Son of a scrivener, Kyd is best known as the author of The Spanish Tragedy (c.1586) an extremely popular revenge tragedy of the late 1580s and one of the most parodied of Elizabethan plays. Kyd's only other acknowledged authorship is the translation of Robert Garnier's Senecan tragedy, Cornelie, in 1594. He may also have written the lost Hamlet play that precedes Shakespeare's. Although Kyd's balanced rhetoric seems old fashioned, The Spanish Tragedy is notable for its searing passions and intensely dramatic rendering of revenge-tragedy themes.