Was christopher marlowe gay
First Published in the Sunday Express
Passionate Watcher who Rivalled Shakespeare
Four hundred years after he was stabbed to death in Deptford, South London, Christopher Marlowe is still going tough. His plays are regularly performed. The Royal Shakespeare Organization has had major successes with Dr Faustus, The Jew of Malta and Edward II. Antony Sher is to bring his acclaimed Tamburlaine to the RSC's Barbican Theatre. Derek Jarman's recent film of an alarmingly modern Edward II is already a classic.
And next Sunday (30 May 1993), the anniversary of Marlowe's death, I will unveil a memorial to him outside the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, a queer actor saluting a possibly gay playwright.
For some, the character of the bloke and his death are as fascinating as his plays and poems. On 30 May 1593, after a sunlight of drinking with three friends, Marlowe was stabbed in the eye, with his own dagger. The magistrate acknowledged his killer's "self-defence" plea; but academics ever since own puzzled over that moment which closed the career of the most promising Elizabethan dramatist.
Shakespeare — exactly the same age as Marlowe —
On This Gay Day: Playwright Christopher Marlowe was born in 1564
Was Christopher Marlowe gay?
Christopher Marlowe was an English poet and playwright born in Canterbury in 1564. He is widely considered to be one of the most significant playwrights of the Elizabethan era, along with William Shakespeare.
Marlowe’s works include the plays Tamburlaine the Great, Doctor Faustus, and Edward II, among others. His writing was known for its lyricism, intellectual complexity, and controversial themes.
Marlowe’s life was marked by controversy, and his career was cut compact by his untimely death in 1593. There has been much speculation surrounding Marlowe’s personal experience, particularly regarding his sexuality. Some historians and literary scholars have suggested that Marlowe was queer, based on certain themes and references in his works, as well as various anecdotes about his life.
One of the most known stories about Marlowe concerns his alleged involvement in a barroom brawl in which he stabbed a man in the eye with a dagger. According to some accounts, the brawl was sparked by a dispute over a bill, while others suggest that it was a
A Royal Mystery
On May 31, 1593, England’s greatest playwright lay gone on a tavern floor in Deptford, stabbed through the eye in a brawl about the tab. He was 29.
The inquest was hurried, confused and largely disregarded. Within a few years, the deceased man’s reputation would be eclipsed by the up-and-coming William Shakespeare. Christopher Marlowe’s plays waited centuries for reappraisal.
His life awaited reappraisal, too. Since Marlowe’s rediscovery in the 19th century, biographers have tended to put him in the best possible light. The myth that a excellent poet is a great man dies hard.
Enter Stanford English professor David Riggs, author of The Earth of Christopher Marlowe (Faber & Faber, 2004). With his portrait of an “intellectual radical and social dissident,” he is out to rock the boat.
“At the time of his death, Marlowe was a more prominent playwright than Shakespeare,” Riggs notes. By then, “Shakespeare had written Henry VI and Titus Andronicus, and they aren’t as good as Tambourlaine or Doctor Faustus.”
In addition to being a revolutionary playwright, Marlowe was a blasphemer, a homosexual, a secret agent, “someone emotionally attached with a w
The King's School, 25 The Precincts, Canterbury CT1 2ES, Regno Unito
University of Cambridge, 4 Mill Ln, Cambridge CB2 1RZ
Norton Folgate, London EC2A, UK
St Nicholas, Deptford Green, London SE8 3DQ, Regno Unito
Westminster Abbey, 20 Deans Yd, Westminster, London SW1P 3PA, Regno Unito
Christopher Marlowe,[1][2] also established as Kit Marlowe (2 February 1564 - 30 May 1593), was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe was the main Elizabethan tragedian of his day.[3] He greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was born in the same year as Marlowe and who rose to become the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright after Marlowe's mysterious early death. Marlowe's plays are known for the apply of blank verse and their overreaching protagonists. The fight in Romeo and Juliet among Mercutio, Tybalt and Romeo may possess been based on that of Marlow, Bradley and Watson, and the character of Mercutio may be a portrait of Marlowe: impulsive, hot-tempered and passionate.
A warrant was issued for Marlowe's arrest on 18 May 1593. No reason was given for it, though it was mind to be connected to allegations of blasphem