The great reckoning: who killed Christopher Marlowe and why?

Although Christopher Marlowe's biography holds together far better than most, his death remains as much a mystery as Shakespeare's identity. Here, Hopkins Hughes investigates who killed Marlowe and why. It was during the period when Marlowe was writing, in the decade from 1583 to 1593, that the first modern commercial theater was built in England. Burbage's Theatre, built in 1576, was a start, but it wasn't until Marlowe's Tamburlaine exploded on the London scene in 1587 that actors, playwrights and theatre owners could see the public stage as having the potential to provide them with a dependable living.