Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)was the leading playwright of the English stage in the years immediately before the emergence of Shakespeare. Marlowe was educated at Cambridge, where he dabbled in theological heresies and began a career as a double agent infiltrating circles of Catholic dissent. Between 1587 and 1593 he stunned London stage audiences with spectacular dramas, including Tamburlaine, Doctor Faustus, The Jew of Malta, Edward II, and The Massacre at Paris. He was arrested for counterfeiting, and subsequently released, only to be arrested again on suspicion of a range of behaviors including heresy and homosexuality. While under investigation, Marlowe was murdered. The killing was probably the result of a violent quarrel, but perhaps a political assassination. Shakespeare's Elizabethan plays are saturated with verbal echoes of Marlowe's poetry.