FR

Biographical Information
• Born in Canterbury in 1564
(2 months before
Shakespeare)
• Son of a shoemaker
• Brilliant student
• Earned a scholarship and
studied the Bible, theology,
philosophy, and history at
Cambridge
• Left college to carry out a
secret mission for the
government – even today the
exact nature of his mission is
not known
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•Cambridge life was a strange

juxtaposition of secular and spiritual.
•Studied books that lead them towards
the pleasures of the world, yet the
students themselves lived essentially
like medieval monks
• Ex: simple fun like swimming was severely
punished
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after College
• Rather than taking Holy
Orders, (Cambridge
prepared all of its
students to be clergymen
or schoolmasters)
Marlowe traveled to
London to become a
dramatist.
• Wrote plays in blank
verse and had his first
play, Tamburlaine the
Great performed in 1587.
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A TroubleD Life?
•In 1589, Marlowe spent two weeks in jail
having been charged with the murder of
William Bradley. He was acquitted.
•In 1592, Marlowe had an injunction
brought against him for killing a man in a
street fight.
•Marlowe was deported from the
Netherlands for counterfeiting gold coins.
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Major Writings
•His plays:
•written in blank verse
•Contained villain-heroes
•influenced all subsequent
drama including the great
Bard himself.
•The Jew of Malta is a
parody of Machiavelli*.
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His death
•The supposed facts:
• On Wednesday, May 30, 1593, Marlowe (age
29) and his friend Ingram Frizer began
arguing over paying their bill at a tavern in
Deptford. Marlowe, enraged, grabbed
Frizer’s dagger and struck him twice in the
head with it. The two struggled and Frizer
regained control of his dagger and stabbed
Marlowe twice in his head. One stab proved
mortal as it entered Marlowe just above his
right eye-ball.
Is to dispute well logic's chiefest end?
Affords this art no greater miracle?
Then read no more, thou has attained
the end.
A greater subject fitteth Faustus' wit.
The end of physic is our body's health.
Why Faustus, hast thou not attained that
end? [...]
Couldst thou make men to live eternally,
Or, being dead, raise them to life again,
Then this profession were to be
esteemed.
Physic farewell!
Why then belike we must sin,
And so consequently die.
Ay, we must die an everlasting death.
What doctrine call you this? Che sara,
sara
What will be, shall be! Divinity, adieu!
These metaphysics of magicians,
And necromantic books are heavenly!
Regard his hellish fall,
Whose fiendful fortune may exhort the
wise
Only to wonder at unlawful things:
Whose deepness doth entice such
forward wits
To practice more than heavenly power
permits.
 CATHOLICS
Believed the Pope to be the
head of the Christian Church.
Believed the Pope was
infallible (couldn’t be wrong).
Believed in Transubstantiation – that the bread
and wine of the Mass literally turned into the
body and blood of Christ in the mouth: you
were literally eating Him.
Believed that your soul could be saved by
doing ‘good works’ – everything good was
weighed up against everything bad you did in
life, and depending which way the balance fell
you either went to Heaven, to Purgatory for a
bit, or to Hell.
Believed in Free Will – ever since
the moment in Eden when Adam
and Eve chose to disobey God,
humans have had the chance to
make choices about their destiny.
ELIZABETHAN PROTESTANTS
Believed that control of the Church rested with
Royal power: the Queen ruled by the Grace of
God (she still does – look at the inscription on
a £1 coin) and so was in charge of God’s affairs
in that country.
Believed in Papal fallibility: there was no way
the Pope, or any other man, could declare
someone’s sins were forgiven, as no man knows
what’s going on in God’s mind.
Believed in Consubstantiation – the
Communion was celebrated in memory of
Christ, and the Spirit was nearby but the actual
bread and wine remained just that.
Believed that your soul could
only be saved by faith (Sola
Fide – by faith alone).
Believed in some degree of Predestination; at
the extreme, people argued that God (knowing
everything, past present and future) already
knew which souls would be saved, and people
who thought they were in this group viewed
themselves as the Elect, and that they could do
no wrong as they were blessed by God.
Q: Why does Marlowe
deny Faustus salvation at
the end of the play and
what are the
implications of this?