Tamburlaine the Great (c. 1587–1588)
Two-part epic of the Scythian shepherd who becomes a world conqueror
Literature · Playwrights
Christopher Marlowe
1564–1593 · English
Elizabethan drama; University Wits
Christopher Marlowe, a shoemaker's son from Canterbury educated at Cambridge, was the most important Elizabethan dramatist before Shakespeare. His plays Tamburlaine the Great and Doctor Faustus established the power of blank verse on the English stage. He was stabbed to death in Deptford at the age of 29, amid rumours of espionage and atheism.
How to spot them
- ▸'Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?' (Faustus on Helen of Troy)
- ▸'Marlowe's mighty line', in Ben Jonson's phrase
- ▸Killed in a house in Deptford in 1593 by Ingram Frizer, supposedly over the bill ('the reckoning')
- ▸Born in Canterbury the same year as Shakespeare; King's School, Canterbury, and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
Key works
Doctor Faustus (c. 1588–1592)
A German scholar sells his soul to Lucifer through Mephistopheles for 24 years of power and knowledge
The Jew of Malta (c. 1589–1590)
Revenge tragedy of the Machiavellian merchant Barabas
Edward II (c. 1592)
History play of the king's infatuation with Piers Gaveston and his downfall
Hero and Leander (published 1598)
Unfinished narrative poem, completed by George Chapman; 'Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?'
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love (published 1599)
Pastoral lyric beginning 'Come live with me and be my love', answered by Walter Raleigh's nymph
Key ideas
- Made unrhymed iambic pentameter (blank verse) the dominant medium of English drama
- His 'overreaching' heroes (Tamburlaine, Faustus, Barabas) push against human limits
- Scholars now accept that he collaborated with Shakespeare, and the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016) credits him on the Henry VI plays
Quick-fire facts
- •Baptised in Canterbury on 26 February 1564, two months before Shakespeare
- •In 1587 the Privy Council intervened for his Cambridge MA, noting he had done the Queen 'good service', fuelling theories that he was a government spy
- •Killed on 30 May 1593 at the house of Eleanor Bull in Deptford, stabbed above the eye by Ingram Frizer, in company with Nicholas Skeres and Robert Poley
- •Days earlier he had been summoned by the Privy Council after allegations of heresy; Thomas Kyd and the informer Richard Baines accused him of atheism
- •Buried at St Nicholas' Church, Deptford
- •Mephistopheles tells Faustus: 'Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it'
- •The 'Marlovian theory' claims he faked his death and wrote Shakespeare's works
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Sources
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Christopher Marlowe
- Charles Nicholl — The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe