Christopher Marlowe

Christopher Marlowe created English tragedy before Shakespeare — and died at twenty-nine in a tavern, a dagger through the eye. Over the bill, perhaps; or perhaps on orders from the intelligence service.

Born in Canterbury in 1564. Cambridge. He worked — presumably — as a secret agent of the Crown, and was several times accused of atheism.

Tamburlaine the Great (1587): a possessed conqueror who says beautiful things about power. The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus: Faustus sells his soul and at the end goes down to hell. The Jew of Malta: greed and hatred.

Blank verse — the unrhymed ten-syllable line — was his invention, which Shakespeare took up and made his own. He died in 1593.