Editing Christopher Marlowe (section)

==Reputation among contemporary writers==
{{more citations needed section|date=November 2021}}
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|Description = [[Ben Jonson]], leading satirist of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, was one of the first to acknowledge Marlowe for the power of his dramatic verse.
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For his contemporaries in the literary world, Marlowe was above all an admired and influential artist. Within weeks of his death, [[George Peele]] remembered him as "Marley, the Muses' darling"; [[Michael Drayton]] noted that he "Had in him those brave translunary things / That the first poets had" and [[Ben Jonson]] even wrote of "Marlowe's mighty line".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Nicholl |first=Charles |title=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2008 |chapter=Marlowe [Marley], Christopher (bap. 1564, . 1593), playwright and poet}}</ref> [[Thomas Nashe]] wrote warmly of his friend, "poor deceased Kit Marlowe," as did the publisher Edward Blount in his dedication of ''Hero and Leander'' to Sir Thomas Walsingham. Among the few contemporary dramatists to say anything negative about Marlowe was the anonymous author of the Cambridge University play ''[[Parnassus plays|The Return from Parnassus]]'' (1598) who wrote, "Pity it is that wit so ill should dwell, / Wit lent from heaven, but vices sent from hell".

The most famous tribute to Marlowe was paid by [[Shakespeare]] in ''[[As You Like It]]'', where he not only quotes a line from ''[[Hero and Leander (poem)|Hero and Leander]]'' ("Dead Shepherd, now I find thy saw of might, 'Who ever lov'd that lov'd not at first sight?{{'"}}) but also gives to the clown [[Touchstone (As You Like It)|Touchstone]] the words "When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with the forward child, understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room."<ref>Peter Alexander ed., ''William Shakespeare: The Complete Works'' (London 1962) p. 273</ref> This appears to be a reference to Marlowe's murder which involved a fight over the "reckoning," the bill, as well as to a line in Marlowe's ''[[Jew of Malta]]'', "Infinite riches in a little room."

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|Description = The influence of Marlowe upon [[William Shakespeare]] is evidenced by the Marlovian themes and other allusions to Marlowe found in Shakespeare's plays and sonnets.
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Shakespeare was much influenced by Marlowe in his work, as can be seen in the use of Marlovian themes in ''[[Antony and Cleopatra]]'', ''[[The Merchant of Venice]]'', ''[[Richard II (play)|Richard II]]'' and ''[[Macbeth]]'' (''Dido'', ''Jew of Malta'', ''Edward II'' and ''Doctor Faustus'', respectively). In ''[[Hamlet]]'', after meeting with the travelling actors, Hamlet requests the Player perform a speech about the Trojan War, which at 2.2.429–432 has an echo of Marlowe's ''[[Dido, Queen of Carthage (play)|Dido, Queen of Carthage]]''. In ''[[Love's Labour's Lost]]'' Shakespeare brings on a character "Marcade" (three syllables) in conscious acknowledgement of Marlowe's character "Mercury", also attending the King of Navarre, in ''Massacre at Paris''. The significance, to those of Shakespeare's audience who were familiar with ''Hero and Leander'', was Marlowe's identification of himself with the god [[Mercury (mythology)|Mercury]].<ref name="Jean-Christophe Mayer2008">{{cite book|last=Wilson|first=Richard|author-link=Richard Wilson (scholar)|editor=Mayer, Jean-Christophe |title=Representing France and the French in early modern English drama|year=2008|publisher=University of Delaware Press|location=Newark|isbn=978-0-87413-000-3|pages=95–97|chapter=Worthies away: the scene begins to cloud in Shakespeare's Navarre}}</ref>