8-1Marlowe

However, the Privy Council assured the worried university authorities that "in all his actions Christopher Marlowe had behaved himself orderly and discreetly whereby, he had done her Majesty good service." Throughout Marlowe’s life, he was renowned for making enemies and getting in trouble with the law. In fact, his death was caused by a knife wound above the right eye. He was killed by Ingram Frizer. On Anniina Jokinen’s web page titled “Christopher Marlowe,” she said that “The place and the value of Christopher Marlowe as a leader among English poets it would be almost impossible for historical criticism to over-estimate. To none of them all, perhaps, have so many of the greatest among them been so deeply and so directly indebted. Nor was ever any great writer's influence upon his fellows more utterly and unmixedly an influence for good. He first, and he alone, guided Shakespeare into the right way of work; his music, in which there is no echo of any man's before him, found its own echo in the more prolonged but hardly more exalted harmony of Milton's. He is the greatest discoverer, the most daring and inspired pioneer, in all our poetic literature. Before him there was neither genuine blank verse nor a genuine tragedy in our language. After his arrival the way was prepared, the paths were made straight, for Shakespeare.” Marlowe also created a convention called blank verse. Blank verse is a meter in poetry and plays that became widely used after Marlowe created it. It can be similarly compared to that of free verse, where there is still beats and feet of a stressed and an unstressed not, however, there is no definite pattern of the feet in blank verse. This is one of the many things that inspired Shakespeare. Also, Marlowe was considered to be Shakespeare’s predecessor. Marlowe only had six years drama experience, and soon after Shakespeare’s fame became eminent. Shakespeare used many of the same styles Marlowe used. That is because the two wrote plays for Lord Strange's acting company and influenced each other's work. Even though Marlowe was somewhat of a criminal and thought to be good-looking, he inspired Shakespeare in many ways such as the choice of music in theatrical plays, and his writing style, and without Marlowe, Shakespeare might not mean as much to us today as it currently does.
 * According to the website “The Life of Christopher Marlowe” by Houston Community College System, “ **Christopher Marlowe has been identified as the most important of Shakespeare’s predecessors. 'The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus' remains the most celebrated and most often anthologized of Marlowe's plays.” Faustus is one of Marlowe’s greatest works of drama. It has a great story line pertaining to a Doctor named Faustus who undergoes numerous horrible tragedies, and ends up dying in the end of a horrible death (hence making it a tragedy). But we should start from the beginning. Christopher Marlowe was born on February 6, 1564 in Canterbury England. He was the oldest son of John Marlowe and Katherine Arthur. As a child in the year 1579, Marlowe went to the King’s School of Canterbury. It was here that Marlowe received his experienced education in ways of literature. He studied Greek, Latin, and old Medieval scripts. In 1580, Marlowe went to Corpus Christi College after receiving a scholarship. He studied there for six years, and became even more advanced in terms of literature. However, Marlowe’s years there were marked with long and mysterious absences. Some people thought he was a spy. Also from “The Life of Christopher Marlowe,” The Houston Community College says that “It is now assumed that in some of these periods he was involved in yet undisclosed government service either as a secret agent or as a confidential messenger. The first mention of Marlowe's involvement is some type of espionage mission, perhaps among the English Catholics at Rheims, occurs in a letter from the Queen's Pravacy Council to the University in 1587, asking that Marlowe be granted his master's degree. For it appeared that not only had Christopher Marlowe given up all idea of going into the church, but it was rumored that he intended to join Dr. Allen's Catholic seminary at Rheims."

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