Marlowe mastered Latin during his schooling, reading and translating the works of Ovid. Instead, he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1584. īy age 14, Marlowe was a pupil at The King's School, Canterbury on a scholarship and two years later a student at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he also studied through a scholarship with expectation that he would become an Anglican clergyman. Marlowe's birth was likely to have been a few days before, making him about two months older than William Shakespeare, who was baptised on 26 April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon. He was baptised at St George's Church, Canterbury, on 26 February 1564 (1563 in the old style dates in use at the time, which placed the new year on 25 March). The tower, shown here, is all that survived destruction during the Baedeker air raids of 1942.Ĭhristopher Marlowe, the second of nine children, and oldest child after the death of his sister Mary in 1568, was born to Canterbury shoemaker John Marlowe and his wife Katherine, daughter of William Arthur of Dover. Early life Marlowe was christened at St George's Church, Canterbury. An official coroner's account of Marlowe's death was discovered only in 1925, and it did little to persuade all scholars that it told the whole story, nor did it eliminate the uncertainties present in his biography. There have been many conjectures as to the nature and reason for his death, including a vicious bar-room fight, blasphemous libel against the church, homosexual intrigue, betrayal by another playwright, and espionage from the highest level: the Privy Council of Elizabeth I.

Differing sensational reports of Marlowe's death in 1593 abounded after the event and are contested by scholars today owing to a lack of good documentation. Įvents in Marlowe's life were sometimes as extreme as those found in his plays. Themes found within Marlowe's literary works have been noted as humanistic with realistic emotions, which some scholars find difficult to reconcile with Marlowe's ' anti-intellectualism' and his catering to the prurient tastes of his Elizabethan audiences for generous displays of extreme physical violence, cruelty, and bloodshed. His plays are distinguished by their overreaching protagonists. Marlowe was the first to achieve critical reputation for his use of blank verse, which became the standard for the era. Some scholars also believe that he greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was baptised in the same year as Marlowe and later succeeded him as the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright. Based upon the 'many imitations' of his play Tamburlaine, modern scholars consider him to have been the foremost dramatist in London in the years just before his mysterious early death. Marlowe is among the most famous of the Elizabethan playwrights. Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe ( / ˈ m ɑːr l oʊ/ baptised 26 February 1564 – ), was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era.

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