Background
Thomas Kyd was the son of Francis Kyd, a scrivener, or professional scribe, of London.
(The Spanish Tragedie, By Thomas Kyd, and Hamlet, Prince o...)
The Spanish Tragedie, By Thomas Kyd, and Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, By William Shakespeare (2 Books) The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronimo is Mad Again is an Elizabethan tragedy written by Thomas Kyd between 1582 and 1592. Highly popular and influential in its time, The Spanish Tragedy established a new genre in English theatre, the revenge play or revenge tragedy. Its plot contains several violent murders and includes as one of its characters a personification of Revenge. The Spanish Tragedy was often referred to (or parodied) in works written by other Elizabethan playwrights, including William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Christopher Marlowe. Many elements of The Spanish Tragedy, such as the play-within-a-play used to trap a murderer and a ghost intent on vengeance, appear in Shakespeare's Hamlet. (Thomas Kyd is frequently proposed as the author of the hypothetical Ur-Hamlet that may have been one of Shakespeare's primary sources for Hamlet.) Hamlet, Prince of Denmark The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, often shortened to Hamlet, is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare at an uncertain date between 1599 and 1602. Set in the Kingdom of Denmark, the play dramatises the revenge Prince Hamlet is called to wreak upon his uncle, Claudius, by the ghost of Hamlet's father, King Hamlet. Claudius had murdered his own brother and seized the throne, also marrying his deceased brother's widow. Hamlet is Shakespeare's longest play, and is ranked among the most powerful and influential tragedies in English literature, with a story capable of "seemingly endless retelling and adaptation by others". The play likely was one of Shakespeare's most popular works during his lifetime, and still ranks among his most performed, topping the performance list of the Royal Shakespeare Company and its predecessors in Stratford-upon-Avon since 1879. It has inspired many other writers from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Charles Dickens to James Joyce and Iris Murdoch and has been described as "the world's most filmed story after Cinderella". The story of Shakespeare's Hamlet was derived from the legend of Amleth, preserved by 13th-century chronicler Saxo Grammaticus in his Gesta Danorum, as subsequently retold by 16th-century scholar François de Belleforest. Shakespeare may also have drawn on an earlier (hypothetical) Elizabethan play known today as the Ur-Hamlet, though some scholars believe he himself wrote the Ur-Hamlet, later revising it to create the version of Hamlet we now have. He almost certainly wrote his version of the title role for his fellow actor, Richard Burbage, the leading tragedian of Shakespeare's time. In the 400 years since its inception, the role has been performed by numerous highly acclaimed actors in each successive century.
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(This one-volume edition of the two most influential pre-S...)
This one-volume edition of the two most influential pre-Shakespearean tragedies in English. "Gorboduc" (1561) has claims to be the earliest English tragedy and was written jointly by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville. "The Spanish Tragedy" is of extraordinary interest, not only in its own right, but as as the central precusor to "Hamlet".
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(The "Spanish Tragedy," highly influential and popular in ...)
The "Spanish Tragedy," highly influential and popular in its time, established a new genre in English theatre - the revenge play or tragedy which later became so influential in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. The Spanish Tragedy (1589) occupies a very special place in the history of English Renaissance drama. Hieronimo, Knight-Marshal of Spain during its war with Portugal, fails to obtain justice when his son is murdered for courting Bel-Imperia, the Duke of Castile's daughter, and decides to take justice into his own hands. In a scene replete with meta-theatrical implications, Hieronimo and Bel-Imperia stage a playlet with Portuguese and Spanish nobles as actors, stabbing them with real 'fake' daggers before they kill themselves. "The Spanish Tragedy" was often referenced in works written by other Elizabethan playwrights, including William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Christopher Marlowe. Many elements of The Spanish Tragedy, such as the play-within-a-play, appear in Shakespeare's Hamlet.
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(A modern edition of Thomas Kyd's "Seleiman and Perseda".)
A modern edition of Thomas Kyd's "Seleiman and Perseda".
