Christopher Marlowe lived from
1564 to
1593, which puts him of an age with old Bill. Marlowe died of stab wounds in a bar brawl, the details of which are unfortunately not clear. Writers were
men in those days! Thank God I missed it.
Marlowe wrote
The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus in
blank verse (unrhymed
iambic pentameter) with occasional prose intrusions, frequently in the mouths of lower-class
comic relief characters. The
blank verse-with-sporadic-prose thing is pretty much an invariant feature of
Elizabethan drama. It's worth noting that Marlowe's verse is a bit ragged compared to
Shakespeare's.
Shakespeare's
Hamlet was largely based (at times, apparently, to the point of
plagiarism) on
Thomas Kyd's
The Spanish Tragedy. By chance, Kyd and Marlowe were friends.
Free verse is entirely unrelated.
The first version of my writeup had Christopher Marlowe's first name, wrongly, as "Thomas". Words like "idiotic" come to mind. I was probably thinking about Thomas Kyd and got confused. Thanks to themusic for pointing this out -- and for doing it in his usual tactful and considerate way, which I'd do well to emulate.
...and thanks to
mcSey for noticing some time later that I had Marlowe dying in
1693, which would make him not quite 160 years of age. Yeah! And, and, and he
smoked, too!