Christopher "Kit" Marlowe

 

Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe (/ˈmɑːrloʊ/; baptized 26 February 1564 – 30 May 1593), was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe is among the most famous of the Elizabethan playwrights. Based upon the "many imitations" of his play Tamburlaine, modern scholars consider him to have been the foremost dramatist in London in the years just before his mysterious early death. Some scholars also believe that he greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was baptized in the same year as Marlowe and later succeeded him as the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright. Marlowe was the first to achieve a critical reputation for his use of blank verse, which became the standard for the era. His plays are distinguished by their overreaching protagonists. Themes found within Marlowe's literary works have been noted as humanistic with realistic emotions, which some scholars find difficult to reconcile with Marlowe's "anti-intellectualism" and his catering to the prurient tastes of his Elizabethan audiences for generous displays of extreme physical violence, cruelty, and bloodshed.

Events in Marlowe's life were sometimes as extreme as those found in his plays. Differing sensational reports of Marlowe's death in 1593 abounded after the event and are contested by scholars today owing to a lack of good documentation. There have been many conjectures as to the nature and reason for his death, including a vicious bar-room fight, blasphemous libel against the church, homosexual intrigue, betrayal by another playwright, and espionage from the highest level: the Privy Council of Elizabeth I. An official coroner's account of Marlowe's death was discovered only in 1925, and it did little to persuade all scholars that it did not tell the whole story, nor did it eliminate the uncertainties present in his biography.

Early life

Christopher Marlowe, the second of nine children, and oldest child after the death of his sister Mary in 1568, was born to Canterbury shoemaker John Marlowe and his wife Katherine, daughter of William Arthur of Dover. He was baptized at St George's Church, Canterbury, on 26 February 1564 (1563 in the old style dates in use at the time, which placed the New Year on 25 March). Marlowe's birth was likely to have been a few days before, making him about two months older than William Shakespeare, who was baptized on 26 April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon.

By age 14, Marlowe was a pupil at The King's School, Canterbury on a scholarship and two years later a student at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he also studied through a scholarship with the expectation that he would become an Anglican clergyman. Instead, he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1584. Marlowe mastered Latin during his schooling, reading and translating the works of Ovid. In 1587, the university hesitated to award his Master of Arts degree because of a rumor that he intended to go to the English seminary at Rheims in northern France, presumably to prepare for ordination as a Roman Catholic priest. If true, such an action on his part would have been a direct violation of the royal edict issued by Queen Elizabeth I in 1585 criminalizing any attempt by an English citizen to be ordained in the Roman Catholic Church.

Large-scale violence between Protestants and Catholics on the European continent has been cited by scholars as the impetus for the Protestant English Queen's defensive anti-Catholic laws issued from 1581 until she died in 1603. Despite the dire implications for Marlowe, his degree was awarded on schedule when the Privy Council intervened on his behalf, commending him for his "faithful dealing" and "good service" to the Queen. The nature of Marlowe's service was not specified by the council, but its letter to the Cambridge authorities has provoked much speculation by modern scholars, notably the theory that Marlowe was operating as a secret agent for Privy Council member Sir Francis Walsingham. The only surviving evidence of the Privy Council's correspondence is found in their minutes, the letter being lost. There is no mention of espionage in the minutes, but its summation of the lost Privy Council letter is vague in meaning, stating that "it was not Her Majesties pleasure" that persons employed as Marlowe had been "in matters touching the benefit of his country should be defamed by those who are ignorant in th'affaires he went about." Scholars agree the vague wording was typically used to protect government agents, but they continue to debate what the "matters touching the benefit of his country" actually were in Marlowe's case and how they affected the 23-year-old writer as he launched his literary career in 1587.

