Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe (/ˈmɑːrloʊ/; baptised 26 February 1564–30 May 1593), was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era.[nb 1] Modern scholars count Marlowe among the most famous of the Elizabethan playwrights; based upon the "many imitations" of his play Tamburlaine, they consider him to have been the foremost dramatist in London in the years just before his mysterious early death.[nb 2] Some scholars also believe that he greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was baptised in the same year as Marlowe and later succeeded him as the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright.[nb 3] Marlowe was the first to achieve critical notoriety for his use of blank verse, which became the standard for the era. His plays are distinguished by their overreaching protagonists. Themes found within Marlowe's literary works have been noted as humanistic with realistic emotions, which some scholars find difficult to reconcile with Marlowe's "anti-intellectualism" and his catering to the taste of his Elizabethan audiences for generous displays of extreme physical violence, cruelty, and bloodshed.[4]
Events in Marlowe's life were sometimes as extreme as those found in his dramas.[nb 4] Reports of Marlowe’s death in 1593 were particularly infamous in his day and are contested by scholars today due to a lack of good documentation. Traditionally, the playwright’s death has been blamed on a long list of conjectures, including a bar-room fight, blasphemous libel against the church, homosexual intrigue, betrayal by another playwright, and espionage from the highest level: Elizabeth I of England'sPrivy Council. An official coroner's account of Marlowe's death was only revealed in 1925,[6] but it did little to persuade all scholars that it told the whole story nor did it eliminate the uncertainties present in his biography.[7]
Early life
Marlowe was christened at St George's Church, Canterbury. The tower, shown here, is all that survived destruction during the Baedeker air raids of 1942.
Christopher Marlowe was born to Canterbury shoemaker John Marlowe and his wife Katherine, daughter of William Arthur of Dover.[8] He was baptised on 26 February 1564 at St. George's Church,[9] Canterbury. Marlowe's birth was likely to have been a few days before, making him about two months older than William Shakespeare, who was baptised on 26 April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon.[8][10]
By age 14, Marlowe attended The King's School, Canterbury on scholarship[nb 5] and two years later Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he also studied on scholarship and received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1584.[8][11] Marlowe mastered Latin during his schooling; reading and translating the works of Ovid. In 1587, the university hesitated to award his Master of Arts degree because of a rumour that he intended to go to the English seminary at Rheims in northern France, presumably to prepare for ordination as a Roman Catholic priest.[8] If true, such an action on his part would have been a direct violation of royal edict issued by Queen Elizabeth I in 1585 criminalising any attempt by an English citizen to be ordained in the Roman Catholic Church.[12][13]
Large-scale violence between Protestants and Catholics on the European continent has been cited by scholars as the impetus for the Protestant English Queen's defensive anti-Catholic laws issued from 1581 until her death in 1603.[12] Despite the dire implications for Marlowe, 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.[14] The nature of Marlowe's service was not specified by the Council, but its letter to the Cambridge authorities has provoked much speculation by modern scholars, notably the theory that Marlowe was operating as a secret agent for Privy Council member Sir Francis Walsingham.[15] The only surviving evidence of the Privy Council's correspondence is found in their minutes, the letter being lost. There is no mention of espionage in the minutes, but its summation of the lost Privy Council letter is vague in meaning, stating that "it was not Her Majesties pleasure" that persons employed as Marlowe had been "in matters touching the benefit of his country should be defamed by those who are ignorant in th'affaires he went about." Scholars agree the vague wording was typically used to protect government agents, but they continue to debate what the "matters touching the benefit of his country" actually were in Marlowe's case and how they affected the 23-year-old writer as he launched his literary career in 1587.[8]
Six dramas have been attributed to the authorship of Christopher Marlowe either alone or in collaboration with other writers, with varying degrees of evidence. The writing sequence or chronology of these plays is mostly unknown and is offered here with any dates and evidence known. Among the little available information we have, Dido is believed to be the first Marlowe play performed, while it was Tamburlaine that was first to be performed on a regular commercial stage in London in 1587. Believed by many scholars to be Marlowe's greatest success, Tamburlaine was the first English play written in blank verse and, with Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, is generally considered the beginning of the mature phase of the Elizabethan theatre.[16]
Works (The dates of composition are approximate).:
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. He may also have written or co-written Arden of Faversham.
Pharsalia, Book One, by Lucan with translation by Marlowe. (c. 1593; printed 1600)[22]
Collaborations
Modern scholars still look for evidence of collaborations between Marlowe and other writers. In 2016, one publisher was the first to endorse the scholarly claim of a collaboration between Marlowe and the playwright William Shakespeare:
Henry VI by William Shakespeare is now credited as a collaboration with Marlowe in the New Oxford Shakespeare series, published in 2016. Marlowe appears as co-author of the three Henry VI plays, though some scholars doubt any actual collaboration.[23][24][25][26]
Marlowe's plays were enormously successful, possibly due to the imposing stage presence of his lead actor, Edward Alleyn. Alleyn was unusually tall for the time and the haughty roles of Tamburlaine, Faustus and Barabas were probably written for him. Marlowe's plays were the foundation of the repertoire of Alleyn's company, the Admiral's Men, throughout the 1590s. One of Marlowe's poetry translations did not fare as well. In 1599, Marlowe's translation of Ovid was banned and copies were publicly burned as part of Archbishop Whitgift's crackdown on offensive material.
Modern compendiums
There are at least two major modern scholarly editions of the collected works of Christopher Marlowe:
The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe, (edited by Roma Gill in 1986; Clarendon Press published in partnership with Oxford University Press)
The Complete Plays of Christopher Marlowe, (edited by J. B. Steane in 1969; edited by Frank Romany and Robert Lindsey, Revised Edition, 2004, Penguin)
There are also notable scholarly collections of essays concerning the collected works of Christopher Marlowe, including:
The Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe, (edited by Patrick Cheney in 2004; Cambridge University Press)
Chronology of dramatic works
This is a possible chronology of composition for the dramatic works of Christopher Marlowe based upon dates previously cited. The dates of composition are approximate. There are other chronologies for Marlowe, including one based upon dates of printing, as was used in the 2004 Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe, edited by Patrick Cheney.[27]
Title page of the 1594 first edition of Dido, Queen of Carthage
First official record: 1594.