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( Thomas Kyds highly influential and popular revenge pla...)
Thomas Kyds highly influential and popular revenge play is now available in a richly documented and critically engaging Norton Critical Edition. The freshly edited and annotated text comes with a full introduction and illustrative materials intended for student readers. The Spanish Tragedy was well known to sixteenth-century audiences, and its central elements?a play-within-a-play and a ghost bent on revenge?are widely believed to have influenced Shakespeares Hamlet. This volume includes a generous selection of supporting materials, among them Kyds likely sources (Virgil, Jacques Yver, and the anonymous The Earl of Leicester Betrays His Own Servant), Thomas Nashes satiric criticism of Kyd, Michel de Montaigne and Francis Bacon on revenge, and The Ballad of The Spanish Tragedy, which suggests the plays initial reception. Criticism is thematically organized to provide readers with a clear sense of the plays major themes. Contributors include Michael Hattaway, Jonas A. Barish, Donna B. Hamilton, G. K. Hunter, Lorna Hutson, Molly Smith, J. R. Mulryne, T. McAlindon, and Andrew Sofer. A Selected Bibliography is also included.
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(Thomas Kyd was born in 1558 and is most noted as a pivota...)
Thomas Kyd was born in 1558 and is most noted as a pivotal figure in the development of Elizabethan drama. In his own time he was highly praised but fell into obscurity until re-discovery in the late 1700's. his most famous work is The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronimo is Mad Again, a tragedy written between 1582 and 1592 and established the then new genre of the revenge play. With the use of several violent murders and a structure of a play-within-a-play and a ghost intent on vengeance Kyd took drama in new directions that remain with us today. Thomas Kyd died in August 1594.
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(This collection of literature attempts to compile many of...)
This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic timeless works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced affordable price in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them
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( The first fully-fledged example of a revenge tragedy, t...)
The first fully-fledged example of a revenge tragedy, the genre that became so influential in later Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, The Spanish Tragedy (1589) occupies a very special place in the history of English Renaissance drama. Hieronimo, Knight-Marshal of Spain during its war with Portugal, fails to obtain justice when his son is murdered for courting Bel-Imperia, the Duke of Castile's daughter, and decides to take justice into his own hands... This new student edition has been freshly revised by Professor Andrew Gurr to incorporate the latest stage history and critical interpretations of the play. It also appends the scenes that were added in 1602, discusses Elizabethan attitudes to revenge, the Senecan features of the play and the significance of the Anglo-Spanish conflict in the 1580s.
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(Little is known about the life of Thomas Kyd (1558-1594),...)
Little is known about the life of Thomas Kyd (1558-1594), but we do know that in the early 1580s he was associated with a London theatre company. By 1594 he had completed one of the most famous plays of the 16th century: "The Spanish Tragedy." At that time, the majority of English drama was stiff, and Kyd's new use of blank verse to present emotions on stage was revolutionary. He took foundations of Roman tragedy-a ghost, revenge and violence-and created a spectacular melodrama that greatly appealed to English audiences. The play's Hieronimo remains one of the most popular tragic characters on the Elizabethan and Jacobean stages, and served as a model for later tragic characters like Shakespeare's Hamlet. Full of allegorical characters and ghosts, onstage murder, suicide, play-within-the-play, real and feigned insanity and a bloody ending, "The Spanish Tragedy" established the popular revenge play and introduced audiences to the excitement of psychological realism.
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( Francis Bacon described revenge as a 'kind of wild just...)
Francis Bacon described revenge as a 'kind of wild justice'. Then as now, early modern playwrights and their theatre-going public were fascinated by the anarchic energies that a desire for retribution unleashes. Rather than rehearsing familiar conventions, each of these plays presents a unique social and cultural milieu where dark fantasies of revenge are variously played out. In Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy a grieving father seeks public justice for the murder of his son by envious princelings. When his attempts are thwarted he turns a court spectacle of murder into the 'real' thing. Blackly comic in its tone and style, The Revenger's Tragedy (anon.) presents vengeance as mimetic art, witty and cruel. Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore represents an innovative re-working of the genre as a brother's love for his sister leads to his spectacular revenge on his rival, her husband, in a society in which brutal retaliation for perceived wrong is the norm. In Webster's The White Devil crimes of passion ignite revenge in the courts of the Italian city states. This student edition contains fully annotated, modernized texts of each play together with an introduction discussing the dramatic and poetic style of each play, focusing on its action and play of ideas.
