William Shakespeare wasn’t the only well known and influential dramatist in Elizabethan England. There was also Christopher (Kit) Marlowe, who was baptized February 26, 1564 in Canterbury, England. Marlowe and Shakespeare were baptized the same year, and it’s assumed that they were born shortly before being baptized, since that was the custom at the time. We don’t really know when either of them was born; for some reason nobody thought that was particularly important back then. Evidently the tradition of “birthday celebrations” came later. Marlowe achieved popular success as a playwright first, and many scholars think that Shakespeare initially copied Marlowe’s techniques, including blank verse and some of the themes in his plays.
Marlowe did not live a long life; he died at just 29, in circumstances that are still mysterious. He was the second of nine children in a shoemaker’s family. He was given a scholarship to Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree when he was about 20. He theoretically earned a Master’s degree at the same time, but the college didn’t award it because they were afraid he intended to go to France to become a Roman Catholic priest. That was very much frowned upon in 1580s England. There was Catholic-versus-Protestant fighting all over Europe, and to try to keep it from spreading to her country, Queen Elizabeth had effectively outlawed Catholicism and passed a law against any English citizen joining the Catholic church.
Whatever Marlowe had intended, he didn’t go to France, and he did receive his Master’s degree. But only after the Queen’s Privy Council (sort of her cabinet of advisors) intervened on his behalf. And that’s one of the mysteries of Marlow — how did the Privy Council even know about the son of a shoemaker from Canterbury? There is a surviving set of minutes from the Council that vaguely refers to Marlowe having been “in matters touching the benefit of his country.” That kind of language was sometimes used in relations to secret agents, but there’s nothing specific about what Marlowe might have been up to.
Similarly, we don’t know very much about Marlowe’s adult life. There are brief mentions in official records and legal documents, so it’s known that he did exist, but there are no details. He’s been called a spy, a brawler, a heretic, a magician, a duellist, a “tobacco user,” a counterfeiter, and even a “rakehell.” “Rakehell” basically meant a hellraiser and womanizer. But it’s all guesswork. One bit of evidence in favor of him being a government spy is that between 1584 and 1585 he violated college rules by having several long, unexplained absences, but evidently no disciplinary action was taken. Also, what records exist of his purchases at college show that he was spending a lot more on food and drink than he should have been able to afford.
Marlowe got embroiled in some sort of legal dispute that started with his colleague Thomas Kyd in 1593. Somebody had written a “heretical tract,” and it was found in Kyd’s rooms. Kyd claimed it was Marlowe’s. The Privy Council issued an arrest warrant for Marlowe, and he presented himself on May 20, but there was no Council meeting that day. It’s not clear what happened next, but just ten days later he was killed. There are several stories about how that happened; it might have been a fight, it might have been an assassination (and there are any number of speculations about who might have ordered it), and there’s even one claim that the whole thing was faked and Marlowe escaped to (somewhere) and lived under an assumed name. Which we don’t know, but some people have always suspected that the assumed name was “William Shakespeare.”
Might be Marlowe when he was in college.
Definitely Shakespeare in 1611, by John Taylor
