該劇描述了一名西班牙貴族淪落為暴民的故事，在伊麗莎白女王時代很受歡迎，用以紀念西班牙無敵艦隊在1588年試圖向英格蘭發(fā)起的侵略。傳說基德寫了一部關(guān)于哈姆雷特的劇本，后被莎士比亞借用�；�德生于倫敦并在那里的商業(yè)泰勒學校學習語言。1593年他被指控為一名無神論者而入獄了一段時間。很多基德的悲劇作品都已失傳。

他是弗蘭西斯的兒子基德，公民和代書倫敦，和洗禮，在圣瑪麗教堂伍爾諾斯，倫巴底街，十一月六日1558。他的母親，誰幸存的兒子，名叫艾格尼絲，或安娜。十月1565基德進入新成立的麥錢特泰勒斯學校，在埃德蒙斯賓塞和托馬斯洛奇是在不同的時間他的school-fellows。據(jù)認為，基德沒有進行任何的大學；他顯然之后，很快就離開學校后，他父親的企業(yè)作為代書。但納什把他描寫成一個“移動伴侶，經(jīng)歷了每一個藝術(shù)繁榮的沒有�！彼�顯示了相當廣泛的閱讀拉丁。作者的人他是最自由的，但也有許多的回憶，和偶爾的誤譯的其他作者。輕蔑地說，“英國人·塞涅卡閱讀的燭光yeeldes許多好的句子，“毫無疑問，夸大他的債務托馬斯牛頓的翻譯。約翰·李利有更明顯的影響，對他的態(tài)度比他同時代的任何人。據(jù)認為，他制作了他的著名的發(fā)揮，西班牙悲劇，之間的1584和1589；四開在大英博物館（這可能是早于哥廷根和埃爾斯米爾四開本，1594和i59y）未注明日期，并發(fā)揮了授權(quán)的新聞在1592。全稱是，西班牙悲劇的可悲下場的霍雷肖和bel-imperia；與悲慘的死亡和發(fā)揮老赫羅尼莫，通常指的是由亨斯洛和其他同時代的赫羅尼莫。該劇很喜歡通過伊麗莎白的年齡，甚至杰姆斯本人和查爾斯我不成功，它已最流行的所有舊英國戲劇。某些詞語在納什的序言1589版的羅伯特格林尼的menaphon可以說已經(jīng)開始了全世界的炒作方面的基德的活動。大部分的這仍然是非常令人費解的；它也不是真正理解為什么本·瓊森稱他為“體育基德�！庇�1592是添加一種序幕西班牙悲劇，稱為第一部分杰羅尼莫，或warres葡萄牙，不到1605。鮑亞士教授認為基德和這毫不夸張的生產(chǎn)，使不同版本的故事，并提出了杰羅尼莫略多于一個小丑。另一方面，它變得越來越確信德國的批評稱ur-hamlet，原草案的悲劇的丹麥王子，是一個失去了工作，基德，他可能由1587。這個理論已經(jīng)非常精心制定的并經(jīng)薩拉茲教授，教授鮑亞士；這些學者無疑是正確的在持有的痕跡，基德的玩生存在一個行為的1603個第一四開本的哈姆雷特，但他們可能走得太遠，把大部分的實際語言的最后三行為基德�；�德的下一步工作的概率在所有的悲劇，索利曼和perseda，或者書面1588和授權(quán)的新聞在1592，其中，盡管匿名，分配給他強大的內(nèi)部證據(jù)的蟒蛇。沒有原本已下降到我們；但它轉(zhuǎn)載，基德去世后，在1599。在夏天或秋天1590基德似乎已經(jīng)放棄了寫作的階段，并已進入服務的一名主，誰雇用一隊球員。基德可能是私人秘書的貴族，他看到羅伯特·斯教授，繼第五薩塞克斯伯爵。對妻子的伯爵（布麗姬·莫里森的cassiobury）基德在他生命的最后一年他翻譯的加美的喜愛（1594），奉獻給他所附的縮寫。2散文作品的劇作家有存活，論述國內(nèi)經(jīng)濟的居士，哲學，從意大利語的塔索（1588）；和一個聳人聽聞的帳戶的最邪惡的秘密謀殺約翰啤酒，戈德史密斯（1592）。他的名字寫在扉頁的獨特的副本的最后一個小冊子在蘭貝斯，但可能不是他的手。許多kyds戲劇和詩歌已失去的事實證明，碎片存在，歸咎于他，這是在沒有發(fā)現(xiàn)生存語境。對接近他的生活基德被帶到與馬洛。它似乎在1590，之后他進入了服務的貴族，他的熟人基德。

Certain expressions in Nashe’s preface to the 1589 edition of Robert Greene’s Menaphon may be said to have started a whole world of speculation with regard to Kyd’s activity. Much of this is still very puzzling; nor is it really understood why Ben Jonson called him "sporting Kyd." In 1592 there was added a sort of prologue to The Spanish Tragedy, called The First Part of Jeronimo, or The Warres of Portugal, not printed till 1605. Professor Boas concludes that Kyd had nothing to do with this melodramatic production, which gives a different version of the story and presents Jeronimo as little more than a buffoon. On the other hand, it becomes more and more certain that what German criticism calls the Ur-Hamlet, the original draft of the tragedy of the prince of Denmark, was a lost work by Kyd, probably composed by him in 1587. This theory has been very elaborately worked out by Professor Sarrazin, and confirmed by Professor Boas; these scholars are doubtless right in holding that traces of Kyd’s play survive in the first two acts of the 1603 first quarto of Hamlet, but they probably go too far in attributing much of the actual language of the last three acts to Kyd. Kyd’s next work was in all probability the tragedy of Soliman and Perseda, written perhaps in 1588 and licensed for the press in 1592, which, although anonymous, is assigned to him on strong internal evidence by Mr. Boas. No copy of the first edition has come down to us; but it was reprinted, after Kyd’s death, in 1599.

