Was Marlowe a Violent Man?

Literary biographers, novelists, and filmmakers have routinely described Marlowe as a rash and hot-headed young man, an assessment that many scholars appear to accept without question. Roy Kendall, for example, in his biography of Richard Baines, confidently refers to “violent characters such as Christopher Marlowe,” yet the playwright was considerably less violent than other young men of the era, including Ben Jonson. Marlowe’s reputation for violence arose only posthumously, as a result of his alleged cause of death, which is still frequently mischaracterised as a “tavern brawl.” If the official record is likely untrue, as this essay theorises, it invites us to challenge the accepted view of his nature and personalit