An anonymous portrait in, believed to show Christopher Marlowe. Born Baptised 26 February 1564,, Died 30 May 1593 (aged 29), Kent, England Occupation Playwright, poet Language Nationality English Alma mater Period 1564–93 Literary movement Notable works;;; Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe ( 26 February 1564 – 30 May 1593), was an English, and of the. Marlowe was the foremost of his day. He greatly influenced, who was born in the same year as Marlowe and who rose to become the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright after Marlowe's mysterious early death.
Marlowe's plays are known for the use of and their overreaching. A warrant was issued for Marlowe's arrest on 18 May 1593. No reason was given for it, though it was thought to be connected to allegations of blasphemy—a manuscript believed to have been written by Marlowe was said to contain 'vile heretical conceipts'. On 20 May, he was brought to the court to attend upon the for questioning. There is no record of their having met that day, however, and he was commanded to attend upon them each day thereafter until 'licensed to the contrary'.
Ten days later, he was stabbed to death. Whether or not the stabbing was connected to his arrest remains unknown.
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Contents • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Early life [ ] Marlowe was born in to shoemaker John Marlowe and his wife Catherine. His date of birth is not known, but he was baptised on 26 February 1564, and is likely to have been born a few days before. Thus, he was just two months older than his contemporary, who was baptised on 26 April 1564 in. Marlowe attended in Canterbury (where a is now named after him) and, where he studied on a scholarship and received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1584. In 1587, the university hesitated to award him his Master of Arts degree because of a rumour that he intended to go to the English college at, presumably to prepare for ordination as a priest. However, his degree was awarded on schedule when the intervened on his behalf, commending him for his 'faithful dealing' and 'good service' to. The nature of Marlowe's service was not specified by the Council, but its letter to the Cambridge authorities has provoked much speculation, notably the theory that Marlowe was operating as a secret agent working for Sir 's intelligence service.
No direct evidence supports this theory, although the Council's letter is evidence that Marlowe had served the government in some secret capacity. Literary career [ ]. The corner of Old Court of, where Marlowe stayed during his studies. Of the dramas attributed to Marlowe, is believed to have been his first. It was performed by the, a company of boy actors, between 1587 and 1593.
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The play was first published in 1594; the title page attributes the play to Marlowe and. Marlowe's first play performed on the regular stage in London, in 1587, was, about the conqueror (Tamerlane), who rises from shepherd to warlord. It is among the first English plays in blank verse, and, with 's, generally is considered the beginning of the mature phase of the. Tamburlaine was a success, and was followed with Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. The two parts of Tamburlaine were published in 1590; all Marlowe's other works were published posthumously. The sequence of the writing of his other four plays is unknown; all deal with controversial themes. • (first published as The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew of Malta), about the Jew Barabas' barbarous revenge against the city authorities, has a prologue delivered by a character representing.
It was probably written in 1589 or 1590, and was first performed in 1592. It was a success, and remained popular for the next fifty years. The play was entered in the on 17 May 1594, but the earliest surviving printed edition is from 1633. • is an English history play about the deposition of King by his barons and the Queen, who resent the undue influence the king's favourites have in court and state affairs. The play was entered into the on 6 July 1593, five weeks after Marlowe's death.
The full title of the earliest extant edition, of 1594, is The troublesome reigne and lamentable death of Edward the second, King of England, with the tragicall fall of proud Mortimer. • is a short and luridly written work, the only surviving text of which was probably a of the original performance text, portraying the events of the in 1572, which English Protestants invoked as the blackest example of Catholic treachery. It features the silent 'English Agent', whom subsequent tradition has identified with Marlowe himself and his connections to the secret service. The Massacre at Paris is considered his most dangerous play, as agitators in London seized on its theme to advocate the murders of refugees from the and, indeed, it warns of this possibility in its last scene. Its full title was The Massacre at Paris: With the Death of the Duke of Guise.
• (or The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus), based on the German, was the first dramatised version of the legend of a scholar's dealing with the devil. While versions of 'The Devil's Pact' can be traced back to the 4th century, Marlowe deviates significantly by having his hero unable to 'burn his books' or repent to a merciful God in order to have his contract annulled at the end of the play. Marlowe's protagonist is instead carried off by demons, and in the 1616 quarto his mangled corpse is found by several scholars. Doctor Faustus is a textual problem for scholars as two versions of the play exist: the 1604, also known as the A text, and the 1616 quarto or B text.
