Writing a life of Marlowe ought to be very much easier than writing one of Shakespeare. For one thing, the book can be much shorter. Both poets were born early in 1564, with similar social origins, their fathers being master craftsmen and tradesmen who achieved local eminence before being embroiled in debt and litigation. One of Honan’s persistent clumsinesses is to describe John Marlowe, who became Warden of Canterbury’s Shoemakers’ Guild in 1589, as a ‘cobbler’, a much more humble craft. But while Shakespeare the glover’s son lived to almost fifty-two, Marlowe the shoemaker’s son was killed at twenty-nine.

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