Transcript Christopher Marlowe

Christopher
Marlowe
AP English
Shauna Rynn Waters
Bio Basics
• Born in Canterbury on February 26, 1564
• Father, John, was a cobbler
– Same artisan class as Shakespeare
• Went to King’s School
– Earned a Matthew Parker scholarship
– Studied at Cambridge from 1580 – 1587
– Earned his MA
The Secret Agent
• Was recruited by Sir Francis Walsingham as a
part-time secret service agent for Elizabeth I
– Many bright, patriotic young men were recruited to
serve
• This was an age of Catholic versus Protestant
political intrigue
– Assassinations and espionage
• Documents show he was a very important agent
His Death at Deptford
• May 30, 1593
– Murder said to have been committed in the private
room of house in Deptford
• Common legend calls it a tavern
– Puritans gloated that it was a judgment from God
– Marlowe had been arrested on May 20th.
• Charged with Atheism
– Heresy
– Burning at the stake
• Was released with a lesser sentence
Death at Deptford (cont.)
• Marlowe was with friends and acquaintances
of Walsingham
• An argument erupted
• Marlowe drew the dagger of Ingram Frizer
– tried to stab Frizer
• Instead, received fatal stab wound over his
right eye
• Some speculate his death to be a government
plot
– Frizer was released without trial within 28 days of
the brawl
Marlowe’s Works
• Heroic themes
– A great personality who is destroyed by his own
passion and ambition
– Never merely sensational
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Strongly influenced Shakespeare
Greatest English dramatist before Shakespeare
1587 – Tamburlaine the Great
1588 – Doctor Faustus
1589 – The Jew of Malta
Works, cont.
• Marlowe was a true original
• Created and mastered the “theatrical
language” of blank verse
– Unrhymed iambic pentameter
• Capable of portraying emotion without the
restrictions of earlier more rigid forms
Doctor Faustus
• Probably written in
1592
• Reinvention of an old
motif
– Individual who sells his or
her soul to the devil for
knowledge
• Based on a real person
– Johannes Faustus
– Disreputable German
astrologer (early
1500’s)
More about Doctor Faustus
• Immediate source is a German
work from 1587
• Marlowe’s Faustus is the first
famous version of the story
• Later, Romantic writers would
revisit it
– Goethe
• “Faustian bargain” – any deal
made for short-term gain with
great costs in the long run
Elements of the Play
• The play and the story itself contain elements
which are holdovers from a medieval tradition,
the morality play:
– psychomachia, the battle over the spirit, here
waged by a Good Angel and a Bad Angel;
– the parade of the Seven Deadly Sins;
– the potential for salvation, which exists until he
finally succumbs to despair and gives up all hope
of being able to repent.