Both were published after Marlowe's death. Scholars have disagreed which text is more representative of Marlowe's original, and some editions are based on a combination of the two.
The latest scholarly consensus (as of the late 20th century) holds the A text is more representative because it contains irregular character names and idiosyncratic spelling, which are believed to reflect a text based on the author's handwritten manuscript, or '.' The B text, in comparison, was highly edited, censored because of shifting theater laws regarding religious words onstage, and contains several additional scenes which scholars believe to be the additions of other playwrights, particularly and William Bird ( alias Borne). Marlowe's plays were enormously successful, thanks in part, no doubt, to the imposing stage presence of. Alleyn was unusually tall for the time, and the haughty roles of Tamburlaine, Faustus, and Barabas were probably written especially for him. Marlowe's plays were the foundation of the repertoire of Alleyn's company, the, throughout the 1590s. Marlowe also wrote the poem (published in 1598, and with a continuation by the same year), the popular lyric, and translations of 's and the first book of 's.
In 1599, his translation of was banned and copies publicly burned as part of 's crackdown on offensive material. Marlowe has been credited in the series as co-author of the three plays, though some scholars doubt any actual collaboration. Legend [ ] As with other writers of the period, little is known about Marlowe. What evidence there is can be found in legal records and other official documents. This has not stopped writers of both fiction and non-fiction from speculating about his activities and character. Marlowe has often been described as a spy, a brawler, and a heretic, as well as a 'magician', 'duellist', 'tobacco-user', 'counterfeiter', and '.
Downie and Constance Kuriyama have argued against the more lurid speculation, but remarked, 'it seems absurd to dismiss all of these Elizabethan rumours and accusations as 'the Marlowe myth '. Title page of the earliest published text of (1594) Marlowe is alleged to have been a government spy ('s 2005 biography even had 'Spy' in its title ). The author speculates this was the case and suggests that Marlowe's recruitment took place when he was at Cambridge. As noted above, in 1587 the Privy Council ordered the University of Cambridge to award Marlowe his degree of Master of Arts, denying rumours that he intended to go to the English Catholic college in Rheims, saying instead that he had been engaged in unspecified 'affaires' on 'matters touching the benefit of his country'. Surviving college records from the period also indicate that Marlowe had had a series of unusually lengthy absences from the university – much longer than permitted by university regulations – that began in the academic year 1584–1585. Surviving college (provisions store) accounts indicate he began spending lavishly on food and drink during the periods he was in attendance – more than he could have afforded on his known scholarship income.
It has sometimes been theorised that Marlowe was the 'Morley' who was tutor to in 1589. This possibility was first raised in a letter by E.
St John Brooks in 1937; in a letter to, John Baker has added that only Marlowe could be Arbella's tutor due to the absence of any other known 'Morley' from the period with an MA and not otherwise occupied. If Marlowe was Arbella's tutor (and some biographers think that the 'Morley' in question may have been a brother of the musician ), it might indicate that he was there as a spy, since Arbella, niece of, and cousin of James VI of Scotland, later, was at the time a strong candidate for the. Dismisses the possibility of this identification, based on surviving legal records which document his 'residence in London between September and December 1589'. Marlowe had been party to a fatal quarrel involving his neighbours and the poet in, and was held in for a fortnight.
In fact the quarrel and his arrest was on 18 September, he was released on bail on 1 October, and he had to attend court – where he was cleared of any wrongdoing – on 3 December, but there is no record of where he was for the intervening two months. In 1592 Marlowe was arrested in the town of (Vlissingen) (then an English ) in the Netherlands for his alleged involvement in the of coins, presumably related to the activities of seditious Catholics. He was sent to be dealt with by the Lord Treasurer () but no charge or imprisonment resulted. This arrest may have disrupted another of Marlowe's spying missions, perhaps by giving the resulting coinage to the Catholic cause.
