Christopher Marlowe

Dramatist and Poet of the English Renaissance (1564-1593). His best-known plays are: Tamburlaine (c. 1587), The Jew of Malta (c. 1589), Dr Faustus (published 1604) and Edward II (c. 1592). He got killed in a quarrel over the bill in a Deptford tavern and was rumoured to be an atheist and a spy for confidential government service.

Biography

Christopher Marlowe was born in 1564, the same year William Shakespeare was born, as the second of nine children to John Marlowe, who was a shoemaker and professional bondsman in Canterbury. Note that Christopher Marlowe's family thus typified that kind of artisan class, which contributed to much of the literary achievements of the period just like for example Marlowe's contemporary William Shakespeare, who was the son of a glovemaker.

The spelling of the family name was fluid: John Marlowe was often called Marley or Marle and his son Christopher appears as Marlowe, Marlow, or Marlo, while he appears with the signature of Marlin or Merling in the Cambridge University records, and as Morley in the coroner's inquest on his death.

Christopher Marlowe enrolled as a scholar of King's School in Canterbury in 1578 and went to Corpus Christi College in Cambridge in 1580. He was recipient of a scholarship by Matthew Parker, the Archbishop of Canterbury and graduated BA in 1584, at a relatively old age of twenty years. His academic career proceeded smoothly but with no great distinction. During an absebce from university between 1581 and 1583 and after June of 1586 he is rumoured to have been working for the secret government service. In 1587 he received his MA degree at Cambridge.

By the late 1580s Marlowe was situated in London and enjoyed great success as a playwright and poet. In 1593 he was arrested in connection with an investigation into religious heterodoxy and disloyalty to the Crown. Wheather these accusations were true or not remains questionable, but as a matter of fact Marlowe died violently shortly thereafter in a quarrel in a private house - perhaps a tavern - in Deptford at the hands of one Ingram Frizer. Marlowe was buried on the 1st of June in 1593 at St Nicholas's Church in Deptford, however, the exact location of his grave is unknown.

Christopher Marlowe in 1585, QVOD ME NVTRIT ME DESTRVIT - What nurishes me destroys me

Sources

Nicholl, Charles. "Marlowe [Marley], Christopher (bap. 1564, d. 1593), playwright and poet." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, published 23 September 2004, last edited 03 January 2008, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-18079.

Marlowe, Christopher. Tamburlaine, Parts I and II, Doctor Faustus, A- and B-Texts, The Jew of Malta, Edward II. Ed. David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.