Elizabethan poet, dramatist, William Shakespeare's predecessor in English drama. Christopher Marlowe was killed at the age of 29 in a tavern broil by Ingram Frizer, and buried at St. Nicholas, Deptford. His dramatic career lasted only six years. And as we all know, the English-born mystery writer Raymond Chandler lent Marlowe's name to his own hero Philip Marlowe.

Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills and fields,
Woods or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shephers feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
...
('The Passionate Shepherd to His Love', c. 1589; The Complete Poems and Translation by Christopher Marlowe, edited by Stephen Orgel, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1971, p. 212)

Christopher Marlowe (Cristofer Marley in his autograph) was born in Canterbury, the son of John Marlowe, a shoemaker, and Katherine, from the coastal town of Dover. He was christened at St George's Chruch. ". . . shoemakers have sometimes possessed and left to their children a strangely powerful endownment of idealism." (Christopher Marlowe by Havelock Ellis, London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1940, p xxxi)

According to a local tradition, the Marlowe house lay at the corner of St George's Street and St George's Lane, near the church. The house and most of the church burned down in an air raid in 1942. Likable and socially gifted, John Marlowe rose to be warden-treasurer of his shoemaker's guild – he was able to read and write – but a few years later he was found guilty of misappropriating funds. He served also as a churchwarden.

Marlowe's parents had high hopes for their son's future. He attended the King's School, Canterbury (called the Queen's School during Elizabeth's reign), which had a strong tradition in theatrical productions. A bright student, he was awarded a scholarship from the foundation of Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury. Marlowe's education had a profound impact on his life and future career as a writer. He studied the Bible and the Reformation theologians as well as philosophy and history at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he arrived in 1580.

Some of Marlowe's political contacts may have been made during the years he studied at Corpus Christi College. In April 1584 Marlowe received his BA and continued as a MA student. His translation of Ovid's Amores was perhaps made as a literary exercise. "In many passages we should be utterly puzzled to attach a definitive meaning to the words, if we had not the original at hand; and in many others the Latin is erroneously rendered, the mistranslations being sometimes extremely ludicrous." ('Some Account of Marlowe and His Writings' by Alexander Dyce, in The Works of Christopher Marlowe, London: George Routledge and Sons, 1850, p. xxxiv)

Instead of staying in Cambridge, Marlowe went to carry out a secret mission for the government. The university authorities, believing he had been converted to Catholicism and had spent time at a Catholic seminary in Rheims, were first unwilling to grant his M.A. When the Queen's Privy Council interceded on Marlowe's behalf, the dispute was settled, and he finally graduated with the degree he wanted. It did not help him either, that he had been away too much from his classes.

After moving to London, Marlowe established his fame as a dramatist. He made important friends, including Sir Walter Raleigh, who had started the first colony in Virginia, and who was contending with the Earl of Essex of Queen's favours. Most likely Marlowe began writing on leaving Cambridge. His first dramas were composed in blank verse. It is assumed that the first part of his Tamburlaine the Great was performed in London in 1587. In the play Tamburlaine burns the Koran and after conquering the world he wants to conquer the heavens.

In 1589 Marlowe was charged with the murder of William Bradley and sent to Newgate Prison, but acquitted 12 days later. Thomas Watson, who had assisted him, is eventually released under self-defense. It was not the last time when the quick tempered author was arrested and jailed. In 1592 an injunction was brought against him because of a street fight, in which a man was killed. Marlowe was also deported from Netherlands for counterfeiting gold coins.

Numerous plays have been assigned to Marlowe. Thanks to him and Shakespeare, the history play as a genre took off in the 1590s; theatre became the place where to go if ordinary people wanted to know about history and the rulers of the nation. Unfortunately, Marlowe neglected to publish authoritative texts, and his literary remnants consist much of incomplete works. The Massacre at Paris has survived only in a mangled and abbreviated form.

