Christopher Marlowe

Christopher Marlowe
An anonymous portrait in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, often believed to show Christopher Marlowe.
Born	Baptized 26 February 1564 Canterbury, England
Died	30 May 1593 (aged 29) Deptford, England
Occupation	Playwright, poet
Nationality	English
Writing period	circa 1586–93
Literary movement	English renaissance theatre
Influenced William Shakespeare
Signature

Christopher Marlowe (c. 26 February 1564–30 May 1593) was an English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. The foremost Elizabethan tragedian next to William Shakespeare, he is known for his blank verse, his overreaching protagonists, and his mysterious and untimely death.

A warrant was issued for Marlowe's arrest on 18 May 1593. No reason for it was given, though it was thought to be connected to allegations of blasphemy—a manuscript believed to have been written by Marlowe was said to contain "vile heretical conceipts." He was brought before the Privy Council for questioning on 20 May, after which he had to report to them daily. Ten days later, he was stabbed to death by Ingram Frizer. Whether the stabbing was connected to his arrest has never been resolved.^[1]

Early life

Marlowe was christened at St. George's Church, in Canterbury.

Marlowe was born to a shoemaker in Canterbury named John Marlowe and his wife Catherine.^[2] His date of birth is not known, but he was baptized on 26 February 1564, and thus born a few days before.

He attended The King's School, Canterbury (where a house is now named after him) and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge on a scholarship and received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1584.^[3] In 1587 the university hesitated to award him his master's degree because of a rumour that he had converted to Roman Catholicism and intended to go to the English college at Rheims to prepare for the priesthood. However, his degree was awarded on schedule when the Privy Council intervened on his behalf, commending him for his "faithful dealing" and "good service" to the Queen.^[4] The nature of Marlowe's service was not specified by the Council, but its letter to the Cambridge authorities has provoked much speculation, notably the theory that Marlowe was operating as a secret agent working for Sir Francis Walsingham's intelligence service.^[5] No direct evidence supports this theory, although the Council's letter is evidence that Marlowe had served the government in some capacity.

Literary career

Dido, Queen of Carthage was Marlowe's first drama. Marlowe's first play performed on stage in London stage was Tamburlaine (1587) about the conqueror Timur, who rises from shepherd to warrior. It is among the first English plays in blank verse,^[6] and, with Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, generally is considered the beginning of the mature phase of the Elizabethan theatre. Tamburlaine was a success, and was followed with Tamburlaine Part II. The sequence of his plays is unknown; all deal with controversial themes.

The Jew of Malta, about a Maltese Jew's barbarous revenge against the city authorities, has a prologue delivered by a character representing Machiavelli.

Edward the Second is an English history play about the deposition of King Edward II by his barons and the Queen, who resent the undue influence the king's favourites have in court and state affairs.

The Massacre at Paris is a short and luridly written work, probably a reconstruction from memory of the original performance text,^[7] portraying the events of the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572, which English Protestants invoked as the blackest example of Catholic treachery. It features the silent "English Agent", whom subsequent tradition has identified with Marlowe himself and his connections to the secret service.^[8] Along with The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, The Massacre at Paris is considered his most dangerous play, as agitators in London seized on its theme to advocate the murders of refugees from the low countries and, indeed, it warns Elizabeth I of this possibility in its last scene.^[9][10]

The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, based on the German Faustbuch, was the first dramatised version of the Faust legend of a scholar's dealing with the devil. While versions of "The Devil's Pact" can be traced back to the 4th century, Marlowe deviates significantly by having his hero unable to "burn his books" or repenting to a merciful God in order to have his contract annulled at the end of the play. Marlowe's protagonist is instead torn apart by demons and dragged off screaming to hell. Dr Faustus is a textual problem for scholars as it was highly edited (and possibly censored) and rewritten after Marlowe's death. Two versions of the play exist: the 1604 quarto, also known as the A text, and the 1616 quarto or B text. Many scholars believe that the A text is more representative of Marlowe's original because it contains irregular character names and idiosyncratic spelling: the hallmarks of a text that used the author's handwritten manuscript, or "foul papers", as a major source.

Marlowe's plays were enormously successful, thanks in part, no doubt, to the imposing stage presence of Edward Alleyn. He was unusually tall for the time, and the haughty roles of Tamburlaine, Faustus, and Barabas were probably written especially for him. Marlowe's plays were the foundation of the repertoire of Alleyn's company, the Admiral's Men, throughout the 1590s.

