Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 31.djvu/357

Kyd "T. K." and the title page of a new edition of 1595 runs: 'Pompey the Great his faire Cornelius Tragedie: effected by her father and husbandes downecast, death, and fortune. . . translated into English by Thomas Kid,' London (Nich. Ling), 1598, 4to. In his dedication the author writes that he endured 'bitter times and privy broken passions' In writing the piece, and promises to deal hereafter with Garnier's 'Portia' ('Porcie'), a promise never fulfilled.' Cornelia' follows the Senecan model, and is very tedious. The speeches in blank-verse are inordinately long, and the rhymed choruses show little poetic feeling. Unlike 'The Spanish Tragedy,' the piece seems to have met with a better reception from cultured critics than from the general public. In 1591 the author of an 'Epicedium' on Lady Helen Branch, who is doubtfully identified with Sir William Herbert, d. 1593 [q. v.], bestowed equal commendation on Shakespeare, the poet of 'Lucretia,' end on him who 'pen'd the praise of sad Cornelia," A year later "William Clerke, in his 'Polimanteia,' wrote that 'Cornelia's Tragedy, however not respected, was excellently well done.'

On strong internal evidence Kyd has been credited with two more anonymous tragedies of the 'Jeronimo' type closely resembling each other in plot. One, first printed by Edward Allde for Edward White in 1589, was entitled 'The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune,' and may be identical with 'A History of Love and Fortune' which was acted at court before 23 Dec. 1582, Collier reprinted it for the Roxburghe Club in 1851. The other piece was 'The Tragedye of Solyman and Perseda. Wherein is laid open Loves Constancy, Fortunes Inconstancy, and Deaths Triumphs.' The play was licensed for the press by Edward White on 20 Nov. 1593, but an edition dated 1599, printed, like 'Love and Fortune,' by Allde for White, is the earliest extant, and in some copies is described as 'newly corrected and amended.' The plot is drawn from H. W.'s 'A Courtlie Controvesie of Cupids Cautels,' 1578, which Collier assigns to Wetton, and the dramatist's description of the beauty of the heroine Persida is partly borrowed from a sonnet in Watson's 'Ekatompathia,' 1582. Kyd makes the whole story the subject of the play with which Hieromino entertains the Spanish court in 'The Spanish Tragedy.' Greene refers familiarly to the leading theme, 'the betrothed faith of Erasto to his Persida,' in both his 'Mamillia,' 1583, and his 'Gwydonius,' 1587, and the tragedy was probably written in the former year. Its popularity is attested by Shakespeare's direct allusion in 'King John' (i. 1, 344) to its comic exposure of the cowardice of Basilisco, a vain-glorious knight (ed. Dodsley, v. 272).

Other plays have been attributed to Kyd on less convincing grounds. Malone believed 'that he had a hand in the 'Taming of a Shrew,' 1594, whence Shakespeare adapted his well-known comedy, and in 'Titus Andronicus,' which recalls 'The Spanish Tragedy' in some of its revolting incidents, and is alluded to by Jonson in close conjunction with 'Jeronimo.' But in neither case is the internal evidence strong enough to admit of a positive conclusion. Mr. Fleary's theory that he wrote 'Arden of Feversham' is unsatisfactory. But the argument in favour of Kyd's authorship of a pre-Shakespearean play (now lost) on the subject of Hamlet deserves' attention. Nashe in 1569, when describing the typical literary hack, who at almost every point suggests Kyd, notices that in addition to his other accomplishments 'he will afford you whole Hamlets, I should say, handfuls of tragical speeches.' Other references in popular tracts and plays of like date prove that in an early tragedy concerning Hamlet there was a ghost who cried repeatedly 'Hamlet revenge!' and that this expression took rank, beside the quotations from 'Jeronimo,' in Elizabethan slang (cf., Memoranda on Hamlet, p. 7-21). The resemblance between the stories of' Hamlet 'and 'Jeronimo' suggests that the former would have supplied Kyd with a congenial plot. In 'Jeronimo' a father seeks to avenge his son's murder, in 'Hamlet' the theme is the same, with the position of father and son reversed. In 'Jeronimo' the avenger resolves to reach his end by arranging for the performance of a play with those whom he suspects of the crime, and there is good ground for crediting the lost tragedy of 'Hamlet' with a similar play-scene. Shakespeare's debt to the lost tragedy is a matter of conjecture, but the stilted speeches of the play-scene in his 'Hamlet' read like intentional parodies of Kyd's bombastic efforts in 'The Spanish Tragedy,' and it is quite possible that they were directly suggested by an almost identical episode in a lost 'Hamlet' by the same author.

Kyd's reputation as one of the best-known tragic poets of his time, and his close personal relations with the leading dramatist, Marlowe, strengthen the assumption that he was directly concerned in the composition of many popular anonymous plays. Immediately after Marlowe's death in 1593 he was charged with holding scandalous opinions regarding morality and religion. According to memoranda made from contemporary documents concerning that charge, and now