Christopher Marlowe's Lifestyle amd the different versions of the play - Dr Faustus

Christopher Marlowe was born in London in 1564, this was only two month before one of the most famous playwrights Shakespeare. Marlowe was born into a fairly poor family, where is father was a shoe maker. His date of birth is unknown but he was baptised on 26th February 1564.


Marlowe wrote his first play in 1585/6, this was called Dido, this was a short play that he wrote and it told the story of the Queen of Carthage. It was an intense dramatic tale of her fanatical love. He then went to perform this play around London, and it became fairly famous within the town.


The next time that Marlowe was heard of was when he wrote his most famous play, Dr Faustus, this was based on the German Faustbuch. Marlowe's play differs to the original in many ways, yet the main being that in the end his protagoinist is dragged to hell by demons.


Marlowe's plays were massively successful and he went on to write more plays and also poems that are still famous and studied today.


Christopher Marlowe was known for being a ruff man, who was always seen for being up to no good, and in early 1592, Marlow was arrested in the Netherlands for counterfeiting money, it was also thought that he was over there to spy for the English government.


Later on that year Marlow was brought back to England, and carried on his life here, however he wrote no more plays, still thriving off of the success of his main play, Dr Faustus. Known for being involved in lots of trouble, he then a year later gets caught up in a pub brawl in Deptford, and his stabbed to death, and it is also thought that the men that stabbed him were government agents, getting back at him.


Not long after the death of Marlow, Dr Faustus was performed by Edward Alleyn's company, the Admiral's Men. they were on of the top running theatre performers and once they performed their take on Marlowe's Classic it then became an even bigger hit.


10 years later is when the play Dr Faustus was published in its first text, known and the A Text, later on around 1616 a second version of Marlowe's play, which followed the same storyline, however it had some different scenes in it. Now with the modern prints of the plays, it is hard to tell what version of the play it is from, as the years go by they have merged into one.