The Marlowe Family's House in Canterbury, since destroyed by WWII bombing.

As Shakespeare's exact contemporary, from a provincial, working-class background, and a good grammar school, Marlowe provides an ideal foil for Shakespeare. Marlowe's university experience seems somewhat uneven as his degree was enforced on the university by the government who employed him as a spy. Two other leading Elizabethan playwrights lacked university degrees: Thomas Kyd, author of the first Hamlet, and Ben Jonson, Shakespeare's versatile protégé. Courtesy of the Marlowe Society.