Biography
Christopher "Kit" Marlowe (baptised 26 February 1564 ? 30 May 1593) was an English dramatist, poet, and translator of the Elizabethan era. The foremost Elizabethan tragedian before William Shakespeare, he is known for his magnificent blank verse, his overreaching protagonists, and his own untimely death.
Early life
Marlowe was christened at St George's Church tower, CanterburyChristopher Marlowe was christened at St George's Church, Canterbury, on 26 February 1564. He was born to a shoemaker in Canterbury named John Marlowe and his wife Katherine.[1] Marlowe 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. 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.[2] The nature of Marlowe's service was not specified by the Council, but their 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. No direct evidence supports this theory, although Marlowe obviously did serve the government in some capacity.
[edit] Literary career
Dido, Queen of Carthage seems to be Marlowe's first extant dramatic work, possibly written at Cambridge with Thomas Nashe.
Marlowe's first known play to be performed on the London stage was Tamburlaine (1587), a story of the conqueror Timur, who rises from a lowly shepherd to wage war on the kings of the world. It was one of the first popular English plays to use blank verse, and, with Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, it is generally considered the beginning of the mature phase of the Elizabethan theatre. Tamburlaine was a success, and Tamburlaine Part II soon followed.
The sequence of his remaining plays is unknown. All were written on controversial themes.
The Jew of Malta, depicting a Maltese Jew's barbarous revenge against the city authorities, features a prologue delivered by a character representing Machiavelli. It is also a complex play in that the Jew, Barabas, is consistently portrayed sympathetically (whilst the Christians are shown to be highly unsympathetic) and in his constant plotting and 'script writing' Barabas is often linked to the author himself.[citation needed]
Edward the Second is an English history play about the dethronement of the homosexual Edward II by his dissatisfied barons and French queen.
The Massacre at Paris is a short, sketchy play (believed to be a memorial construction made by actors) portraying the events surrounding the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572, an event that English Protestants frequently invoked as the blackest example of Catholic treachery. It also features a character, the silent "English Agent", rumoured to have been portraying, and possibly even played by, Marlowe himself (see below for links of Marlowe with the Elizabethan secret service). This play, along with Faustus, is believed to have been Marlowe's last play and is regarded as his most dangerous, dealing as it does with living monarchs and politicians, (at the time a treasonable act) and indeed addressing Elizabeth I herself in the last scene.
The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, based on the recently published German Faustbuch, was the first dramatic version of the Faust legend of a scholar's dealing with the devil. Whilst 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 have his contract repudiated by a merciful god 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. It seems that the A text is the most representative of Marlowe's work and is believed to be taken from "foul papers", uncorrected and jumbled manuscript copies, thus suggesting that it was incomplete at the time of Marlowe's killing.
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.
[edit] The Marlowe legend
Marlowe Theatre, CanterburyAs with other writers of the period, such as Shakespeare, little is known about Marlowe. Most of the evidence is legal records and other official documents that tell us little about him. This has not stopped writers of both fiction and non-fiction from speculating about his activities and character. Marlowe has often been regarded 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.
[edit] Spying
Marlowe is often alleged to have been a government spy.
[edit] Possible evidence of spying
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" in the Queen's service. This from a document dated June 29th, 1587, from the Public Records Office - Acts of Privy Council.
It has sometimes been theorized that Marlowe was the "Morley" who was tutor to Arbella Stuart in 1589, described by Arbella's guardian, the Countess of Shrewsbury, as having hoped for an annuity of some £40 from Arbella, his being "so much damnified (i.e. having lost this much) by leaving the University".[3] 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.[4] Some biographers think that the "Morley" in question may have been a brother of the musician Thomas Morley.[5] If Marlowe was Arbella's tutor, 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 of Elizabeth's throne.[6]
In 1592, Marlowe was arrested in the Dutch town of Flushing for attempting to counterfeit coins. He was sent to be dealt with by the Lord Treasurer (Burghley) but no charge or imprisonment seems to have resulted.[7]
[edit] 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",[8] 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,[9] 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.[10] 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".[11] 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.[12] Marlowe had spent all day in a house (not a tavern, as is widely claimed, even in some biographies) in Deptford, owned by the widow Eleanor Bull, along with three men, Ingram Frizer, Nicholas Skeres and Robert Poley[13]. All three had been employed by the Walsinghams. Skeres and Poley had helped snare the conspirators in the Babington plot. Frizer was a servant of Thomas Walsingham. Witnesses testified that Frizer and Marlowe had earlier argued over the bill, 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:
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.[14] 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."[15]
Their story that they were on a day's pleasure outing to Deptford is considered 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.[16]
It seems too much of a coincidence that Marlowe's death occurred only a few days after his arrest for heresy.