He was to infiltrate the followers of the active Catholic plotter and report back to Burghley. Arrest and death [ ]. A from Marlowe's writing of (1593). Reproduced from Ms.J.b.8 During his lifetime, Marlowe was reputed to be an which, at that time, held the dangerous implication of being an enemy of God and, by association, the state. With the rise of public fears concerning, or 'School of Atheism' in the late 16th century, accusations of atheism were closely associated with disloyalty to the Protestant monarchy of England. Some modern historians consider that Marlowe's professed atheism, as with his supposed Catholicism, may have been no more than an elaborate and sustained pretence adopted to further his work as a government spy. Contemporary evidence comes from Marlowe's accuser in, an informer called.
The governor of Flushing had reported that each of the men had 'of malice' accused the other of instigating the counterfeiting, and of intending to go over to the Catholic 'enemy'; such an action was considered atheistic by the. Following Marlowe's arrest in 1593, Baines submitted to the authorities a 'note containing the opinion of one Christopher Marly concerning his damnable judgment of religion, and scorn of God's word.' Baines attributes to Marlowe a total of eighteen items which 'scoff at the pretensions of the and ' such as, 'Christ was a bastard and his mother dishonest [unchaste]', 'the woman of Samaria and her sister were whores and that Christ knew them dishonestly', and, 'St was bedfellow to Christ and leaned always in his bosom' (cf.
), and, 'that he used him as the sinners of '. He also implies that Marlowe had Catholic sympathies. Other passages are merely sceptical in tone: 'he persuades men to atheism, willing them not to be afraid of bugbears and hobgoblins'. Poster for the production of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, New York City (1937) Some critics believe that Marlowe sought to disseminate these views in his work and that he identified with his rebellious and iconoclastic protagonists. However, plays had to be approved by the before they could be performed, and the censorship of publications was under the control of the. Presumably these authorities did not consider any of Marlowe's works to be unacceptable other than the Amores.
Sexuality [ ] Marlowe is frequently claimed to have been homosexual. Others argue that the question of whether an Elizabethan was gay or homosexual in a modern sense is anachronistic. For the Elizabethans, what is often today termed homosexual or bisexual was more likely to be recognised as a sexual act, rather than an exclusive sexual orientation and identity. Some scholars argue that the evidence is inconclusive and that the reports of Marlowe's homosexuality may simply be exaggerated rumours produced after his death.
Richard Baines reported Marlowe as saying: 'All they that love not Tobacco and Boys are fools'. And Eric Rasmussen describe Baines's evidence as 'unreliable testimony' and make the comment: 'These and other testimonials need to be discounted for their exaggeration and for their having been produced under legal circumstances we would regard as a witch-hunt'. One critic,, remarked that he considers there to be 'no evidence for Marlowe's homosexuality at all.' Other scholars, however, point to homosexual themes in Marlowe's writing: in, Marlowe writes of the male youth Leander, 'in his looks were all that men desire' and that when the youth swims to visit Hero at, the sea god becomes sexually excited, '[i]magining that Ganymede, displeas'd, [h]ad left the Heavens. [t]he lusty god embrac'd him, call'd him love.
He watched his arms and, as they opened wide [a]t every stroke, betwixt them would he slide [a]nd steal a kiss. And dive into the water, and there pry [u]pon his breast, his thighs, and every limb.
[a]nd talk of love', while the boy, naive and unaware of Greek love practices, protests, 'You are deceiv'd, I am no woman, I.' Thereat smil'd Neptune.' Contains the following passage supporting homosexual relationships.
The mightiest kings have had their minions; Great loved, The conquering for wept; And for, stern drooped. And not kings only, but the wisest men: The Roman loved, Grave, wild. Marlowe wrote the only play about the life of up to his time, taking the literary discussion of male sexuality much further than his contemporaries. The play was extremely bold, dealing with a star-crossed love story between and.
Though it was common practice at the time to reveal characters as gay to give audiences reason to suspect them as culprits of a given crime, Christopher Marlowe's Edward II is portrayed as a sympathetic character. Reputation among contemporary writers [ ] Whatever the particular focus of modern critics, biographers and novelists, for his contemporaries in the literary world, Marlowe was above all an admired and influential artist.
Within weeks of his death, remembered him as 'Marley, the Muses' darling'; noted that he 'Had in him those brave translunary things / That the first poets had', and wrote of 'Marlowe's mighty line'. Wrote warmly of his friend, 'poor deceased Kit Marlowe'.
