Nothing is known of the first schooling…
August 1590 CE
Nothing is known of the first schooling of the English dramatist Christopher Marlowe, the second child and eldest son of John Marlowe, a Canterbury shoemaker, but on January 14, 1579, he had entered the King's School, Canterbury, as a scholar, and a year later had gone to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
Obtaining his bachelor of arts degree in 1584, he has continued in residence at Cambridge—which may imply that he had been intending to take Anglican orders.
The university hesitates, however, about granting him the master's degree in 1587; its doubts (arising from his frequent absences from the university) are apparently set at rest when the Privy Council sends a letter declaring that he has been employed “on matters touching the benefit of his country”—apparently in Elizabeth I's secret service.
Marlowe's first drama is Dido, Queen of Carthage; first published in 1594 by the bookseller Thomas Woodcock, the title page attributes the play to Marlowe and Thomas Nashe, and also states that the play was acted by the Children of the Chapel.
That company of boy actors had stopped regular dramatic performance in 1584, but appears to have engaged in at least sporadic performances in the late 1580s and early 1590s, so that scholars give a range of 1587-93 for the first performance of Dido.
Marlowe’s first play performed on stage in London was Tamburlaine (1587) about the conqueror Timur, who rises from shepherd to warrior.
It is among the first English plays in blank verse, and, with Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, generally is considered the beginning of the mature phase of the Elizabethan theater.
Tamburlaine was a success, and was followed with Tamburlaine Part II.
The play (in both parts) is entered into the Stationers' Register on August 14, 1590 (as "two comical discourses").
Both parts are published in a single octavo later the same year by the printer Richard Jones.
The sequence of his plays is unknown; all deal with controversial themes.
Images
An anonymous portrait in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, often believed to show Christopher Marlowe. There is in fact no evidence that the anonymous sitter is Marlowe, but the clues do point in that direction. Marlowe was 21 years old in 1585, when the painting was made. He was also the only 21-year old student at Corpus Christi, where the painting was later found.