The manner of Marlowe's arrest suggests 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, it seems probable that the investigation was meant primarily as a warning to the politicians in the "School of Night," and/or that it was connected with a power struggle within the Privy Council itself.[17]
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' second cousin, who was actively involved in intelligence work.
For these reasons and others, some believe there was more to Marlowe's death than emerged at the inquest. It is also possible that he was not murdered at all, and that his death was faked. However, on the basis of our current knowledge, it is not possible to draw any firm conclusions about what happened or why. There are many different theories, of varying degrees of probability, but no solid evidence. 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.
[edit] Atheism
Marlowe had a reputation for atheism. The only contemporary evidence for this is from Marlowe's accuser in Flushing, an informer called Richard Baines. The governor of Flushing had reported that both men had accused one another of instigating the counterfeiting and of intention to go over to the Catholic side (considered atheism by Protestants), "both as they say of malice one to another". 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".[18] Baines attributes to Marlowe ideas 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". Similar statements were made by Thomas Kyd after his imprisonment and possible torture (see below);[19][20] 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. Baines ends his "note" with the ominous statement: "I think all men in Christianity ought to endeavour that the mouth of so dangerous a member may be stopped".
Some critics believe that Marlowe sought to disseminate these views in his work and that he identified with his rebellious and iconoclastic protagonists.[21] 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).
[edit] Sexuality
Marlowe is often 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 (see History of homosexuality).
[edit] Documentary evidence
Two documents suggest that Marlowe was homosexual.
The most graphic is the testimony of Richard Baines, an informer who made a long list of allegations against Marlowe after his arrest in Flushing (see above). Most of these allegations concern Marlowe's atheism, but Baines also claimed that Marlowe said "all they that love not tobacco and boys were fools" and that "St John the Evangelist was bedfellow to Christ and leaned always in his bosom, that he used him as the sinners of Sodom".
In 1593, Marlowe's one-time room-mate and fellow dramatist, Thomas Kyd was imprisoned and interrogated after atheistic papers were found in his room. Claiming the papers belonged to Marlowe, Kyd later produced a list detailing some of Marlowe's "monstrous opinions," which included the claim that Marlowe "would report St. John to be our saviour Christ's Alexis ... that is, that Christ did love him with an extraordinary love."
In addition, it has been pointed out that there is no evidence of any marriage or female companionship for Marlowe.
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".[22] It has also been noted that Kyd's evidence was given after torture, and thus may have little connection to reality.[23]
[edit] Literary evidence
Marlowe's writing is also notable for its homosexual themes.
Edward II (c.1592) is one of the very few English Renaissance plays to be concerned with homosexuality, since Edward II of England had that reputation. The portrayal of Edward and his love, Piers Gaveston, is unflattering, but so too is the portrayal of the barons who usurp him, and the play's numerous modern revivals have demonstrated that Edward's tragic decline and death can elicit sympathetic responses; it is thus conceivable that some contemporary audience members might have responded similarly.
In Dido, Queen of Carthage, he opens with a scene of Jupiter "dandling Ganymede upon his knee" and says "what is't, sweet wag, I should deny thy youth?, whose face reflects such pleasure to mine eyes." Venus complains during the play that Jupiter is playing "with that female wanton boy."
In Hero and Leander, Marlowe writes of the male youth Leander, "in his looks were all that men desire" 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", 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."
The mere inclusion of same-sex love themes in Marlowe's works has been seen as signifying a biographical interest. Diligent classicists often mimicked the homosexual themes they found in Greek and Roman texts (as Edmund Spenser did in The Shepheard's Calendar), but Marlowe accords these themes more prominence than almost any other writer besides Richard Barnfield. In conjunction with the rumours preserved in the historical record, the prominence of homosexual themes in Marlowe's work has led, especially in the twentieth century, to a presumption of interest in same-sex love (although not necessarily of homosexual activity).
For debates of a somewhat similar nature, compare Sexuality of William Shakespeare.