So too did the publisher Edward Blount, in the dedication of Hero and Leander to Sir Thomas Walsingham. Among the few contemporary dramatists to say anything negative about Marlowe was the anonymous author of the Cambridge University play (1598) who wrote, 'Pity it is that wit so ill should dwell, / Wit lent from heaven, but vices sent from hell.' The most famous tribute to Marlowe was paid by in, where he not only quotes a line from ('Dead Shepherd, now I find thy saw of might, 'Who ever loved that loved not at first sight? ') but also gives to the clown the words 'When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with the forward child, understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room.' This appears to be a reference to Marlowe's murder which involved a fight over the 'reckoning', the bill, as well as to a line in Marlowe's Jew of Malta – 'Infinite riches in a little room'.
Shakespeare was heavily influenced by Marlowe in his work, as can be seen in the re-using of Marlovian themes in,,, and ( Dido, Jew of Malta, Edward II and Doctor Faustus, respectively). In, after meeting with the travelling actors, Hamlet requests the Player perform a speech about the Trojan War, which at 2.2.429–32 has an echo of Marlowe's. In Shakespeare brings on a character 'Marcade' (three syllables) in conscious acknowledgement of Marlowe's character 'Mercury', also attending the King of Navarre, in Massacre at Paris. The significance, to those of Shakespeare's audience who had read Hero and Leander, was Marlowe's identification of himself with the god. As Shakespeare [ ]. The Muse of Poetry, part of the in Canterbury A in the form of a of The Muse of Poetry by was erected by subscription in Buttermarket, Canterbury in 1891.
In July 2002, a memorial window to Marlowe – a gift of the Marlowe Society – was unveiled in in. Controversially, a question mark was added to the generally accepted date of death. On 25 October 2011 a letter from Paul Edmondson and was published by newspaper, in which they called on the Dean and Chapter to remove the question mark on the grounds that it 'flew in the face of a mass of unimpugnable evidence'.
In 2012, they renewed this call in their e-book Shakespeare Bites Back, adding that it 'denies history', and again the following year in their book Shakespeare Beyond Doubt. Fictional works about Marlowe [ ] • 's novel (1895) was the first book to argue that Marlowe's death was faked —apparently in support of Zeigler's claim that Marlowe was the actual author of, which was written after Marlowe's recorded death. • 's Enter a Spy: The Double Life of Christopher Marlowe (1978), a historical novel. • 's One Dagger For Two (1932), novel which claims that Marlowe was stabbed in a dispute over a woman. • Leo Rost's (1981), was an American staged on. • 's play (1992), about Marlowe's links to the freethinking ' and the young Shakespeare, was performed by the in.
• 's (1993), an imaginative treatment of Marlowe's death, was the last of Burgess's novels to be published in his lifetime. • Marlowe appears in 's (2002), an depicting an England where the was successful in 1588 and imposed the rule of King. In this depiction, Marlowe is still alive in 1598 and is active among conspirators seeking to overthrow Spanish rule and restore the imprisoned. This involvement leads to Marlowe being killed, five years later than in actual history, and he does not live to see the success of the rebellion he helped foment.
• 's 2004 novel about Marlowe's last days was chosen as a 'Book at Bedtime' in April 2006. • Marlowe plays a major role in 's (2006-2013), which combines elements of and.
Among other things, in this account Marlowe and had a secret, deeply emotional homosexual love affair and many of were written to express his love for Marlowe. Also, as depicted in the Promethean Age series, Christopher Marlowe was not assassinated in 1593 as history records but was taken into where he became the lover of the witch. • was a 4-episode BBC Radio 4 series, first broadcast in 2007. • Michael Butt's radio play, The Killing, was performed as 'Afternoon Drama' on BBC Radio 4 in August 2010. Lawrence-Young's novel Marlowe: 'Soul'd to the Devil' (2010) is close to a biography of Marlowe's life.
• In 's verse novel The Marlowe Papers (2012), Marlowe looks back on his past and faked death and his writing of the plays attributed to. It was winner of the and joint winner of the for 2013. • 's The Kit Marlowe Series (2011 - ), in which Marlowe is depicted as a detective and spy for • Ellen Wilson's novel, In the Shadow of Shakespeare (2013), mixing,, and, the heroine, Alice, travels back in time and meets Christopher Marlowe. • John Hurt in Jim Jarmusch's ' (2014) • Marlowe is a character in the 2015 film. • Marlowe (played by ) is a main character in the 2017 TNT series.
