Thomas Kyd was born in 1558, six years before Shakespeare and Marlowe. Parish records indicate that he lived in London with his parents and two other siblings-of which one died in 1602. His father, Francis Kyd, was a scrivener. Eminent biographer Arthur Freeman observes that while scriveners garnered little respect from contemporary writers, they profited considerably from their monopoly on many official documents. Francis Kyd's official title read "Writer of the Court Letter"...
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The Spanish Tragedy is a play written by an English dramatist called Thomas Kyd between 1582 and 1592 when the first known performance was conducted. Kyd was a popular dramatist in his day, although most of his plays have been lost. The Spanish...
Among the various definitions of tragedy, the one most commonly proffered is: a play that treats - at the most uncompromising level - human suffering, or pathos, with death being the usual conclusion. According to Aristotle's Poetics, the purpose...
"'Send him,' quoth [Minos], 'to our infernal king, / To doom him as best seems his majesty" (1.1.52-3). Nestled in the lengthy opening monologue by Don Andrea, these lines introduce the overarching question that Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy...
Cross-dressing on the early modern stage was a highly exploited theatrical device. It subverted the traditional conceptions of gender, evoking a recurring sense of dramatic irony. Jean E. Howard explains that “behavioural differences” and “...
By the thirteenth scene of Act III in Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, the character Hieronimo has finally emerged as a major character and transformed significantly. He has gone from a commendable subordinate of the King, to a grieving father,...
It is easy to look at Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, widely considered the first revenge tragedy play, as having a completely nonsensical ending. While the proceeding three acts are fairly typical for a revenge narrative, with machinations...
Renaissance revenge tragedies, like all works of arts, are profoundly influenced by the state of the world around them. Thousands of years later, those state of affairs – wars, love triangles, and power struggles – have evolved, but not truly...
