Christopher Marlowe

Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) is best-known as being the playwright who created Dr. Faustus, as well as writing the Tamburlaine the Great plays, The Massacre at Paris, The Jew of Malta, and the epic poem Hero and Leander. Evidence suggests he was also a spy for Her Majesty's government, a heretic, a counterfeiter, a homosexual, and an atheist. Who killed him and why? The short answer is Ingram Frizer, allegedly in self-defence. The long answer is much more interesting, representing a five hundred-year-old literary mystery full of intrigue, betrayal, political machinations, and poetry. Born the son of a Canterbury shoemaker in 1564, Marlowe clearly was a bright boy, and attended The King's School in Canterbury on a scholarship, then Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, where he wrote Dido Queen of Carthage. It's from his time at university that we see the first evidence that Marlowe began working as a government spy. Suspicion fell on Marlowe after he travelled to Rheims, the location of a Catholic seminary (and Elizabethan England was brimming with suspicion regarding illicit Catholic activities, particularly given the 1586 Babington Plot involving Mary Queen of Scots...