Christopher Marlowe

Baptised in February 1564, Marlowe rose fast in Elizabethan London as the playwright who cracked the code—blank verse, overreaching heroes, humanistic themes laced with spectacular violence. Tamburlaine spawned so many imitators that he became the city's foremost dramatist, widely believed to have shaped Shakespeare, who was baptised the same year and later eclipsed him. Then came 30 May 1593: a death in a tavern, contested ever since. The official coroner's account didn't surface until 1925, and it settled nothing—theories still swirl around blasphemy charges, espionage, betrayal, and whether…