Thomas Kyd

Thomas Kyd (1558–1594) was an English dramatist whose play The Spanish Tragedy helped shape Elizabethan tragedy. The son of a London scrivener, he was educated at the Merchant Taylors' School and wrote for the stage in the 1580s. The Spanish Tragedy, with its ghost, its avenger driven to madness and its play within a play, was performed again and again for decades, and Kyd is often credited with a lost early version of Hamlet. In 1593 he was arrested and tortured after heretical papers, which he said belonged to Christopher Marlowe, were found in his lodgings. He died the following year.