Adult life and legend

Little is known about Marlowe's adult life. All available evidence, other than what can be deduced from his literary works, is found in legal records and other official documents. Writers of fiction and non-fiction have speculated about his professional activities, private life, and character. Marlowe has been described as a spy, a brawler, and a heretic, as well as a "magician", "duelist", "tobacco user", "counterfeiter" and "rakehell". While J. A. Downie and Constance Kuriyama have argued against the more lurid speculations, it is the usually circumspect J. B. Steane who remarked, "It seems absurd to dismiss all of these Elizabethan rumors and accusations as 'the Marlowe myth'".  Much has been written on his brief adult life, including speculation of his involvement in royally-sanctioned espionage; his vocal declaration as an atheist; his (possibly same-sex) sexual interests; and the puzzling circumstances surrounding his death.

Spying

Marlowe is alleged to have been a government spy. Park Honan and Charles Nicholl speculate that this was the case and suggest that Marlowe's recruitment took place when he was at Cambridge. In 1587, when the Privy Council ordered the University of Cambridge to award Marlowe his degree as Master of Arts, it denied rumors that he intended to go to the English Catholic College in Rheims, saying instead that he had been engaged in unspecified “affaires “on” matters touching the benefit of his country. “ Surviving college records from the period also indicate that, in the academic year 1584–1585, Marlowe had had a series of unusually lengthy absences from the university which violated university regulations. Surviving college buttery accounts, which record student purchases for personal provisions, show that Marlowe began spending lavishly on food and drink during the periods he was in attendance; the amount was more than he could have afforded on his known scholarship income.

It has been speculated that Marlowe was the "Morley" who was tutor to Arbella Stuart in 1589. This possibility was first raised in a Times Literary Supplement letter by E. St John Brooks in 1937; in a letter to Notes and Queries, John Baker added that only Marlowe could have been Arbella's tutor owing to the absence of any other known "Morley" from the period with an MA and not otherwise occupied. If Marlowe was Arbella's tutor, it might indicate that he was there as a spy, since Arbella, niece of Mary, Queen of Scots, and cousin of James VI of Scotland, later James I of England, was at the time a strong candidate for the succession to Elizabeth's throne. Frederick S. Boas dismisses the possibility of this identification, based on surviving legal records which document Marlowe's "residence in London between September and December 1589". Marlowe had been party to a fatal quarrel involving his neighbors and the poet Thomas Watson in Norton Folgate and was held in Newgate Prison for a fortnight. In fact, the quarrel and his arrest occurred on 18 September, he was released on bail on 1 October and he had to attend court, where he was acquitted on 3 December, but there is no record of where he was for the intervening two months.

In 1592 Marlowe was arrested in the English garrison town of Flushing (Vlissingen) in the Netherlands, for alleged involvement in the counterfeiting of coins, presumably related to the activities of seditious Catholics. He was sent to the Lord Treasurer (Burghley), but no charge or imprisonment resulted. This arrest may have disrupted another of Marlowe's spying missions, perhaps by giving the resulting coinage to the Catholic cause. He was to infiltrate the followers of the active Catholic plotter William Stanley and report back to Burghley.

Philosophy

Marlowe was reputed to be an atheist, who held the dangerous implication of being an enemy of God and the state, by association. With the rise of public fears concerning The School of Night, or "School of Atheism" in the late 16th century, accusations of atheism were closely associated with disloyalty to the Protestant monarchy of England.

Some modern historians consider that Marlowe's professed atheism, as with his supposed Catholicism, may have been no more than a sham to further his work as a government spy. Contemporary evidence comes from Marlowe's accuser in Flushing, an informer called Richard Baines. The governor of Flushing had reported that each of the men had "of malice" accused the other of instigating the counterfeiting and of intending to go over to the Catholic "enemy"; such an action was considered atheistic by the Church of England. Following Marlowe's arrest in 1593, Baines submitted to the authorities a "note containing the opinion of one Christopher Marly concerning his damnable judgment of religion and scorn of God's word". Baines attributes to Marlowe a total of eighteen items which "scoff at the pretensions of the Old and New Testament" such as, "Christ was a bastard and his mother dishonest [unchaste]", "the woman of Samaria and her sister were whores and that Christ knew them dishonestly", "St John the Evangelist was bedfellow to Christ and leaned always in his bosom" (cf. John 13:23–25) and "that he used him as the sinners of Sodom". He also implied that Marlowe had Catholic sympathies. Other passages are merely skeptical in tone: "he persuades men to atheism, willing them not to be afraid of bugbears and hobgoblins". The final paragraph of Baines's document reads:

These thinges, with many other, shall by good & honest witnes be approved to be his opinions and Comon Speeches, and that this Marlowe doth not only hould them himself, but almost into every Company he Cometh he persuades men to Atheism willing them not to be afeard of bugbeares and hobgoblins, and vtterly scorning both god and his ministers as I Richard Baines will Justify & approue both by mine oth and the testimony of many honest men, and almost al men with whome he hath Conversed any time will testify the same, and as I think all men in Cristianity ought to indevor that the mouth of so dangerous a member may be stopped, he saith likewise that he hath quoted several Contrarieties oute of the Scripture which he hath giuen to some great men who in Convenient time shalbe named. When these thinges shalbe Called in question the witnes shalbe produced.

Similar examples of Marlowe's statements were given by Thomas Kyd after his imprisonment and possible torture; Kyd and Baines connect Marlowe with mathematician Thomas Harriot's and Sir Walter Raleigh's circle. Another document claimed about that time that "one Marlowe can show more sound reasons for Atheism than any divine in England can give to prove divinity and that ... he hath read the Atheist lecture to Sir Walter Raleigh and others".

Some critics believe that Marlowe sought to disseminate these views in his work and that he identified with his rebellious and iconoclastic protagonists. Plays had to be approved by the Master of the Revels before they could be performed and the censorship of publications was under the control of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Presumably, these authorities did not consider any of Marlowe's works to be unacceptable other than the Amores.

Sexuality

It has been claimed that Marlowe was homosexual. Some scholars argue that the identification of an Elizabethan as gay or homosexual in the modern sense is "anachronistic," claiming that for the Elizabethans the terms were more likely to have been applied to homoerotic affections or sexual acts rather than to what we currently understand as a settled sexual orientation or personal role identity. Other scholars argue that the evidence is inconclusive and that the reports of Marlowe's homosexuality may be rumors produced after his death. Richard Baines reported Marlowe as saying: "All they that love not Tobacco & Boies were fools". David Bevington and Eric C. Rasmussen describe Baines's evidence as "unreliable testimony" and "[t]hese and other testimonials need to be discounted for their exaggeration and for their having been produced under legal circumstances we would now regard as a witch-hunt".

J. B. Steane considered there to be "no evidence for Marlowe's homosexuality at all". Other scholars point to the frequency with which Marlowe explores homosexual themes in his writing: in Hero and Leander, Marlowe writes of the male youth Leander: "in his looks were all that men desire..." Edward the Second contains the following passage enumerating homosexual relationships:

The mightiest kings have had their minions;

Great Alexander loved Hephaestion,

The conquering Hercules for Hylas wept;

And for Patroclus, stern Achilles drooped.

And not kings only, but the wisest men:

The Roman Tully loved Octavius,

Grave Socrates, wild Alcibiades.

Marlowe wrote the only play about the life of Edward II up to his time, taking the humanist literary discussion of male sexuality much further than his contemporaries. The play was extremely bold, dealing with a star-crossed love story between Edward II and Piers Gaveston. Though it was a common practice at the time to reveal characters as homosexual to give audiences reason to suspect them as culprits in a crime, Christopher Marlowe's Edward II is portrayed as a sympathetic character. The decision to start the play Dido, Queen of Carthage with a homoerotic scene between Jupiter and Ganymede that bears no connection to the subsequent plot has long puzzled scholars.