Marlowe also wrote poetry, including a, possibly, unfinished minor epic, Hero and Leander (published with a continuation by George Chapman in 1598), the popular lyric The Passionate Shepherd to His Love, and translations of Ovid's Amores and the first book of Lucan's Pharsalia.

The two parts of Tamburlaine were published in 1590; all Marlowe's other works were published posthumously. In 1599, his translation of Ovid was banned and copies publicly burned as part of Archbishop Whitgift's crackdown on offensive material.

The legend

Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury

As with other writers of the period, little is known about Marlowe. What little evidence there is can be found in legal records and other official documents. This has not stopped writers of both fiction and non-fiction from speculating about his activities and character. Marlowe has often been described as a spy, a brawler, a heretic and a homosexual, as well as a "magician," "duellist," "tobacco-user," "counterfeiter" and "rakehell." The evidence for most of these claims is slight. The bare facts of Marlowe's life have been embellished by many writers into colourful, and often fanciful, narratives of the Elizabethan underworld. However, J.B. Steane^[11] remarked, "it seems absurd to dismiss all of these Elizabethan rumours and accusations as 'the Marlowe myth'"^[12]

Spying

Marlowe is often alleged to have been a government spy. The author Charles Nicholls speculates this is so, and that Marlowe's recruitment took place when he was at Cambridge. Surviving college records from the period indicate Marlowe had a series of unusually lengthy absences from the university - much longer than permitted by university regulations - that began in the academic year 1584-1585. Surviving college buttery (dining room) accounts indicate he began spending lavishly on food and drink during the periods he was in attendance^[13] - more than he could have afforded on his known scholarship income.

As noted above, in 1587 the Privy Council ordered Cambridge University to award Marlowe his MA, denying rumours that he intended to go to the English Catholic college in Rheims, saying instead that he had been engaged in unspecified "affaires" on "matters touching the benefit of his country". This from a document dated 29 June 1587, from the Public Records Office - Acts of Privy Council.

It has sometimes been theorised that Marlowe was the "Morley" who was tutor to Arbella Stuart in 1589.^[14] This possibility was first raised in a TLS letter by E. St John Brooks in 1937; in a letter to Notes and Queries, John Baker has added that only Marlowe could be Arbella's tutor due to the absence of any other known "Morley" from the period with an MA and not otherwise occupied.^[15] If Marlowe was Arbella's tutor, (and some biographers think that the "Morley" in question may have been a brother of the musician Thomas Morley^[16]) it might indicate that he was a spy, since Arbella, niece of Mary Queen of Scots and cousin of James VI of Scotland, later James I of England, was at the time a strong candidate for the succession to Elizabeth's throne.^[17]

In 1592 Marlowe was arrested in the Dutch town of Flushing for attempting to counterfeit coins and use the proceeds to assist seditious Catholics. He was sent to be dealt with by the Lord Treasurer (Burghley) but no charge or imprisonment resulted.^[18] This untimely arrest may have disrupted another of Marlowe's spying missions: by giving the resulting coinage to the Catholic cause he was to infiltrate the followers of the active Catholic plotter William Stanley and report back to Burghley.^[19]

Arrest and death

In early May 1593 several bills were posted about London threatening Protestant refugees from France and the Netherlands who had settled in the city. One of these, the "Dutch church libel,"^[20] written in blank verse, contained allusions to several of Marlowe's plays and was signed, "Tamburlaine". On 11 May the Privy Council ordered the arrest of those responsible for the libels. The next day, Marlowe's colleague Thomas Kyd was arrested. Kyd's lodgings were searched and a fragment of a heretical tract was found. Kyd asserted, possibly under torture, that it had belonged to Marlowe. Two years earlier they had both been working for an aristocratic patron, probably Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange,^[21] and Kyd suggested that at this time, when they were sharing a workroom, the document had found its way among his papers. Marlowe's arrest was ordered on 18 May. Marlowe was not in London, but was staying with Thomas Walsingham, the cousin of the late Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's principal secretary in the 1580s and a man deeply involved in state espionage.^[22] However, he duly appeared before the Privy Council on 20 May and was instructed to "give his daily attendance on their Lordships, until he shall be licensed to the contrary". On 30 May, Marlowe was murdered.

