Christopher Marlowe

Abstract

Christopher Marlowe was born in Canterbury, the son of a shoemaker. He was educated at the King’s School, Canterbury, and then proceeded to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he took his BA in 1584. His supplication for his MA on 31 March 1587 was denied because of his supposed intention to live in Rheims, the seat of the Roman Catholic propaganda campaign which was directed against England. On 29 June the Privy Council intervened and commanded that Marlowe be given his degree ‘because it is not Her Majesty’s pleasure that anyone employed as he hath been in matters touching the benefit of his country should be defamed by those that are ignorant in the affairs he went about’. The precise nature of these ‘affairs’ is unknown, but they clearly took the form of some sort of secret government service. In 1589 Marlowe was committed to Newgate on suspicion of murder, but was eventually discharged. By 1591 Marlowe was living in London with the playwright Thomas Kyd, who after Marlowe’s death accused him of atheism. On 30 May 1593 Marlowe was killed in a brawl at the Widow Bull tavern in Deptford.