Arrest and death

In early May 1593, several bills were posted about London threatening the Protestant refugees from France and the Netherlands who had settled in the city. One of these, the "Dutch church libel", written in rhymed iambic pentameter, contained allusions to several of Marlowe's plays and was signed, "Tamburlaine". On 11 May the Privy Council ordered the arrest of those responsible for the libels. The next day, Marlowe's colleague Thomas Kyd was arrested, his lodgings were searched and a three-page fragment of a heretical tract was found. In a letter to Sir John Puckering, Kyd asserted that it had belonged to Marlowe, with whom he had been writing "in one chamber" some two years earlier. In a second letter, Kyd described Marlowe as blasphemous, disorderly, holding treasonous opinions, being an irreligious reprobate, and "intemperate & of a cruel hart". They had both been working for an aristocratic patron, probably Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange. A warrant for Marlowe's arrest was issued on 18 May, when the Privy Council apparently knew that he might be found staying with Thomas Walsingham, whose father was a first cousin of the late Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's principal secretary in the 1580s and a man more deeply involved in state espionage than any other member of the Privy Council. Marlowe duly presented himself on 20 May but there apparently being no Privy Council meeting on that day, was instructed to "give his daily attendance on their Lordships until he shall be licensed to the contrary". On Wednesday, 30 May, Marlowe was killed.

Various accounts of Marlowe's death were current over the next few years. In his Palladis Tamia, published in 1598, Francis Meres says Marlowe was "stabbed to death by a bawdy serving-man, a rival of his in his lewd love" as punishment for his "epicurism and atheism". In 1917, in the Dictionary of National Biography, Sir Sidney Lee wrote, on slender evidence, that Marlowe was killed in a drunken fight. His claim was not much at variance with the official account, which came to light only in 1925, when the scholar Leslie Hotson discovered the coroner's report of the inquest on Marlowe's death, held two days later on Friday 1 June 1593, by the Coroner of the Queen's Household, William Danby. Marlowe had spent all day in a house in Deptford, owned by the widow Eleanor Bull, with three men: Ingram Frizer, Nicholas Skeres, and Robert Poley. All three had been employed by one or other of the Walsinghams. Skeres and Poley had helped snare the conspirators in the Babington plot and Frizer was a servant to Thomas Walsingham probably in the role of a financial or business agent, as he was for Walsingham's wife Audrey a few years later. These witnesses testified that Frizer and Marlowe had argued over payment of the bill (now famously known as the 'Reckoning') exchanging "divers malicious words" while Frizer was sitting at a table between the other two and Marlowe was lying behind him on a couch. Marlowe snatched Frizer's dagger and wounded him on the head. In the ensuing struggle, according to the coroner's report, Marlowe was stabbed above the right eye, killing him instantly. The jury concluded that Frizer acted in self-defense and within a month he was pardoned. Marlowe was buried in an unmarked grave in the churchyard of St. Nicholas, Deptford immediately after the inquest, on 1 June 1593.

The complete text of the inquest report was published by Leslie Hotson in his book, The Death of Christopher Marlowe, in the introduction to which Prof. George Kittredge said, "The mystery of Marlowe's death, heretofore involved in a cloud of contradictory gossip and irresponsible guess-work, is now cleared up for good and all on the authority of public records of complete authenticity and gratifying fullness" but this confidence proved fairly short-lived. Hotson had considered the possibility that the witnesses had "concocted a lying account of Marlowe's behavior, to which they swore at the inquest, and with which they deceived the jury" but came down against that scenario. Others began to suspect that this scenario was indeed the case. Writing to the Times Literary Supplement shortly after the book's publication, Eugénie De Kalb disputed that the struggle and outcome as described were even possible and Samuel A. Tannenbaum insisted the following year that such a wound could not have possibly resulted in instant death, as had been claimed. Even Marlowe's biographer John Bakeless acknowledged that "some scholars have been inclined to question the truthfulness of the coroner's report. There is something queer about the whole episode" and said that Hotson's discovery "raises almost as many questions as it answers". It has also been discovered more recently that the apparent absence of a local county coroner to accompany the Coroner of the Queen's Household would if noticed, have made the inquest null and void.