First published: 1594; posthumously.
First recorded performance: between 1587 and 1593 by the Children of the Chapel, a company of boy actors in London.[28]
Additional information (title and synopsis): Full title The Tragedie of Dido, Queen of Carthage; 17-character cast plus other additional Trojans, Carthaginians, servants and attendants. In this short play, believed to be based on books 1, 2 and 4 of Virgil'sAeneid, the Trojan soldier Aeneas leaves the fallen city of Troy to the conquering Greeks and finds shelter for his fellow Trojan survivors with Dido, Queen of Carthage. The gods interfere with the love lives of Dido and Aeneas, with Venus using Cupid to trick Dido into falling in love with Aeneas, rather than Iarbas, her Carthaginian suitor. Dido and Aeneas pledge their love to each other, but the Trojans warn Aeneas that their future is in Italy, which is also where Mercury and the other gods order Aeneas to go. The play ends when Aeneas leaves for Italy with the Trojans and as Dido sets off a triple suicide by throwing herself on a funeral pyre in despair, followed by her despairing suitor Iarbus and then by Anna, who loves Iarbus.
Additional information (significance): This play is believed by many scholars to be the first play by Christopher Marlowe to be performed.
Additional information (attribution): The title page attributes the play to Marlowe and Thomas Nashe, yet some scholars question how much of a contribution Nashe made to the play.[29][30]
Evidence: No manuscripts by Marlowe exist for this play.[31]
Tamburlaine, Part I (c. 1587); Part II (c. 1587–88)
Title page of the earliest published edition of Tamburlaine (1590)
First official record: 1587, Part I.
First published: 1590, Parts I and II in one octavo, London. No author named.[32]
First recorded performance: 1587, Part I, by the Admiral's Men, London. [nb 6]
Additional information (attribution): Author name is missing from first printing in 1590. Attribution of this work by scholars to Marlowe is based upon comparison to his other verified works. Passages and character development in Tamburlane are similar to many other Marlowe works.[36]
Evidence: No manuscripts by Marlowe exist for this play.[37] Parts I and II were entered into the Stationers' Register on 14 August 1590. The two parts were published together by the London printer, Richard Jones, in 1590; a second edition in 1592, and a third in 1597. The 1597 edition of the two parts were published separately in quarto by Edward White; part I in 1605, and part II in 1606.[38][39]
First published: 1592; earliest extant edition, 1633.
First recorded performance: 26 February 1592, by Lord Strange's acting company.[40]
Additional information (title and synopsis): First published as The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew of Malta; a large 25-character cast plus other additional citizens of Malta, Turkish janizaries, guards, attendants and slaves. The play begins with the ghost of a fictionalized Machiavelli, who introduces Barabas, the Jew of Malta, in his counting house. The Governor of Malta has seized the wealth of all Jewish citizens to pay the Turks not to invade. As a consequence, Barabas designs and executes a homicidal tirade of events in retaliation against the governor and is assisted by his slave, Ithamore. Barabas’ murderous streak includes: the governor’s son dying in a duel; frightening his own daughter, who joins a nunnery for safety but is afterward poisoned by her father; the strangling of an old friar and the framing of another friar for the murder; and, the death of Ithamore, a prostitute and her friend, who had threatened to expose him. Finally, Barabas betrays Malta by planning another invasion by the Turks, but is outwitted when the Christians and Turks resolve the conflict and leave him to burn alive in a trap he has set for others, but has mistakenly fallen into himself.
Additional information (significance): The performances of the play were a success and it remained popular for the next fifty years. This play helps to establish the strong theme of "anti-authoritarianism" that is found throughout Marlowe's works.
Evidence: No manuscripts by Marlowe exist for this play.[37] The play was entered in the Stationers' Register on 17 May 1594 but the earliest surviving printed edition is from 1633.
First recorded performance: 1594-1597; 24 revival performances occurred between these years by the Lord Admiral's Company, Rose Theatre, London; earlier performances probably occurred around 1589 by the same company.[43]
Additional information (title and synopsis): Full title, The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus;[44] a very large 35-character cast, plus other additional scholars, cardinals, soldiers, and devils. Based on the German Faustbuch, which itself can be traced to a fourth-century tale known as "The Devil's Pact," Marlowe's play opens with a Prologue, where the Chorus introduces Doctor Faustus and his story. Faustus is a brilliant scholar who leaves behind the study of logic, medicine, law and divinity to study magic and necromancy, the art of speaking to the dead. When he is approached by a Good and Bad Angel, it is the Bad Angel who wins his attentions by promising that he will become a great magician. Faustus ignores his other scholarly duties and attempts to summon a devil. By revoking his own baptism he attracts the attention of Lucifer, Mephistopheles and other devils. Faustus strikes a pact with Lucifer, allowing him 24-years with Mephistopheles as his assistant, but after the pact begins Mephistopheles will not answer Faustus' questions. The two angels return, but even though Faustus waffles, coercion from the devils has him again swear allegiance to Lucifer. Faustus achieves nothing worthwhile with his pact, warns other scholars of his folly, and the play ends with Faustus dragged off to Hell by Mephistopheles as the Chorus attempts a moral summation of events with an Epilogue.
Additional information (significance): This is the first dramatised version of the Faust legend of a scholar's dealing with the devil. Marlowe deviates from earlier versions of "The Devil's Pact" significantly: Marlowe's protagonist is unable to "burn his books" or repent to a merciful God to have his contract annulled at the end of the play; he is carried off by demons; and, in the 1616 quarto, his mangled corpse is found by the scholar characters.
