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Christopher Marlowe
(February 26, 1564 - May 30, 1593) U.K.

Christopher Marlowe

Dramatist and poet

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Born at Canterbury, Kent, England; died at Deptford, London. His father was a shoemaker and his mother was the daughter of a clergy man. He was educated at King's School, Canterbury until he was 15, and then he took a scholarship at Benet (Corpus Christi) College, Cambridge.

While at Cambridge Christopher Marlowe met Thomas Watson who was visiting the university. They became close friends and made plans to live together after Marlowe's studies.

Thomas Watson introduced Christopher Marlowe to Sir Francis Walsingham, the Secretary of State, who operated a network of spies throughout Europe. Marlowe offered his services and he was sent to Rheims where he spied on the Roman Catholic seminary and sent back information on the priests and students who were secretly planning to return to England.

Also while at Cambridge Marlowe met Francis Walsingham's nephew, Thomas, who was then about 17. They became close friends and they often spent time together at Thomas's country house, Scadbury, near Chislehurst, Kent.

Christopher Marlowe moved to London in 1587 and began to write seriously. His plays became popular and he became established as a leading dramatist.

His Tamburlaine the Great was a considerable improvement on any tragedy that had been produced in England. Although blank verse had been used before he gave it strength and variety. He prepared the way for William Shakespeare.

His play Edward II was the first English play to deal openly with homosexuality, and tells the story of the Edward II's love for the French Knight, Piers Gaveston, and their deaths at the hands of enemies. Marlowe also wrote a play about gay King Henry III.

A film adaptation of Christopher Marlowe's play Edward II, was directed by Derek Jarman in 1991. The film is in modern dress and is an attack on current anti-gay prejudices in Britain.

Christopher Marlowe lived a colourful and perhaps reckless life. After Marlowe's death Richard Baines quoted him as saying "all they that love not tobacco and boys are fools". Baines also claimed that Marlowe repeated what seems to have been a common heresy at the time, that Jesus of Nazareth and St. John the evangelist were lovers.

Marlowe was brilliant and well-read; however, his caustic wit, and an impish love of destroying other people's idols, and a reckless and violent nature, made him many enemies.

In 1593 Christopher Marlowe was due to be arrested for treason and perhaps charged with sodomy. However, before this could take place Thomas Walsingham's business manager invited him to dine with him on May 30th at Eleanor Bull's tavern in Deptford, south east London. During the evening Marlowe was killed by stab wounds to the head. At an inquest afterwards it was claimed that the stabbing was the culmination of an argument about the bill. Legend has it that the brawl followed a dispute over a young boy, but it was more likely a result of his work as a spy infiltrating Catholic anti-government groups.

In his short 6-year career as a dramatist, his only competition was Shakespeare, who acknowledged Marlowe's genius and incorporated references to Marlowe into over half his plays, at times lifting entire lines. For instance, the line "The face that launched a thousand ships," describing Helen of Troy, was originally Marlowe's, although it is remembered from Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida.

Marlowe was called the "morning star" of Elizabethan poetry. His surviving works, to one degree or another, contain homoerotic passages of unsurpassed beauty.

Marlowe was known to be a lover of young boys, and he is the first known creator of lists of Queer people!

The mightiest kings have had their minions -
Great Alexander lov'd Hephestion;
The conquering Hector for Hylas wept;
And for Patroclus stern Achilles droop'd.
And not kings only but the wisest men -
The Roman Tully lov'd Octavius;
Grave Socrates wild Alcibiades.

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Read Marlove's lyric The Passionate Shepherd to His Love on his page in our book Famous Homoerotic Poems

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