[edit] Marlowe's 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 indeed very influenced by Marlowe in his early work as can be seen in the re-using of Marlowe themes in Anthony and Cleopatra, The Merchant of Venice, Richard II, and Macbeth (Dido, Jew of Malta, Edward II and Dr Faustus respectively). Indeed in Hamlet, after meeting with the travelling actors, Hamlet starts discussing Dido, Queen of Carthage and quoting from it. As this was Marlowe's only play not to have been played in the public theatre we can see that Shakespeare was quite the Marlovian scholar. Indeed in Love's Labour's Lost, echoing Marlowe's The Massacre at Paris, Shakespeare brings on a character called Marcade (French for Mercury ? the messenger of the Gods ? a nickname Marlowe bestowed upon himself) who arrives to "interrupt'st" the "merriment" with news of the King's death. A fitting tribute for one who delighted in destruction in his plays.
[edit] Marlowe as Shakespeare
Main articles: Shakespearean authorship question and Marlovian theory
Given the murky inconsistencies concerning the account of Marlowe's death, an ongoing conspiracy 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 Murder of the Man Who Was Shakespeare (1955)[24]
Louis Ule, Christopher Marlowe (1564-1607): A Biography
AD Wraight, The Story that the Sonnets Tell (1994)
Roderick L Eagle, The Mystery of Marlowe's Death, N&Q (1952)
[edit] Works
The dates of composition are approximate.
[edit] 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.
[edit] Poetry
Translation of Lucan's Pharsalia (date unknown)
Translation of Ovid's Elegies (c. 1580s?)
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love (pre 1593, but due to being constantly referenced through 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)
[edit] Marlowe in fiction
The upcoming play 'Upstart Crows' written by Mike Punter centres around the life of Marlowe, Edward Alleyn, Jack Alleyn and other characters that centre around their lives. Its first performance is at the Edward Alleyn theatre in Dulwich College in November 2007, and it goes on the be performed in the 2008 Edinburgh fringe festival.
Marlowe was the title character of a 1981 stage musical that had a brief Broadway run. It was rather unsuccessful.
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 change 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 fictionalized 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 and/or because Marlowe's espionage on the continent discovered 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 sixteen 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) to great comic effect.
Marlowe is one of several main characters in Rosemary Laurey's vampire series. He explains at one point that if his friend, Thomas Kyd had not turned him, he would have died.
Marlowe is a major protagonist in Elizabeth Bear's Promethean Age books, specifically Whiskey & WaterNotes
^ This is commemorated by the name of the town's main theatre, the Marlowe Theatre, and by the town museums. However St George's, the church in which he was christened, was gutted by fire in the Baedeker raids and was demolished in the post-war period - only the tower is left, at the south end of Canterbury's High Street http://www.digiserve.com/peter/cant-sgm1.htm
^ For a full transcript, see Peter Farey's Marlowe page
^ BL Lansdowne MS 71,f.3.and Charles Nicholl, The Reckoning (1992), pp. 340-2.
^ John Baker, letter to Notes and Queries 44.3 (1997), pp. 367-8
^ Constance Kuriyama, Christopher Marlowe: A Renaissance Life (2002), p. 89. Also in Handover's biography of Arbella, and Nicholl, The Reckoning, p. 342.
^ Elizabeth I and James VI and I, History in Focus.
^ For a full transcript, see Peter Farey's Marlowe page
^ http://www.prst17z1.demon.co.uk/libell.htm
^ Mulryne, J. H. "Thomas Kyd." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
^ Haynes, Alan. The Elizabethan Secret Service. London: Sutton, 2005.
^ Palladis Tamia. London, 1598: 286v-287r.
^ http://www.prst17z1.demon.co.uk/inquis~2.htm
^ E. de Kalb, Robert Poley?s Movements as a Messenger of the Court, 1588 to 1601 Review of English Studies, Vol. 9, No. 33
^ Seaton, Ethel. "Marlowe, Robert Poley, and the Tippings." Review of English Studies 5 (1929): 273.
^ Greenblatt, Stephen Will in the World. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2004: 268.
^ Nicholl, Charles. The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995: 32.
^ Gray, Austin. "Some Observations on Christopher Marlowe, Government Agent." PMLA 43 (1928): 692-4.
^ http://www.prst17z1.demon.co.uk/baines1.htm
^ http://www.prst17z1.demon.co.uk/kyd1.htm
^ http://www.prst17z1.demon.co.uk/kyd2.htm
^ Waith, Eugene. The Herculean Hero in Marlowe, Chapman, Shakespeare, and Dryden. London: Chatto and Windus, 1962. The idea is commonplace, though by no means universally accepted.
