Shakespeare or Marlowe? Trivia Quiz

Answer:

The playwright and poet William Shakespeare was born in 1564 in the Warwickshire town of Stratford-upon-Avon, the son of a successful glove-maker, and died there in 1616, having retired from writing some three years previously. He is generally regarded as the greatest of all writers in the English language, whose plays are still performed around the world today, having been translated into many different languages. The total number of 37 plays is a minimum and excludes two plays recently added to the official canon ("The Two Noble Kinsmen" and "Edward III"), as well as others such as "Sir Thomas More" and "Arden of Faversham" which contain passages that may have been written by him.

Christopher Marlowe was born in 1564 in Canterbury, Kent, and died in 1593 after being stabbed in a tavern brawl in Deptford, London. Prior to his death he authored six plays, from "Dido Queen of Carthage" in around 1585, to "The Massacre at Paris" in 1593, first performed shortly before his death. He is generally believed to have been employed as a spy employed by the English government, and it has often been suggested that this may have been a factor in his death.

It is clear that Shakespeare was much influenced by Marlowe, and several of Shakespeare's plays are clearly at least partly inspired by those of his fellow writer. It has sometimes been suggested that Marlowe may have faked his own death, and continued to write using Shakespeare's name, but this is not accepted by any serious scholars of the period.