Christopher Marlowe

Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) was born in Canterbury, the son of a shoemaker, and educated at the King's School there and at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where his frequent absences suggest government service, later confirmed by a Privy Council letter crediting him with unspecified work "touching the benefit of his country." Tamburlaine the Great (c. 1587) made blank verse the language of the London stage; Doctor Faustus, The Jew of Malta, Edward II and the unfinished narrative poem Hero and Leander followed within a few crowded years. In May 1593 he was summoned before the Privy Council amid charges of atheism and blasphemy; on 30 May, at a house in Deptford, he was stabbed to death by Ingram Frizer in a dispute over a bill, and an inquest returned a verdict of self-defence. He was twenty-nine.