Thomas Kyd - by Brian Vickers (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A groundbreaking new account of the author of The Spanish Tragedy that establishes him as a major Elizabethan dramatist

Thomas Kyd (1558-1594) was a highly regarded dramatist and the author of The Spanish Tragedy, the first revenge tragedy and the most influential Elizabethan play. In this first full study of his life and works, Brian Vickers discusses Kyd's accepted canon as well as three additional plays Vickers has newly identified as having been written by Kyd--exciting discoveries that establish him as a major dramatist.

Thomas Dekker, a fellow Elizabethan dramatist, referred to "industrious Kyd," which suggests a greater output than the three plays traditionally attributed to him--The Spanish Tragedy, Soliman and Perseda, and Cornelia. Kyd worked between 1585 and 1594, when the plague led to the anonymous publication of many plays because of the breakup of several London theatre companies. Researching this corpus, Vickers has identified Kyd's authorship of three more plays: Arden of Faversham, the first domestic tragedy, King Leir and his three daughters, a tragicomedy that provided Shakespeare with his main source, and Fair Em, a love comedy. These attributions are based on two forms of evidence: unique similarities of plot between Kyd's acknowledged and newly attributed plays and many unique phrases shared by all six plays as identified by modern software.

Discussing all the plays in detail and placing them in biographical and historical context, Thomas Kyd offers a major reassessment of an underappreciated Elizabethan playwright.

Review Quotes

"This is a book full of passion, scholarship and controversy. . . .A book that anyone with scholarly aspirations in this area of literary study should and would want to read and for those with more of a lay interest, you will enjoy discovering more about Thomas Kyd and the debates about what he did or didn't write."---Terry Potter, The Letterpress Project

About the Author

Brian Vickers, a Fellow of the British Academy and an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, is a Senior Research Fellow at the School of Advanced Study at London University. His many books include The One King Lear and Shakespeare, Co-Author: A Historical Study of Five Collaborative Plays. He is editing The Collected Works of Thomas Kyd and The Collected Works of John Ford.