English playwright Christopher Marlowe was baptised on this day in 1564. Born in Canterbury, he won a scholarship to the Kings School and later studied theology at Cambridge. His degree was almost withheld because of rumours that he intended to become a Catholic priest, in breach of Queen Elizabeth I’s anti-Catholic laws, until the Privy Council intervened on his behalf. Little is known about his adult life, provoking a rich history of biographical speculation. Rumours include his being a government spy, a heretic, a Satanist, a master criminal and a notorious homosexual. He was also a highly successful playwright, rivalling his friend William Shakespeare as the most popular of the Elizabethan dramatists. He is credited as the first playwright to popularise iambic pentameter (blank verse), which became the standard poetic meter for Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. His plays typically feature charismatic anti-heroes whose ambitions for greatness result in their brutal downfall, notably Edward II, a sympathetic and explicit account of King Edward II’s relationship with Piers Gaveston. He is perhaps best known for the verse drama Dr Faustus, based on the German myth of an alchemist who sells his soul to the Devil, became famous for a scene in which Faustus conjures the spirit of Helen of Troy, exclaiming “Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?” His other works include Dido, Queen of Carthage, Tamburlaine and The Jew of Malta, and he is also thought to have co-authored some of Shakespeare’s plays, including Henry VI. Rumours about Marlowe’s private life have been equally as creative, with extensive debate about his possible homosexuality or bisexuality. Marlowe was arrested in 1593 on suspicion of circulating anti-Protestant documents. He was murdered a few days later, supposedly in a bar brawl, though he may well have been assassinated. His works were hugely influential on Shakespeare and the Jacobean dramatists, and continue to be performed worldwide. Edward II was filmed by Derek Jarman in 1991, drawing comparisons between Edward’s and Gaveston’s prosecution and 1980s-era gay rights campaigns. In 2002, a memorial window to Marlowe was installed at Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. He was played by Rupert Everett in the Oscar-winning comedy Shakespeare in Love and by John Hurt as a hipster vampire in Jim Jarmusch’s 2013 film Only Lovers Left Alive.