Marlowe’s mighty line

Abstract

The year 1564 saw the birth of both Marlowe and Shakespeare; but of the two, Marlowe was to mature more swiftly. By 1592, the date of the first recorded reference to Shakespeare as a playwright, Marlowe’s career was almost over. He had burst unheralded upon the English stage some five years earlier at the age of twenty-three, completed the five great plays which were to transform the theatre, and was about to depart suddenly from it leaving the disturbing question of what more he might have done had he been granted more years.