Additional information (attribution): The 'B text' was highly edited and censored partly due to the shifting theatre laws regarding religious words onstage during the seventeenth-century. Because it contains several additional scenes believed to be the additions of other playwrights, particularly Samuel Rowley and William Bird (alias Borne), a recent edition attributes the authorship of both versions to "Christopher Marlowe and his collaborator and revisers." This recent edition has tried to establish that the 'A text' was assembled from Marlowe's work and another writer, with the 'B text' as a later revision.[43][45]
Evidence: No manuscripts by Marlowe exist for this play.[37] The two earliest printed extant versions of the play, A and B, form a textual problem for scholars. Both were published after Marlowe's death and scholars disagree which text is more representative of Marlowe's original. Some editions are based on a combination of the two texts. Late twentieth-century scholarly consensus identifies 'A text' as more representative because it contains irregular character names and idiosyncratic spelling, which are believed to reflect the author's handwritten manuscript or "foul papers". In comparison, 'B text' is highly edited with several additional scenes possibly written by other playwrights.[42]
Additional information (significance): Considered by recent scholars as Marlowe's "most modern play" due to its probing treatment of the private life of a king and unflattering depiction of the power politics of the time.[47] The 1594 editions of Edward II and of Dido are the first published plays with Marlowe's name appearing as the author.[19]
Additional information (attribution): Earliest extant edition of 1594.[19]
Evidence: The play was entered into the Stationers' Register on 6 July 1593, five weeks after Marlowe's death.[19]
First official record: c. 1593, alleged foul sheet by Marlowe of "Scene 15"; although authorship by Marlowe is contested by recent scholars, the manuscript is believed written while the play was first performed and with an unknown purpose.:
First published: undated, c. 1594 or later, octavo, London;[48] while this is the most complete surviving text, it is near half the length of Marlowe's other works and possibly a reconstruction.[37] The printer and publisher credit, "E.A. for Edward White," also appears on the 1605/06 printing of Marlowe's Tamburlaine.[49]
Additional information (title and synopsis): Full title, The Massacre at Paris: With the Death of the Duke of Guise; very large 36-character cast, plus other additional guards, Protestants, schoolmasters, soldiers, murderers, attendants, etc.[50][37] A short play that compresses the events prior to and following the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572, into a "curious comic strip history" that reduces seventeen years of religious war into twelve.[37] Considered by some to be Protestant propaganda, English Protestants of the time invoked these events as the blackest example of Catholic treachery.[51][52] Generally, the extant text is in two parts: the Massacre; and the murder of the Duke of Guise. The prelude to the Massacre begins with a wedding between the sister of France’s Catholic king, Charles IX, to the Protestant King of Navarre, which places a Protestant in line for the crown of France. Navarre knows Guise “seeks to murder all the Protestants” in Paris for the wedding, but he trusts the protections promised by Charles IX and the Queen Mother, Catharine (de Medici). The Queen Mother, however, is secretly funding the homicidal plots of Guise, shown to us in murder vignettes executed by Guise henchman. In a soliloquy, Guise tells how all Catholics—even priests—will help murder Protestants. After the first deaths, Charles IX is persuaded to support Guise out of fear of Protestant retaliation. Catholic killers at the Massacre will wear visored helmets marked with a white cross and murder Protestants until the bells cease ringing. Charles IX feels great guilt for the Massacre. As the bells toll, Protestants are chased by soldiers, murder vignettes reveal cruelties and offstage massacres are retold by their killers. • The death of Guise is a series of intrigues. Queen Mother Catherine vows to kill and replace her unreliable son Charles IX, with her son Henry. When Charles IX dies of a broken heart (historically, of tuberculosis), a series of events unfold: Henry III is crowned king of France, but his Queen Mother will replace him as well if he dares to stop the killing of “Puritans”; Henry III makes Duke Joyeux the General of his army against Navarre, whose army is outside Paris and will later slay Joyeux; meanwhile, Guise becomes an unhinged, jealous husband who brings his army and popularity to Paris, whereupon the King has him assassinated for treason; with Guise gone, Navarre pledges his support to Henry III; the Queen Mother mourns the loss of Guise as his brother, the Cardinal, is assassinated; and finally, Henry III is stabbed with a poisoned knife by a friar sent by Guise’s other brother, the Duke of Dumaine. The final scene is of the death of Henry III and the rise of Navarre as the first Protestant King of France.
Additional information (significance): The Massacre at Paris is considered Marlowe's most dangerous play, as agitators in London seized on its theme to advocate the murders of refugees from the low countries of the Spanish Netherlands, and it warns Elizabeth I of this possibility in its last scene.[53][54] It features the silent "English Agent", whom tradition has identified with Marlowe and his connexions to the secret service.[55] Highest grossing play for Lord Strange's Men in 1593.[56]
Additional information (attribution): A 1593 loose manuscript sheet of the play, called a foul sheet, is alleged to be by Marlowe and has been claimed by some scholars as the only extant play manuscript by the author. It could also provide an approximate date of composition for the play. When compared with the extant printed text and his other work, other scholars reject the attribution to Marlowe. The only surviving printed text of this play is possibly a reconstruction from memory of Marlowe's original performance text. Current scholarship notes that there are only 1147 lines in the play, half the amount of a typical play of the 1590s. Other evidence that the extant published text may not be Marlowe's original is the uneven style throughout, with two-dimensional characterizations, deteriorating verbal quality and repetitions of content.[57]
Evidence: Never appeared in the Stationer's Register.[52]
Adult life and legend
As with other Elizabethans, little is known about Marlowe's adult life. All available evidence, other than what can be deduced from his literary works, is found in legal records and other official documents. This has not stopped writers of fiction and non-fiction from speculating about his professional activities, private life and character. Marlowe has often been described as a spy, a brawler and a heretic, as well as a "magician", "duellist", "tobacco-user", "counterfeiter" and "rakehell". While J. A. Downie and Constance Kuriyama have argued against the more lurid speculations, it is the usually circumspect J. B. Steane who remarked, "it seems absurd to dismiss all of these Elizabethan rumours and accusations as 'the Marlowe myth'".[58][59][60] To understand his brief adult life, from 1587 to 1593, much has been written, including speculation of: his involvement in royally sanctioned espionage; his vocal declaration as an atheist; his private, and possibly same-sex, sexual interests; and the puzzling circumstances surrounding his death.
Spying
The corner of Old Court of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where Marlowe stayed while a Cambridge student and, possibly, during the time he was recruited as a spy.
