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Compare and contrast Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare as contemporary innovative dramatists

Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare were contemporaries of the age.    There are many similarities in their literary styles; so many, in fact, that it has often been speculated that Marlowe wrote some of Shakespeare’s plays.  Marlowe definitely had an influence on Shakespeare.  One of the most obvious similarities between the two was that they both wrote in blank verse.  Marlowe took the idea of blank verse common to his time and changed its conventional form to a more flexible structure known as “the Mighty Line.”  Shakespeare then perfected Marlowe’s form into the blank verse that we know in his plays today.


Both men also wrote tragedies following Aristotle’s idea of the tragic hero who has an inherent tragic flaw. Although their tragic heroes were very similar, however, there were some differences in their tragedies.  Shakespeare was very fond of using supernatural elements in his plays in order to produce mystery, but Marlowe’s plays did not contain the supernatural and were more straightforward.  Shakespeare was also known for using characters as foils (contrasts to the tragic hero to show his flaws), but Marlowe did not use this technique.  Both men also used comedy in their plays, but comic scenes in Marlowe’s plays did not contain the genuine comic relief so apparent in Shakespeare. 

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