Christopher Marlowe, the son of a shoemaker, was educated at Cambridge before he joined the Lord Admiral’s Theatre Company in London. Like Shakespeare, a contemporary whom he influenced, Marlowe worked as an actor as well as a dramatist. He wrote beautiful love poems and heroic plays, including Dr. Faustus and The Jew of Malta. His brilliant career, though, was cut tragically short when he was killed in a tavern fight at 29.