and he became involved in some colorful espionage activities.
In a flagrant breach of the rules, Marlowe stayed absent for
months at a time, traveling on the Continent on some deep
business of the Privy Council's. (The Privy Council was a body
of advisors to the queen, a sort of unofficial Cabinet.)
The Cambridge authorities moved to expel Marlowe, but a
grateful government intervened. The university dons, their arms
gently twisted by the Privy Council, awarded Marlowe the highly
respected Master of Arts degree in 1587. With two university
degrees (a bachelor's and a master's) under his belt, the
shoemaker's son was entitled to style himself Christopher
Marlowe, gentleman. No small matter in class-conscious England,
then or now.
His studies behind him, Marlowe left for London, where he
joined the circle of bright and ambitious university renegades:
Thomas Nashe, John Lyly, Robert Greene. Marlowe and the rest
headed for the theater with a sense of exhilaration. In London
of the 1580s, the drama was just springing to life.
The first theaters were being built--the Curtain, the
Rose--legitimate places for plays that had previously been
performed in innyards. The first acting companies were being
formed--the Lord Admiral's Men, the Lord Chamberlain's Men--as
the players, frowned upon by the church, sought the service and
protection of the great lords.
Marlowe, an innovator, thrived in this stimulating
environment. He threw himself into the new theater with
enthusiasm. He took lodgings in Shoreditch, the theatrical
district on the outskirts of town, and roomed for a while with
Thomas Kyd, the author of the popular Spanish Tragedy. Marlowe
worked for the hard-headed theater owner, Philip Henslowe, and
wrote plays for the Lord Admiral's Men and their great star,
Edward Alleyn. In the process, Marlowe's fertile brain and
fiery spirit helped give shape and form to what we now call
Elizabethan drama.
The main gift Marlowe gave to the theater was its language.
As you probably know from your study of Shakespeare, Elizabethan
playwrights wrote in blank verse or iambic pentameter. (Iambic
pentameter meant that the verse line had five feet, each
composed of a weak and a strong syllable.) Marlowe didn't invent
blank verse, but he took a form that had been stilted and dull
and he breathed fresh life and energy into it. It was Marlowe
who made blank verse a supple and expressive dramatic
instrument.
When Marlowe arrived in London, he took the theatrical world
