Christopher Marlowe

Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), English playwright and poet, considered the first great English dramatist and the most important Elizabethan dramatist before William Shakespeare, although his entire activity as a playwright lasted only six years. Earlier playwrights had concentrated on comedy; Marlowe worked on tragedy and advanced it considerably as a dramatic medium. His masterpiece is The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus.

Born in Canterbury on February 6, 1564, the son of a shoemaker, Marlowe was educated at the University of Cambridge. Going to London, he associated himself with the Admiral's Men, a company of actors for whom he wrote most of his plays. He was reputedly a secret agent for the government and numbered some prominent men, including Sir Walter Raleigh, among his friends, but he led an adventurous and dissolute life and held unorthodox religious views. In 1593 he was denounced as a heretic; before any action could be taken against him, in May of that year he was stabbed to death in a tavern brawl at Deptford supposedly over payment of a dinner bill, though the circumstances of his death remain mysterious.

By revealing the possibilities for strength and variety of expression in blank verse, Marlowe helped to establish the verse form as the predominant form in English drama. He wrote four principal plays, three of which were published posthumously: the heroic dramatic epic Tamburlaine the Great (first staged c. 1587; published 1590), about the 14th-century Mongol conqueror; the tragedy The Jew of Malta (first staged c. 1589; published 1633); Edward II (first staged c. 1592; published 1594), which was one of the earliest successful English historical dramas and a model for Shakespeare's Richard II and Richard III; and The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (first staged c. 1594; published 1604), one of the earliest dramatizations of the Faust legend. In each of these dramas one forceful protagonist with a single overriding passion dominates. Marlowe was also the author of two lesser plays: Dido, Queen of Carthage (first staged c. 1587; published 1594 revised by the English dramatist Thomas Nashe); and The Massacre at Paris (first staged 1593; published c. 1600). Some academics believe Marlowe also wrote parts of several of Shakespeare's plays. Each of Marlowe's important plays has as a central character a passionate man doomed to destruction by an inordinate desire for power. The plays are further characterized by beautiful, sonorous language and emotional vitality, which is, however, at times unrestrained to the point of bombast.

As a poet Marlowe is known for “The Passionate Shepherd” (1599), which contains the lyric “Come Live with Me and Be My Love”. Marlowe's mythological love poem, Hero and Leander, was unfinished at his death; it was completed by George Chapman and published in 1598. Marlowe also translated works of the ancient Latin poets Lucan and Ovid.