50 Fun Facts About Christopher Marlowe

In which English city was Christopher Marlowe born in 1564?

His father John was a shoemaker, and he was baptised at St George's Church on 26 February 1564.

What was Marlowe's father's trade?

Shakespeare, baptised two months later in Stratford, was the son of a glover.

Marlowe was baptised in the same year as which other playwright?

Marlowe was probably about two months older, and Shakespeare succeeded him as the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright.

At which Cambridge college did Marlowe study on a scholarship?

The scholarship expected him to become an Anglican clergyman; he took his BA in 1584 instead.

Why did Cambridge hesitate to award Marlowe his MA in 1587?

The Privy Council intervened, praising his "good service" to the Queen, which fuels the theory that he was a government spy.

Which body wrote to Cambridge in 1587 commending Marlowe's "good service" to the Queen?

The letter is lost; only the vague minutes survive, in wording scholars say was typically used to protect government agents.

Which spymaster is Marlowe most often supposed to have worked for?

College buttery accounts show him spending far more on food and drink than his scholarship could have paid for.

Marlowe was the first playwright to win a critical reputation for using which metrical form?

Tamburlaine was the first English play written in it, and Ben Jonson praised "Marlowe's mighty line".

Which Marlowe play about a conqueror was the first performed on a regular commercial London stage, in 1587?

Its many imitators are why scholars rank Marlowe the foremost dramatist of the years just before his death.

Marlowe's two-part conqueror play is loosely based on which real ruler?

Marlowe turned the Turco-Mongol noble into a Scythian shepherd who rises to emperor.

What humble occupation does Marlowe give his conqueror hero at the start of the play?

He woos the captured Egyptian princess Zenocrate and defeats the Turkish emperor Bajazeth.

Which play is believed to be the first by Marlowe ever performed, by a company of boy actors?

The Children of the Chapel staged it, and the title page also credits Thomas Nashe.

Which demon accompanies Faustus throughout Doctor Faustus?

He offers twenty-four years of worldly power in exchange for the scholar's soul.

How many years of worldly power does Faustus receive in exchange for his soul?

Unlike earlier Faust stories, Marlowe's hero cannot repent or burn his books at the end and is carried off by demons.

Doctor Faustus survives in two versions from 1604 and 1616; what are they called?

The B text adds scenes probably written by Samuel Rowley and William Bird; the A text is thought closer to Marlowe's manuscript.

Doctor Faustus was the first dramatised version of which old story?

Its source, the German Faustbuch, had appeared in English translation around 1588.

What is the name of the Jewish merchant at the centre of The Jew of Malta?

The play opens with a prologue spoken by Machiavel, a ghost modelled on Machiavelli.

Who speaks the cynical prologue of The Jew of Malta, introducing the tragedy of a Jew?

The Senecan ghost, based on Machiavelli, declares that power is amoral and religion a childish toy.

In The Jew of Malta, what does the merchant do after his daughter Abigail becomes a Christian nun?

He then strangles one friar, frames another, and poisons his slave Ithamore and two blackmailers for good measure.

Edward II focuses on the king's relationship with which favourite?

It was the only play about Edward II written up to that time and portrays the king sympathetically.

Which two 1594 editions were the first published plays to carry Marlowe's name as author?

Tamburlaine had been printed anonymously in 1590, and Edward II was entered in the Stationers' Register five weeks after his death.

Which historical event does Marlowe's play about the Duke of Guise, first staged in 1593, dramatise?

It features a silent "English Agent" whom tradition identifies with Marlowe himself, and was Lord Strange's Men's top earner in 1593.

Which unusually tall actor probably had Marlowe's haughty lead roles written for him?

Marlowe's plays were the foundation of his company, the Admiral's Men, throughout the 1590s.

Which Roman poet's Amores did Marlowe translate, in a version publicly burned in 1599?

Archbishop Whitgift's crackdown on offensive books sent it to the flames.

Marlowe's unfinished poem Hero and Leander was completed after his death by whom?

It was printed in 1598, and Shakespeare quoted a line from it in As You Like It, calling Marlowe "Dead Shepherd".

Which strait separates the lovers in Hero and Leander?

Hero lives at Sestos and Leander at Abydos, on opposite shores.