One of the main reasons for doubting the truth of the inquest concerns the reliability of Marlowe's companions as witnesses. As an agent provocateur for the late Sir Francis Walsingham, Robert Poley was a consummate liar, the "very genius of the Elizabethan underworld" and is on record as saying "I will swear and forswear myself, rather than I will accuse myself to do me any harm". The other witness, Nicholas Skeres, had for many years acted as a confidence trickster, drawing young men into the clutches of people in the money-lending racket, including Marlowe's apparent killer, Ingram Frizer, with whom he was engaged in such a swindle. Despite their being referred to as generosi (gentlemen) in the inquest report, the witnesses were professional liars. Some biographers, such as Kuriyama and Downie, take the inquest to be a true account of what occurred, but in trying to explain what really happened if the account was not true, others have come up with a variety of murder theories:

Jealous of her husband Thomas's relationship with Marlowe, Audrey Walsingham arranged for the playwright to be murdered.

Sir Walter Raleigh arranged the murder, fearing that under torture Marlowe might incriminate him.

With Skeres the main player, the murder resulted from attempts by the Earl of Essex to use Marlowe to incriminate Sir Walter Raleigh.

He was killed on the orders of father and son Lord Burghley and Sir Robert Cecil, who thought that his plays contained Catholic propaganda.

He was accidentally killed while Frizer and Skeres were pressuring him to pay back the money he owed them.

Marlowe was murdered at the behest of several members of the Privy Council, who feared that he might reveal them to be atheists.

The Queen ordered his assassination because of his subversive atheistic behavior.

Frizer murdered him because he envied Marlowe's close relationship with his master Thomas Walsingham and feared the effect that Marlowe's behaviour might have on Walsingham's reputation.

Marlowe's death was faked to save him from trial and execution for subversive atheism.

Since there are only written documents on which to base any conclusions and since, probably, the most crucial information about his death was never committed to paper, it is unlikely that the full circumstances of Marlowe's death will ever be known.

Reputation among contemporary writers

For his contemporaries in the literary world, Marlowe was above all an admired and influential artist. Within weeks of his death, George Peele remembered him as "Marley, the Muses' darling"; Michael Drayton noted that he "Had in him those brave translunary things / That the first poets had" and Ben Jonson even wrote of "Marlowe's mighty line". Thomas Nashe wrote warmly of his friend, "poor deceased Kit Marlowe," as did the publisher Edward Blount in his dedication of Hero and Leander to Sir Thomas Walsingham. Among the few contemporary dramatists to say anything negative about Marlowe was the anonymous author of the Cambridge University play The Return from Parnassus (1598) who wrote, "Pity it is that wit so ill should dwell, / Wit lent from heaven, but vices sent from hell".

The most famous tribute to Marlowe was paid by Shakespeare in As You Like It, where he not only quotes a line from Hero and Leander ("Dead Shepherd, now I find thy saw of might, 'Who ever lov'd that lov'd not at first sight?'") but also gives to the clown Touchstone the words "When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with the forward child, understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room." This appears to be a reference to Marlowe's murder which involved a fight over the "reckoning," the bill, as well as to a line in Marlowe's Jew of Malta, "Infinite riches in a little room."

Shakespeare was much influenced by Marlowe in his work, as can be seen in the use of Marlovian themes in Antony and Cleopatra, The Merchant of Venice, Richard II and Macbeth (Dido, Jew of Malta, Edward II and Doctor Faustus, respectively). In Hamlet, after meeting with the traveling actors, Hamlet requests the Player perform a speech about the Trojan War, which at 2.2.429–432 has an echo of Marlowe's Dido, Queen of Carthage. In Love's Labor’s Lost Shakespeare brings on a character "Marcade" (three syllables) in conscious acknowledgment of Marlowe's character "Mercury", also attending the King of Navarre, in Massacre at Paris. The significance, to those of Shakespeare's audience who were familiar with Hero and Leander, was Marlowe's identification of himself with the god Mercury.

