Christopher Marlowe

Christopher Marlowe (baptised 26 February 1564 – 30 May 1593), often called Kit Marlowe, was an English playwright, poet, and translator active during the Elizabethan period. He ranks among the most celebrated playwrights of that era. Because so many later works imitated his play *Tamburlaine*, modern scholars regard him as the leading dramatist in London in the years leading up to his unexplained early death. Some academics also think he had a strong influence on William Shakespeare, who was baptised the same year as Marlowe and later became the dominant Elizabethan playwright after him. Marlowe was the first writer to earn a critical reputation for using blank verse, which then became the standard style of the period. His plays are known for their ambitious, overreaching main characters. The themes in his writing have been described as humanistic, with realistic emotions—a combination that some scholars find hard to square with his apparent anti-intellectualism and his willingness to give Elizabethan audiences the violent, bloody, and cruel scenes they wanted.

Marlowe’s own life sometimes matched the extremes of his plays. After his death in 1593, various sensational stories spread, and scholars still debate what really happened because reliable records are scarce. Many theories exist about the cause and nature of his death: a tavern brawl, a charge of blasphemy against the church, a homosexual affair, betrayal by a fellow playwright, or involvement in espionage at the highest level—the Privy Council of Queen Elizabeth I. An official coroner’s report was not found until 1925, and even that did not convince all scholars that the full story had been told, nor did it clear up the uncertainties in his biography.

Marlowe was born in Canterbury to John Marlowe, a shoemaker, and his wife Katherine, daughter of William Arthur of Dover. He was the second of nine children and the oldest surviving after his sister Mary died in 1568. He was baptised at St George’s Church, Canterbury, on 26 February 1564 (which would have been 1563 under the old calendar, where the new year began on 25 March). His birth likely occurred a few days earlier, making him about two months older than Shakespeare, who was baptised on 26 April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon.

At age 14, Marlowe began attending The King’s School in Canterbury on a scholarship. Two years later, he went to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, also on a scholarship, with the expectation that he would become an Anglican clergyman. Instead, he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1584. During his schooling, he became fluent in Latin, reading and translating the works of Ovid. In 1587, the university hesitated to grant him his Master of Arts degree because of a rumour that he planned to go to the English seminary at Rheims in northern France, likely to train as a Roman Catholic priest. If true, this would have directly violated a 1585 royal edict by Queen Elizabeth I that made it a crime for any English citizen to be ordained in the Roman Catholic Church. Large-scale violence between Protestants and Catholics in Europe is often cited as the reason for the Protestant queen’s defensive anti-Catholic laws, which were in effect from 1581 until her death in 1603.

Despite the serious risk to Marlowe, his degree was granted on time after the Privy Council intervened on his behalf, praising his “faithful dealing” and “good service” to the queen. The council did not specify what that service was, but its letter to Cambridge has led to much speculation, especially the idea that Marlowe worked as a secret agent for Sir Francis Walsingham, a member of the Privy Council. The only surviving record of this correspondence is in the council’s minutes; the actual letter is lost. The minutes do not mention espionage, but they summarise the lost letter in vague terms, stating that “it was not Her Majesties pleasure” that people 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 that such vague wording was typical for protecting government agents, but they continue to debate what those “matters” actually were and how they affected the 23-year-old writer as he began his literary career in 1587.

Very little is known about Marlowe’s adult life. Apart from what can be inferred from his writings, all available information comes from legal records and official documents. Fiction and nonfiction writers have speculated about his professional life, private life, and personality. He has been described as a spy, a brawler, a heretic, a “magician,” a “duellist,” a “tobacco-user,” a “counterfeiter,” and a “rakehell.” While scholars J. A. Downie and Constance Kuriyama have pushed back against the more extreme stories, J. B. Steane noted that it seems foolish to dismiss all these Elizabethan rumours and accusations as simply “the Marlowe myth.” Much has been written about his short adult life, including theories about his involvement in state-sanctioned espionage, his open claims of atheism, his possible same-sex relationships, and the strange circumstances of his death.