Marlowe is alleged to have been a government spy.[61]Park Honan and Charles Nicholl speculate that this was the case and suggest that Marlowe's recruitment took place when he was at Cambridge.[62][63] In 1587, when the Privy Council ordered the University of Cambridge to award Marlowe his degree as Master of Arts, it denied rumours that he intended to go to the English Catholic college in Rheims, saying instead that he had been engaged in unspecified "affaires" on "matters touching the benefit of his country".[64] Surviving college records from the period also indicate that, in the academic year 1584–1585, Marlowe had had a series of unusually lengthy absences from the university which violated university regulations. Surviving college buttery accounts, which record student purchases for personal provisions, show that Marlowe began spending lavishly on food and drink during the periods he was in attendance; the amount was more than he could have afforded on his known scholarship income.[65][nb 7]
It has been speculated that Marlowe was the "Morley" who was tutor to Arbella Stuart in 1589.[67] This possibility was first raised in a Times Literary Supplement letter by E. St John Brooks in 1937; in a letter to Notes and Queries, John Baker has added that only Marlowe could have been Arbella's tutor due to the absence of any other known "Morley" from the period with an MA and not otherwise occupied.[68] If Marlowe was Arbella's tutor, it might indicate that he was there as 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 to Elizabeth's throne.[69][70][71][72]Frederick S. Boas dismisses the possibility of this identification, based on surviving legal records which document Marlowe's "residence in London between September and December 1589". Marlowe had been party to a fatal quarrel involving his neighbours and the poet Thomas Watson in Norton Folgate and was held in Newgate Prison for a fortnight.[73] In fact, the quarrel and his arrest occurred on 18 September, he was released on bail on 1 October and he had to attend court, where he was acquitted on 3 December, but there is no record of where he was for the intervening two months.[74]
In 1592 Marlowe was arrested in the English garrison town of Flushing (Vlissingen) in the Netherlands, for alleged involvement in the counterfeiting of coins, presumably related to the activities of seditious Catholics. He was sent to the Lord Treasurer (Burghley), but no charge or imprisonment resulted.[75] This arrest may have disrupted another of Marlowe's spying missions, perhaps by giving the resulting coinage to the Catholic cause. He was to infiltrate the followers of the active Catholic plotter William Stanley and report back to Burghley.[76]
Marlowe was reputed to be an atheist, which held the dangerous implication of being an enemy of God and the state, by association.[77] With the rise of public fears concerning The School of Night, or "School of Atheism" in the late 16th century, accusations of atheism were closely associated with disloyalty to the Protestant monarchy of England.[78]
Some modern historians consider that Marlowe's professed atheism, as with his supposed Catholicism, may have been no more than a sham to further his work as a government spy.[79] Contemporary evidence comes from Marlowe's accuser in Flushing, an informer called Richard Baines. The governor of Flushing had reported that each of the men had "of malice" accused the other of instigating the counterfeiting and of intending to go over to the Catholic "enemy"; such an action was considered atheistic by the Church of England. Following Marlowe's arrest 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".[80] Baines attributes to Marlowe a total of eighteen items which "scoff at the pretensions of the Old and New Testament" 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", "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".[60] He also implied 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". The final paragraph of Baines's document reads:
These thinges, with many other shall by good & honest witnes be approved to be his opinions and Comon Speeches, and that this Marlowe doth not only hould them himself, but almost into every Company he Cometh he persuades men to Atheism willing them not to be afeard of bugbeares and hobgoblins, and vtterly scorning both god and his ministers as I Richard Baines will Justify & approue both by mine oth and the testimony of many honest men, and almost al men with whome he hath Conversed any time will testify the same, and as I think all men in Cristianity ought to indevor that the mouth of so dangerous a member may be stopped, he saith likewise that he hath quoted a number of Contrarieties oute of the Scripture which he hath giuen to some great men who in Convenient time shalbe named. When these thinges shalbe Called in question the witnes shalbe produced.[81]
Similar examples of Marlowe's statements were given by Thomas Kyd after his imprisonment and possible torture (see above); Kyd and Baines connect Marlowe with the mathematician Thomas Harriot's and Sir Walter Raleigh's circle.[82] Another document claimed about that time that "one Marlowe is able to show more sound reasons for Atheism than any divine in England is able to give to prove divinity, and that ... he hath read the Atheist lecture to Sir Walter Raleigh and others".[83][60]
Some critics believe that Marlowe sought to disseminate these views in his work and that he identified with his rebellious and iconoclastic protagonists.[84] 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 other than the Amores.
Sexuality
Title page to 1598 edition of Marlowe's Hero and Leander
It has been claimed that Marlowe was homosexual.[by whom?] Some scholars argue that the identification of an Elizabethan as gay or homosexual in a modern sense is "anachronistic," claiming that for the Elizabethans the terms were more likely to have been applied to sexual acts rather than to what we understand to be exclusive sexual orientations and identities.[85] Other scholars argue that the evidence is inconclusive and that the reports of Marlowe's homosexuality may be rumours produced after his death. Richard Baines reported Marlowe as saying: "all they that love not Tobacco & Boies were fools". David Bevington and Eric C. Rasmussen describe Baines's evidence as "unreliable testimony" and "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".[86]
J. B. Steane remarked that he considered there to be "no evidence for Marlowe's homosexuality at all".[60] Other scholars point to homosexual themes in Marlowe's writing: in Hero and Leander, Marlowe writes of the male youth Leander: "in his looks were all that men desire..."[87][88][89][90]Edward the Second contains the following passage enumerating homosexual relationships:
Marlowe wrote the only play about the life of Edward II up to his time, taking the humanist literary discussion of male sexuality much further than his contemporaries. The play was extremely bold, dealing with a star-crossed love story between Edward II and Piers Gaveston. Though it was a common practice at the time to reveal characters as gay to give audiences reason to suspect them as culprits in a crime, Christopher Marlowe's Edward II is portrayed as a sympathetic character.[92]
Arrest and death
Marlowe was buried in an unmarked grave in the churchyard of St Nicholas, Deptford. This modern plaque is on the east wall of the churchyard.