Various versions of Marlowe's death were current at the time. Francis Meres says Marlowe was "stabbed to death by a bawdy serving-man, a rival of his in his lewd love" as punishment for his "epicurism and atheism."^[23] In 1917, in the Dictionary of National Biography, Sir Sidney Lee wrote that Marlowe was killed in a drunken fight, and this is still often stated as fact today.

The facts only came to light in 1925 when the scholar Leslie Hotson discovered the coroner's report on Marlowe's death in the Public Record Office.^[24] Marlowe had spent all day in a house in Deptford, owned by the widow Eleanor Bull. With him were three men: Ingram Frizer, Nicholas Skeres and Robert Poley.^[25] All three had been employed by the Walsinghams. Skeres and Poley had helped snare the conspirators in the Babington plot and Frizer was a servant of Thomas Walsingham. Witnesses testified that Frizer and Marlowe had earlier argued over the bill for their drink (now famously known as the 'Reckoning') exchanging "divers malicious words". Later, while Frizer was sitting at a table between the other two and Marlowe was lying behind him on a couch, Marlowe snatched Frizer's dagger and began attacking him. In the ensuing struggle, according to the coroner's report, Marlowe was accidentally stabbed above the right eye, killing him instantly. The jury concluded that Frizer acted in self-defence, and within a month he was pardoned. Marlowe was buried in an unmarked grave in the churchyard of St. Nicholas, Deptford, on 1 June 1593.

Marlowe's death is alleged by some to be an assassination for the following reasons:

1. The three men who were in the room with him when he died were all connected both to the state secret service and to the London underworld.^[26] Frizer and Skeres also had a long record as loan sharks and con-men, as shown by court records. Bull's house also had "links to the government's spy network".^[27]
2. Their story that they were on a day's pleasure outing to Deptford is alleged to be implausible. In fact, they spent the whole day closeted together, deep in discussion. Also, Robert Poley was carrying confidential despatches to the Queen, who was at her palace of Nonsuch in Surrey, but instead of delivering them, he spent the day with Marlowe and the other two.^[28]
3. It seems too much of a coincidence that Marlowe's death occurred only a few days after his arrest for heresy.
4. The manner of Marlowe's arrest is alleged to suggest causes more tangled than a simple charge of heresy would generally indicate. He was released in spite of prima facie evidence, and even though the charges implicitly connected Sir Walter Raleigh and the Earl of Northumberland with the heresy. Thus, some contend it to be probable that the investigation was meant primarily as a warning to the politicians in the "School of Night", or that it was connected with a power struggle within the Privy Council itself.^[29]
5. The various incidents that hint at a relationship with the Privy Council (see above), and by the fact that his patron was Thomas Walsingham, Sir Francis's second cousin, who was actively involved in intelligence work.

For these reasons and others, Charles Nicholl (in his book 'The Reckoning' on Marlowe's death) argues there was more to Marlowe's death than emerged at the inquest. There are different theories of some degree of probability. Since there are only written documents on which to base any conclusions, and since it is probable that the most crucial information about his death was never committed to writing at all, it is unlikely that the full circumstances of Marlowe's death will ever be known.

Atheism

Marlowe was reputed to be an atheist which, at that time, held the dangerous implication of being an enemy of God.^[30] Modern historians, however, consider that his professed atheism, as with his supposed Catholicism, may have been no more than an elaborate and sustained pretence adopted to further his work as a government spy.^[31] Contemporary evidence comes from Marlowe's accuser in Flushing, an informer called Richard Baines. The governor of Flushing had reported that both men had accused one "of malice one to another" of instigating the counterfeiting, and of intention to go over to Catholicism; such an action was considered atheistic by the Protestants, who constituted the dominant religious faction in England at that time. Following Marlowe's arrest on a charge of atheism in 1593, Baines submitted to the authorities a "note containing the opinion of one Christopher Marly concerning his damnable judgment of religion, and scorn of God's word."^[32] Baines attributes to Marlowe a total of eighteen items which "scoff at the pretensions of the Old and New Testament"^[12] such as, "Christ was a bastard and his mother dishonest [unchaste]," "the woman of Samaria and her sister were whores and that Christ knew them dishonestly," and, "St John the Evangelist was bedfellow to Christ and leaned always in his bosom" (cf. John 13:23-25), and, "that he used him as the sinners of Sodom". He also claims that Marlowe had Catholic sympathies. Other passages are merely sceptical in tone: "he persuades men to atheism, willing them not to be afraid of bugbears and hobgoblins". The final paragraph of Baines' document reads:

