ABSTRACT

Christopher Marlowe was born two months before Shakespeare and was baptized in St. George's Parish, Canterbury, on February 26, 1564; he was killed in Deptford just outside London on May 30, 1593 by a knife wound in his head. Between these dates and geographical points he lived a life obscured, certainly, by a lack of records, but not without sufficient data recording his public acts, pronouncements, and meteoric career for us to draw some educated guesses about the kind of person he was and the sort of life he lived. 1

Canterbury is a town unique in its religious importance to England, its great Cathedral being the seat of the national church. In Marlowe's day, the city's visiting pilgrims and its refugees from the Protestant low countries and France, as well as the influx of people and goods from the port at Dover, made for a life more cosmopolitan and informed than that of Shakespeare's Stratford, a quiet market town. Surely Marlowe also must have come to sense the influence and political power of Canterbury Cathedral, which stood only a few streets from his home (Wraight and Stem 5).