Christopher Marlowe

Born in Canterbury in 1564, Christopher Marlowe studied at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and rose quickly as one of the most exciting writers of the Elizabethan age. Though his life was brief, he became a major force in English drama and is often remembered for the power and sweep of his blank verse.

His best-known works include Doctor Faustus, Tamburlaine, The Jew of Malta, and Edward II, along with the poem Hero and Leander. His writing brought intensity, grandeur, and a new sense of dramatic possibility to the stage, and later writers, including Shakespeare, worked in the shadow of his achievement.

Marlowe died in Deptford in 1593 under violent and still much-discussed circumstances. That early death helped make him a literary mystery, but his reputation rests on the work itself: daring, theatrical, and alive with big questions about power, desire, faith, and ambition.