Overview
Christopher Marlowe
(1564—1593) playwright and poet
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(1564–93).
English playwright, poet, and spy. Born in Canterbury, he was educated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. His plays, beginning with Dido, Queen of Carthage (c.1587), are energetic, restless, generically daring explorations of selfhood. Success came with his two‐part epic of ambition and war, Tamburlaine (1587–8), and between 1588 and 1593 he wrote four more plays: The Massacre at Paris, The Jew of Malta, Doctor Faustus, and Edward II. Shortly after a warrant for his arrest was issued in May 1593 on charges of atheism and Marlowe was killed, apparently in a pub brawl.
Subjects: Literature — Shakespeare studies and criticism
