Playwright and poet, born in Canterbury, Kent, SE England, UK. He studied there and at Cambridge, and was the most significant of Shakespeare's predecessors in English drama. His Tamburlaine the Great (c.1587) shows his discovery of the strength and variety of blank verse, and this was followed by The Jew of Malta (c.1590), The Tragical History of Dr Faustus (c.1592), partly written by others, and Edward II (c.1592). He wrote several translations and poems, such as the unfinished Hero and Leander, and much of his other work has been handed down in fragments. He led an irregular life, and was on the point of being arrested for disseminating atheistic opinions when he was fatally stabbed, under mysterious circumstances, apparently in a tavern brawl in Deptford; research suggests he was murdered by an agent of Walsingham, for reasons unknown.
For the Raymond Chandler film, see Marlowe (1969 film). For the American cabaret composer, see Christopher Marlowe (composer).Christopher ("Kit") Marlowe (baptised 26 February 1564 – 30 May 1593) was an English dramatist, poet, and translator of the Elizabethan era.
Early life
Born on 6th feb.1564 Canterbury, Marlowe attended The King's School, Canterbury and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge on a scholarship and received his bachelor of arts degree in 1584. 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.
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.
Marlowe's plays were enormously successful, thanks in part, no doubt, to the imposing stage presence of Edward Alleyn. 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 an 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. all Marlowe's other works were published posthumously.
The Marlowe legend
As with other writers of the period, such as Shakespeare, little is known about Marlowe. Marlowe has often been regarded as a spy, a brawler, a heretic, and a homosexual, as well as a "magician", "duelist", "tobacco-user", "counterfeiter", and "rakehell". The bare facts of Marlowe's life have been embellished by many writers into colourful, and often fanciful, narratives of the Elizabethan underworld.
Spying and Death
Marlowe is often alleged to have been a government spy. Marlowe was killed in a pub in Deptford in an apparent dispute between him and his acquaintances over the tab.
Possible evidence of spying
As noted above, in 1587 the Privy Council ordered Cambridge University to award Marlowe his MA, denying rumours that he had been to the English Catholic college in Rheims, saying instead that he had been engaged in unspecified "affaires" in the Queen's service.
It has sometimes been theorized that Marlowe was the "Morley" who was tutor to Arbella Stuart in 1589, described by Arbella's mother as "much damnified by leaving the University" . 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. This possibility has not been acknowledged in any Marlowe biographies; If Marlowe was Arbella's tutor, it might indicate that he was a spy, since Arbella was at the time a possible successor to the English throne.
In 1592, Marlowe was arrested in the Dutch town of Flushing for attempting to counterfeit coins. One of these, the "Dutch church libel", written in blank verse, contained allusions to several of Marlowe's plays and was signed "Tamburlaine." The next day, Marlowe's colleague Thomas Kyd was arrested. Kyd asserted, possibly under torture, that it had belonged to Marlowe. 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, who was known as Elizibeth I's spymaster. 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". 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 . Marlowe had spent all day in a house (not a tavern) in Deptford, owned by the widow Eleanor Bull, along with three men, Ingram Frizer, Nicholas Skeres and Robert Poley. 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 left eye, killing him instantly. 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 all had links to the intelligence service as well as to the London underworld. Also, Robert Poley was carrying confidential despatches to the Queen, who was at Greenwich nearby, but instead of delivering them, he spent the day with Marlowe and the other two. It seems too much of a coincidence that Marlowe's death occurred only a few days after his arrest for heresy. Marlowe's arrest for heresy was handled by the Privy Council in an unusual way.For these reasons and others, some believe there was more to Marlowe's death than emerged at the inquest. 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 paper at all, it is unlikely that the full circumstances of Marlowe's death will ever be known.
Atheist
Marlowe had a reputation for atheism. The only contemporary evidence for this is from Marlowe's accuser in Flushing, an informer called Richard Baines. 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". 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. He also claims that Marlowe had Catholic sympathies. 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.
Some critics believe that Marlowe sought to disseminate these views in his work and that he identified with his rebellious and iconoclastic protagonists. Presumably these authorities did not consider any of Marlowe's works to be unacceptable (apart from the Amores).
Sexuality
Marlowe is often described today as homosexual, although the evidence for this is inconclusive.
Documentary evidence
Two documents suggest that Marlowe may have been homosexual, though all are clearly circumstantial, or reported by people of questionable motives.
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 roommate 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 ...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.
Literary evidence
Marlowe's writing is also notable for its homosexual themes. 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 mere inclusion of same-sex love themes, often in very tender terms, in Marlowe's works is seen by some as a significant .
It has been noted that the argument from his plays and poems depends on a circular argument : that only someone who was homosexual would have written them. Furthermore, much of Marlowe's work is also concerned with heterosexuality. In Marlowe's work, heterosexuality is most frequently presented as a restriction of freedom, lacking the elevated nature of same-sex attraction.
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. 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".
The only contemporary dramatist 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 his only dramatic reference to a contemporary writer, 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).
Recent Marlowe controversies
In November 2005, a production of Tamburlaine at the Barbican Arts Centre in London was accused of deferring to Muslim sensibilities by amending a section of the play in which the title character burns the Koran and excoriates the prophet Muhammad.
Marlowe as Shakespeare
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) Louis Ule, Christopher Marlowe (1564-1607): A Biography AD Wraight, The Story that the Sonnets Tell (1994)Works
The dates of composition are approximate. completed by George Chapman, 1598)
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