Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)

Was he or wasn't he Shakespeare....?

"The Passionate Shepherd to his Love"


Remember this poem. ETS like, loves it coz there are like, a million references to it (okay namely just Raleigh, Donne, Herrick and C. Day Lewis.)


Come live with me and be my love
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills and fields
Woods or steepy mountain yields.
And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;
A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my love.
The shepherds' swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move
Then live with me and be my love.


Tamburlaine the Great
Remember the characters' names, the plot's not so important. Marlowe's play established blank verse as the main style for later Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatic writing.

Mycetes - King of Persia
Cosroe - Mycetes' brother
Tamburlaine - a "Scythian shepherd" who becomes King of Persia
Zenocrate - Egyptian princess captured by Tamburlaine who eventually becomes his wife
Theridamas - Mycetes' chief captain
Meander - one of Mycetes' lords
Bajazeth - Turkish emperor
Zabina - Turkish empress
Callapine - prince of Turkey, Bajazeth and Zabina's son
Orcanes - King of Anatolia
Sigismond - King of Hungary
Calyphas, Amyras and Celebinus - Tamburlaine's sons
Techelles and Usumcasane - Tamburlaine's trusted military leaders


"Hero and Leander"

• Hero and Leander are two youths living in cities on opposite sides of the Hellespont who fall in love.
•  Leander promises to swim across the Hellespont each night to be with Hero. 
• Neptune mistakes Leander for Ganymede but eventually releases him.
• The poem ends abruptly

First few lines:

On Hellespont guiltie of true loves blood

In view and opposite two cities stood

Sea-borderes, disjoin'd by Neptune's might

The one Abydos, the other Sestos hight.

At Sestos Hero dwelt; Hero the faire...

Doctor Faustus

• Characters: Faustus, Wagner (Faustus' servant), Mephistopheles (devil)
• Faustus tries to seek more knowledge by selling his soul to the devil
• The deal - Faustus has 24 years of life during which Mephistopheles will be his servant. After that he gives his soul to Lucifer.
• Faustus was the one who described Helen as "the face that launch'd a thousand ships" (just so you know)
• the play also has a character called Benvolio, like in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet