Ah, poor Kit, he died young you know. Son of a shoemaker (Cobblers!), he got lucky with his education and burst onto the playhouse scene in the late 1580’s, giving us seven plays before his life was abridged by a sharp pointy thing in the eye. We’ve done a lot of prep work on Marlowe, but we’re in no hurry because he actually has a pretty good presence on the modern stage.

The plays below are in no absolute order, opinions of the timing of writing and performance vary.

Dido, Queen of Carthage by Thomas Nashe and Christopher Marlowe. An epic First Look exploring session is available, recorded during the first lock down in 2020, a Second Look session followed in the second lock down.

Tamberlaine the Great – Part One and Part Two – these are great plays, individually and together. For the podcast we’ve looked at the Prologue to Part One…

And also the prologue to Part 2…

We did both plays in full as part of our exploring sessions – though scheduling kept them together, we tried to discuss each play as individual pieces of entertainment. It was quite a journey. The playlist below starts with play one…

Doctor Faustus – with Thomas Nashe and other/s. We’ve got quite a lot of unreleased material on this most famous of plays. There are two distinct versions – A and B. We’ve looked at A which is below, B will come one day. The playlist has our First Look session first, and afterwards our Second Look crazy run through. Following the conclusion of the first look reading of the text we also look at The Merry Devil of Edmonton, which spoofs the close of the play. ALSO SEE: The Friar Bacon Plays by Robert Greene.

The Jew of Malta – we’ve run exploring sessions on the play, as well as podcast episodes on additional material.

These two prologues were written for a later revival, so are not by Marlowe – but part of the Marlowe Extended Universe.

Edward II – We’ve done a First Look exploring session, but there are also lots of versions commercially available (HUZZAH!). There are two audio versions – one stand alone that can be found on Audible, and another that is part of Vivat Rex! – both from the BBC. There is a DVD of a BBC Television broadcast of a stage production with Ian McKellen, which is definitely available in Region 1, maybe other regions as well. And last, but not least is the Derek Jarman film. Hunt them out till we get around to doing more.

We have also discussed Edward II with the delightful Dr Kit Heyam as well…

And a discussion of a digital production by The Show Must Go Online…

The Massacre at Paris – which was read through and discussed here…

We’ve also discussed the practical side of staging Marlowe – here’s one episode with the nice people of Lazarus Theatre Company.

And finally, in case we get behind in updating this website, here’s our general Marlowe playlist on the podcast.

And also on the YouTube channel – my, so much Marlowe!