Nevertheless, his blank verse, written with great intensity, and villain-heroes - a new type on the English stage - influenced deeply the theatre of his time. The poet Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) observed of Marlowe that "the father of English tragedy and the creator of English blank verse was therefore also the teacher and the guide of Shakespeare." Also Shakespeare favored the blank verse. They both wrote plays for Lord Strange's acting company; quite likely they were at the same time rivals and admirers of one another. The New Oxford Shakespeare (2016) suggest that they may even co-authored the three Henry VI dramas. (Marlowe and Shakespeare: The Critical Rivalry by Robert Sawyer, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 3-4 )

Marlowe's major plays were written between 1585 and 1593, among them Tamburlaine, Parts I and II, and The Jew of Malta, a tragedy and parody of Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527). Machiavelli – or Machiavel as Marlowe calls him - is portrayed as the embodiment of political manipulator. "If one takes the Jew of Malta not as a tragedy, or as a "tragedy of blood," but as a farce, the concluding act becomes intelligible; and if we attend with a careful ear to the versification, we find that Marlowe develops a tone to suit this farce, and even perhaps that this tone is his most powerful and mature tone." (The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism by T.S. Eliot, London: Methues & Co,, 1920, p. 83) The prologue refers to the play as the "tragedy of a Jew," but Marlowe's Barabas the Jew has nothing of the ethical ambiguity of Shakespeare's Shylock – he is an uncomplicated, greedy schemer. "It's no sin to deceive a Christian, / For they themselves hold it a principle / Faith is not to be held with heretics; / But all are heretics that are not Jews," he reasons. (The Jew of Malta, edited by David Bevington, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997, p. 63)

The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus drew on the medieval legend of the bargain with the Devil. "These metaphysics of magicians, / And necromantic books are heavenly," says Faustus at the beginning of the play, "Lines, circles, scenes, letters, and character; / Ay, these are those that Faustus most desires." (The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, edited with a preface, notes and glossary by Israel Gollancz, London: J. M. Dent, 1897, p. 4) Eventually, after making his pact with the Devil and finding only empty answers to his questions, the tragic hero rejects black magic and calls upon Christ to save him. Marlowe himself was a soulmate of Faustus, called an atheist by his opponents, but basically his work defies simple classification, Since its first performance, Faustus has captured the hearts of the viewers ranging from atheists and non-Christians to Protestants and Catholics.

Edward the Second was a historical tragedy in blank verse, probably Marlowe's last major dramatic work. Later it has inspired Leben Eduards des Zweiten von England (1924) by Bertolt Brecht and Lion Feuchtwanger, Derek Jarman's film from 1991, which presented a homosexual relationship between the king and Piers Gaveston, Edward's protegé, and David Bintley's Ballet-Edward II (1995). Marlowe's plays were produced by the Earl of Nottingham's Company. 

"Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, like Goethe's Faust, finds himself before the specter of Helen (the idea that Helen of Troy was a ghost or apparition is already present in the ancients) and says to her, "Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss." And then, "O thou art fairer than the evening air clad in the beauty of a thousand stars." He does not say "evening sky," but "evening air." All of Copernican space is present in that word air, the infinite space that was one of the revelations of the Renaissance, the space in which we still believe, despite Einstein, that space that came to supplant the Ptolomaic system which presides over Dante's triple comedy." (Jorge Luis Borges, in Selected Non-fictions, edited by Eliot Weinberger, translated by Esther Allen, Suzanne Jill Levine and Eliot Weinberger. New York: Viking, 1999, p. 468)

Besides plays, Marlowe wrote a significant number of poetry, including Hero and Leander, based on work by the sixth-century poet Musaeus, and The Passionate Shepherd (1599), a small volume, ascribed on the title page to W. Shakespeare. A slightly longer version was printed in England's Helicon (1600). Ovid translation appeared in Epigrams and Elegies by Sir John Davies and Christopher Marlowe; it was banned and burned by the ecclesiastical authorities in 1599. 'The Passionate Shepard to His Love' was published posthumously.

Marlowe's mysterious death in Deptford in Eleanor Bull's house - nominally about who should pay the bill - may have had a political cause. Accusations of atheism, blasphemy, subversion and homosexuality, also burdened his public image. Richard Baines, who had been hired by the Privy Council to gather information on Marlowe, said that the author habitually scorned God and religion.

