The Life and Works of Christopher Marlowe: Between Theater and Legend

What was the life of Christopher Marlowe?

Christopher Marlowe was son of a poor shoemaker of Canterbury; he however – thanks probably to the pecuniary assistance of some appreciative friend – made excellent studies, first at King’s School., Canterbury, and later at Cambridge University, where he took his degree in 1583. He then joined the Earl of Nottingham’s theatrical company and in 1587 produced his first tragedy: Tamburlaine the Great, written in blank verse. Blank verse is a literary device defined as un-rhyming verse written in iambic pentameter.

The Legend of Faust

His other plays are: The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (1588 or 1589), The Jew of Malta and Edward II. He unfortunately received a stab in a drunken brawl at Deptford, and died from its effects before he was thirty years of age. For his knowledge of human nature, Marlowe stands considerably below Shakespeare, but “the splendour of his imagination and the noble surging of his verse make us forget his want of dept variety.

The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus is founded on the German legend with which the Faust of Goethe has made every one familiar. Faust was a real person who lived at the beginning of the sixteenth century, a magician, astrologer and alchemist who was believed to have made a compact with the devil and bartered his soul for all the enjoyments attainable in the world.

The Fate of Faust

The last hour comes, and Faust is brought face to face with his doom, eternal misery. The history of Faust appeared at Frankfurt in 1587 in a small volume known as the Faustbuch; it was soon translated into English, and this translation is the basis on the play of Marlowe, who follows the German legend very closely. The scene quoted below is the final scene of the Tragical history. Faustus has subscribed to the following “deed of gift of body and of soul”