These thinges, with many other shall by good & honest witnes be aproved to be his opinions and Comon Speeches, and that this Marlow doth not only hould them himself, but almost into every Company he Cometh he perswades men to Atheism willing them not to be afeard of bugbeares and hobgoblins, and vtterly scorning both god and his ministers as I Richard Baines will Justify & approue both by mine oth and the testimony of many honest men, and almost al men with whome he hath Conversed any time will testify the same, and as I think all men in Cristianity ought to indevor that the mouth of so dangerous a member may be stopped, he saith likewise that he hath quoted a number of Contrarieties oute of the Scripture which he hath giuen to some great men who in Convenient time shalbe named. When these thinges shalbe Called in question the witnes shalbe produced.^[33]

Similar statements were made by Thomas Kyd after his imprisonment and possible torture (see above);^[34][35] both Kyd and Baines connect Marlowe with the mathematician Thomas Harriot and Walter Raleigh's circle. Another document claims that Marlowe had read an "atheist lecture" before Raleigh; a man called Richard Chomley was charged with atheism and treason shortly after Marlowe's death, and noted in his testimony that "one Marlowe is able to show more sound reasons from atheism than any divine in England is able to give to prove divinity and that Marlowe told him that he hath read the atheist lecture to Sir Walter Raleigh and others".^[12]

Some critics believe that Marlowe sought to disseminate these views in his work and that he identified with his rebellious and iconoclastic protagonists.^[36] However, plays had to be approved by the Master of the Revels before they could be performed, and the censorship of publications was under the control of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Presumably these authorities did not consider any of Marlowe's works to be unacceptable (apart from the Amores).

The public burning in 1589 of Francis Kett, a tutor at Corpus Christi College, was used by many informants to associate the playwright with the writing of seditious literature.^[who?] Kett was charged with heresy based on his avowal of Unitarianism, a denial of the Holy Trinity, and this matches the content of the heretical material blamed on Marlowe by fellow playwright Thomas Kyd (see above), but Kett's "fervent" religious beliefs seem at odds with Marlowe's supposed atheism.^[37] Kett had resigned his post only a few months after Marlowe joined the college.

Heresy and atheism were also used to describe those dealing in necromancy and alchemy. A common misconception about Marlowe, based solely upon Doctor Faustus, is that he himself was a proponent of the 'dark arts'.^{[citation needed]} It is certainly true, when one considers the aforementioned play, that Marlowe had studied incantation rituals, but whether he practised them is another matter entirely.

Sexuality

Marlowe is sometimes described today as homosexual. Some believe that the question of whether an Elizabethan was "gay" or "homosexual" in a modern sense is anachronistic; for the Elizabethans, what is often today termed homosexual or bisexual was more likely to be recognised as simply a sexual act, rather than an exclusive sexual orientation and identity.^[38]

Some scholars argue that the evidence is inconclusive and that the reports of Marlowe's homosexuality may simply be exaggerated rumours produced after his death. David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen describe Baines's evidence as "unreliable testimony" and make the comment: "These and other testimonials need to be discounted for their exaggeration and for their having been produced under legal circumstances we would regard as a witch-hunt".^[39] It has also been noted that Kyd's evidence was given after torture, and thus may have little connection to reality.^[40] One critic, J.B. Steanes, remarked that he considers there to be "no evidence for Marlowe's homosexuality at all."^[12]

Other scholars,^[41] however, point to homosexual themes in Marlowe's writing:

• In Hero and Leander, Marlowe writes of the male youth Leander, "in his looks were all that men desire"^[42] and that when the youth swims to visit Hero at Sestos, the sea god Neptune becomes sexually excited, "imagining that Ganymede, displeas'd... the lusty god embrac'd him, call'd him love... and steal a kiss... upon his breast, his thighs, and every limb ... [a]nd talk of love",^[43] while the boy naive and unaware of Greek love practices said that, "You are deceiv'd, I am no woman, I... Thereat smil'd Neptune."^[44] For debates of a somewhat similar nature, compare Sexuality of William Shakespeare.

Reputation among contemporary writers

Whatever the particular focus of modern critics, biographers and novelists, for his contemporaries in the literary world, Marlowe was above all an admired and influential artist. Within weeks of his death, George Peele remembered him as "Marley, the Muses' darling"; Michael Drayton noted that he "Had in him those brave translunary things/That the first poets had", and Ben Jonson wrote of "Marlowe's mighty line". Thomas Nashe wrote warmly of his friend, "poor deceased Kit Marlowe". So too did the publisher Edward Blount, in the dedication of Hero and Leander to Sir Thomas Walsingham.

