Thomas Kyd wasn’t a patch on Shakespeare

The biggest blockbuster hit of the Elizabethan theatre was not by William Shakespeare or Christopher Marlowe or Ben Jonson. In fact it wasn’t by anyone. The Spanish Tragedy, a sturdy play of rhetoric, blood and revenge, was published in multiple editions without any attribution at all. Its central figure, Hieronimo, was a cultural phenomenon, but the drama was widely quoted, imitated and parodied without mention of its author. Its impact was huge. We wouldn’t have Hamlet without it. BBC Radio 4’s invitation to celebrities to try experiences they have unaccountably missed is called I’ve Never Seen Star Wars. Without a doubt, the Elizabethan equivalent would have been I’ve Never Seen The Spanish Tragedy.

Not until a quarter-century after its first performances was an author mentioned. Step forward Thomas Kyd. Unsurprisingly for a man who did not dine out on his authorship of the theatre’s most significant bestseller, Kyd has left few clear biographical traces. We know that he was baptised in St Mary Woolnoth in November 1558, the son of a scrivener, or professional scribe. He attended Merchant Taylors’ School in the City, a grammar school with 250 pupils, supervised by the humanist teacher, educational theorist and Latin poet Richard Mulcaster. The focus there was on intensive Latin grammar, rhetoric and composition, and probably it was at Merchant Taylors’ that the young Kyd first encountered drama: the works of the Roman playwright Terence were part of the curriculum. His biographer and champion Brian Vickers, an expert on Renaissance rhetoric, paints this part of Kyd’s intellectual formation in clear and authoritative detail.