^ Doctor Faustus and Other Plays, pp. viii - ix
^ Boas, F. S. Christopher Marlowe: A Biographical and Critical Study. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940: 242.
^ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/muchado/readings/hoffman.html
[edit] 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)
Marlow, Christopher. Complete Works. Vol. 3: Edward II. Ed. R. Rowland. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. (pp. xxii-xxiii)
Louis Ule Christopher Marlowe (1564-1607): A Biography, Carlton Press, 1996. ISBN 0-8062-5028-3
David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen, Doctor Faustus and Other Plays, OUP, 1998; ISBN 0-19-283445-2
J. A. Downie and J. T. Parnell, eds., Constructing Christopher Marlowe, Cambridge 2000. ISBN 0-521-57255-X
Constance Kuriyama,Christopher Marlowe: A Renaissance Life. Cornell University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-8014-3978-7
Charles Nicholl, The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe, Vintage, 2002 (revised edition) ISBN 0-09-943747-3
Alan Shepard, "Marlowe's Soldiers: Rhetorics of Masculinity in the Age of the Armada", Ashgate, 2002. ISBN 0-7546-0229-X
M. J. Trow, Who Killed Kit Marlowe?, Sutton, 2002; ISBN 0-7509-2963-4
Anthony Burgess, 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
David Riggs, "The World of Christopher Marlowe", Henry Holt and Co., 2005 ISBN 0-8050-8036-8
Louise Walsh "Tamburlaine Must Die", novella based around the build up to Marlowe's death.
John Passfield, Water Lane: The Pilgrimage of Christopher Marlowe (novel) Authorhouse, 2005 ISBN 1-4208-1558-X
John Passfield, The Making of Water Lane (journal) Authorhouse, 2005 ISBN 1-4208-2020-6
David Riggs, The World of Christopher Marlowe A John Macrae book, 2005 ISBN-13: 0-8050-7755-3
Park Honan, Christopher Marlowe Poet and Spy Oxford University Press, 2005 ISBN 0-19-818695-9
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Biography
Christopher Marlowe
Christopher "Kit" Marlowe (baptised 26 February 1564 ? 30 May 1593) was an English dramatist, poet, and translator of the Elizabethan era. The foremost Elizabethan tragedian before William Shakespeare, he is known for his magnificent blank verse, his overreaching protagonists, and his own untimely death.
Early life
Marlowe was christened at St George's Church tower, CanterburyChristopher Marlowe was christened at St George's Church, Canterbury, on 26 February 1564. He was born to a shoemaker in Canterbury named John Marlowe and his wife Katherine.[1] Marlowe 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. 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.[2] The nature of Marlowe's service was not specified by the Council, but their 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. No direct evidence supports this theory, although Marlowe obviously did serve the government in some capacity.
[edit] Literary career
Dido, Queen of Carthage seems to be Marlowe's first extant dramatic work, possibly written at Cambridge with Thomas Nashe.
Marlowe's first known play to be performed on the London stage was Tamburlaine (1587), a story of the conqueror Timur, who rises from a lowly shepherd to wage war on the kings of the world. It was one of the first popular English plays to use blank verse, and, with Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, it is generally considered the beginning of the mature phase of the Elizabethan theatre. Tamburlaine was a success, and Tamburlaine Part II soon followed.
The sequence of his remaining plays is unknown. All were written on controversial themes.
The Jew of Malta, depicting a Maltese Jew's barbarous revenge against the city authorities, features a prologue delivered by a character representing Machiavelli. It is also a complex play in that the Jew, Barabas, is consistently portrayed sympathetically (whilst the Christians are shown to be highly unsympathetic) and in his constant plotting and 'script writing' Barabas is often linked to the author himself.[citation needed]
Edward the Second is an English history play about the dethronement of the homosexual Edward II by his dissatisfied barons and French queen.
The Massacre at Paris is a short, sketchy play (believed to be a memorial construction made by actors) portraying the events surrounding the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572, an event that English Protestants frequently invoked as the blackest example of Catholic treachery. It also features a character, the silent "English Agent", rumoured to have been portraying, and possibly even played by, Marlowe himself (see below for links of Marlowe with the Elizabethan secret service). This play, along with Faustus, is believed to have been Marlowe's last play and is regarded as his most dangerous, dealing as it does with living monarchs and politicians, (at the time a treasonable act) and indeed addressing Elizabeth I herself in the last scene.
