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Christopher Marlowe

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Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) is best-known as being the playwright who created Dr. Faustus, as well as writing the Tamburlaine the Great plays, The Massacre at Paris, The Jew of Malta, and the epic poem Hero and Leander. Evidence suggests he was also a spy for Her Majesty's government, a heretic, a counterfeiter, a homosexual, and an atheist. Who killed him and why? The short answer is Ingram Frizer, allegedly in self-defence. The long answer is much more interesting, representing a five hundred-year-old literary mystery full of intrigue, betrayal, political machinations, and poetry. Born the son of a Canterbury shoemaker in 1564, Marlowe clearly was a bright boy, and attended The King's School in Canterbury on a scholarship, then Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, where he wrote Dido Queen of Carthage. It's from his time at university that we see the first evidence that Marlowe began working as a government spy. Suspicion fell on Marlowe after he travelled to Rheims, the location of a Catholic seminary (and Elizabethan England was brimming with suspicion regarding illicit Catholic activities, particularly given the 1586 Babington Plot involving Mary Queen of Scots...
Read the essay: Who Killed Christopher Marlowe (and Why)? by Kate O'Connor
# Title Description Contributor
1 Dr Faustus: Christopher Marlowe

Emma Smith's lecture on this infernal play discusses Elizabethan religion, the revisions to the...

Emma Smith
# Essay Title Description Contributor
1 English Renaissance Timeline: Some Historical and Cultural Dates

This list offers an overview of some historical and cultural dates from the English Renaissance...

Kate O'Connor
2 Who Killed Christopher Marlowe (and Why)? Kate O'Connor
3 Renaissance Theatre

When John Brayne built the Red Lion Theatre in London’s Whitechapel in 1569, he could hardly...

Emma Smith
# Title Description Author
1 The Tragedy of Dido Queene of Carthage Christopher Marlowe
2 The Second Part of Tamburlaine the Great

Edited by The Rev. Alexander Dyce.

Christopher Marlowe
3 The First Part of Tamburlaine the Great

Edited by The Rev. Alexander Dyce.

Christopher Marlowe
4 Marlowe, a conspectus

Published: London : G. Routledge & sons, ltd.

J. M. Robertson
5 Hero and Leander

Hero and Leander, a poem, by C. Marlow, and G. Chapman.
Edition: New ed., revised [by...

Christopher Marlowe, George Chapman
6 The poems of Robert Greene, Christopher Marlowe, and Ben Jonson

ed., with notes, by R. Bell.

Robert Greene, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson
7 Christopher Marlowe's tragedy of Edward the Second

with an introduction and notes by Wilhelm Wagner

Hamburg : Boyes and...

Christopher Marlowe
8 Christopher Marlowe (works of)

Edited by Havelock Ellis ; with an introduction by J. A. Symonds.

...

Christopher Marlowe
# Resource Title Description Contributor
1 Course: Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus

Online course from the Open University.
Description: "What does Christopher Marlowe's...