Shakespeare authorship theory

An argument has arisen about the notion that Marlowe faked his death and then continued to write under the assumed name of William Shakespeare. Academic consensus rejects alternative candidates for authorship of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, including Marlowe.

Literary career

Plays

Six dramas have been attributed to the authorship of Christopher Marlowe either alone or in collaboration with other writers, with varying degrees of evidence. The writing sequence or chronology of these plays is mostly unknown and is offered here with any dates and evidence known. Among the little available information we have, Dido is believed to be the first Marlowe play performed, while it was Tamburlaine that was first to be performed on a regular commercial stage in London in 1587. Believed by many scholars to be Marlowe's greatest success, Tamburlaine was the first English play written in blank verse and, with Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, is generally considered the beginning of the mature phase of the Elizabethan theater.

The play Lust's Dominion was attributed to Marlowe upon its initial publication in 1657, though scholars and critics have almost unanimously rejected the attribution. He may also have written or co-written Arden of Faversham.

Poetry and translations

Publication and responses to the poetry and translations credited to Marlowe primarily occurred posthumously, including:

Amores, first book of Latin elegiac couplets by Ovid with translation by Marlowe (c. 1580s); copies publicly burned as offensive in 1599.

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love, by Marlowe. (c. 1587–1588); a popular lyric of the time.

Hero and Leander, by Marlowe (c. 1593, unfinished; completed by George Chapman, 1598; printed 1598).

Pharsalia, Book One, by Lucan with translation by Marlowe. (c. 1593; printed 1600)

Collaborations

Modern scholars still look for evidence of collaborations between Marlowe and other writers. In 2016, one publisher was the first to endorse the scholarly claim of a collaboration between Marlowe and the playwright William Shakespeare:

Henry VI by William Shakespeare is now credited as a collaboration with Marlowe in the New Oxford Shakespeare series, published in 2016. Marlowe appears as co-author of the three Henry VI plays, though some scholars doubt any actual collaboration.

Charles Howard, 1st Earl of Nottingham, Lord High Admiral, shown here c. 1601 in a procession for Elizabeth I of England, was patron of the Admiral's Men during Marlowe's lifetime.

Contemporary reception

Marlowe's plays were enormously successful, possibly because of the imposing stage presence of his lead actor, Edward Alleyn. Alleyn was unusually tall for the time and the haughty roles of Tamburlaine, Faustus, and Barabas were probably written for him. Marlowe's plays were the foundation of the repertoire of Alleyn's company, the Admiral's Men, throughout the 1590s. One of Marlowe's poetry translations did not fare as well. In 1599, Marlowe's translation of Ovid was banned and copies were publicly burned as part of Archbishop Whitgift's crackdown on offensive material.

Chronology of dramatic works

(Patrick Cheney's 2004 Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe presents an alternative timeline based on printing dates.)

Dido, Queen of Carthage (c. 1585–1587)

Tamburlaine, Part I (c. 1587); Part II (c. 1587–1588)

The Jew of Malta (c. 1589–1590)

Doctor Faustus (c. 1588–1592)

Edward the Second (c. 1592)

The Massacre at Paris (c. 1589–1593)

Memorials

The Muse of Poetry, a bronze sculpture by Edward Onslow Ford references Marlowe and his work. It was erected on Buttermarket, Canterbury in 1891, and now stands outside the Marlowe Theatre in the city.

In July 2002, a memorial window to Marlowe was unveiled by the Marlowe Society at Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey. Controversially, a question mark was added to his generally accepted date of death. On 25 October 2011, a letter from Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells was published by The Times newspaper, in which they called on the Dean and Chapter to remove the question mark because it "flew in the face of a mass of unimpugnable evidence". In 2012, they renewed this call in their e-book Shakespeare Bites Back, adding that it "denies history" and again the following year in their book Shakespeare Beyond Doubt.

The Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury, Kent, UK, was named for Marlowe in 1949.

Marlowe in fiction

Marlowe has been used as a character in books, theatre, film, television, games, and radio.

