CHRISTOPHER, the "Kit Marlowe" of Elizabethan wits and poets, was born at Canterbury in 1564. His birth is registered under the date of February 26, so that he was not two months older than his great contemporary in the drama, Shakspeare. Marlowe's father was a shoemaker, but he had interest enough to obtain for his son admission into King's School, Canterbury, which insured him five years' liberal education and a sum of L4 per annum, equal to L20 of our present money. He was entered as a pensioner of Bennet College, Cambridge, March 17, 1581, and took his degree of M.A. in 1587. Before this time Marlowe had written the first part of his tragedy of Tamburlaine, which was attacked in 1587 by Greene and Nash as an attempt to "outbrave better pens with the swelling bombast of blank verse." In the prologue to his play Marlowe had challenged attention to his innovation:

"From jigging veins of rhyming mother-wit, And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay, We'll lead you to the stately tent of war, Where thou shalt hear the Scythian Tamburlaine Threatening the world with high astounding terms."

Marlowe kept his word with the audience. The tragedy is full of extravagant scenes in Persia, Scythia, Morocco, &c., in which Tamburlaine is drawn in a chariot to which captive kings are harnessed, and even death is represented as afraid to face the conqueror! There is great power of expression, and some gorgeous local painting, in the drama, and its success was unprecedented. A second part was soon produced, and both were printed in 1590. Tamburlaine was followed by the Tragical History of the Life and Death of Dr Faustus, the Massacre at Paris, the Rich Jew of Malta, and the Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second. Marlowe also aided Nash in another tragedy, Dido Queen of Carthage. Besides his plays, all of which were highly successful, Marlowe translated part of the poem of Hero and Leander, from Musaeus (afterwards completed by Chapman), the first book of Lucrece, and Ovid's Elegies,—the last in so licentious a style that it was burned by order of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The beautiful little pastoral song, "Come live with me, and be my love," quoted in Izaak Walton's Angler, was also of Marlowe's composition. He had thus not only the tragic pomp and "mighty line" of the dramatic muse, but the gentler graces of the poet and lover of nature. His chief strength, however, consisted in depicting the passions—in awakening terror, pity, grief, and remorse, which, before his day, were unknown to the English stage. The latter scenes of Faustus, and the death-scene of Edward II., are unsurpassed, even in Shakspeare, for their strong interest and sublimity. Passages of fine poetical and rhetorical beauty also relieve his darker delineations of character and daring flights of imagination; and there is little doubt that, if Marlowe had lived till his powers had been chastened and matured, Shakspeare might for once have found a rival. But Marlowe was wild and dissipated, entertaining atheistical opinions, according to his wretched associate in debauchery, Robert Greene, and numerous zealots; and he was cut off by a violent death when little more than twenty-nine years of age. One Francis Archer, a serving-man, and rival in Marlowe's "lewd love," as Meres states, had invited him to a feast at Deptford. A quarrel probably arose, for Marlowe attempted to stab his host with his dagger, while the other seized him by the wrist, and turned the dagger so that it entered Marlowe's eye, and pierced him to the brain. He died shortly afterwards, June 16, 1593.

It is usual to term Marlowe the precursor of Shakspeare. He had the priority in the use of sonorous and energetic blank verse. They were, however, of the same age; and as the great dramatist had produced at least twelve of his original plays before 1598, it is natural to infer that he had begun to write some time before Marlowe's death in 1593. He may have been engaged even as early as 1587, when Tamburlaine appeared, in adapting his historical dramas of Henry VI. and Richard III., and the Taming of the Shrew; all which are modelled so closely on the old plays that above 2000 lines have been appropriated entire by Shakspeare. Many passages in these old plays are also found in Marlowe's Edward II. Stage effect was then chiefly studied; the plays were produced to be acted, not read; and so many additions were made—at least to the inferior dramas—by subsequent writers engaged by the managers, that considerable uncertainty hangs over their literary history. That Shakspeare had at first "beautified" himself by "feathers" taken from Greene or Marlowe, or both, we have shown by extracts given in the life of Greene; but his style—the garb, as it were, of his unapproachable genius—was soon distinctly formed, and the characteristics of Marlowe are also manifest in his best plays. The individuality of either cannot be mistaken; and Marlowe, however inferior, has the striking merit of originality and command of the grander elements of tragedy.