Among the few contemporary dramatists to say anything negative about Marlowe was the anonymous author of the Cambridge University play The Return From Parnassus (1598) who wrote, "Pity it is that wit so ill should dwell,/Wit lent from heaven, but vices sent from hell."

The most famous tribute to Marlowe was paid by Shakespeare in As You Like It, where he not only quotes a line from Hero and Leander (Dead Shepherd, now I find thy saw of might, "Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?") but also gives to the clown Touchstone the words "When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with the forward child, understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room." This appears to be a reference to Marlowe's murder which involved a fight over the "reckoning" – the bill.

Shakespeare was heavily influenced by Marlowe in his early work, as can be seen in the re-using of Marlowe themes in Antony and Cleopatra, The Merchant of Venice, Richard II, and Macbeth (Dido, Jew of Malta, Edward II and Dr Faustus respectively). In Hamlet, after meeting with the travelling actors, Hamlet requests the Player perform a speech about the Trojan War, which at 2.2.429-32 has an echo of Marlowe's Dido, Queen of Carthage. Indeed, in Love's Labour's Lost, echoing Marlowe's The Massacre at Paris, Shakespeare brings on a character called Marcade (French for Mercury – a god who, in Hero and Leander, is responsible for advancing scholars from poor backgrounds and identified by Marlowe with his own humble origin^[45] ) who arrives to interrupt the merriment with news of the King's death. This is a fitting tribute for one who delighted in destruction in his plays^{[citation needed]}.

As Shakespeare

Given the murky inconsistencies concerning the account of Marlowe's death, a theory has arisen centred on the notion that Marlowe may have faked his death and then continued to write under the assumed name of William Shakespeare. Authors who have propounded this theory include:

• Wilbur Gleason Zeigler It Was Marlowe (1895)
• Calvin Hoffman, The Man Who Was Shakespeare, Mitre Press (1955)^[46]
• Calvin Hoffman, The Murder of the Man Who Was Shakespeare, Grosset & Dunlap (1960)
• Daryl Pinksen, Marlowe's Ghost (2008)
• Samuel Blumenfeld's The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection: A New Study of the Authorship Question
• Louis Ule, Christopher Marlowe (1564-1607): A Biography
• A D Wraight, The Story that the Sonnets Tell (1994)
• Roderick L Eagle, The Mystery of Marlowe's Death, N&Q (1952)
• William Honey, The Shakespeare Epitaph Deciphered, Mitre Press (1969)

Works

The dates of composition are approximate.

Plays

• Dido, Queen of Carthage (c.1586) (possibly co-written with Thomas Nashe)
• Tamburlaine, part 1 (c.1587)
• Tamburlaine, part 2 (c.1587-1588)
• The Jew of Malta (c.1589)
• Doctor Faustus (c.1589, or, c.1593)
• Edward II (c.1592)
• The Massacre at Paris (c.1593)

The play Lust's Dominion was attributed to Marlowe upon its initial publication in 1657, though scholars and critics have almost unanimously rejected the attribution.

Poetry

• Translation of Book One of Lucan's Pharsalia (date unknown)
• Translation of Ovid's Elegies (c. 1580s?)
• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love (pre-1593; because it is constantly referred to in his own plays we can presume an early date of mid-1580s)
• Hero and Leander (c. 1593, unfinished; completed by George Chapman, 1598)

In fiction

Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (May 2009)

