托马斯·基德（Thomas Kyd，1558–1594年），英国剧作家。他的情节剧《西班牙悲剧》（1594年）复兴了复仇悲剧，一种经典的以谋杀和复仇为主题的戏剧形式。

该剧描述了一名西班牙贵族沦落为暴民的故事，在伊丽莎白女王时代很受欢迎，用以纪念西班牙无敌舰队在1588年试图向英格兰发起的侵略。传说基德写了一部关于哈姆雷特的剧本，后被莎士比亚借用。基德生于伦敦并在那里的商业泰勒学校学习语言。1593年他被指控为一名无神论者而入狱了一段时间。很多基德的悲剧作品都已失传。

他是弗兰西斯的儿子基德，公民和代书伦敦，和洗礼，在圣玛丽教堂伍尔诺斯，伦巴底街，十一月六日1558。他的母亲，谁幸存的儿子，名叫艾格尼丝，或安娜。十月1565基德进入新成立的麦钱特泰勒斯学校，在埃德蒙斯宾塞和托马斯洛奇是在不同的时间他的school-fellows。据认为，基德没有进行任何的大学；他显然之后，很快就离开学校后，他父亲的企业作为代书。但纳什把他描写成一个“移动伴侣，经历了每一个艺术繁荣的没有。”他显示了相当广泛的阅读拉丁。作者的人他是最自由的，但也有许多的回忆，和偶尔的误译的其他作者。轻蔑地说，“英国人·塞涅卡阅读的烛光yeeldes许多好的句子，“毫无疑问，夸大他的债务托马斯牛顿的翻译。约翰·李利有更明显的影响，对他的态度比他同时代的任何人。据认为，他制作了他的著名的发挥，西班牙悲剧，之间的1584和1589；四开在大英博物馆（这可能是早于哥廷根和埃尔斯米尔四开本，1594和i59y）未注明日期，并发挥了授权的新闻在1592。全称是，西班牙悲剧的可悲下场的霍雷肖和bel-imperia；与悲惨的死亡和发挥老赫罗尼莫，通常指的是由亨斯洛和其他同时代的赫罗尼莫。该剧很喜欢通过伊丽莎白的年龄，甚至杰姆斯本人和查尔斯我不成功，它已最流行的所有旧英国戏剧。某些词语在纳什的序言1589版的罗伯特格林尼的menaphon可以说已经开始了全世界的炒作方面的基德的活动。大部分的这仍然是非常令人费解的；它也不是真正理解为什么本·琼森称他为“体育基德。”有1592是添加一种序幕西班牙悲剧，称为第一部分杰罗尼莫，或warres葡萄牙，不到1605。鲍亚士教授认为基德和这毫不夸张的生产，使不同版本的故事，并提出了杰罗尼莫略多于一个小丑。另一方面，它变得越来越确信德国的批评称ur-hamlet，原草案的悲剧的丹麦王子，是一个失去了工作，基德，他可能由1587。这个理论已经非常精心制定的并经萨拉兹教授，教授鲍亚士；这些学者无疑是正确的在持有的痕迹，基德的玩生存在一个行为的1603个第一四开本的哈姆雷特，但他们可能走得太远，把大部分的实际语言的最后三行为基德。基德的下一步工作的概率在所有的悲剧，索利曼和perseda，或者书面1588和授权的新闻在1592，其中，尽管匿名，分配给他强大的内部证据的蟒蛇。没有原本已下降到我们；但它转载，基德去世后，在1599。在夏天或秋天1590基德似乎已经放弃了写作的阶段，并已进入服务的一名主，谁雇用一队球员。基德可能是私人秘书的贵族，他看到罗伯特·斯教授，继第五萨塞克斯伯爵。对妻子的伯爵（布丽姬·莫里森的cassiobury）基德在他生命的最后一年他翻译的加美的喜爱（1594），奉献给他所附的缩写。2散文作品的剧作家有存活，论述国内经济的居士，哲学，从意大利语的塔索（1588）；和一个耸人听闻的帐户的最邪恶的秘密谋杀约翰啤酒，戈德史密斯（1592）。他的名字写在扉页的独特的副本的最后一个小册子在兰贝斯，但可能不是他的手。许多kyds戏剧和诗歌已失去的事实证明，碎片存在，归咎于他，这是在没有发现生存语境。对接近他的生活基德被带到与马洛。它似乎在1590，之后他进入了服务的贵族，他的熟人基德。

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.