Atheist, blasphemer, sodomite, spy, counterfeiter, lover of boys and tobacco — playwright and poet Christopher Marlowe has never been easily accepted into the comfortable canon of English literature.

Born in 1564, the same year as William Shakespeare, in 1593 Marlowe was stabbed to death in an arms-dealer's office in the south London riverside district of Deptford — seemingly after a quarrel over money. He was only 29.

And as his life was violent, so were his plays. The two-part "Tamburlaine the Great" celebrates with savage humor a man who calls himself "the Scourge of God" and declares that an earthly crown is better than anything laid up in heaven. "The Jew of Malta," whose protagonist gleefully poisons a whole nunnery, among other crimes, is filled with anti-Christian jokes and the Turks are the only (half-way) decent people in the play. In his "Doctor Faustus," the protagonist sells his soul to the devil and, after sealing his damnation by having sex (offstage) with a succubus in the form of Helen of Troy — though the kissing of the boy-actor playing Helen happens stage center — he is torn to pieces by devils. In "Edward II," the king is finally murdered by having a red-hot spit thrust up his fundament — the English essayist and poet Charles Lamb (1775-1834) declared of this that, "it moves with pity and terror beyond any scene ancient or modern that I am acquainted with."