DID WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE WRITE THE PLAY SIR THOMAS MORE?

Added : ( Fri Sep 17 2004 )

THOMAS KYD ELIZABETHAN DRAMATIST WAS ARRESTED ON 12TH MAY 1593 AND TORTURED AT NEWGATE PRISON IN LONDON ENGLAND. HIS FRIEND AND CO-WRITER, CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, DRAMATIST, WAS ARRESTED ON 18TH MAY 1593 AND MURDERED ON 30TH MAY 1593 (STABBED THROUGH THE EYE.) KYD WROTE THE FORERUNNER TO HAMLET “THE SPANISH TRAGEDY” BEFORE SHAKESPEARE, AND MARLOWE WROTE KING RICHARD II AND KING EDWARD II. BOTH KYD AND MARLOWE WERE BRILLIANT DRAMATISTS. WHAT BROUGHT ABOUT THEIR DOWNFALL?

In the book “The King’s Quinto: The Life and Times of Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618)" (ISBN: 1413708285 Publish America), the author Barbara O’Sullivan examines the history of Thomas Kyd Dramatist and Christopher Marlowe Dramatist who lived in the same age as William Shakespeare. They all lived in London in 1593 when these strange events took place. Kyd and Marlowe had both received a classical education, Kyd having been educated at Merchant Taylor’s School in London, and Marlowe at Cambridge University.

The arrest and murder of Christopher Marlowe (who was baptized on 26th February 1564 at St. George the Martyr, Canterbury) in 1593 took place shortly after the arrest and torture of Thomas Kyd at Newgate Prison, and these arrests were connected in a sinister way, because Kyd and Marlowe had shared a writing chamber from 1591 when Marlowe was writing Edward II (which had been registered by William Jones in London on 6th July, 1593). Marlowe went on to write The Massacre at Paris in 1592 as well as Hero and Leander in the same year. Were they working on the play Sir Thomas More, for which they were accused of seditious and heretical writing? The strangest part of the story you are about to read, is that William Shakespeare is said to have written the play “Sir Thomas More” and in a letter from the British Library Curator of Manuscripts, Mr. W.H. Kelliher wrote to Barbara O’Sullivan on 8th March 1998: “As one of the Library’s greatest treasures the original (Harley MS 7368), which has suffered rather badly from physical deterioration over the years, is not normally made available in our Student’s Room. However, a leaf from it, now temporarily withdrawn from display at the British Museum, is to be transferred to a Shakespeare case in the new exhibition area at St. Pancras in the late spring or early summer.” Mr. Kelliher goes on to say, “I enclose a draft of the label to accompany it.” The label, which Mr. Kelliher sent was entitled “Shakespeare the Artist” (1564 to 1616) and reads: “This document is generally accepted as the only literary manuscript to survive from the pen of the greatest English playwright. The playhouse copy, or “Booke”, of which it forms part is a collaborative revision of an earlier drama tracing the career and downfall of Henry VIII’s staunchly Catholic Lord Chancellor. It is copied mostly in the hand of Anthony Munday, with additions and revisions made by five other dramatists, including Dekker, Chettle and perhaps Heywood. Another hand, commonly labelled “hand D” wrote the insurrection or “Ill May Day” scene than runs to three pages. The nature of the revisions proves it to be authorial rather than merely a scribal addition, and its attribution to Shakespeare is based mainly on features of treatment, style, imagery and spelling that can all be paralleled in his known work. The evidence of handwriting, however, which depends on comparison with the six surviving signatures, is rather more ambiguous.”

Newgate Prison was built in 1218 and enlarged and improved by the Lord Mayor of London, Richard Whittington in 1423, and thereafter no improvements were made to the prison.

On 12th May 1593, Thomas Kyd was carried off to Newgate Prison and cruelly tortured, without trial, having his fingertips crushed so that he may never write again. His arrest concerned the matter of a rhyme which had been pasted to the wall of a Dutch churchyard in London on Thursday May 5th, 1593, between the hours of 11 and 12 at night. The rhyme in question reads:

“You strangers, that inhabit this land
Note this same writing, do it understand
Conceive it well, for safe-guard of your lives
Your goods, your children and your dearest wives.”