• The Conscience of the King is a historical novel by Martin Stephen which features Marlowe, having faked his death in 1593, in action in 1612 in London.
• Upstart Crows is a play written by Mike Punter that centres around the life of Marlowe, Edward Alleyn, Jack Alleyn and other characters. Its first performance was at the Edward Alleyn theatre in Dulwich College in November 2007 and it appeared in the 2008 Edinburgh fringe festival.
• A play called The Reckoning of Kit & Little Boots, written by Nat Cassidy, examines the life and death of Marlowe, juxtaposed with the life of the Roman emperor Caligula, via the conceit that Marlowe is working on a play about Caligula at the time of his (Marlowe's) death. It focuses on Marlowe's atheism, and emphasizes the influence Marlowe had on Shakespeare as a contemporary, but rejects the idea that Marlowe in any way wrote Shakespeare's plays. It premiered in New York City at the Gallery Players in June 2008.^[47][48]
• Marlowe was one of the characters in the Kristopher Reisz novel Tripping To Somewhere.
• Marlowe was the title character of Marlowe, a 1981 stage musical that had a brief Broadway run.
• Marlowe features heavily in the Harry Turtledove alternative history novel Ruled Britannia (2002), about an England ruled by Catholics. He is depicted as a contemporary and friend of Shakespeare.
• Marlowe is played by Rupert Everett in the film Shakespeare in Love (1998), in which he helps Shakespeare to write Romeo and Juliet. His last line is a cheery "Well, I'm off to Deptford!" After Marlowe's murder, screenwriters Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard have Shakespeare say, "I would exchange all my plays to come for one of his that will never come".
• Marlowe had survived his assassination in the tangentially alternative history novel Armor of Light by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett, rescued by Sir Philip Sidney, who in reality died before then, and plays a major role in the story.
• In Neil Gaiman's comic The Sandman, Marlowe makes a brief appearance in a pub. He and Shakespeare are discussing the content of "Faustus" while Morpheus and an immortal human have their own conversation. Marlowe is represented as a great playwright with the young and inexperienced Shakespeare in awe of his friend. Marlowe is also referenced in a later Shakespeare-centric Sandman comic, in which Morpheus tells Shakespeare of his friend's assassination.
• Marlowe is a central character in Lisa Goldstein's fantasy novel Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon
• Connie Willis's Winter's tale features Marlowe as a major character.
• Louise Welsh's Tamburlaine Must Die is a novel based on a fictitious theory about the last two weeks of Marlowe's life.
• Leslie Silbert's The Intelligencer, a novel, intertwines Marlowe as a possible spy in his time and events in the present, Washington Square Press, 2004. ISBN 0-7434-3292-4
• Anthony Burgess, A Dead Man in Deptford is an account of Marlowe and his death; according to Burgess, it is fictionalised but does not depart from any known historical facts.
• The School of Night (ISBN 0-312-28778-X), by Alan Wall, features a protagonist/narrator who constructs a theory identifying a not-really-dead Marlowe as the author of Shakespeare's works, with the Stratfordian merely a cat's-paw enlisted to pass them off as his own for money, or because Marlowe's espionage on the continent revealed that Shakespeare was a crypto-Catholic.
• Marlowe is the central character in One Dagger for Two by Philip Lindsay, which includes some speculation about his death.
• Marlowe is one of the guest characters, having allegedly survived his murder 16 years previously, in Andy Lane's The Empire of Glass, a Doctor Who Missing Adventure featuring the First Doctor and set in Venice.
• Marlowe appears in four chapters of The Player's Boy, a children's book by Antonia Forest. He gives the fictional character Nicholas Marlow a ride to London in May 1593; Nicholas witnesses Marlowe's death in the house in Deptford, and later becomes a boy actor in the same company as William Shakespeare.
• Marlowe is the central character in The Christopher Marlowe Mysteries written by Ged Parsons for BBC Radio 4 (1993). This was a series of comedy adventures revolving around Marlowe's work as a spy. The four stories were: The Curious Case of the Curs'd Quayside, The Turbulent Tale of the Troubl'd Tragedy, The Perplex'd Plot of the Perilous Plague and The Murky Mystery of Murder at St Mark's. The series is repeated on digital radio station BBC 7.
• Marlowe is referenced in Tom Holt's Faust Among Equals (ISBN 1-85723-265-8) as a comic effect.
• Marlowe is a major protagonist in Elizabeth Bear's Promethean Age books, specifically Whiskey & Water, Ink & Steel, and Hell & Earth. A different version of Marlowe appears in the short story This Tragic Glass.
• Christopher "Kit" Marlowe as a vampire is the main hero of Rosemary Laurey's paranormal romance Kiss Me Forever. His character is also included in several of the sequel novels. He explains at one point that if his friend, Thomas Kyd, had not turned him, he would have died. Marlowe's heroine, modern Dixie LaPage, coincidentally, is well versed in his work before she meets him.
• Christian Camargo played the role of Kit Marlowe in the 2001 production of David Grimm's Kit Marlowe at the New York Public Theater. The production was a dark portrayal of Marlowe's life as a spy, playwright and lover.
• Christopher Marlow is a minor character in Karen Chance's Cassandra Palmer Series. In which he is a Vampire and is the North American Vampire Senate's Chief Spy. He is also Head of MAGIC's Secret Intelligence Service.
• Marlowe is called on as an assassin in Howard Waldrop's story Heart of Whitenesse.
• Marlowe is the central character in a play by Peter Whelan called The School of Night that deals with his playwriting career after his faked death at Deptford.
• In Martha Grimes' The Dirty Duck, the character Harvey Shoenberg puts forth a theory (although it turns out to be a ruse) that it was William Shakespeare who had Marlowe killed out of professional jealousy.
• The Agony of Marlowe, a play written by Mark Cubillos, parallels the life of Christopher Marlowe and his most famous character, Dr. Faustus. In the play, Marlowe is in agony over his belief he will never be remembered in the same light as William Shakespeare, whose brilliance has been noticed by Marlowe but no one else. In the play, Marlowe sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for immortality through his Faustus play, ultimately leading to his demise.
• Kit Marlowe is the name of Bette Davis' character in Old Aquantaince who is also a famous writer.