• Michelle Butler Hallett's This Marlowe (2016) explores the relationship between Kyd and Marlowe, and gives an account of Kyd's interrogation and the murder of Marlowe.. Toronto Star. March 26, 2016. Retrieved 31 August 2017. • Marlowe (played by ) is a main character in the 2 sitcom. The series makes a recurring joke on the Marlovian theory of Shakespeare authorship, making Shakespeare the actual author of some of Marlowe's plays. Works [ ] The dates of composition are approximate.
Plays [ ] • ( c. 1586) (possibly co-written with ) •, part 1 ( c. 1587), part 2 ( c. 1587–1588) • ( c. 1593) The play was attributed to Marlowe upon its initial publication in 1657, though scholars and critics have almost unanimously rejected the attribution. He may also have written or co-written. Poetry [ ] • Translation of Book One of 's (date unknown) • Translation of 's Amores ( c.
1580s?) • (pre-1593) • ( c. 1593, unfinished; completed by, 1598) Notes [ ]. • Bevington, David and Eric Rasmussen, Doctor Faustus and Other Plays, OUP, 1998; • Brooke, Tucker; Charles, Frederick. The Life of Marlowe and 'The Tragedy of Dido, Queen of Carthage.' London: Methuen, 1930.
(pp. 107, 114, 99, 98) • Cornelius R. Christopher Marlowe's Use of the Bible. A.; Parnell J. T., eds., Constructing Christopher Marlowe, Cambridge 2000.
Christopher Marlowe Poet and Spy. Oxford University Press, 2005 • Kuriyama, Constance. Christopher Marlowe: A Renaissance Life.
Cornell University Press, 2002. • Logan, Robert A. Shakespeare's Marlowe: The Influence of Christopher Marlowe on Shakespeare's Artistry. Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate, 2007.
• Marlowe, Christopher. Complete Works. 3: Edward II., ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. Xxii–xxiii) • Nicholl, Charles. The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe, Vintage, 2002 (revised edition) • Oz, Avraham, ed. 'Marlowe: New Casebook', Houndmills, Basingstoke and London: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2003 • Parker, John.
The Aesthetics of Antichrist: From Christian Drama to Christopher Marlowe. Cornell University Press, 2007. • Riggs, David.
'The World of Christopher Marlowe', Henry Holt and Co., 2005 • Shepard, Alan. 'Marlowe's Soldiers: Rhetorics of Masculinity in the Age of the Armada', Ashgate, 2002. • Sim, James H. Dramatic Uses of Biblical Allusions in Marlowe and Shakespeare, Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1966. Who Killed Kit Marlowe?, Sutton, 2002; • Wraight A. D.; Stern, Virginia F. In Search of Christopher Marlowe: A Pictorial Biography, Macdonald, London 1965 External links [ ].
Find more about Christopher Marloweat Wikipedia's • from Wikimedia Commons • from Wikiquote • from Wikisource • from Wikidata • • •, with modernised spelling, on Peter Farey's Marlowe page. Radio 4 discussion programme on Marlowe and his work • at • at • at (public domain audiobooks) • an online library of books claiming that Marlowe was Shakespeare • The is an initiative of the and the. Its purpose is to facilitate scholarship on the works of Christopher Marlowe by providing a searchable annotated bibliography of relevant scholarship. • 'Marlowe, Christopher (bap. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 3 June 2013.
These are two baptismal records documenting the birth of his three children (a girl and twins - a boy and a girl), and a record of a court case of 1587, in which his family tried to recover property lost when his father's business collapsed. So the biographer can see the writer's early years only through the eyes of those around him. This scarcity of real knowledge has led to theories that Shakespeare never actually existed, but was really the playwright Christopher Marlowe, the poet and politician Francis Bacon, or the Earl of Oxford - and many of these ideas still have a wide popular currency. It is now mostly thought by serious historians, however, that these theories are baseless: the later years of Shakespeare's life are in fact relatively well documented, for someone of his social class and profession. Despite this, his early biography has yet to be convincingly anchored in his turbulent times, so a fresh look at the limited range of historical documents relating to the period from his birth until 1592 - the time when a little more starts to be known about him - may offer some interesting clues to his life as a young man. William's father, John Shakespeare, was a former farmer from Snitterfield, also in South Warwickshire.
