Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction: Marlowe in the twenty-first century
- 2 Marlowe’s life
- 3 Marlovian texts and authorship
- 4 Marlowe and style
- 5 Marlowe and the politics of religion
- 6 Marlowe and the English literary scene
- 7 Marlowe’s poems and classicism
- 8 Tamburlaine the Great, Parts One and Two
- 9 The Jew of Malta
- 10 Edward II
- 11 Doctor Faustus
- 12 Dido, Queen of Carthage and The Massacre at Paris
- 13 Tragedy, patronage, and power
- 14 Geography and identity in Marlowe
- 15 Marlowe’s men and women
- 16 Marlowe in theatre and film
- 17 Marlowe’s reception and influence
- Reference Works
- Index
- Series list
- Plate section
17 - Marlowe’s reception and influence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
- Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction: Marlowe in the twenty-first century
- 2 Marlowe’s life
- 3 Marlovian texts and authorship
- 4 Marlowe and style
- 5 Marlowe and the politics of religion
- 6 Marlowe and the English literary scene
- 7 Marlowe’s poems and classicism
- 8 Tamburlaine the Great, Parts One and Two
- 9 The Jew of Malta
- 10 Edward II
- 11 Doctor Faustus
- 12 Dido, Queen of Carthage and The Massacre at Paris
- 13 Tragedy, patronage, and power
- 14 Geography and identity in Marlowe
- 15 Marlowe’s men and women
- 16 Marlowe in theatre and film
- 17 Marlowe’s reception and influence
- Reference Works
- Index
- Series list
- Plate section
Summary
Marlowe was barely cold before people began the process of trying to make meanings of both his death and life. He was stabbed to death on Wednesday 30 May 1593. On Sunday 23 June 1593, less than a month later, George Peele was paid £3 by the Earl of Northumberland, who may well have known Marlowe personally, for his poem The Honour of the Garter, which praised both Marlowe and his friend Thomas Watson, who had died in late 1592. Four days later, Thursday 27 June, was the date affixed by Marlowe's friend (and possible collaborator) Thomas Nashe to the end of his The Unfortunate Traveller (though it was not published until 1594), which draws a parallel between Marlowe and the notoriously lascivious Italian poet Ludovico Aretino. The Unfortunate Traveller also refers to the supposed necromancer Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and his entertainment for the Emperor Charles V, episodes which seem to be echoed in Doctor Faustus. Indeed, Marlowe seems to have been playing on Nashe's mind, because 8 September saw the entry in the Stationers' Register of his Christ's tears over Jerusalem, which castigates atheism and may have been an attempt to dissociate himself from his dangerous acquaintance.
Meanwhile, on 6 July of the same year, Marlowe’s Edward II had been licensed for publication by William Jones (no known quarto was published until 1594, but there may have been an earlier one which is now lost), and on 28 September Hero and Leander was entered in the Stationers’ Register by John Wolf; it must already have been circulating in manuscript, though, because on 22 October Thomas Edwards’s Narcissus, praising Watson and Marlowe and showing clear signs of knowledge of Hero and Leander, was entered in the Stationers’ Register, also by John Wolf.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe , pp. 282 - 296Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004
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