The ''Marlowe Memorial'' is a statue and four statuettes erected in memory of the playwright and poet

Christopher Marlowe Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe (; baptised 26 February 156430 May 1593), was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe is among the most famous of the Elizabethan playwrights. Based upon the ...

in 1891 in

Canterbury Canterbury (, ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and UNESCO World Heritage Site, situated in the heart of the City of Canterbury local government district of Kent, England. It lies on the River Stour, Kent, River Stour. ...

, England. The memorial was commissioned by a Marlowe Memorial Committee, and comprises a bronze statue, ''The Muse of Poetry'' sculpted by

Edward Onslow Ford Edward Onslow Ford (27 July 1852—23 December 1901) was an English sculptor. Much of Ford's early success came with portrait heads or busts. These were considered extremely refined, showing his subjects at their best and led to him receiving a ...

, standing on a plinth decorated with statuettes of actors playing Marlowe roles. The statue is now situated outside the city's

Marlowe Theatre The Marlowe Theatre is a 1,200-seat theatre in Canterbury named after playwright Christopher Marlowe, who was born and attended school in the city. It was named a Stage Awards, 2022 UK Theatre of the Year. The Marlowe Trust, a not for profi ...

Memorial Committee

Statue for Christopher Marlowe in Canterbury

A Marlow Memorial Committee was established in 1888, arising out of a conception on the part of the Elizabethan Society of

Toynbee Hall Toynbee Hall is a charitable institution that works to address the causes and impacts of poverty in the East End of London and elsewhere. Established in 1884, it is based in Commercial Street, Spitalfields, and was the first university-affiliat ...

, that Marlowe, perhaps because of his reputation as an atheist, lacked the national recognition that he deserved. James Ernest Baker of the Society wrote to the ''

London Evening Standard The ''Evening Standard'', formerly ''The Standard'' (1827–1904), also known as the ''London Evening Standard'', is a local free daily newspaper in London, England, published Monday to Friday in tabloid format. In October 2009, after be ...

'' newspaper on 28 July 1888 to draw attention to Marlowe's work and legacy, stating that he had "laid the foundations of English

blank verse Blank verse is poetry written with regular metrical but unrhymed lines, almost always in iambic pentameter. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the 16th century", and P ...

, which, in its more developed form through the medium of Shakespeare and Milton, has become the life-blood of English literature and the supreme instrument of tragic poetry." A committee was formed in reaction to the letter, numbering amongst its officers

Sidney Lee Sir Sidney Lee (5 December 1859 – 3 March 1926) was an English biographer, writer, and critic. Biography Lee was born Solomon Lazarus Lee in 1859 at 12 Keppel Street, Bloomsbury, London. He was educated at the City of London School , ...

and Frederick Rogers of the Society, the former acting as treasurer; Lord Coleridge, the

Lord Chief Justice of England Lord is an appellation for a person or deity who has authority, control, or power over others, acting as a master, chief, or ruler. The appellation can also denote certain persons who hold a title of the peerage in the United Kingdom, or a ...

acting as chairman; and with members including poets

Robert Browning Robert Browning (7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889) was an English poet and playwright whose dramatic monologues put him high among the Victorian poets. He was noted for irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings ...

Alfred, Lord Tennyson Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his ...

James Russell Lowell James Russell Lowell (; February 22, 1819 – August 12, 1891) was an American Romantic poet, critic, editor, and diplomat. He is associated with the fireside poets, a group of New England writers who were among the first American poets that ri ...

Edmund Gosse Sir Edmund William Gosse (; 21 September 184916 May 1928) was an English poet, author and critic. He was strictly brought up in a small Protestant sect, the Plymouth Brethren, but broke away sharply from that faith. His account of his childhoo ...

Algernon Charles Swinburne Algernon Charles Swinburne (5 April 1837 – 10 April 1909) was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He wrote several novels and collections of poetry such as ''Poems and Ballads'', and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition ...

John Addington Symonds John Addington Symonds, Jr. (; 5 October 1840 – 19 April 1893) was an English poet and literary critic. A cultural historian, he was known for his work on the Renaissance, as well as numerous biographies of writers and artists. Although m ...

Andrew Lang Andrew Lang (31 March 1844 – 20 July 1912) was a Scottish poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University ...

Alfred Austin Alfred Austin (30 May 1835 – 2 June 1913) was an English poet who was appointed Poet Laureate in 1896, after an interval following the death of Tennyson, when the other candidates had either caused controversy or refused the honour. It was cl ...

and

Henry Beeching Henry Charles Beeching (15 May 1859 – 25 February 1919) was a British clergyman, author and poet, who was Dean of Norwich from 1911 to 1919. Biography Beeching was born on 15 May 1859 in Sussex, the son of J. P. G. Beeching of Bexhill. He was ...

; the publisher

Arthur Henry Bullen Arthur Henry Bullen, often known as A. H. Bullen, (9 February 1857, London – 29 February 1920, Stratford-on-Avon) was an English editor and publisher, a specialist in 16th and 17th century literature, and founder of the Shakespeare Head Press, ...

