Christopher Marlowe
From Philosopedia
Marlowe, Christopher (26 February 1564 - 30 May 1593)
Often described as being the greatest English playwright before Shakespeare, Marlowe belongs to the genre known in French literature as poète maudit, one of the “accursed poets” who like Rimbaud, Verlaine, Poe, or Dylan Thomas, went to the “bad.”
Marlowe is known for The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (c. 1588). In it, and in exchange for twenty-four years of power and pleasure, Faust forfeits his soul to Mephistopheles, a theme also used by Goethe, Charles François Gounod, Thomas Mann, Steven Vincent Benét, and others. On the subject of religion, Marlowe wrote,
- I count religion but a childish toy, and hold there is no sin but ignorance.
- Religion hides many mischiefs from suspicion.
- Both law and physic are for petty wits.
- Divinity is basest of the three,
- Unpleasant, harsh, contemptible, and vile.
Marlowe was a member of “the School of Night,” a group of freethinking intellectuals. As for his atheism, in Doctor Faustus Marlowe makes Mephistopheles affirm that “Hell hath no limits . . . but where we are is hell,” which is a common view today but was original in his time.
J. M. Robertson wrote that, privately, Marlowe is said to have gone into much more detail as to his unbelief. For example, he claimed that Jesus had sex with his disciple John: “Christ did love him with an extraordinary love,” he wrote. In Edward II, Marlowe wrote about the 14th-century British king who was killed in part because he lavished so many royal favors on his male lover.
His death before he reached the age of thirty was caused by accidental manslaughter, for which Marlowe himself was to blame. In a tavern brawl, Marlowe when only twenty-nine was stabbed in the eye and killed, allegedly in a quarrel over a boy. Characteristically, he died swearing.
Marlowe once had written, “All they that love not tobacco and boys are fools.” Charles Nicholl, in The Reckoning, The Murder of Christopher Marlowe (1994), contends that Marlowe’s death was not an accidental killing that involved a youth, that it was an act of murder which resulted from Marlowe’s political and intelligence affiliations. Nicoll suggests that when efforts to slander Marlowe as a dangerous atheist failed, it was Nicholas Skeres, not the man who claimed he had killed Marlowe in self defense - Ingram Frizer - who was the villain responsible for Marlowe’s death. Skeres allegedly worked for a faction which supported the Earl of Essex and wished to discredit Marlowe as a way of discrediting Marlowe’s friend Sir Walter Raleigh.
Marlowe lived at a time when personal fighting and duels were common. The longevity of writers and poets who were his contemporaries was short - as A. L. Rowse has pointed out, George Peele died of syphilis, Robert Greene was horribly diseased, and both Thomas Kyd and Thomas Nashe died in their thirties.
Within a few years of Marlowe’s death, Ben Jonson would duel and kill the well-known actor Gabriel Spencer. Although further specific evidence is lacking for his reputed atheism, Marlowe admittedly had an eventful death.
{CE; FFRF; GL; JM; JMR; JMRH; RAT; PUT; RE; TYD}
