Thomas Kyd

The Spanish Tragedy: or, Hieronimo is Mad Again (1592) was published anonymously, and it gained immense popularity. The play introduced a new kind of central character, an obsessive plotter, and it set a the pattern which later revenge-plays followed. See also the The Count of Monte Cristo.

The play contains extensions: Ben Jonson is known to have been paid for the additions, but the additonal passages in the 1602 edition do not seem Jonsonian. The alternative title was was given to it in 1615.

Kyd is believed to have written a lost Hamlet.