Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) was an Elizabethan playwright, poet, and translator. His life remains a great mystery surrounded by all sorts of legends. He was born in Canterbury the same year as William Shakespeare into a prosperous middle-class family. He studied at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1584 and completed his Master's in 1587. Initially, Cambridge authorities were reluctant to grant him the degree because they suspected he had converted to Catholicism, but the Queen's Privy Council intervened on his behalf, emphasizing that Marlowe "had rendered good service to Her Majesty" and had been working for the "benefit of the country." However, the exact nature of the service he provided to the crown is unknown. After his years in Cambridge, Marlowe moved to London where he led a dark and turbulent life (he had a couple of run-ins with the law and had a bad reputation) while trying to make his way as a playwright.
He is the author of seven plays and an incomplete poem: the two parts of Tamburlaine the Great, The Jew of Malta, Edward II, Doctor Faustus, Dido, Queen of Carthage, and The Massacre at Paris, as well as the poem Hero and Leander. In 1593, at just twenty-nine years old, he was arrested and accused of being an atheist. He did not go to prison, and before his case was judged, he died during a brawl in a tavern in Deptford.
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