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", written in rhymed iambic pentameter, contained allusions to several of Marlowe's plays and was signed, "Tamburlaine".[93] 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, his lodgings were searched and a three-page fragment of a heretical tract was found. In a letter to Sir John Puckering, Kyd asserted that it had belonged to Marlowe, with whom he had been writing "in one chamber" some two years earlier.[94][82] In a second letter, Kyd described Marlowe as blasphemous, disorderly, holding treasonous opinions, being an irreligious reprobate and "intemperate & of a cruel hart".[95] They had both been working for an aristocratic patron, probably Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange.[95] A warrant for Marlowe's arrest was issued on 18 May, when the Privy Council apparently knew that he might be found staying with Thomas Walsingham, whose father was a first cousin of the late Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's principal secretary in the 1580s and a man more deeply involved in state espionage than any other member of the Privy Council.[96] Marlowe duly presented himself on 20 May but there apparently being no Privy Council meeting on that day, was instructed to "give his daily attendance on their Lordships, until he shall be licensed to the contrary".[97] On Wednesday, 30 May, Marlowe was killed.
Title page to the 1598 edition of Palladis Tamia by Francis Meres, which contains one of the earliest descriptions of Marlowe's death.
Various accounts of Marlowe's death were current over the next few years. In his Palladis Tamia, published in 1598, 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".[98] 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 official account came to light only in 1925, when the scholar Leslie Hotson discovered the coroner's report of the inquest on Marlowe's death, held two days later on Friday 1 June 1593, by the Coroner of the Queen's Household, William Danby.[6] Marlowe had spent all day in a house in Deptford, owned by the widow Eleanor Bull and together with three men: Ingram Frizer, Nicholas Skeres and Robert Poley. All three had been employed by one or other of the Walsinghams. Skeres and Poley had helped snare the conspirators in the Babington plot and Frizer would later describe Thomas Walsingham as his "master" at that time, although his role was probably more that of a financial or business agent, as he was for Walsingham's wife Audrey a few years later.[99][100] These witnesses testified that Frizer and Marlowe had argued over payment of the bill (now famously known as the 'Reckoning') exchanging "divers malicious words" 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 wounded him on the head. In the ensuing struggle, according to the coroner's report, Marlowe was 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 immediately after the inquest, on 1 June 1593.[101]
The complete text of the inquest report was published by Leslie Hotson in his book, The Death of Christopher Marlowe, in the introduction to which Prof. George Kittredge said "The mystery of Marlowe's death, heretofore involved in a cloud of contradictory gossip and irresponsible guess-work, is now cleared up for good and all on the authority of public records of complete authenticity and gratifying fullness" but this confidence proved fairly short-lived. Hotson had considered the possibility that the witnesses had "concocted a lying account of Marlowe's behaviour, to which they swore at the inquest, and with which they deceived the jury" but came down against that scenario.[102] Others began to suspect that this was indeed the case. Writing to the TLS shortly after the book's publication, Eugénie de Kalb disputed that the struggle and outcome as described were even possible and Samuel A. Tannenbaum insisted the following year that such a wound could not have possibly resulted in instant death, as had been claimed.[103][104] Even Marlowe's biographer John Bakeless acknowledged that "some scholars have been inclined to question the truthfulness of the coroner's report. There is something queer about the whole episode" and said that Hotson's discovery "raises almost as many questions as it answers".[105] It has also been discovered more recently that the apparent absence of a local county coroner to accompany the Coroner of the Queen's Household would, if noticed, have made the inquest null and void.[106]
One of the main reasons for doubting the truth of the inquest concerns the reliability of Marlowe's companions as witnesses.[107] As an agent provocateur for the late Sir Francis Walsingham, Robert Poley was a consummate liar, the "very genius of the Elizabethan underworld" and is on record as saying "I will swear and forswear myself, rather than I will accuse myself to do me any harm".[108][109] The other witness, Nicholas Skeres, had for many years acted as a confidence trickster, drawing young men into the clutches of people in the money-lending racket, including Marlowe's apparent killer, Ingram Frizer, with whom he was engaged in such a swindle.[110] Despite their being referred to as "generosi" (gentlemen) in the inquest report, the witnesses were professional liars. Some biographers, such as Kuriyama and Downie, take the inquest to be a true account of what occurred but in trying to explain what really happened if the account was not true, others have come up with a variety of murder theories.[111][112]
Jealous of her husband Thomas's relationship with Marlowe, Audrey Walsingham arranged for the playwright to be murdered.[113]
Sir Walter Raleigh arranged the murder, fearing that under torture Marlowe might incriminate him.[114]
With Skeres the main player, the murder resulted from attempts by the Earl of Essex to use Marlowe to incriminate Sir Walter Raleigh.[115]
He was killed on the orders of father and son Lord Burghley and Sir Robert Cecil, who thought that his plays contained Catholic propaganda.[116]
He was accidentally killed while Frizer and Skeres were pressuring him to pay back money he owed them.[117]
Marlowe was murdered at the behest of several members of the Privy Council who feared that he might reveal them to be atheists.[118]
The Queen ordered his assassination because of his subversive atheistic behaviour.[119]
Frizer murdered him because he envied Marlowe's close relationship with his master Thomas Walsingham and feared the effect that Marlowe's behaviour might have on Walsingham's reputation.[120]
Marlowe's death was faked to save him from trial and execution for subversive atheism.[nb 8]
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, it is unlikely that the full circumstances of Marlowe's death will ever be known.
Reputation among contemporary writers
Ben Jonson, leading satirist of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, was one of the first to acknowledge Marlowe for the power of his dramatic verse.
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," as did the publisher Edward Blount in his 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 lov'd that lov'd 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".[122] This appears to be a reference to Marlowe's murder which involved a fight over the "reckoning", the bill, as well as to a line in Marlowe's Jew of Malta; "Infinite riches in a little room".
The influence of Marlowe upon William Shakespeare is evidenced by the Marlovian themes and other allusions to Marlowe found in Shakespeare's plays and sonnets.