The rhyme is taken from the play “Sir Thomas More” which was written by at least four dramatists, being Thomas Dekker (writing for the Admiral’s Men in 1598), Thomas Kyd and Anthony Munday (the author of John a Kent John a Cumber 1593), and John Day. The play “Sir Thomas More” was written in about 1593 and traces the downfall of King Henry VIII’s Catholic Lord Chancellor. “Thomas More was born in Milk Street within the City of London in 1478. He was knighted in 1514 and sworn in as a member of the Privy Council. In 1523 he was elected Speaker of the House of Commons. When Cardinal Wolsey fell into disgrace, More became Chancellor. High office did not, however, alter More. When he saw that Henry VIII was determined to divorce Queen Catherine of Aragon in order to marry Anne Bolelyn, Sir Thomas More resigned. King Henry VIII never forgave or forgot. More was imprisoned in the Tower of London and executed for his religious beliefs and opinions, together with Bishop Fisher in the year 1535. More’s head was set upon Tower Bridge.

Frederick S. Boas says in his book, “Thomas Kyd” …

“Thomas Kyd underwent interrogation and rigorous torture by the pressing and crushing of his fingertips under the instructions of William Deyos, one of the Keepers of Newgate. Eight months later, Kyd was called before the Sessions Hall near Newgate Prison and there he was examined concerning the heretical papers, which had been found. During his eight month imprisonment, Kyd had voluntarily written letters of apology to the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, Sir John Puckering, claiming that the heretical papers discovered in his writing chamber were the property of Christopher Marlowe and he said that the papers must have been cast in whilst they had shared a writing chamber in 1591. Kyd was released in November 1593, but the torture that he had endured and the circumstances in which he had lived for those eight months, meant that his health was so poor that he survived for a short time after his release, even though he was still only 36 years old. His dramatic work “Cornelia” was registered for publication on the 26th January 1594.”

If Marlowe and Kyd were writing the play about Sir Thomas More, it would have had the effect of upsetting Queen Elizabeth I, because when King Henry VIII divorced Catherine of Aragon and married Anne Boleyn, Henry fathered a child with Ann and she was of course to become, Queen Elizabeth I. The murderer of Marlowe was Mr. Ingram Frizer who was a servant to Sir Francis Walsingham. Walsingham was known as the Spymaster of the Catholics at Queen Elizabeth I’s court. Marlowe’s murder was a very sinister crime that has not been solved unto this day.

Thomas Kyd was born to Anna and Francis Kyd and baptised at St. Mary Woolnorth in the Ward of Langborn, on the 6th November 1558. Thomas had a younger sister Ann, who was born on 24th September 1561 and a brother named William, who outlived Thomas and died in 1602. His mother died towards the end of 1605. His father, Francis Kyd was by profession a court letter writer or Scrivener, and he became a member of the Company of Scriveners in 1557. Due to his literary background, Francis Kyd was sought out by the Church and offered the position of Church Warden at St. Mary Woolnorth, which he held from 1575 to 1576.

The Kyd family were fairly wealthy and because Francis Kyd’s occupation was well paid, they were able to employ servants at their house in Lombard Street, a well to do area in the City of London, where many rich London merchants lived. Adjacent to them lived a family friend, Francis Coldocke, who worked as a bookseller and publisher near the “Cardinal’s Hat.”

By 1565, when Thomas Kyd had reached the age of seven, he was already able to read and write in Latin and English. Kyd later went on to write in Italian as well. Thomas Kyd was the author of The Spanish Tragedy pre-1587 (a forerunner to Shakespeare’s Hamlet) and had been introduced to Christopher Marlowe and they were engaged to write for the Earl of Sussex Players. The Spanish Tragedy was not entered for publication until the 14th March 1592. (Henslowe’s Diary records Spanish Tragedy 1592).

Kyd’s dramatic works include:

The Spanish Tragedy
The First Part of Jeronimo
Soliman and Persida
Cornelia (a play about Julius Caesar)
The Householder’s Philosophy
Verses and Praise and Joy

About fifteen months after Marlowe’s murder, Thomas Kyd was buried on 15th August 1594, possibly at the same place where he had been baptised, being St. Mary Woolnorth, London. One of Francis Kyd’s servants, a Prudence Cook, who died on 2 September 1563 is buried at St. Mary Woolnorth. Kyd’s grave was destroyed during the Great Fire of London in 1666 and no trace of it remains.

Barbara O'Sullivan
author of "The King's Quinto: The Life and Times of Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) ISBN 1413708285 Publish America.

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