1564–1593 · English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era
Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) was an English playwright and poet of the Elizabethan era, author of Doctor Faustus, Tamburlaine and The Jew of Malta, and a decisive influence on Shakespeare. He died at twenty-nine. His best-known poem about love, The Passionate Shepherd to His Love, is an invitation to pastoral pleasures and mentions neither money nor bargaining — and the quip credited to him here was not printed anywhere until 1954.