Marlowe, Christopher

(1564-1593)

   The son of a shoemaker, of Canterbury, Kent, he graduated B.A. in 1583-84 and M.A. in 1587 from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He went to London in 1587, where he became an actor and dramatist for the Lord Admiral's Company. As a dramatist only Shakespeare was greater than Marlowe. His death, at the age of twenty-nine, is still surrounded by mystery and myth. Some say he was assassinated as a spy, others that he was killed in a drunken brawl. Some of his tragedies (which contain rhyme and blank verse) and poetry publications: Tamburlaine, ?1590. The First Book of Lucan's Pharsalia, 1593. Dido, Queen of Carthage, 1594. Edward 11, 1594. Hero and Leander, 1598. The Jew of Malta, ?1633. Faustus, 1694. The Massacre of Paris, unknown date. All Ovid's Elegies unknown date.

   Some (most of the titles are in Latin) of his other elgeies/poems: "Ad Cypassim Ancillam Corinna," "De Iunonis Festo," "Hero and Leander," "In Mortem Psittaci," "In Winter Woe Befell Me," "Quod Pro Gigantomachia Amores Scribere Sit Coactus," "The Atheist's Tragedy," "The Passionate Sheepheard to His Loue."

   Sources: A Treasury of Great Poems: English and American. Louis Untermeyer, ed. Simon and Schuster, 1955. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Life and Works of Christopher Marlowe (http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/marlowe.htm). Silver Poets of the Sixteenth Century. Gerald Bullett, ed. J.M. Dent, 1947. The CherryTree. Geoffrey Grigson, ed. Phoenix House, 1959. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Complete Poems and Translations of Christopher Marlowe. Stephen Orgel, ed. Penguin Books, 1971. The Complete Works of C.S. Calverley. G. Bell and Sons, 1926 (for translations of some of Marlowe's Latin poems). The Faber Book of English History in Verse. Kenneth Baker, ed. Faber and Faber, 1988. The Oxford Book of Classical Verse in Translation. Adrian Poole and Jeremy Maule, eds., 1995. The Oxford Book of Death. D.J. Enright, ed. Oxford University Press, 1987. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. The Penguin Book of Renaissance Verse 1509-1659. David Norbrook, ed. Penguin Books, 1992.