Marlowe, Christopher

Marlowe, Christopher (1564–93). In 1589 he was involved in a street fight in which the poet T. Watson killed a man. Early in 1592 he was deported from the Netherlands for attempting to issue forged gold coins. On 30 May 1593 he was killed by Ingram Frizer in a Deptford tavern after a quarrel over a bill; Marlowe was at the time under warrant to appear before the Privy Council on unknown charges. Kyd and another friend, Richard Baines, testified after his death to his blasphemy and outrageous beliefs.

He wrote The Tragedie of Dido, Queene of Carthage (1594) in collaboration with Nashe; Tamburlaine was published in 1590. The next plays may have been The Jew of Malta, not published until 1633, and Edward II, published in 1594. The highly topical Massacre at Paris, which survives only in a fragmentary and undated text, and Dr Faustus, published 1604, may both belong to the last year of Marlowe's life. At various times he translated Ovid's Amores, published without date as All Ovids Elegies, together with some of Sir John Davies's ‘Epigrammes’; wrote two books of an erotic narrative poem Hero and Leander (1598), which was completed by G. Chapman; made a fine blank verse rendering of Lucans First Booke, Book 1 of Lucan's Pharsalia; and wrote the song ‘Come live with me and be my love’, published in The Passionate Pilgrim (1599) and England's Helicon (1600), with a reply by Ralegh. In spite of his violent life Marlowe was an admired and highly influential figure. Shakespeare's early histories are strongly influenced by Marlowe, and he paid tribute to him in As You Like It as the ‘dead shepherd’. Jonson referred to ‘Marlowes mighty line’.