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Marlowe Essay, Research Paper

Christopher Marlowe: what did he contribute to English literature and how is his writing reflective of the style of the times?

Christopher Marlowe contributed greatly to English literature. He developed a new metre which has become one of the most popular in English literary history, and he revitalised a dying form of English drama. His short life was apparently violent and the m

an himself was supposedly of a volatile temperament, yet he managed to write some of the most delicate and beautiful works on record. His writing is representative of the spirit of the Elizabethan literature in his attitude towards religion, his choice of

writing style and in the metre that he used.

Christopher Marlowe was born in 1564 the son of a Canterbury shoemaker and was an exact contemporary of Shakespeare. He was educated at the King’s School, Canterbury, and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He became a BA in 1584 and a MA in 1587. He seem

s to have been of a violent nature and was often in trouble with the law. He made many trips to the continent during his short lifetime and it has been suggested that these visits were related to espionage. In 1589 he was involved in a street brawl which

resulted in a man’s death. An injunction was brought against him three years later by the constable of Shoreditch in relation to that death. In 1592 he was deported from the Netherlands after attempting to issue forged gold coins. On the 30th of May 1593

he was killed by Ingram Frizer in a Deptford tavern after a quarrel over the bill. He was only 29 years old.

During the middle ages, culture and government were influenced greatly by the Church of Rome. The Reformation of Henry VIII (1529-39), and the break of ties with that church meant that the monarch was now supreme governor. This altered the whole balance

of political and religious life, and, consequently, was the balance of literature, art and thought. The literature of Elizabethan England was based on the crown. This period of literature (1558-1625) is outstanding because of its range of interests and vi

tality of language. Drama was the chief form of Elizabethan art because there was an influx of writers trying to emulate speech in their writing, and because of the suddenly expanded vocabulary writers were using (most of these new words came from foreign

languages).

Marlowe’s plays comprise The Tragedy of Dido, Queen of Carthage (possibly with some collaboration from Nashe), Tamburlaine parts one and two, The Jew of Malta, Edward II, Dr. Faustus and The Massacre at Paris. Up to the time of Tamburlaine, written in 15

87-8, there had been a few so-called tragedies. Of these, the best known is Gorboduc, first played in 1561, and apparently popular enough to justify its printing a few years later, although the play was “a lifeless performance, with no character of enough

vitality to stand out from the ruck of the rest of the pasteboards.” With Tamburlaine, Marlowe swept the Elizabethan audiences off their feet.

The Jew of Malta, written after Tamburlaine, begins very strongly, with the main character a commanding figure of the same calibre as Tamburlaine, and the characterisation is better rounded than Tamburlaine’s. Sadly the play comes to pieces after the sec

ond act, and it has been speculated that another less talented author revised the ending.

Edward II is unexpected in that the main character is a neurotic weakling, instead of a dominant figure like Henry V. Even though the characterisation is clumsy, it is yet a dramatist’s treatment, and one can see that Marlowe has moved towards creating a

more developed character. Marlowe thus breathed new life into English tragedy, and paved the way for the greatest English dramatist, Shakespeare. It is quite possible that without Marlowe’s contribution to English tragedy, Shakespeare would never have at

tempted such an unpopular style and he would not be canonised as he is today.

The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus is surely the pinnacle of Marlowe’s achievement. The subject no doubt appealed to Marlowe. In no other play of his, nor in the majority of English literature, is there a scene to match the passionate and tragic inte

nsity of Faustus’ last hour on earth.

Faustus used to be placed as the play immediately following Tamburlaine, yet a discovery by Dr. F. S. Boas led to the conclusion that the play cannot be dated before 1592. This was because the English translation of the German Faustbuch was not published

until 1592, and though it is possible that Marlowe saw the manuscript before publication, the evidence suggests that Dr. Faustus was written after Edward II. This would mean that instead of making a massive jump in quality from Tamburlaine and The Jew of

Malta to Dr. Faustus, and then reverting back to Edward II, Marlowe wrote Tamburlaine and The Jew and felt that he had not really set his genius and so casts back to the type of these earlier plays and far surpasses them in dramatic poetry.

Faustus tells of a man who sells his soul to Satan in return for twenty-four years of knowledge and power. The protagonist, Dr. John Faustus, instead of sharing his gift with others, fritters his years away until the in last scene he realises the grave m

istakes he has made. The scenes where Faustus uses his power for practical jokes are in stark contrast to those where something meaningful happens to him. There are three places in the play where Marlowe’s genius can be seen illuminated by perfection of m

etre and rhetoric; the scene where Faustus conjures up Mephistopheles, the scene in which he speaks to Helen of Troy and Faustus’ last hour on Earth. It has been suggested by some that Marlowe only wrote these

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