The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, based on the recently published German Faustbuch, was the first dramatic version of the Faust legend of a scholar's dealing with the devil. Whilst 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 have his contract repudiated by a merciful god 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. It seems that the A text is the most representative of Marlowe's work and is believed to be taken from "foul papers", uncorrected and jumbled manuscript copies, thus suggesting that it was incomplete at the time of Marlowe's killing.
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.
[edit] The Marlowe legend
Marlowe Theatre, CanterburyAs with other writers of the period, such as Shakespeare, little is known about Marlowe. Most of the evidence is legal records and other official documents that tell us little about him. This has not stopped writers of both fiction and non-fiction from speculating about his activities and character. Marlowe has often been regarded 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.
[edit] Spying
Marlowe is often alleged to have been a government spy.
[edit] Possible evidence of spying
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" in the Queen's service. This from a document dated June 29th, 1587, from the Public Records Office - Acts of Privy Council.
It has sometimes been theorized that Marlowe was the "Morley" who was tutor to Arbella Stuart in 1589, described by Arbella's guardian, the Countess of Shrewsbury, as having hoped for an annuity of some £40 from Arbella, his being "so much damnified (i.e. having lost this much) by leaving the University".[3] 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.[4] Some biographers think that the "Morley" in question may have been a brother of the musician Thomas Morley.[5] If Marlowe was Arbella's tutor, 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 of Elizabeth's throne.[6]
In 1592, Marlowe was arrested in the Dutch town of Flushing for attempting to counterfeit coins. He was sent to be dealt with by the Lord Treasurer (Burghley) but no charge or imprisonment seems to have resulted.[7]
[edit] 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",[8] 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,[9] 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.[10] 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".[11] 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.[12] Marlowe had spent all day in a house (not a tavern, as is widely claimed, even in some biographies) in Deptford, owned by the widow Eleanor Bull, along with three men, Ingram Frizer, Nicholas Skeres and Robert Poley[13]. All three had been employed by the Walsinghams. Skeres and Poley had helped snare the conspirators in the Babington plot. Frizer was a servant of Thomas Walsingham. Witnesses testified that Frizer and Marlowe had earlier argued over the bill, 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:
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.[14] 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."[15]
Their story that they were on a day's pleasure outing to Deptford is considered 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.[16]
It seems too much of a coincidence that Marlowe's death occurred only a few days after his arrest for heresy.
The manner of Marlowe's arrest suggests 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, it seems probable that the investigation was meant primarily as a warning to the politicians in the "School of Night," and/or that it was connected with a power struggle within the Privy Council itself.[17]
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' second cousin, who was actively involved in intelligence work.
For these reasons and others, some believe there was more to Marlowe's death than emerged at the inquest. It is also possible that he was not murdered at all, and that his death was faked. However, on the basis of our current knowledge, it is not possible to draw any firm conclusions about what happened or why. There are many different theories, of varying degrees of probability, but no solid evidence. 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.
[edit] Atheism
Marlowe had a reputation for atheism. The only contemporary evidence for this is from Marlowe's accuser in Flushing, an informer called Richard Baines. The governor of Flushing had reported that both men had accused one another of instigating the counterfeiting and of intention to go over to the Catholic side (considered atheism by Protestants), "both as they say of malice one to another". 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".[18] Baines attributes to Marlowe ideas 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". Similar statements were made by Thomas Kyd after his imprisonment and possible torture (see below);[19][20] 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. Baines ends his "note" with the ominous statement: "I think all men in Christianity ought to endeavour that the mouth of so dangerous a member may be stopped".
Some critics believe that Marlowe sought to disseminate these views in his work and that he identified with his rebellious and iconoclastic protagonists.[21] 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).
[edit] Sexuality
Marlowe is often 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 (see History of homosexuality).
[edit] Documentary evidence
Two documents suggest that Marlowe was homosexual.
The most graphic is the testimony of Richard Baines, an informer who made a long list of allegations against Marlowe after his arrest in Flushing (see above). Most of these allegations concern Marlowe's atheism, but Baines also claimed that Marlowe said "all they that love not tobacco and boys were fools" and that "St John the Evangelist was bedfellow to Christ and leaned always in his bosom, that he used him as the sinners of Sodom".
