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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Christopher Marlowe
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(1564–93) The first great English dramatist. Unlike Shakespeare he was university-educated (at Cambridge) and his life is relatively well documented because of his troubles with the law – in prison in 1589 after an incident in which someone was killed, bound over to keep the peace in 1592, in constant danger for suspected atheism, and arrested in 1593 just 12 days before being killed in a tavern dispute (when still short of his 30th birthday).
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With *Tamburlaine and *Doctor Faustus (produced 1587 and c.1590, shortly before Shakespeare's first plays), Marlowe inaugurated the greatest period of English theatre and of *blank verse. The Jew of Malta (c.1590) is a characteristic revenge tragedy of the time, in which the wrongs done to the Jew provoke him to an orgy of slaughter. And Edward II (c.1592) is England's first sophisticated history play – roughly contemporary with Shakespeare's more primitive Henry VI, but soon to be outshone by his Richard III.
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