Aubrey holds a Ph.D. in English and has published many articles on sixteenth-century literature. In this essay, Aubrey discusses the parallels between The Spanish Tragedy and Shakespeare's Hamlet.

The short life of Thomas Kyd is shrouded in obscurity, and The Spanish Tragedy is one of the very few works that can be confidently ascribed to his pen. Many scholars believe that Kyd also wrote a play called Hamlet, and they speculate that probably about a decade later William Shakespeare drew on Kyd's play, which they refer to as the "Ur-Hamlet," for his version of the famous revenge drama. Unfortunately, as of 2004, no trace of an "Ur-Hamlet" by Kyd has been disovered, so the matter has not been resolved beyond any doubt. However, the link between Kyd and Shakespeare does not entirely depend on the tantalizing idea that Kyd wrote a version of Hamlet, since The Spanish...