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Thomas Kyd

Thomas Kyd (baptised 6 November 1558; buried 15 August 1594) was an English dramatist, the author of The Spanish Tragedy, and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama.

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.


“Then haste we down to meet thy friends and foes;To place thy friends in ease, the rest in woes.For here though death doth end their misery,I'll there begin their endless tragedy.”
Thomas Kyd
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“My soule, poore soule thou talkes of things/ Thou knowest not what, my soule hath sliver wings,/ That mounts me up unto the highest heavens.”
Thomas Kyd
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“Let dangers go; thy war shall be with me,But such a war, as breaks no bonds of peace.Speak thou fair words, I'll cross them with fair words;Send thou sweet looks, I'll meet them with sweet looks;Write loving lines, I'll answer loving lines;Give me a kiss, I'll countercheck thy kiss.Be this our warring peace, or peaceful war.”
Thomas Kyd
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“BEL-IMPERIA: Oh let me go; for in my troubled eyesNow may'st thou read that life in passion dies.HORATIO: Oh stay a while, and I will die with thee;So shalt thou yield, and yet have conquered me.”
Thomas Kyd
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“Qui jacet in terra non habet unde cadat. In me consumpsit vires fortuna nocendo, Nil superest ut iam possit obesse magis." (loosely translated: "He who lies on the ground can fall no farther. In me, Fortune has exhausted her power of hurting; nothing remains that can harm me anymore.")”
Thomas Kyd
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