Shakespeare was much influenced by Marlowe in his work, as can be seen in the use of Marlovian themes in Antony and Cleopatra, The Merchant of Venice, Richard II and Macbeth (Dido, Jew of Malta, Edward II and Doctor Faustus, respectively). In Hamlet, after meeting with the travelling actors, Hamlet requests the Player perform a speech about the Trojan War, which at 2.2.429–32 has an echo of Marlowe's Dido, Queen of Carthage. In Love's Labour's Lost Shakespeare brings on a character "Marcade" (three syllables) in conscious acknowledgement of Marlowe's character "Mercury", also attending the King of Navarre, in Massacre at Paris. The significance, to those of Shakespeare's audience who were familiar with Hero and Leander, was Marlowe's identification of himself with the god Mercury.[123]
An argument has arisen about the notion that Marlowe may have faked his death and then continued to write under the assumed name of William Shakespeare. Academic consensus rejects alternative candidates for authorship of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, including Marlowe.[124]
A Marlowe Memorial in the form of a bronze sculpture of The Muse of Poetry by Edward Onslow Ford was erected by subscription in Buttermarket, Canterbury in 1891.[125] In July 2002, a memorial window to Marlowe, a gift of the Marlowe Society, was unveiled in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.[126] Controversially, a question mark was added to the generally accepted date of death.[127] On 25 October 2011 a letter from Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells was published by The Times newspaper, in which they called on the Dean and Chapter to remove the question mark on the grounds that it "flew in the face of a mass of unimpugnable evidence". In 2012, they renewed this call in their e-book Shakespeare Bites Back, adding that it "denies history" and again the following year in their book Shakespeare Beyond Doubt.[128][129]
The Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury, Kent, UK, was named after the town’s “most famous” resident in 1949. Originally housed in a former 1920s cinema on St. Margaret’s Street, the Marlowe Theatre later moved to a newly converted 1930’s era Odeon Cinema in the city. After a 2011 reopening with a newly enhanced state-of-the-art theatre facility, the Marlowe now enjoys some of the country’s finest touring companies including, Glyndebourne Opera, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal National Theatre as well as many major West End musicals.[130]
Modern productions of the plays of Christopher Marlowe have increased in frequency throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including the following notable productions:
directed by Maria Aberg with Sandy Grierson and Oliver Ryan sharing the roles of Faustus and Mephistophilis, Swan Theatre and Barbican Theatre (London), 2016.[142]
↑ "Christopher Marlowe was baptised as 'Marlow,' but he spelled his name 'Marley' in his one known surviving signature."[1]
↑ "During Marlowe's lifetime, the popularity of his plays, Robert Greene's unintentionally elevating remarks about him as a dramatist in A Groatsworth of Wit, including the designation “famous,” and the many imitations of Tamburlaine suggest that he was for a brief time considered England's foremost dramatist." Logan also suggests consulting the business diary of Philip Henslowe, which is traditionally used by theatre historians to determine the popularity of Marlowe's plays.[2]
↑ No birth records, only baptismal records, have been found for Marlowe and Shakespeare, therefore any reference to a birthdate for either man probably refers to the date of their baptism.[3]
↑ "…as one of the most influential current critics, Stephen Greenblatt frets, Marlowe's 'cruel, aggressive plays' seem to reflect a life also lived on the edge: 'a courting of disaster as reckless as any that he depicted on stage'."[5]
↑ The earliest record of Marlowe at The King's School is their payment for his scholarship of 1578/79, but Nicholl notes this was "unusually late" to start as a student and proposes he could have begun school earlier as a "fee-paying pupil".[8]
↑ Performing company is listed on the title page of the 1590 octavo. Henslowe's diary first lists Tamburlaine performances in 1593, so the original playhouse is unknown.[33]
↑ It is known that some poorer students worked as labourers on the Corpus Christi College chapel, then under construction, and were paid by the college with extra food. It has been suggested this may be the reason for the sums noted in Marlowe's entry in the buttery accounts.[66]
↑ "Useful research has been stimulated by the infinitesimally thin possibility that Marlowe did not die when we think he did. ... History holds its doors open."[121]
Related Research Articles
Shakespearean tragedy is the designation given to most tragedies written by playwright William Shakespeare. Many of his history plays share the qualifiers of a Shakespearean tragedy, but because they are based on real figures throughout the history of England, they were classified as "histories" in the First Folio. The Roman tragedies—Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus—are also based on historical figures, but because their source stories were foreign and ancient they are almost always classified as tragedies rather than histories. Shakespeare's romances were written late in his career and published originally as either tragedy or comedy. They share some elements of tragedy featuring a high status central character but end happily like Shakespearean comedies. Several hundred years after Shakespeare's death, scholar F. S. Boas also coined a fifth category, the "problem play," for plays that do not fit neatly into a single classification because of their subject matter, setting, or ending. The classifications of certain Shakespeare plays are still debated among scholars.
The Raigne of King Edward the Third, commonly shortened to Edward III, is an Elizabethan play printed anonymously in 1596, and partly written by William Shakespeare, having now become accepted as part of Shakespeare's canon of plays. In the late 1990s it began to be included in publications of the complete works as co-authored by Shakespeare. Scholars who have supported this attribution include Jonathan Bate, Edward Capell, Eliot Slater, Eric Sams, Giorgio Melchiori, Brian Vickers, and others. The play was co-authored by another playwright: suggested as co-author have been Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, Michael Drayton, Thomas Nashe, and George Peele.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1594.
Philip Henslowe was an Elizabethan theatrical entrepreneur and impresario. Henslowe's modern reputation rests on the survival of his diary, a primary source for information about the theatrical world of Renaissance London.
In the First Folio, the plays of William Shakespeare were grouped into three categories: comedies, histories, and tragedies. The histories—along with those of contemporary Renaissance playwrights—help define the genre of history plays. The Shakespearean histories are biographies of English kings of the previous four centuries and include the standalones King John, Edward III and Henry VIII as well as a continuous sequence of eight plays. These last are considered to have been composed in two cycles. The so-called first tetralogy, apparently written in the early 1590s, covers the Wars of the Roses saga and includes Henry VI, Parts I, II & III and Richard III. The second tetralogy, finished in 1599 and including Richard II, Henry IV, Parts I & II and Henry V, is frequently called the Henriad after its protagonist Prince Hal, the future Henry V.
Edward "Ned" Alleyn was an English actor who was a major figure of the Elizabethan theatre and founder of the College of God's Gift in Dulwich.
The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, commonly referred to simply as Doctor Faustus, is an Elizabethan tragedy by Christopher Marlowe, based on German stories about the title character Faust. It was written sometime between 1589 and 1592, and may have been performed between 1592 and Marlowe's death in 1593. Two different versions of the play were published in the Jacobean era several years later.