Who wrote "The Nymph's Reply", the famous answer to Marlowe's pastoral poem of a lover's invitation?

John Rutter set both poems in his 1995 Birthday Madrigals, men against women.

In which Dutch garrison town was Marlowe arrested in 1592 for alleged coin counterfeiting?

He was sent to Lord Burghley but never charged; it may have been cover for a mission against the Catholic plotter William Stanley.

Which informer wrote the note listing Marlowe's alleged blasphemies about tobacco and boys?

He had also accused Marlowe in Flushing; scholars call the note unreliable testimony from a witch-hunt.

Which fellow playwright, under torture, said a heretical tract found in his rooms belonged to Marlowe?

Kyd said the papers had been shuffled together when the two shared a writing chamber two years earlier.

The 1593 "Dutch church libel" in London was signed with the name of which Marlowe hero?

The rhymed verse alluded to several of Marlowe's plays, and the Privy Council's hunt for its author led to Kyd's arrest.

On what date in 1593 was Marlowe killed?

He had been reporting daily to the Privy Council since 20 May while awaiting a hearing.

In which Thames-side town was Marlowe stabbed to death?

He was buried in an unmarked grave at St Nicholas's churchyard there on 1 June, straight after the inquest.

Who owned the house where Marlowe died?

She was a niece of Blanche Parry, companion to Elizabeth I, and her clients were dockyard officials and Baltic merchants.

Who was named at the inquest as the man who stabbed Marlowe?

A servant and business agent of Thomas Walsingham, he claimed self-defence and was pardoned within a month.

According to the inquest, what were Frizer and Marlowe arguing about?

Shakespeare's Touchstone in As You Like It speaks of "a great reckoning in a little room", widely read as a nod to the killing.

Where was Marlowe stabbed, according to the coroner's report?

The report said death was instant; scholars later disputed whether such a wound could kill instantly at all.

Which scholar discovered the coroner's report on Marlowe's death in 1925?

Until then the standard account was Sidney Lee's claim, on slender evidence, that Marlowe died in a drunken fight.

Which two of Marlowe's companions on his last day had helped snare the Babington plotters?

Poley, an agent provocateur, once said he would swear and forswear himself rather than accuse himself to his own harm.

Which poet called Marlowe "the Muses' darling" within weeks of his death?

Drayton credited him with "brave translunary things", and Nashe mourned "poor deceased Kit Marlowe".

In which Shakespeare comedy does a character quote Hero and Leander in tribute to the dead Marlowe?

The clown Touchstone's line about a great reckoning in a little room is also read as a reference to the murder.

Which Shakespeare works did the 2016 New Oxford Shakespeare credit as collaborations with Marlowe?

Some scholars doubt any real collaboration took place.

What does the fringe "Marlovian theory" claim?

Wilbur Zeigler floated it in an 1895 novel; academic consensus rejects all alternative Shakespeare candidates.

Marlowe was held in Newgate Prison for a fortnight in 1589 after a fatal quarrel involving which poet?

He was released on bail and acquitted in December; where he spent the intervening two months is unknown.

Some scholars think Marlowe was the "Morley" who tutored which royal claimant in 1589?

As niece of Mary, Queen of Scots, she was a strong candidate for Elizabeth's throne, which would make the tutor a well-placed spy.

Where in Canterbury was Marlowe a scholarship pupil by age 14?

Two years later he went up to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, again on a scholarship, and college accounts show long, unexplained absences in 1584–85.

What was controversially added to Marlowe's 2002 memorial window in Poets' Corner?

The Marlowe Society unveiled the window, hedging on the accepted date of 30 May 1593 to nod at theories that he faked his death.

In which Deptford churchyard was Marlowe buried in an unmarked grave on 1 June 1593?

He was interred immediately after the inquest held that same Friday by William Danby, Coroner of the Queen's Household.

Which sculptor's bronze The Muse of Poetry, erected in Canterbury in 1891, commemorates Marlowe?

Originally placed on the Buttermarket, it now stands outside the Marlowe Theatre, which took the playwright's name in 1949.

Which Roman poet's Pharsalia did Marlowe translate, in a version printed in 1600?

Only Book One survives from around 1593; his Ovid translation was banned and burned the year before the Lucan appeared.