Cyril Tourneur

Little is known for certain about this English dramatist's early life, and even basic biographical details are partly reconstructed from scattered records. He lived in the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean period and died in 1626.

He is best known for The Atheist's Tragedy, a grim revenge play, and for his long-standing connection with The Revenger's Tragedy, a play that helped shape his reputation for fierce, unsettling drama. His writing is often noted for its intensity, moral darkness, and interest in corruption, death, and theatrical shock.

Because the surviving evidence is limited, scholars have continued to debate parts of his life and even aspects of his authorship. Still, his name remains an important one in discussions of early seventeenth-century English tragedy.