The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England, with the Tragical Fall of Proud Mortimer, known as Edward II, is a Renaissance or Early Modern period play written by Christopher Marlowe. It is one of the earliest English history plays, and focuses on the relationship between King Edward II of England and Piers Gaveston, and Edward's murder on the orders of Roger Mortimer.
Dido, Queen of Carthage is a short play written by the English playwright Christopher Marlowe, with possible contributions by Thomas Nashe. It was probably written between 1587 and 1593, and was first published in 1594. The story focuses on the classical figure of Dido, the Queen of Carthage. It tells an intense dramatic tale of Dido and her fanatical love for Aeneas, Aeneas' betrayal of her and her eventual suicide on his departure for Italy. The playwrights relied on Books 1, 2, and 4 of Virgil's Aeneid as primary source.
Tamburlaine the Great is a play in two parts by Christopher Marlowe. It is loosely based on the life of the Central Asian emperor, Timur. Written in 1587 or 1588, the play is a milestone in Elizabethan public drama; it marks a turning away from the clumsy language and loose plotting of the earlier Tudor dramatists, and a new interest in fresh and vivid language, memorable action, and intellectual complexity. Along with Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, it may be considered the first popular success of London's public stage.
Frederick Samuel Boas, (1862–1957) was an English scholar of early modern drama.
The Admiral's Men was a playing company or troupe of actors in the Elizabethan and Stuart eras. It is generally considered the second most important acting troupe of English Renaissance theatre.
The Marlovian theory of Shakespeare authorship holds that the Elizabethan poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe was the main author of the poems and plays attributed to William Shakespeare. Further, the theory says Marlowe did not die in Deptford on 30 May 1593, as the historical records state, but that his death was faked.
Thomas Drury, government informer, messenger and swindler, is noted for having been one of the main people responsible for accusations of heresy, blasphemy and seditious atheism on the part of the Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe given to the Privy Council in May 1593. Within a couple of weeks, Marlowe—at just 29 the same age as William Shakespeare, but one of the single greatest influences upon his work—was reported dead.
The University Wits is a phrase used to name a group of late 16th-century English playwrights and pamphleteers who were educated at the universities and who became popular secular writers. Prominent members of this group were Christopher Marlowe, Robert Greene, and Thomas Nashe from Cambridge, and John Lyly, Thomas Lodge, and George Peele from Oxford. Thomas Kyd is also sometimes included in the group, though he was not from any of the above mentioned universities.
The Marlowe Society is a Cambridge University theatre club for Cambridge students. It is dedicated to achieving a high standard of student drama at Cambridge. The society celebrated its centenary over three years (2007–2009) and in 2008 there was a production by the society of a version of Comus written by Australian poet and playwright John Kinsella.
Charles Marlow is a fictional English seaman and recurring character in the work of novelist Joseph Conrad.
Clifford Leech (1909–1977) was a prolifically published British-born professor of English at University College at the University of Toronto 1963-74. In The Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe (2004), Patrick Cheney, its editor, describes Leech's contribution to Christopher Marlowe studies "historically important." His publications mainly concerned Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists, including William Shakespeare, John Webster and John Ford. He also wrote a book on American playwright Eugene O'Neill.
The Marlowe Memorial is a statue and four statuettes erected in memory of the playwright and poet Christopher Marlowe in 1891 in Canterbury, England. The memorial was commissioned by a Marlowe Memorial Committee, and comprises a bronze statue, The Muse of Poetry sculpted by Edward Onslow Ford, standing on a plinth decorated with statuettes of actors playing Marlowe roles. The statue is now situated outside the city's Marlowe Theatre.
Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593), English playwright and poet, has appeared in works of fiction since the nineteenth century. He was a contemporary of William Shakespeare, and has been suggested as an alternative author of Shakespeare's works, an idea not accepted in mainstream scholarship. Marlowe, alleged to have been a government spy and frequently claimed to have been homosexual, was killed in 1593.
Logan, Robert A. (2007). Shakespeare's Marlowe: the influence of Christopher Marlowe on Shakespeare's artistry. Aldershot, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate. pp.4–5, 21. ISBN978-0754657637.
↑ Erne, Lukas, (2005) "Biography, Mythography, and Criticism: The Life and Works of Christopher Marlowe," Modern Philology, Vol. 103, No. 1, University of Chicago Press (August 2005), pp. 28-50.
↑ Hutchinson, Robert (2006). Elizabeth's Spy Master: Francis Walsingham and the Secret War that Saved England. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. p.111. ISBN978-0-297-84613-0.
↑ Cheney, Patrick (2004). "Chronology". In Cheney, Patrick (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.xvi, xix. ISBN9780511999055.
↑ Cheney, Patrick (2004). "Introduction: Marlowe in the twenty-first century". In Cheney, Patrick (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p.5. ISBN9780511999055.
↑ Logan, Terence P., and Denzell S. Smith, eds. The Predecessors of Shakespeare: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1973.
↑ Maguire, Laurie E. (2004). "Marlovian texts and authorship". In Cheney, Patrick (ed.). The Cambridge Champion of Christopher Marlowe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p.44. ISBN9780511999055.
↑ Chambers, E. K. (1923). The Elizabethan Stage. Vol. 3. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p.421.
Brooke, C.F. Tucker (1910). "Tamburlaine". In Brooke, C.F. Tucker (ed.). The Works of Christopher Marlowe (1964 Reprinted.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp.1–5. Retrieved 27 May 2020.
↑ Dyce, Alexander (1850). "Tamburlaine the Great, in Two Parts". In Dyce, Alexander (ed.). The works of Christopher Marlowe, with notes and some account of his life and writings by the Rev. Alexander Dyce, Vol. 1 (1sted.). London: William Pickering. pp.3–4.
↑ The Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe, Patrick Cheney, editor. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press) 2004, p33. ISBN0521820340
↑ Healy, Thomas (2004). "Doctor Faustus". In Cheney, Patrick (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p.179. ISBN9780511999055.
↑ This was the title of the (B text) edition published in 1616. The earlier (A text) edition of 1604 simply had The Tragicall History of D. Faustus.
↑ "The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus" (‘A’ Text) and ('B' Text) in David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen (eds.), Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus and Other Plays, World’s Classics (Oxford University Press, 1995).
↑ Cartelli, Thomas (2004). "Edward II". In Cheney, Patrick (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.158–159. ISBN9780511999055.