In 1593, Marlowe's one-time room-mate and fellow dramatist, Thomas Kyd was imprisoned and interrogated after atheistic papers were found in his room. Claiming the papers belonged to Marlowe, Kyd later produced a list detailing some of Marlowe's "monstrous opinions," which included the claim that Marlowe "would report St. John to be our saviour Christ's Alexis ... that is, that Christ did love him with an extraordinary love."
In addition, it has been pointed out that there is no evidence of any marriage or female companionship for Marlowe.
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".[22] It has also been noted that Kyd's evidence was given after torture, and thus may have little connection to reality.[23]
[edit] Literary evidence
Marlowe's writing is also notable for its homosexual themes.
Edward II (c.1592) is one of the very few English Renaissance plays to be concerned with homosexuality, since Edward II of England had that reputation. The portrayal of Edward and his love, Piers Gaveston, is unflattering, but so too is the portrayal of the barons who usurp him, and the play's numerous modern revivals have demonstrated that Edward's tragic decline and death can elicit sympathetic responses; it is thus conceivable that some contemporary audience members might have responded similarly.
In Dido, Queen of Carthage, he opens with a scene of Jupiter "dandling Ganymede upon his knee" and says "what is't, sweet wag, I should deny thy youth?, whose face reflects such pleasure to mine eyes." Venus complains during the play that Jupiter is playing "with that female wanton boy."
In Hero and Leander, Marlowe writes of the male youth Leander, "in his looks were all that men desire" 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", 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."
The mere inclusion of same-sex love themes in Marlowe's works has been seen as signifying a biographical interest. Diligent classicists often mimicked the homosexual themes they found in Greek and Roman texts (as Edmund Spenser did in The Shepheard's Calendar), but Marlowe accords these themes more prominence than almost any other writer besides Richard Barnfield. In conjunction with the rumours preserved in the historical record, the prominence of homosexual themes in Marlowe's work has led, especially in the twentieth century, to a presumption of interest in same-sex love (although not necessarily of homosexual activity).
For debates of a somewhat similar nature, compare Sexuality of William Shakespeare.
[edit] Marlowe's 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 indeed very influenced by Marlowe in his early work as can be seen in the re-using of Marlowe themes in Anthony and Cleopatra, The Merchant of Venice, Richard II, and Macbeth (Dido, Jew of Malta, Edward II and Dr Faustus respectively). Indeed in Hamlet, after meeting with the travelling actors, Hamlet starts discussing Dido, Queen of Carthage and quoting from it. As this was Marlowe's only play not to have been played in the public theatre we can see that Shakespeare was quite the Marlovian scholar. Indeed in Love's Labour's Lost, echoing Marlowe's The Massacre at Paris, Shakespeare brings on a character called Marcade (French for Mercury ? the messenger of the Gods ? a nickname Marlowe bestowed upon himself) who arrives to "interrupt'st" the "merriment" with news of the King's death. A fitting tribute for one who delighted in destruction in his plays.
[edit] Marlowe as Shakespeare
Main articles: Shakespearean authorship question and Marlovian theory
Given the murky inconsistencies concerning the account of Marlowe's death, an ongoing conspiracy 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 Murder of the Man Who Was Shakespeare (1955)[24]
Louis Ule, Christopher Marlowe (1564-1607): A Biography
AD Wraight, The Story that the Sonnets Tell (1994)
Roderick L Eagle, The Mystery of Marlowe's Death, N&Q (1952)
[edit] Works
The dates of composition are approximate.
[edit] 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.
[edit] Poetry
Translation of Lucan's Pharsalia (date unknown)
Translation of Ovid's Elegies (c. 1580s?)
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love (pre 1593, but due to being constantly referenced through 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)
[edit] Marlowe in fiction
The upcoming play 'Upstart Crows' written by Mike Punter centres around the life of Marlowe, Edward Alleyn, Jack Alleyn and other characters that centre around their lives. Its first performance is at the Edward Alleyn theatre in Dulwich College in November 2007, and it goes on the be performed in the 2008 Edinburgh fringe festival.
Marlowe was the title character of a 1981 stage musical that had a brief Broadway run. It was rather unsuccessful.
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 change 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 fictionalized 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 and/or because Marlowe's espionage on the continent discovered 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 sixteen 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) to great comic effect.
