Thomas Kyd (1558–1594)

Verse

Hendecasyllabon T.K. in Cygneam Cantionam Chidiochi Tychborne (‘Thy prime of youth is frozen with thy faults’)

First published in Verses of Prayse and Ioye (London, 1586). Boas, pp. 340-1. Probably not by Kyd.

KyT 1

Copy, written in oblong format, headed ‘Answer’.

In: A duodecimo miscellany of verse and some prose, in a secretary hand, largely written in oblong format, 36 pages (including blanks), in vellum wrappers (a recycled medieval religious text). Early 17th century.

Formerly among the manuscripts of the Isham family at Lamport Hall, Northamptonshire.

Recorded in HMC, 3rd report (1872), Appendix, p. 253.

Edited from this MS in The Complete Poems of Richard Barnfield, ed. A.B. Grosart (London, 1876), pp. 211-12.

Folger, MS V.a.161, pp. 13-14.

KyT 2

Copy, headed ‘The Aunsweare to the same’ [i.e. Tichborne's poem] and here beginning ‘Thy theyme of youthe, is frozen with the faults’.

In: A folio volume of transcripts of state papers, in a secretary hand, i + 41 leaves, in contemporary vellum with remains of ties. c.1610.

Names inscribed on f. [ir]: ‘John Humphreys’ and ‘D [?] Wynn’.

Yale, Osborn MS fb 9, f. 30v.

Letters

Letter(s)

*KyT 3

Autograph letter signed, to Sir John Puckering, Keeper of the Great Seal, [1593]. 1593.

In: A folio composite volume of state papers and parliamentary speeches, in various hands, 337 leaves, in modern red morocco gilt.

Edited in Boas, pp. cviii-cx, and in Freeman, pp. 181-3. Facsimile examples in Boas, frontispiece; in Greg, English Literary Autographs, Plate XV(a); in Wraight & Stern, p. 314; and in Petti, English Literary Hands, No. 32.

British Library, Harley MS 6849, ff. 218r-19r.

*KyT 4

A letter unsigned, possibly by Kyd, to Sir John Puckering or to one or more other Lords of the Privy Council, [1593].

In: A folio composite volume of state letters and papers, in various hands.

Edited in Freeman, pp. 182-3. Facsimile example in Greg, English Literary Autographs, Plate XV(b). Discussed, and the identity of the handwriting questioned, in Freeman, p. 30; in Robert D. Parsons, ‘Thomas Kyd's Letters’, N&Q, 225 (April 1980), 140-1; and in Rebekah Owens, ‘Thomas Kyd and the Letters to Puckering’, N&Q, 250 (December 2006), 458-61.

British Library, Harley MS 6848, f. 154r.

Documents

Document(s)

KyT 5

Fragments of an anonymous heretical disputation found among Kyd's papers (though not in his hand). c.1593.

In: the MS described under KyT 4.

Edited, with a facsimile of one page, in Boas, pp. cx-cxiii. Facsimile of another page in Wraight & Stern, p. 239.

British Library, Harley MS 6848, ff. 187r-9v.