Everything you need to study or teach literature!

Doctor Faustus Author Biography

Born in 1564, the same year as fellow playwright William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe's great dramatic achievements appeared on London's stage a few years before Stratford's favorite son (Shakespeare wrote and worked in Stratford) came to dominate the English stage. In their day, Marlowe's plays marked a highpoint in English drama, particularly because he first successfully introduced blank verse mto tragedy. Blank verse is written in poetic stanzas marked by Iambic Pentameter (each line has ten syllables with accents on every second beat); the verse is composed without rhyme. In addition, Marlowe's characterization helped develop the Elizabethan concept of tragedy as a way of exploring key moral issues of the Renaissance.

A native of Canterbury, England, and the son of a successful shoemaker, Marlowe received a scholarship enabling him to attend Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and prepare for a church career. He resided at Cambridge from 1581 to 1587, receiving...
(read more)