Notes

Additional reading

• Brooke, C.F. Tucker. The Life of Marlowe and "The Tragedy of Dido, Queen of Carthage." London: Methuen, 1930. (pp. 107, 114, 99, 98)
• Bevington, David and Eric Rasmussen, Doctor Faustus and Other Plays, OUP, 1998; ISBN 0192834452
• Burgess, Anthony, A Dead Man in Deptford, Carroll & Graf, 2003. (novel about Marlowe based on the version of events in The Reckoning) ISBN 0-7867-1152-3
• Marlow, Christopher. Complete Works. Vol. 3: Edward II. Ed. R. Rowland. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. (pp. xxii-xxiii)
• Downie, J. A. and J. T. Parnell, eds., Constructing Christopher Marlowe, Cambridge 2000. ISBN 052157255X
• Honan, Park. Christopher Marlowe Poet and Spy Oxford University Press, 2005 ISBN 0-19-818695-9
• Kuriyama, Constance. Christopher Marlowe: A Renaissance Life. Cornell University Press, 2002. ISBN 0801439787
• Nicholl, Charles. The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe, Vintage, 2002 (revised edition) ISBN 0099437473
• Parker, John. The Aesthetics of Antichrist: From Christian Drama to Christopher Marlowe. Cornell University Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-8014-4519-4
• Riggs, David. "The World of Christopher Marlowe", Henry Holt and Co., 2005 ISBN 0-8050-8036-8
• Shepard, Alan. "Marlowe's Soldiers: Rhetorics of Masculinity in the Age of the Armada", Ashgate, 2002. ISBN 0-7546-0229-X
• Trow, M. J. Who Killed Kit Marlowe?, Sutton, 2002; ISBN 0-7509-2963-4
• Ule, Louis. Christopher Marlowe (1564-1607): A Biography, Carlton Press, 1996. ISBN 0806250283
• Welsh, Louise. "Tamburlaine Must Die", novella based around the build up to Marlowe's death.
• Wraight, A.D. and Virginia F. Stern, In Search of Christopher Marlowe: A Pictorial Biography, Macdonald, London 1965

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Christopher Marlowe

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Christopher Marlowe

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Christopher Marlowe

• The Marlowe Society
• The International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society "Our Belief is that Christopher Marlowe - in his day England's greatest playwright - did not die in 1593 but survived to write most of what is now assumed to be the work of William Shakespeare."
• Carlo DiNota's The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection a Marlovian blog/website, started in May 2008, with regular contributions from the world's leading Marlovians.
• Peter Farey's Marlowe Page includes a factual biography and reproduces the documents concerning Marlowe as well as his complete works (but also contains material related to the Shakespearean authorship question)
• Marlowe Lives!
• The works of Marlowe at Perseus Project
• The Rose Theatre where Marlowe made his name
• Works by Christopher Marlowe at Project Gutenberg
• Peter Bull presents a case for Marlowe as the true author of Shakespeare's Sonnets.
• Works by Christopher Marlowe in e-book
• Marlowe Collection at Bartleby.com
• A Deception in Deptford exposition of circumstantial evidence for the Marlowe-as-Shakespeare theory
• M.G. Scarsbrook's Marlowe Research Page contains a balanced biography, timeline, descriptions of Marlowe's known associates, and transcripts of all the key Marlowe-related documents
• “Hell” and “Soul” as cultural codes in Christopher Marlowe’s “Tragic history of the Life and death of Doctor Faustus”