English writer Christopher Marlowe.

Christopher Marlowe

(1564 - 1593)

Queen Elizabeth’s Privy Council quelled the worries of Cambridge University in 1587 over young Christopher Marlowe’s absences, issuing a statement that he was employed in “matters touching the benefit of his country”; it is the earliest record of his clandestine government service. The poet and playwright, best known for his play The Tragicall History of Dr. Faustus, was denounced variously in his short career: by one man for his “pestilent Machiavellian policy” and by another for supposedly having said, “All they that love not tobacco and boys were fools.” He died in 1593 at the age of twenty-nine from a stab wound. 

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Miscellany

In January 1592, playwright Christopher Marlowe was arrested for counterfeiting in the Netherlands. For making coins of pewter, Marlowe was charged with the crime of petty treason, punishable by death. He was eventually sent back to London, where, a little more than a year later, he was stabbed to death in Deptford.

Voices In Time

c. 1590 | London

Arranging a Deal

Marlowe’s Faustus gives himself over to magic.More

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