He became a glover, and rose to be alderman and then mayor of Stratford-upon-Avon when William was still a boy. John himself is particularly well documented, being named in dozens of documents, and recent finds have included fascinating evidence - reported by Queen Elizabeth's government informers - concerning his illegal money lending and wool dealing activities. The year 1564 was an extraordinary time to be born, for this was the time of the great cultural revolution in England. In the preceding 12 years, the state religion had changed from the hard line Protestantism of Edward VI to the persecuting Catholicism of Queen Mary - and then back again to a less repressive form of Protestantism under Elizabeth I. In the aftermath of the defeat of the Spanish Armada (when, in 1588, Catholic Spain made its attempt to reinstate a Catholic monarchy in England), the new Protestant establishment triumphed, and by the turn of the century only a minority of Queen Elizabeth's subjects remained true to the old faith. So Shakespeare's formative years were spent at a time poised between two worlds - those of Catholicism and Protestantism, of the old and the new, the medieval and the modern. This was the time reflected in some of the richly informative documents relating to his town and region that survive.
Spies' stories The Hathaway house in Shottery. It still contains Tudor furniture, including perhaps William and Anne's marital bed South Warwickshire was a strongly Catholic area, especially in the villages in the Forest of Arden, where both William's parents were born.
Government spies were very active in those years, keeping an eye open for signs of treason - especially among Catholics. The spies' reports, astonishingly, show a dozen Catholic priests from Queen Mary's day continuing to work as parish vicars in Arden in 1585 - one of them may well have performed the marriage ceremony between William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway. Stratford-upon-Avon's Guild Chapel Other reports show that during the time that William's father served as mayor of Stratford, officers delayed as long as possible before removing Catholic murals and vestments from the local chapel; some wall paintings were never destroyed.
Perhaps even more significant, of the six schoolmasters employed by the corporation at the grammar school during Shakespeare's youth, four were Catholic sympathisers. Of these, Simon Hunt, who probably taught the future playwright, is known to have later become a Jesuit. This fascinating local picture mirrors the national situation, and is perhaps a key to Shakespeare's outlook on the world.
In his life in the family, in the town, at school and at church he grew up between two worlds. In the privacy of home the old faith may have been foremost. His grandfather, Robert Arden, left a will (of 1556) that demonstrates a strongly Catholic belief. His father, John Shakespeare, appears on a list of Catholic recusants in 1592; and a document discovered quite recently (in 1964), in the Maidstone church court records, shows that even his daughter Susanna was summonsed, as late as 1606, for refusing to take Easter Communion. Surviving change Stained glass in the church at Wroxall. Shakespeare's grandfather Richard was bailiff here and Shakepeare women were prioresses at the nunnery The Shakespeare family story seems typical of that of many English people in the 16th century. They held on to their affection for old England, while the state swept away a vast and resonant world of custom and belief - from fairies to prayers for the dead.
By the end of Elizabeth's reign most of the country had conformed, at least outwardly, to the new faith, but by then Shakespeare was nearly 40. Seen in this light, it seems that Shakespeare may have made concealment not only part of his art, but part perhaps of a deliberate pattern in his life too. It is intriguing, for example, that during his 25 years of lodging in London, with as many as eight addresses indicated in a range of sources, he is never picked up in church attendance lists - even in those places in London where attendance was compulsory, and had to be recorded.
The origins of Shakespeare's professional career are also still controversial. For example, we don't know where or with whom he first became an actor and writer. After 1592, however, his life in London becomes clearer.
In that year a rave review and a panning by a jealous rival - as an 'upstart crow' - are our first documented references to him as a London playwright, though he had probably been living in the city since1589. Shakespeare's early fame came through history plays - his first being a trilogy on the Wars of the Roses - and by the end of 1592 he had written their sequel, Richard III.
His first definite address is documented in Bishopsgate tax records, and he is thought to have lived here from 1592, maybe earlier. The great medieval house of Crosby Place, in Bishopsgate, where Richard III lived (and which has now been reconstructed in Chelsea), could well have been right outside his window, and is written into Richard III. His first great rival and inspirer, Christopher Marlowe, was murdered in May 1593, and this must have affected the younger man greatly as he approached the height of his powers.
The event also marks a violent end to the period of Shakespeare's early, almost entirely undocumented, years.