Although the details of Thomas Kyd's life are obscure, it is known that he shared a room with fellow dramatist Christopher Marlowe. Kyd's best known play, The Spanish Tragedy (1589), was the most popular and influential tragedy of Elizabethan times, and it is believed that he also wrote a lost Hamlet, sometimes referred to as the Ur-Hamlet, which was probably the model for Shakespeare's tragedy. Thomas Kyd's brilliant career was cut short, however, in 1593 when he was arrested on the charge of atheism based on one of his manuscripts. Although he denied the charge, his spirit was apparently broken by the imprisonment, torture, and disgrace -- he died in poverty in 1594, only a year after his release. According to some sources, it may have been Marlowe who betrayed Kyd to the authorities.