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Christopher Marlow

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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.[1] Marlowe was the foremost Elizabethan tragedian of his day.[2] He greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was born in the same year as Marlowe and who rose to become the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright after Marlowe's mysterious early death. Marlowe's plays are known for the use of blank verse and their overreaching protagonists.

Some scholars believe that a warrant was issued for Marlowe's arrest on 18 May 1593. No reason was given for it, though it was thought to be connected to allegations of blasphemy—a manuscript believed to have been written by Marlowe was said to contain "vile heretical conceipts". On 20 May, he was brought to the court to attend upon the Privy Council for questioning. There is no record of their having met that day, and his being commanded to attend upon them each day thereafter, until "licensed to the contrary". Ten days later, he was stabbed to death by Ingram Frizer. Whether or not the stabbing was connected to his arrest remains unknown.

Of the dramas attributed to Marlowe, Dido, Queen of Carthage is believed to have been his first. It was performed by the Children of the Chapel, a company of boy actors, between 1587 and 1593. The play was first published in 1594; the title page attributes the play to Marlowe and Thomas Nashe.

Marlowe's first play performed on the regular stage in London in 1587, was Tamburlaine the Great, about the conqueror Timur (Tamerlane), who rises from shepherd to warlord. It is among the first English plays in blank verse, and with Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, is generally considered the beginning of the mature phase of the Elizabethan theatre. Tamburlaine was a success and was followed by Tamburlaine the Great, Part II.

The two parts of Tamburlaine were published in 1590. All Marlowe's other works were published posthumously. The sequence of the writing of his other four plays is unknown; they all deal with controversial themes.

The Jew of Malta (first published as The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew of Malta), about the Jew Barabas' barbarous revenge against the city authorities, has a prologue delivered by a character representing Machiavelli. It was probably written in 1589 or 1590 and was first performed in 1592. It was a success and remained popular for the next fifty years. The play was entered in the Stationers' Register on 17 May 1594 but the earliest surviving printed edition is from 1633.
Edward the Second is an English history play about the deposition of King Edward II by his barons and the Queen, who resent the undue influence the king's favourites have in court and state affairs. The play was entered into the Stationers' Register on 6 July 1593, five weeks after Marlowe's death. The full title of the earliest extant edition of 1594, is The troublesome reigne and lamentable death of Edward the second, King of England, with the tragicall fall of proud Mortimer.
The Massacre at Paris is a short and luridly written work, the only surviving text of which was probably a reconstruction from memory of the original performance text, portraying the events of the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572, which English Protestants invoked as the blackest example of Catholic treachery. It features the silent "English Agent", whom tradition has identified with Marlowe and his connexions to the secret service. The Massacre at Paris is considered his most dangerous play, as agitators in London seized on its theme to advocate the murders of refugees from the low countries, and it warns Elizabeth I of this possibility in its last scene. The full title was The Massacre at Paris: With the Death of the Duke of Guise.
Doctor Faustus (or The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus), based on the German Faustbuch, was the first dramatised version of the Faust legend of a scholar's dealing with the devil. 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 repent to a merciful God to have his contract annulled at the end of the play. Marlowe's protagonist is instead carried off by demons and in the 1616 quarto his mangled corpse is found by several scholars. Doctor Faustus is a textual problem for scholars as two versions of the play exist: the 1604 quarto, also known as the 'A text', and the 1616 quarto or 'B text'. Both were published after Marlowe's death. Scholars have disagreed which text is more representative of Marlowe's original and some editions are based on a combination of the two. The scholarly consensus of the late 20th century holds the 'A text' is more representative because it contains irregular character names and idiosyncratic spelling, which are believed to reflect a text based on the author's handwritten manuscript or "foul papers". The 'B text' in comparison, was highly edited, censored because of shifting theater laws regarding religious words onstage and contains several additional scenes which scholars believe to be the additions of other playwrights, particularly Samuel Rowley and William Bird (alias Borne).
Marlowe's plays were enormously successful, thanks in part - no doubt - to the imposing stage presence of 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. Marlowe also wrote the poem Hero and Leander (published in 1598, with a continuation by George Chapman the same year), the popular lyric The Passionate Shepherd to His Love, translations of Ovid's Amores and the first book of Lucan's Pharsalia. In 1599, his translation of Ovid was banned and copies publicly burned as part of Archbishop Whitgift's crackdown on offensive material. Marlowe has been credited in the New Oxford Shakespeare series as co-author of the three Henry VI plays, though some scholars doubt any actual collaboration.

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