Christopher Marlowe

Christopher Marlowe (baptized February 26, 1564, Canterbury, Kent, England—died May 30, 1593, Deptford, near London) was an English Elizabethan poet and William Shakespeare’s most important predecessor in English drama. Marlowe is noted especially for his establishment of dramatic blank verse, particularly in such plays as the tragedy Doctor Faustus (1604). Marlowe’s murder in a tavern brawl at age 29 has been the subject of many conspiracy theories. In his short playwriting career, however, he produced some of the most vital works of Elizabethan literature.

Early years and education

Marlowe was the second child and eldest son of John Marlowe, a Canterbury shoemaker, and Katherine Marlowe (née Arthur), who is believed to have been a clergyman’s daughter. Nothing is known of his first schooling, but on January 14, 1579, he entered the King’s School, Canterbury, as a scholar. A year later he went to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Obtaining his bachelor of arts degree in 1584, he continued in residence at Cambridge—which may imply that he was intending to take Anglican holy orders. In 1587, however, the university hesitated about granting him the master’s degree. Its doubts (arising from his frequent absences from the university) were apparently set at rest when the Privy Council sent a letter declaring that he had been employed “on matters touching the benefit of his country”—apparently in Queen Elizabeth I’s secret service.

Dangerous reputation and murder

After 1587 Marlowe was in London, writing for the theaters, occasionally getting into trouble with the authorities because of his violent and disreputable behavior, and probably also engaging himself from time to time in government service. Marlowe won a dangerous reputation for “atheism,” but this could, in Elizabeth I’s time, indicate merely unorthodox religious opinions. In the writer and autobiographer Robert Greene’s deathbed tract, Greenes groats-worth of witte, bought with a million of repentance (1592), Marlowe is referred to as a “famous gracer of Tragedians” and is reproved for having said, like Greene himself, “There is no god” and for having studied “pestilent Machiuilian pollicie.”

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There is further evidence of Marlowe’s unorthodoxy, notably in the denunciation of him written by the spy Richard Baines and in the letter of Thomas Kyd to the lord keeper in 1593 after Marlowe’s death. Kyd alleged that certain papers “denying the deity of Jesus Christ” that were found in his room belonged to Marlowe, who had shared the room two years before. Both Baines and Kyd suggested atheism on Marlowe’s part in the stricter sense and a persistent delight in blasphemy.

Whatever the case may be, on May 18, 1593, the Privy Council issued an order for Marlowe’s arrest; two days later the poet was ordered to give daily attendance on their lordships “until he shall be licensed to the contrary.” On May 30, however, Marlowe was killed by Ingram Frizer (the business agent of Marlowe’s patron, Thomas Walsingham, a cousin of the espionage director Francis Walsingham), in the dubious company of two con artists, Nicholas Skeres and Robert Poley, at a lodging house in Deptford, where they had spent most of the day and where, it was alleged, a fight broke out between them over the bill.

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