By: HISTORY.com Editors

Playwright Christopher Marlowe killed in tavern brawl

Published: November 13, 2009Last Updated: May 27, 2025

Playwright Christopher Marlowe, 29, is killed in a brawl over a bar tab on this day.

Marlowe, born two months before William Shakespeare, was the son of a Canterbury shoemaker. A bright student, he won scholarships to prestigious schools and earned his B.A. from Cambridge in 1584. He was nearly denied his master’s degree in 1587, until advisers to Queen Elizabeth intervened, recommending he receive the degree, referring obliquely to his services for the state. Marlowe’s activities as a spy for Queen Elizabeth were later documented by historians.

While still in school, Marlowe wrote his play Tamburlaine the Great, about a 14th century shepherd who became an emperor. The blank verse drama caught on with the public, and before his death in 1593, Marlowe wrote five more plays, including The Jew of Malta and Dr. Faustus. He also published a translation of Ovid’s Elegies.

In May of 1593, Marlowe’s former roommate, playwright Thomas Kyd, was arrested and tortured for treason. He told authorities that “heretical” papers found in his room belonged to Marlowe, who was subsequently arrested. While out on bail, Marlowe became involved in a fight over a tavern bill and was stabbed to death.

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Timeline

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Discover more of the major events, famous births, notable deaths and everything else history-making that happened on May 30th

1431

Joan of Arc is burned at the stake for heresy

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1806

Future president Andrew Jackson kills Charles Dickinson in a duel

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1868

Civil War dead honored on Decoration Day, now known as Memorial Day

In May 1868, Americans came together to in the first widespread observation of what would become Memorial Day.

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1899

Bandit Pearl Hart holds up an Arizona stagecoach

The amateur bandit Pearl Hart and her boyfriend hold up an Arizona stagecoach on May 30, 1899. Little is known about Pearl Hart’s early life. She was born in Ontario, Canada in 1871, and moved to Toronto as a child. She eloped when she was 16, but her husband abused her and the marriage did […]

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1911

First Indianapolis 500 held

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1913

The First Balkan War ends

On May 30, 1913, a peace treaty is signed ending the First Balkan War, in which the newly aligned Slavic nations of Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece had driven Turkish forces out of Macedonia, a territory of the Ottoman Empire located in the tumultuous Balkans region of southeastern Europe. After rebellion in Macedonia—led by a […]

1922

Warren G. Harding becomes the first president to be heard on the radio

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1922

Former President Taft dedicates Lincoln Memorial

Former President William Howard Taft dedicates the Lincoln Memorial on the Washington Mall on May 30, 1922. At the time, Taft was serving as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. A crowd gathered on the Mall to witness the ceremony. The neoclassical monument honors 16th U.S. president Abraham Lincoln. Congress authorized construction of a monument […]

1934

Nissan Motor Company founded

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1942

Japanese American Fred Korematsu is arrested for resisting internment

On May 30, 1942, Fred Korematsu is arrested in San Leandro, California for resisting internment under President Franklin Roosevelt’s controversial Executive Order 9066, which called for the incarceration of nearly all Japanese Americans in the United States in the wake of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. Following his conviction and incarceration in a Utah camp, […]

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1943

Auschwitz gets a new doctor: “the Angel of Death”

On May 30, 1943, the extermination camp at Auschwitz, Poland, receives a new doctor, 32-year-old Josef Mengele, a man who will earn the nickname “the Angel of Death.” Born March 16, 1911, in Bavaria, Mengele studied philosophy under Alfred Rosenberg, whose racial theories highly influenced him. In 1934, already a member of the Nazi Party, […]

1967

“One Hundred Years of Solitude” is published

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1967

Republic of Biafra proclaimed

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1971

Mariner 9 departs for Mars

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1990

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev arrives in Washington for a summit

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev arrives in Washington, D.C., for three days of talks with President George Bush. The summit meeting centered on the issue of Germany and its place in a changing Europe. When Gorbachev arrived for this second summit meeting with President Bush, his situation in the Soviet Union was perilous. The Soviet economy, […]

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1997

NYC teacher Jonathan Levin is tortured and killed by his former student

Jonathan Levin, a popular 31-year-old English teacher, is stabbed and shot to death in his Upper West Side apartment in New York City. The son of Time Warner chairman Gerald Levin, Jonathan was known by many to be wealthy. When he did not show up for work, investigators searched his apartment and found his lifeless […]

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