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(Edited by John Matthews Manly- Containing the lamentable ...)
Edited by John Matthews Manly- Containing the lamentable end of DON HORATIO and BEL-IMPERIA: with the pittiful death of olde HIERONIMO.
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Thomas Kyd was the son of Francis Kyd, a scrivener, or professional scribe, of London.
He received his education at the Merchant Taylors' School, a well-respected, fairly progressive school attended by sons of middle-class citizens of London.
Kyd probably began his career as a popular playwright about 1583 and produced his most significant work, The Spanish Tragedy, sometime between this date and 1589. Although somewhat crude both dramatically and poetically, this extremely popular play did much to shape the greater tragedies of the later Elizabethan and Jacobean periods.
It is the earliest example in English of the "revenge play, " or "tragedy of blood, " which was later developed and refined by such dramatists as Shakespeare, George Chapman, and John Webster.
Its exciting action culminates in a cleverly contrived scene in which the protagonist stages a "play" which turns out to be horrifyingly real: the "actors" use their swords in earnest, with the result that all principal characters-heroes and villains-are disposed of in a spectacularly bloody fashion.
Unfortunately, Kyd proved unable to repeat his early success. During the early months of 1593 he became involved in legal difficulties in connection with certain "lewd and malicious libels" directed against foreigners living in London. In the course of an investigation into these charges, incriminating papers of an "atheist" nature were discovered in Kyd's lodgings.
Although Kyd claimed that these papers belonged to Christopher Marlowe, with whom he had lived for a time, he was nonetheless forced to spend some months in prison. It was during this trying period that Kyd composed his Cornelia, a translation of a play by the French tragic writer Robert Garnier. Kyd's version of Garnier's play was highly esteemed by some early critics, but it lacks the excitement and energy which made The Spanish Tragedy such a potent influence on subsequent playwrights.
On the strength of a passage in the writings of the Elizabethan pamphleteer Thomas Nashe, Kyd's name has long been associated with an early Hamlet play. This play, which is commonly referred to as the Ur-Hamlet, has not survived.
Scholars are now inclined to believe that the play did in fact exist and that Shakespeare probably made use of it for his masterpiece, but most are agreed that there is no firm evidence for associating this play with Kyd.
Kyd died in April 1594, apparently in poverty and disgrace as a result of his difficulties with the law. He was buried in London.
Although well known in his own time, Kyd fell into obscurity until 1773 when Thomas Hawkins, an early editor of The Spanish Tragedy, discovered that Kyd was named as its author by Thomas Heywood in his Apologie for Actors (1612). A hundred years later, scholars in Germany and England began to shed light on his life and work, including the controversial finding that he may have been the author of a Hamlet play pre-dating Shakespeare's, which is now known as the Ur-Hamlet.
( The first fully-fledged example of a revenge tragedy, t...)
(The Spanish Tragedie, By Thomas Kyd, and Hamlet, Prince o...)
(This collection of literature attempts to compile many of...)
(The "Spanish Tragedy," highly influential and popular in ...)
( Thomas Kyds highly influential and popular revenge pla...)
(Little is known about the life of Thomas Kyd (1558-1594),...)
(Edited by John Matthews Manly- Containing the lamentable ...)
(Thomas Kyd was born in 1558 and is most noted as a pivota...)
(This one-volume edition of the two most influential pre-S...)
( Francis Bacon described revenge as a 'kind of wild just...)
(A modern edition of Thomas Kyd's "Seleiman and Perseda".)
