The Spanish Tragedy: A Play

Excerpt from The Spanish Tragedy: A Play

Unfortunately, this investigation is beset with great difficulties; and thus considerable discrepancy of opinion prevails even on some of the most important points.

All detailed criticism, as well as a full statement of authorities - I have only room here to mention my especial indebtedness to Sarrazin's book, Thomas Kyd und sein Kreis, and Mr. Sidney Lee's article in the Dictionary of National Biography - must be reserved for my forthcoming larger edition, of which the preface and notes in this little volume form merely a short extract.

Known facts of Kyd's life. Materials for a biography of Thomas Kyd are still but scanty. Yet we are now fortunate enough to possess as a starting-point the fact that Thomas Kyd was baptized Nov. 6, 1558, in the Church of St Mary Woolnoth, in the City - a discovery which we owe to Mr. Gordon Goodwin; see Notes and Queries, 8th series, vol. v. pp. 305-6 (21st April 1894).

Thus we know now for certain that Kyd was older by a good lustrum than Marlowe or Shakspere. This seems to me a very important consideration, in view of the astounding youthfulness of the creators of the English drama - some, after a glorious record, being carried off in early youth, and the greatest of them storming the very heights of Parnassus before he could be called a man.

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