Kyd, Thomas (c. 1557-1595)

English dramatist. He was the author of a bloody revenge tragedy, The Spanish Tragedy (printed about 1590), which anticipated elements present in Shakespeare's Hamlet.

His Pompey the Great (1594) was translated from the French of Robert Garnier. He probably wrote Solyman and Perseda (1592), and perhaps had a part in Arden of Feversham (1592), the first of many domestic tragedies.

Kyd was born in London, the son of a scrivener. He was a schoolfellow of Edmund Spenser at Merchant Taylors', but little is known of his life. He became one of the bohemian literary set of his day, was a close associate of Christopher Marlowe in his last years and, like him, was charged with atheism; after being imprisoned for this he spent his last years in poverty.