What was Christopher Marlowe's life like?

Christopher Marlowe lived a short life, dying at age twenty-nine in 1593. He was born two months before Shakespeare and is famous for having innovated writing plays in blank verse, as well as for the very high quality of his plays.

Like Shakespeare, Marlowe came from middle class roots, growing up in Canterbury as the son of a shoemaker, then graduating from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Around 1587, he moved to London, where he gained a reputation for his wild lifestyle and tendency to violence. He may also have engaged in homosexual behavior. There is creditable evidence that he worked as a spy for Queen Elizabeth I, and in addition to his other purportedly scandalous behavior, he was known as an atheist, though scholars debate exactly what that word meant at the time.

Marlowe benefitted from being coming of age at the height of Elizabeth's reign, a time of prosperity and a stability in which the arts, including theater, flourished. However, it was also a dangerous time, with religious belief and orthodoxy tied closely to politics, meaning Marlowe's "atheism," if real, put him in a precarious position.

Marlowe died in 1593 during a fight. Like Shakespeare, he left behind no personal letters or diaries, so what we know of his life, beyond rumor, comes from business and other official documents.