C

HRISTOPHER

M

ARLOWE

(1564-1593) son of a Canterbury shoemaker,

educated at King’s School, Canterbury and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
where he had been granted a scholarship (BA in 1584, MA in 1587). There was
some strange intervention from the court then stating that Marlowe did not, as
university authorities believed, intend to go to Rheims (the centre of Catholicism)
and that he had done her Majestie good service. At about the same time (1588)
England was threatened by the Spanish Armada. He is believed therefore to have
been living a double life - a playwright and a spy. He attached himself to the Earl of
Nottingham’s theatrical company, which produced most of his plays. He was
acquainted with the leading men of letters (like Raleigh) was a friend of Thomas
Kyd who, having been tortured, betrayed him - he said that some documents stating

that Christ was not God belonged to Marlowe. This was punished by death then. Marlowe was called for an
interrogation, let out and 30 days later murdered.

He wrote Tamburlaine (not later than 1587 - published 1590) and gave a new development to blank verse.

His Tragedy of Doctor Faustus was published already after his death in 1604. After 1588 he wrote The Jew
of Malta (published 1633) and Edward II (published 1593) and two inferior pieces - Massacre at Paris
(published 1600) and Tragedy of Dido (joint work of Marlowe and Nash, published 1594). He could have
been the co-author of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus and parts of Henry VI revised and completed by
Shakespeare. He translated Ovid’s Amores, The First Book of Lucan[‘s Pharsalia (1600)

Marlowe held and propagated atheistic opinions, and a warrant was issued for his arrest in 1593, but later

researches have suggested that he was a government agent, and that his death had a political complexion.
He was killed by one Ingram Frisar at a tavern in Deptford, where the two had supped and started to quarrel
over the bill. The people involved in the incidents were most certainly agents as well and one of them was a
double agent - Robert Poley - probably afraid of being given away. (In 1955 Calvin Hoffman, a U.S. writer,
posed a sensational but groundless theory saying that Marlowe conspired with his supposed murderers and
together they killed a sailor. Later Marlowe was to live under the name of Shakespeare writing plays)

He achieved celebrity and infamy (e.g. the author of the atheist Tamburlaine) for leading a very reckless life

(many conflicts with the law), very ambitious, he was the harbinger of the great English drama.

Tamburlaine the Great a drama in blank verse (written ca. 1587, publ. 1590) - it showed an immense advance

on the blank verse and was received with much approval. The material was taken from Spanish - the life of
Timur by Pedro Naxia (Engl. trans. in 1571). It deals with he rise of a Scythian shepherd-robber
Tamburlaine, allied with the king of Persia and then defeating him in the battle for the throne. Tamburlaine
is very ambitious, ruthless and cruel. He fights and conquers Bajazet (Turkish sultan), leads him a prisoner
in the cage - Bajazet and his wife kill themselves against the bars of the cage. He falls in love with the
daughter of the sultan of Egypt. Then the play deals with further conquests (to Babylon), it ends with the
death of him and his beloved.

Nature, that fram'd us of four elements
Warring within our breasts for regiment,
Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds:
Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend
The wondrous architecture of the world,
And measure every wandering planet's course,
Still climbing after knowledge infinite,
And always moving as the restless spheres,
Wills us to wear ourselves and never rest,
Until we reach the ripest fruit of all,
That perfect bliss and sole felicity,
The sweet fruition of an earthly crown.

Christopher Marlowe Tamburlaine

The Jew of Malta a drama in blank verse (produced in 1592, publ. In 1633). The Turkish leader demanded a

tribute from Malta - the governor of the island decides that the Jews of Malta must pay it. Barabas, a rich
Jew, resists the verdict looses his wealth and house. He revenges - slaughters his daughter and her lover and

eventually betrays Malta to the Turks. In reward he is made its governor. He then starts plotting against the
Turks (thinks about a collapsible floor) but is himself betrayed and hurled through the same floor into a
cauldron where he dies.

University Wits - a name given to a group of Elizabethan playwrights and pamphleteers, graduates of

Cambridge and Oxford- chief were Nash, Greene, Lyly and Lodge. Men with learning and talent but no
money - the career in church was impossible for them after the dissolution of monasteries. They were
connected with London theatres.

Doctor Faustus – sources and analogues

X

In 1484 Malleus Malificarum or Hexenhammer - The Hammer of Witches by Jakob Sprenger, the

Dominican Inquisitor of Cologne and Heinrich Krämer, the Prior of Cologne - the textbook on how to
discover and fight with the witchcraft. Even though in 1584 Reginald Scot published Discoverie of
Witchcraft aimed at preventing the persecution of the poor women - it was nevertheless a minority
opinion.

X

In 1580s and 1590s convictions for witchcraft were particularly high. There were also increased

demonisations of other marginalised groups - Catholics, Puritans, Jews.

X

Notice the popularity of such stories at about the same time - the knowledge of alchemy (which is more

and more like chemistry) is becoming more and more popular - the court of Roman German Emperor
Rudolf II (1552-1612 deposed in 1608, in 1611 in Bohemia, because of supposed insanity) in Prague
where John Dee (1527-1608) a mathematician and astrologer) resided, later John Kepler(1571-1630
astronomer), Societae Rosae Crucii, Jan Twardowski in Poland etc.

X

There are two versions of the play’s text now (A and B).

X

Certain similarities to morality plays.

X

The sources: The Historie of the Damnable Life and deserved death of Doctor John Faustus (the English

Faust Book - appeared in 1592). It was the translation of the German Faust Book (1587) which was an
international bestseller. The play was written and performed in, or after, 1592.

Some additional www resources.
Life in Elizabethan England: A Compendium of Common Knowledge

http://www.renaissance.dm.net/compendium/

(information on everyday life in Elizabethan England)

Renaissance: the Elizabethan world related sites

http://www.renaissance.dm.net/sites.html

Luminarium: Renaissance Literature on the Internet

http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/