When Marlowe died, he was under a shadow of charges of atheism. His former roommate and fellow dramatist, Thomas Kyd (1558-94), the author of the revolutionary Spanish Tragedy, was tortured by the Star Chamber for information about Marlowe's alleged treasons, and the mystery surrounding his death. Kyd's thumbs were crushed to prevent him from writing again. After suffering great bodily harm, Kyd declared that a document denying the divinity of Christ belonged to Marlowe. And Richard Baines had presented his notorious statements in the memorandum 'A note Containing the opinion of one Christopher Marly Concerning his Damnable Judgment of Religion, and scorn of gods word,'delivered to the authorities in May 1593: ". . . into every Company he Cometh he perswades men to Atheism willing them not to be afeard of bugbeares and hobgoblins . . ." (Christopher Marlowe and Richard Baines: Journeys Through the Elizabethan Underground by Roy Kendall, Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003, p. 38)

Thanks to connections, Marlowe's was saved from imprisonment. The author might have worked as a government's secret agent according to Anthony Burgess. It has been assumed, that while still at university, he became an agent of Sir Francis Walsingham (c. 1530-90), a statesman and a Puritan sympathizer, in the secret service of Elisabeth I and a favorite of Walsingham's brother, Thomas.

Research suggests he was murdered by an agent of Francis Walsingham, for reasons unknown. Supporters of the Earl of Essex could have been behind the death. "Marlowe did not die by mischance, and he was not killed in self-defence. He had become an impediment to the political ambitions of the Earl of Essex, as these were perceived and furthered by secret operators like Cholmeley and Baines, and behind them probably Thomas Phelippes. . . . His mouth – if it could not be made to say what they wanted it to say – must be 'stopped'." (The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe by Charless Nicholl, London: Jonathan Cape, 1994, p. 327)

Scholars are still attempting to reconstruct the events. In the common version it is concluded, that after eating and drinking together in a tavern in Deptford, on Wednesday, May 30, 1593, Marlowe and his friend Ingram Frizer began to wrangle over payment of the bill. Marlowe wrenched Frizer's dagger from its sheath, and struck him twice about the head with it. In the struggle Frizer got the weapon. According to the coroner's inquest, "And so it occurred, in that affray that the said Ingram, in defence of his life, and with the aforesaid dagger of the value of 12 pence, gave the aforesaid Christopher then and there a mortal wound above his right eye to the depth of two inches and in breadth one inch, of which same mortal wound the aforesaid Christopher Morley then and there instantly died." (Christopher Marlowe: Poet & Spy by Park Honan, Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 377)

A week earlier a warrant had been issued for the author's arrest. Marlowe was buried two days later in an unmarked grave. His killer pleaded self-defense and received a pardon from the Queen. This has partly confirmed the thesis of a political intrigues. Marlowe's life have been the theme of the tragedies Death of Marlowe by Richard H. Horne (1837) and Kit Marlowe by W. L. Courtney (1890). In the Oscar winning film, Shakespeare in Love (1998), directed by John Madden, Shakespeare believes that he has caused the death of his colleague.

Marlowe's violent end was not something that exceptional among writers. In 1599 the playwright John Day apparently killed the playwright Henry Porter, and the famous dramatist Ben Jonson killed the well-known actor Gabriel Spencer in a duel. As a both spy and a writer, Marlowe was a representative of a long tradition, continued through Ben Jonson and Daniel Defoe to such modern day writers Graham Greene, John Le Carré, John Dickson Carr, Somerset Maugham, Alec Waugh and Ted Allbeury.