Marlowe is one of several main characters in Rosemary Laurey's vampire series. He explains at one point that if his friend, Thomas Kyd had not turned him, he would have died.
Marlowe is a major protagonist in Elizabeth Bear's Promethean Age books, specifically Whiskey & WaterNotes
^ This is commemorated by the name of the town's main theatre, the Marlowe Theatre, and by the town museums. However St George's, the church in which he was christened, was gutted by fire in the Baedeker raids and was demolished in the post-war period - only the tower is left, at the south end of Canterbury's High Street http://www.digiserve.com/peter/cant-sgm1.htm
^ For a full transcript, see Peter Farey's Marlowe page
^ BL Lansdowne MS 71,f.3.and Charles Nicholl, The Reckoning (1992), pp. 340-2.
^ John Baker, letter to Notes and Queries 44.3 (1997), pp. 367-8
^ Constance Kuriyama, Christopher Marlowe: A Renaissance Life (2002), p. 89. Also in Handover's biography of Arbella, and Nicholl, The Reckoning, p. 342.
^ Elizabeth I and James VI and I, History in Focus.
^ For a full transcript, see Peter Farey's Marlowe page
^ http://www.prst17z1.demon.co.uk/libell.htm
^ Mulryne, J. H. "Thomas Kyd." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
^ Haynes, Alan. The Elizabethan Secret Service. London: Sutton, 2005.
^ Palladis Tamia. London, 1598: 286v-287r.
^ http://www.prst17z1.demon.co.uk/inquis~2.htm
^ E. de Kalb, Robert Poley?s Movements as a Messenger of the Court, 1588 to 1601 Review of English Studies, Vol. 9, No. 33
^ Seaton, Ethel. "Marlowe, Robert Poley, and the Tippings." Review of English Studies 5 (1929): 273.
^ Greenblatt, Stephen Will in the World. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2004: 268.
^ Nicholl, Charles. The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995: 32.
^ Gray, Austin. "Some Observations on Christopher Marlowe, Government Agent." PMLA 43 (1928): 692-4.
^ http://www.prst17z1.demon.co.uk/baines1.htm
^ http://www.prst17z1.demon.co.uk/kyd1.htm
^ http://www.prst17z1.demon.co.uk/kyd2.htm
^ Waith, Eugene. The Herculean Hero in Marlowe, Chapman, Shakespeare, and Dryden. London: Chatto and Windus, 1962. The idea is commonplace, though by no means universally accepted.
^ Doctor Faustus and Other Plays, pp. viii - ix
^ Boas, F. S. Christopher Marlowe: A Biographical and Critical Study. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940: 242.
^ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/muchado/readings/hoffman.html
[edit] 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)
Marlow, Christopher. Complete Works. Vol. 3: Edward II. Ed. R. Rowland. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. (pp. xxii-xxiii)
Louis Ule Christopher Marlowe (1564-1607): A Biography, Carlton Press, 1996. ISBN 0-8062-5028-3
David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen, Doctor Faustus and Other Plays, OUP, 1998; ISBN 0-19-283445-2
J. A. Downie and J. T. Parnell, eds., Constructing Christopher Marlowe, Cambridge 2000. ISBN 0-521-57255-X
Constance Kuriyama,Christopher Marlowe: A Renaissance Life. Cornell University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-8014-3978-7
Charles Nicholl, The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe, Vintage, 2002 (revised edition) ISBN 0-09-943747-3
Alan Shepard, "Marlowe's Soldiers: Rhetorics of Masculinity in the Age of the Armada", Ashgate, 2002. ISBN 0-7546-0229-X
M. J. Trow, Who Killed Kit Marlowe?, Sutton, 2002; ISBN 0-7509-2963-4
Anthony Burgess, 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
David Riggs, "The World of Christopher Marlowe", Henry Holt and Co., 2005 ISBN 0-8050-8036-8
Louise Walsh "Tamburlaine Must Die", novella based around the build up to Marlowe's death.
John Passfield, Water Lane: The Pilgrimage of Christopher Marlowe (novel) Authorhouse, 2005 ISBN 1-4208-1558-X
John Passfield, The Making of Water Lane (journal) Authorhouse, 2005 ISBN 1-4208-2020-6
David Riggs, The World of Christopher Marlowe A John Macrae book, 2005 ISBN-13: 0-8050-7755-3
Park Honan, Christopher Marlowe Poet and Spy Oxford University Press, 2005 ISBN 0-19-818695-9
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