Christopher Marlowe--the name is also spelled Marly and Marlin in the records--was born in 1564, the son of a well-to-do shoemaker and a clergyman's daughter. He was educated at King's School in his native Canterbury and at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he proceeded B.A. in 1584 and M.A. in 1587. The privy council intervened to see that his employment on some confidential mission for the government, in which he had proved "orderly and discreet," should not put him at a disadvantage in the matter of his M.A. degree.
For the remaining six years of his life there is evidence of exceptional activity. Apparently he continued to serve as a confidential agent for the government; he engaged in the philosophical or theological speculation of a circle centering around Raleigh; he achieved distinction by his non-dramatic verse, of which the unfinishedHero and Leander is the most important example and he became the outstanding dramatist of London, in association chiefly with the Admiral's Company of players. Many details of his life were a source of scandal to some of his contemporaries, and for us are still shrouded in mystery.
In May, 1593, a manuscript was discovered in Kyd's possession which he declared to be Marlowe's left' with Kyd in 1591 when he was in the service of a noble lord for whose players Marlowe was writing. The document--merely a copy of part of a theological treatise already published--though unitarian in nature, was atheistic in the eyes of the orthodox. Testimony as to blasphemous conversations on Marlowe's part was also produced. Before the privy council took definite action about the charges, Marlowe was killed.
Puritan disapproval of his connection with the stage and of his free-thinking perhaps influenced Meres' statement that he was stabbed "by a bawdy serving-man, a rival of his in his lewd love." Records discovered by Hotson merely show that he was stabbed in a tavern in Deptford by Friser, one of three companions who also were, or had been, in the service of the government. The procedure of the coroner's inquest by which Friser was exonerated is regarded by some modern students as regular, by others as an attempt to cover official secrets or even a political assassination. Marlowe was buried on June 1, 1593.
This portrait is believed to be of Christopher Marlowe. It was discovered at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in 1953 and required extensive restoration work.
The age of the sitter and date of the portrait as inscribed in the top-left corner match Marlowe, who was born in February 1564, and who attended the College between 1580 to 1587. The inscription readsANNO DNI AETATIS SVAE 21 1585 -"Aged 21 in 1585".
Beneath this is inscribed the motto, QVOD ME NVTRIT ME DESTRVIT, which translates from the Latin as "that which nourishes me destroys me".
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