For further reading: Christopher Marlowe by Havelock Ellis (1940); 'Christopher Marlowe' (1918) by T.S. Eliot, in Selected Essays (1951); Marlowe and the Early Shakespeare by F. P. Wilson (1953); Marlowe: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Clifford Leech (1965); The Dramatist and the Received Idea: Studies in the Plays of Marlowe and Shakespeare by Wilbur Sanders (1968); Marlowe, Tamburlaine and Magic by James Howe (1976); Christopher Marlowe: Poet for the Stage by Clifford Leech (1986); Christopher Marlowe by William Tydeman and Vivien Thomas (1989); Christopher Marlowe by Roger Sales (1991); The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe by Charles Nicholl (1994); Christopher Marlowe and the Renaissance Tragedy Douglas Cole (1995); Critical Essays on Christopher Marlowe, ed. by Emily Carroll Bartels (1996); The Alternative Trinity: Gnostic Heresy in Marlowe, Milton, and Blake by A.D. Nuttall (1998); Christopher Marlowe, edited and introduced by Richard Wilson (1999); Marlowe: The Plays by Stevie Simkin (2001); Christopher Marlowe and Richard Baines: Journeys Through the Elizabethan Underground by Roy Kendall (2003); The Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe, edited by Patrick Cheney (2004); Christopher Marlowe: Poet & Spy by Park Honan (2005); The Cambridge Introduction to Christopher Marlowe by Tom Rutter (2012); Christopher Marlowe in Context, edited by Emily C. Bartels and Emma Smith (2013); Marlowe and Shakespeare: The Critical Rivalry by Robert Sawyer (2017); Localizing Christopher Marlowe: His Life, Plays and Mthology, 1575-1593 by Arata Ide (2023); Religious Dissimulation and Early Modern Drama: The Limits of Toleration by Kilian Schindler (2023); Devil's Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain by Ed Simon (2024)

Selected works:

• Tamburlaine the Great, I-II, 1590 (printed)
• The Tragedie of Dido, Queen of Carthage, 1594
• The Troublesome Raigne and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England: With the Tragicall Fall of Proud Mortimer, 1594 (prod. c. 1592)
  - Edward II (suom. Jarmo Haapanen, Lasse Kekki, 2003)
• The Massacre at Paris, 1594? (acted 1593)
• Hero and Leander, 1598 (completed by George Chapman)
• Lucan's First Booke, Translated Line for Line by C. Marlow, 1600
• Doctor Fautus, 1604 (see also: J.W. Goethe)
• The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew of Malta, 1633 (printed)
• The Works of Christopher Marlowe: With Notes and Some Accounts of His Life and Writings, 1850 (3 vols., edited by Alexander Dyce)
• The Works of Christopher Marlowe, 1885 (3 vols., edited by A. H. Bullen)
• The Dramatic Works of Christopher Marlowe, 1889 (selected, with a prefatory notice, biographical and critical by Percy E. Pinkerton)
• The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus: A Play, 1904 (4th ed., edited with a preface, notes and glossary by Israel Gollancz)
• The Works Christopher Marlowe, 1910 (edited by C.F. Tucker Brooke)
• Marlowe's Poems, 1931 (edited by L. C. Martin)
• Christopher Marlowe, 1948 (edited by Havelock Ellis, with an introd. by J. A. Symonds)
• The Poems of Christopher Marlowe, 1968 (edited by Millar MacLure)
  
• Plays, 1962 (edited by Leo Kirschbaum)
• The Complete Plays, 1969 (edited with an introduction by J. B. Steane)
• The Complete Poems and Translations, 1971 (edited by Stephen Orgel)
• The Plays of Christopher Marlowe, 1971 (edited with an introd. by Roma Gill)
• The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe, 1973 (2 vols., edited by Fredson Bowers)
• Dr Faustus: The A-Text, 1985 (edited by David Ormerod and Christopher Wortham)
• Tamburlaine, Parts I and II; Doctor Faustus, A- and B-Texts; The Jew of Malta; Edward II, 1995 (edited by David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen)
• The Complete Plays of Christopher Marlowe, 1998 (edited by Mark Thornton Burnett)
  
• The Complete Plays, 2003 (edited by Frank Romany and Robert Lindsey)
• Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus: With Introduction, Essays, and Notes, 2004 (edited by Irving Ribner, revised with a new introduction by James H. Lake)
• The Collected poems of Christopher Marlowe, 2006 (edited by Patrick Cheney, Brian J. Striar)
• Four Plays, 2011 (introduction by Brian Gibbons, edited by Brian Gibbons)
• Edward II: With Related Texts, 2015 (edited, with introduction and notes, by Stephen J. Lynch)
  
• The Jew of Malta: an Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism, 2021 (edited by Lloyd Edward Kermode)
  
• Doctor Faustus: A Two-text Edition (a-text, 1604, b-text, 1616), Contexts and Sources, Criticism, 2023 (second edition; edited by David Scott Kastan, Matthew Hunter)
• Doctor Faustus with Related Texts, 2023 (edited, with introduction and notes, by Stephen J. Lynch)