↑ Hoenselaars, A. J. (1992). "Englishmen abroad 1558–1603". Images of Englishmen and Foreigners in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries. Madison, New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. pp.78–79. ISBN978-0-8386-3431-8.
↑ Wilson, Richard (2004). "Tragedy, Patronage and Power" in Cheney, Patrick, 2007, p. 207
↑ From Henslowe's Diary. Cambridge Companion, 2004, p199.
David Riggs (2004). The World of Christopher Marlowe. Faber. p.65. ISBN978-0-571-22159-2.
↑ He was 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.": British Library Lansdowne MS. 71, f.3. and Nicholl, (1992), pp. 340–2.
↑ John Baker, letter to Notes and Queries 44.3 (1997), pp. 367–8
↑ The so-called 'Remembrances' against Richard Cholmeley. For a full transcript, see Peter Farey's Marlowe page. (Retrieved 30 April 2015)
↑ Waith, Eugene. The Herculean Hero in Marlowe, Chapman, Shakespeare, and Dryden. Chatto and Windus, London, 1962. The idea is commonplace, though by no means universally accepted.
↑ Smith, Bruce R. (March 1995). Homosexual desire in Shakespeare's England. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press. p.74. ISBN978-0-226-76366-8.
↑ White, Paul Whitfield, ed. (1998). Marlowe, History and Sexuality: New Critical Essays on Christopher Marlowe. New York: AMS Press. ISBN978-0-404-62335-7.
↑ J. R. Mulryne states in his ODNB article that the document was identified in the 20th century as transcripts from John Proctour's The Fall of the Late Arian (1549).
↑ Haynes, Alan. The Elizabethan Secret Service. London: Sutton, 2005.
↑ National Archives, Acts of the Privy Council. Meetings of the Privy Council, including details of those attending, are recorded and minuted for 16, 23, 25, 29 and the morning of 31 May, all of them taking place in the Star Chamber at Westminster. There is no record of any meeting on either 18 or 20 May, however, just a note of the warrant being issued on 18 May and the fact that Marlowe "entered his appearance for his indemnity therein" on the 20th.
↑ Wilson, Scott. Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Location 30125). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition
↑ Nicholl, Charles (2004). "Marlowe [Marley], Christopher", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press. online edn, January 2008. Retrieved 24 August 2013. "The authenticity of the inquest is not in doubt, but whether it tells the full truth is another matter. The nature of Marlowe's companions raises questions about their reliability as witnesses."
↑ Peter Alexander ed., William Shakespeare: The Complete Works (London 1962) p. 273
↑ Wilson, Richard (2008). "Worthies away: the scene begins to cloud in Shakespeare's Navarre". In Mayer, Jean-Christophe (ed.). Representing France and the French in early modern English drama. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press. pp.95–97. ISBN978-0-87413-000-3.
↑ Kathman, David (2003), "The Question of Authorship", in Wells, Stanley; Orlin, Lena C., Shakespeare: an Oxford Guide, Oxford University Press, pp. 620–32, ISBN978-0-19-924522-2
↑ "The Marlowe". marlowetheatre.com. Retrieved 10 June 2020.
↑ Potter, Lois (2004). "Marlowe in theatre and film". In Cheney, Patrick (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p.277. ISBN9780511999055.
↑ Lunney, Ruth (2015). "Dido, Queen of Carthage". In Logan, Robert A.; Deats, Sara Munson (eds.). Christopher Marlowe at 450 (1sted.). London: Routledge. p.41. ISBN9781315571959.
↑ Billington, Michael (5 September 2013). "Edward II – review". theguardian.com. The Guardian. Retrieved 15 June 2020.
Bevington, David, and Eric Rasmussen, eds. Doctor Faustus and Other Plays. Oxford English Drama. Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN0-19-283445-2
Brooke, C. F. Tucker. "The Life of Marlowe and 'The Tragedy of Dido, Queen of Carthage,'" The works and life of Christopher Marlowe. Vol. 1, ed. R.H. Case, London: Methuen, 1930. (pp.107, 114, 99, 98)
Chambers, E. K. The Elizabethan Stage. 4 Volumes, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923.
Conrad, B. Der wahre Shakespeare: Christopher Marlowe. (German non-Fiction book) 5th Edition, 2016. ISBN978-3957800022
Cornelius R. M. Christopher Marlowe's Use of the Bible. New York: P. Lang, 1984.
Downie J. A.; Parnell J. T., eds. Constructing Christopher Marlowe, Cambridge 2000. ISBN0-521-57255-X
Kuriyama, Constance. Christopher Marlowe: A Renaissance Life. Cornell University Press, 2002. ISBN0-8014-3978-7
Logan, Robert A. Shakespeare's Marlowe: The Influence of Christopher Marlowe on Shakespeare's Artistry. Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate, 2007. ISBN9780754657637
Logan, Terence P., and Denzell S. Smith, eds. The Predecessors of Shakespeare: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1973.
Marlowe, Christopher. Complete Works. Vol. 3: Edward II., ed. R. Rowland. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. (pp. xxii–xxiii)
Nicholl, Charles. The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe, Vintage, 2002 (revised edition). ISBN0-09-943747-3
Oz, Avraham, ed. Marlowe. New Casebooks. Houndmills, Basingstoke and London: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2003. ISBN033362498X
Parker, John. The Aesthetics of Antichrist: From Christian Drama to Christopher Marlowe. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007. ISBN978-0-8014-4519-4
Riggs, David. The World of Christopher Marlowe, Henry Holt and Co., 2005. ISBN0-8050-8036-8
Shepard, Alan. Marlowe's Soldiers: Rhetorics of Masculinity in the Age of the Armada, Ashgate, 2002. ISBN0-7546-0229-X
Sim, James H. Dramatic Uses of Biblical Allusions in Marlowe and Shakespeare, Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1966.
Trow, M. J., and Taliesin Trow. Who Killed Kit Marlowe?: a contract to murder in Elizabethan England, Stroud: Sutton, 2002. ISBN0-7509-2963-4
Wraight A. D.; Stern, Virginia F. In Search of Christopher Marlowe: A Pictorial Biography, London: Macdonald, 1965.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
