This is believed to be Marlowe's fi

This is believed to be Marlowe's first performed play, although record-keeping was not so hot back then, so we can never be sure. It's based on three early books of the Roman poet Virgil's epic The Aeneid. It's about a crazy queen who falls in love with Virgil's hero, Aeneas, and, when he spurns her to continue on his mission, she commits suicide. We can already see that Marlowe didn't really shy away from racy and offensive themes - he just dove right in. This was first performed by a company of young boy actors sometime between 1587-1593.


This is Marlowe's first proper London production, probably in 1587. This again takes on classical source material; Tamburlaine is about an Asian emperor Timur the Lame (which sounds a lot like Tamburlaine). He kind of clawed his way up from being a shepherd to being a ruler. Scholars celebrate this play as a turning point in Elizabethan drama because it introduces rich language, complex plotting, and complex themes - things that hadn't really been seen before on the London stage. It was so successful that it was followed by a sequel, and these two plays were the only ones that were actually published during his lifetime.