Modern compendia

Modern scholarly collected works of Marlowe include:

The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe (edited by Roma Gill in 1986; Clarendon Press published in partnership with Oxford University Press)

The Complete Plays of Christopher Marlowe (edited by J. B. Steane in 1969; edited by Frank Romany and Robert Lindsey, Revised Edition, 2004, Penguin)

Works of Marlowe in performance

Poster for the 1937, New York WPA Federal Theatre Project production of Doctor Faustus

Radio

BBC Radio broadcast adaptations of Marlowe's six plays from May to October 1993.

Royal Shakespeare Company

Dido, Queen of Carthage, directed by Kimberly Sykes, with Chipo Chung as Dido. Swan Theater, 2017.

Tamburlaine the Great, directed by Terry Hands, with Anthony Sher as Tamburlaine. Swan Theater, 1992; Barbican Theater, 1993.

Tamburlaine the Great directed by Michael Boyd, with Jude Owusu as Tamburlaine. Swan Theater, 2018.

The Jew of Malta, directed by Barry Kyle, with Jasper Britton as Barabas. Swan Theater, 1987; People's Theatre, and Barbican Theater, 1988.

The Jew of Malta, directed by Justin Audibert, with Jasper Britton as Barabas. Swan Theater, 2015.

Edward II, directed by Gerard Murphy, with Simon Russell Beale as Edward. Swan Theater, 1990.

Doctor Faustus, directed by John Barton, with Ian McKellen as Faustus. Nottingham Playhouse and Aldwych Theater, 1974, and Royal Shakespeare Theater, 1975.

Doctor Faustus directed by Barry Kyle with Gerard Murphy as Faustus, Swan Theater and Pit Theater, 1989.

Doctor Faustus directed by Maria Aberg, with Sandy Grierson and Oliver Ryan sharing the roles of Faustus and Mephistophilis. Swan Theatre and Barbican Theater, 2016.

Royal National Theater

 

Tamburlaine, directed by Peter Hall, with Albert Finney as Tamburlaine. Olivier Theater, 1976.

Dido, Queen of Carthage, directed by James McDonald with Anastasia Hille as Dido. Cottesloe Theater, 2009.

Edward II, directed by Joe Hill-Gibbins, with John Heffernan as Edward. Olivier Theater, 2013.

Shakespeare's Globe

Dido, Queen of Carthage, directed by Tim Carroll, with Rakie Ayola as Dido, 2003.

Edward II, directed by Timothy Walker, with Liam Brennan as Edward, 2003.

Malthouse Theater

The Marlowe Sessions

Dido, Queen of Carthage, Directed/Produced by Ray Mia, Performance direction by Stephen Unwin, with Thalissa Teixeira as Dido, 2022.

Tamburlaine The Great, Part 1, Directed/Produced by Ray Mia, Performance direction by Phillip Breen, with Alan Cox as Tamburlaine, 2022.

The Jew of Malta, Directed/Produced by Ray Mia, Performance direction by Stephen Unwin, with Adrian Schiller as Barrabus, 2022.

Tamburlaine The Great, Part 2, Directed/Produced by Ray Mia, Performance direction by Phillip Breen, with Alan Cox as Tamburlaine, 2022.

Edward The Second, Directed/Produced by Ray Mia, Performance direction by Abigail Rokison, with Jack Holden as Edward II, 2022.

The Massacre at Paris, Directed/Produced by Ray Mia, Performance direction by Abigail Rokison, with Michael Maloney as Guise, 2022.

Dr Faustus, Directed/Produced by Ray Mia, Performance direction by Phillip Breen, with Dominic West as Faustus and Talulah Riley as Mephistopheles, 2022.

The Poetry of Christopher Marlowe, Directed/Produced by Ray Mia, Performance direction by Philip Bird, read by Jack Holden, Fisayo Akinade, and Philip Bird, 2022.

Other stage

Tamburlaine. Yale University, 1919.

