example of the boyish “blood and thunder” popular at the time, of which Marlowe’s _Tamburlaine_ is the masterpiece. It is the equivalent to Greene’s _Alphonsus_; but if not more sane it is more substantial, and does really contain lines which are poetry and not rant, though the rant is there in profusion. [SN: _Kyd._] Thomas Kyd need hardly be mentioned here except for the purpose of leading on to the master of the school, Marlowe. He is a very shadowy figure, who may have been born in 1557, and may have died in 1595. His voice is still audible in _The Spanish Tragedy_, and perhaps in _Jeronimo_. The first-named is a continuation of the second--if the second were not written to supply an introduction to the first. They too are “blood and thunder,” with the occasional flash of real poetry, which is found wellnigh everywhere in that wondrous time. Greene, Peele, and Kyd, in spite of the independent merit of parts of their work, are mainly interesting because they were forerunners of Shakespeare, and aided in the formation of the English drama. If it had wanted _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_, or _David and Bethsabe_, it would no doubt have been the poorer, but by things not great in themselves, and still less indispensable. [SN: _Marlowe._] If it had wanted the author of _Doctor Faustus_, it would have been the poorer by a very great poet. Christopher Marlowe was born in 1564, in the same year as Shakespeare and was the son of a shoemaker. Probably by the help of patrons he was educated at the grammar-school of the town, and went from it to Corpus Christi College at Cambridge. The other events of his life are mainly matter of guesswork till we come to the fact that he was stabbed in a tavern brawl at Deptford on the 1st June 1593. He was accused of exceeding even the large Bohemian licence of life of his contemporaries, and of atheism. The evidence is neither direct nor good, but it is certain that a warrant for his arrest, and that of several of his friends, on the charge of disseminating irreligious opinions, was issued by the Privy Council about a fortnight before he was killed. At a time when all the once accepted foundations of religion were being called in question, sheer denial was naturally not unknown. Given the vehement spirit of all his work, it is as probable that Marlowe went this length as that he stopped short of it. The truth is in this case of little importance, for Marlowe’s place is among the poets, not the controversialists, of the sixteenth century.