Christopher Marlowe
1564 – 1593 English playwright, poet
The daring Elizabethan playwright who shaped English tragedy before Shakespeare.
- Religion
- Nominally Anglican, but accused in his lifetime of atheism and heresy.
- Affiliations
- Rumored to have worked as a government agent. No confirmed secret society.
Marlowe brought blank verse and towering, overreaching heroes to the English stage in plays like Doctor Faustus and Tamburlaine. He set the standard that Shakespeare, his exact contemporary, would build on. He died young in a violent tavern quarrel amid rumors of espionage.
Connections
- influenced William Shakespeare — His blank verse and tragic scale shaped the young Shakespeare.