Tamburlaine, directed by Tyrone Guthrie, with Donald Wolfit as Tamburlaine. The Old Vic, 1951.

Doctor Faustus, co-directed by Orson Welles and John Houseman, with Welles as Faustus and Jack Carter as Mephistopheles. Maxine Elliott's Theater, 1937.

Doctor Faustus, directed by Adrian Noble. Royal Exchange, 1981.

Edward II, directed by Toby Robertson, with John Barton as Edward. Cambridge, 1951.

Edward II, directed by Toby Robertson, with Derek Jacobi as Edward. Cambridge, 1958.

Edward II, directed by Toby Robertson, with Ian McKellen as Edward. Assembly Rooms, 1969.

Edward II, directed by Jim Stone, Washington Stage Company, 1993;

Edward II, directed by Jozsef Ruszt. Budapest, 1998;

Edward II, directed by Michael Grandage, with Joseph Fiennes as Edward. Crucible Theater, 2001.

The Massacre in Paris, directed by Patrice Chéreau. France, 1972.

Stage adaptations

Edward II, Phoenix Society, London, 1923.

Leben Eduards des Zweiten von England, by Bertolt Brecht (the first play he directed). Munich Chamber Theatre, Germany, 1924.

The Life of Edward II of England, by Marlowe and Bertold Brecht, directed by Frank Dunlop. National Theater, 1968.

Edward II adapted as a ballet, choreographed by David Bintley. Stuttgart Ballet, 1995.

Doctor Faustus, additional text by Colin Teevan, directed by Jamie Lloyd, with Kit Harington as Faustus. Duke of York's Theater, 2016.

Faustus, That Damned Woman by Chris Bush, directed by Caroline Byrne. Lyric Theater, 2020.

Film

Doctor Faustus, based on Nevill Coghill's 1965 production, was adapted for Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, in 1967.

Edward II, directed by Derek Jarman, 1991.

Faust, with some Marlowe dialogue, directed by Jan Švankmajer, 1994.

Notes

 "Christopher Marlowe was baptized as 'Marlow,' but he spelled his name 'Marley' in his one known surviving signature."

 "During Marlowe's lifetime, the popularity of his plays, Robert Greene's unintentionally elevating remarks about him as a dramatist in A Groatsworth of Wit, including the designation “famous,” and the many imitations of Tamburlaine suggest that he was for a brief time considered England's foremost dramatist." Logan also suggests consulting the business diary of Philip Henslowe, which is traditionally used by theatre historians to determine the popularity of Marlowe's plays.

 No birth records, only baptismal records, have been found for Marlowe and Shakespeare, therefore any reference to a birthdate for either man probably refers to the date of their baptism.

 "…as one of the most influential current critics, Stephen Greenblatt frets, Marlowe's 'cruel, aggressive plays' seem to reflect a life also lived on the edge: 'a courting of disaster as reckless as any that he depicted on stage'."

 The earliest record of Marlowe at The King's School is their payment for his scholarship of 1578/79, but Nicholl notes this was "unusually late" to start as a student and proposes he could have begun school earlier as a "fee-paying pupil".

 It is known that some poorer students worked as laborers in the Corpus Christi College chapel, then under construction, and were paid by the college with extra food. It has been suggested this may be the reason for the sums noted in Marlowe's entry in the buttery accounts.

 He was described by Arbella's guardian, the Countess of Shrewsbury, as having hoped for an annuity of some £40 from Arbella, his being "so much damnified (i.e. having lost this much) by leaving the University."

 The so-called 'Remembrances' against Richard Cholmeley.

 J. R. Mulryne states in his ODNB article that the document was identified in the 20th century as transcripts from John Proctour's The Fall of the Late Arian (1549).

 "Useful research has been stimulated by the infinitesimally thin possibility that Marlowe did not die when we think he did. ... History holds its doors open."

 Performing company is listed on the title page of the 1590 Octavo. Henslowe's diary first lists Tamburlaine performances in 1593, so the original playhouse is unknown.