In the summer or autumn of 1590 Kyd seems to have given up writing for the stage, and to have entered the service of an unnamed lord, who employed a troop of players. Kyd was probably the private secretary of this nobleman, in whom Professor Boas sees Robert Radcliffe, afterwards fifth earl of Sussex. To the wife of the earl (Bridget Morison of Cassiobury) Kyd dedicated in the last year of his life his translation of Gamier’s Comedia (1594), to the dedication of which he attached his initials. Two prose works of the dramatist have survived, a treatise on domestic economy, The House-holders Philosophy, translated from the Italian of Tasso (1588); and a sensational account of The Most Wicked and Secret Murdering of John Brewer, Goldsmith (1592). His name is written on the title-page of the unique copy of the last-named pamphlet at Lambeth, but probably not by his hand. That many of Kyds plays and poems have been lost is proved by the fact that fragments exist, attributed to him, which are found in no surviving context.

Towards the close of his life Kyd was brought into relations with Marlowe. It would seem that in 1590, soon after he entered the service of this nobleman, Kyd formed his acquaintance. If he is to be believed, he shrank at once from Marlowe as a man intemperate and of a cruel heart and irreligious. This, however, was said by Kyd with the rope ’round his neck, and is scarcely consistent with a good deal of apparent intimacy between him and Marlowe. When, in May 1593, the lewd libels and blasphemies of Marlowe came before the notice of the Star Chamber, Kyd was immediately arrested, papers of his having been found shuffled with some of Marlowe’s, who was imprisoned a week later. A visitation on Kyd’s papers was made in consequence of his having attached a seditious libel to the wall of the Dutch churchyard in Austin Friars. Of this he was innocent, but there was found in his chamber a paper of vile heretical conceits denying the deity of Jesus Christ. Kyd was arrested and put to the torture in Bridewell. He asserted that he knew nothing of this document and tried to shift the responsibility of it upon Marlowe, but he was kept in prison until after the death of that poet (June 1, 1593). When he was at length dismissed, his patron refused to take hun back into his service. He fell into utter destitution, and sank under the weight of bitter times and privy broken passions. He must have died late in 1594, and on the 30th of December of that year his parents renounced their administration of the goods of their deceased son, in a document of great importance discovered by Professor Schick.

The importance of Kyd, as the pioneer in the wonderful movement of secular drama in England, gives great interest to his works, and we are now able at last to assert what many critics have long conjectured, that he takes in that movement the position of a leader and almost of an inventor. Regarded from this point of view, The Spanish Tragedy is a work of extraordinary value, since it is the earliest specimen of effective stage poetry existing in English literature. It had been preceded only by the pageant-poems of Peele and Lyly, in which all that constitutes in the modern sense theatrical technique and effective construction was entirely absent. These gifts, in which the whole power of the theatre as a place cf general entertainment was to consist, were supplied earliest among English playwrights to Kyd, and were first exercised by him, so far as we can see, in 1586. This, then, is a more or less definite starting date for Elizabethan drama, and of peculiar value to its historians.

Curiously enough, The Spanish Tragedy, which was the earliest stage-play of the great period, was also the most popular, and held its own right through the careers of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Fletcher. It was not any shortcoming in its harrowing and exciting plot, hut the tameness of its archaic versification, which probably led in 1602 to its receiving additions, which have been a great stumblingblock to the critics. It is known that Ben Jonson was paid for these additional scenes, but they are extremely unlike all other known writings of his, and several scholars have independently conjectured that John Webster wrote them.

Of Kyd himself it seems needful to point out that neither the Germans nor even Professor Boas seems to realize how little definite merit his poetry has; he is important, not in himself, but as a pioneer. The influence of Kyd is marked on all the immediate predecessors of Shakespeare, and the bold way in which scenes of violent crime were treated on the Elizabethan stage appears to be directly owing to the example of Kyd’s innovating genius. His relation to Hamlet has already been noted, and Titus Andronicus presents and exaggerates so many of his characteristics that Mr. Sidney Lee and others have supposed that tragedy to be a work of Kyd’s, touched up by Shakespeare. Professor Boas, however, brings cogent objections against this theory, founding them on what he considers the imitative inferiority of Titus Andronicus to The Spanish Tragedy. The German critics have pushed too far their attempt to find indications of Kyd’s influence on later plays of Shakespeare. The extraordinary interest felt for Kyd in Germany is explained by the fact that The Spanish Tragedy was long the best known of all Elizabethan plays abroad. It was acted at Frankfurt in 1601, and published soon afterwards at Nuremberg. It continued to be a stock piece in Germany until the beginning of the 18th century; it was equally popular in Holland, and potent in its effect upon Dutch dramatic literature.