, editor

Alexander Balloch Grosart Alexander Balloch Grosart (18 June 182716 March 1899) was a Scottish clergyman and literary editor. He is chiefly remembered for reprinting much rare Elizabethan literature, a work which he undertook because of his interest in Puritan theology. ...

actor-manager An actor-manager is a leading actor who sets up their own permanent theatrical company and manages the business, sometimes taking over a theatre to perform select plays in which they usually star. It is a method of theatrical production used co ...

Henry Irving Sir Henry Irving (6 February 1838 – 13 October 1905), christened John Henry Brodribb, sometimes known as J. H. Irving, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility ( ...

; writers & critics

Leslie Stephen Sir Leslie Stephen (28 November 1832 – 22 February 1904) was an English author, critic, historian, biographer, and mountaineer, and the father of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. Life Sir Leslie Stephen came from a distinguished intellectua ...

, Richard Garnett; and scholars

Horace Howard Furness Horace Howard Furness (November 2, 1833 – August 13, 1912) was an American Shakespearean scholar of the 19th century. Life and career Horace Furness was the son of the Unitarian minister and abolitionist William Henry Furness (1802–1896), ...

and

Francis James Child Francis James Child (February 1, 1825 – September 11, 1896) was an American scholar, educator, and folklorist, best known today for his collection of English and Scottish ballads now known as the Child Ballads. Child was Boylston professor of r ...

. The committee raised funds by subscription, and held a public reading at

St James's Hall St. James's Hall was a concert hall in London that opened on 25 March 1858, designed by architect and artist Owen Jones, who had decorated the interior of the Crystal Palace. It was situated between the Quadrant in Regent Street and Piccadilly, ...

involving Irving and

Ellen Terry Dame Alice Ellen Terry, (27 February 184721 July 1928), was a leading English actress of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born into a family of actors, Terry began performing as a child, acting in Shakespeare plays in London, and tour ...

, which raised £100.

Memorial

Victorian sculptor Edward Onslow Ford was commissioned to create the memorial; there being no surviving image of Marlowe known at the time, Ford decided on an allegorical representation in the form of ''The Muse of Poetry'', a scantily-clad lyric

muse In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Muses ( grc, Μοῦσαι, Moûsai, el, Μούσες, Múses) are the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the ...

surmounting a square pedestal having statuettes of four notable players of Marlowe characters in niches on each side. These were to be (according to Rogers) Irving as

Tamburlaine ''Tamburlaine the Great'' is a play in two parts by Christopher Marlowe. It is loosely based on the life of the Central Asian emperor Timur (Tamerlane/Timur the Lame, d. 1405). Written in 1587 or 1588, the play is a milestone in Elizabethan p ...

, George Alexander as Faustus,

Herbert Beerbohm Tree Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree (17 December 1852 – 2 July 1917) was an English actor and theatre manager. Tree began performing in the 1870s. By 1887, he was managing the Haymarket Theatre in the West End, winning praise for adventurous progra ...

Edward II Edward II (25 April 1284 – 21 September 1327), also called Edward of Caernarfon, was King of England and Lord of Ireland from 1307 until he was deposed in January 1327. The fourth son of Edward I, Edward became the heir apparent to t ...

, and W. S. Willard as

The Jew of Malta ''The Jew of Malta'' (full title: ''The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew of Malta'') is a play by Christopher Marlowe, written in 1589 or 1590. The plot primarily revolves around a Maltese Jewish merchant named Barabas. The original story comb ...

. Funds were insufficient to realise this plan, and the memorial, situated in the Buttermarket, was unveiled on 16 September 1891 by Irving, with his statuette as the sole plinth decoration. Rogers asserts that the Memorial awakened a new interest in Elizabethan literature, and quoting Gosse – "Marlowe had been successfully neglected for three-hundred years" noted that "he suddenly became the subject of leading articles in the chief newspapers and magazines, and of paragraphs and leaderettes in minor ones". Although the statue earned the nicknamed Kitty (the playwright was known as Kit), some objections were raised to the statue's dishabille, especially so near the

Cathedral A cathedral is a church that contains the '' cathedra'' () of a bishop, thus serving as the central church of a diocese, conference, or episcopate. Churches with the function of "cathedral" are usually specific to those Christian denomination ...

. Shrubbery, railings and four lanterns were erected around the statue in 1892. Much later, additional funds were raised to complete the vision, and a second unveiling was conducted by the novelist

Hugh Walpole Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole, Commander of the Order of the British Empire, CBE (13 March 18841 June 1941) was an English novelist. He was the son of an Anglican clergyman, intended for a career in the church but drawn instead to writing. Among th ...

, who had briefly attended Marlowe's alma mater,

The King's School, Canterbury The King's School is a public school (English independent day and boarding school for 13 to 18 year old pupils) in Canterbury, Kent, England. It is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference and the Eton Group. It is Britain's ...

. A contemporary source lists the statuettes on the plinth as Irving (Tamburlaine), Sir Johnston Forbes-Roberston as Faustus,

James Keteltas Hackett James Keteltas Hackett (September 6, 1869 – November 8, 1926) was an American actor and Actor-manager, manager. Life James K. Hackett was the son of Clara C. and James Henry Hackett, a comedian and celebrated Falstaff. He was born on Wolf ...

as Edward II, and

Edward Alleyn Edward "Ned" Alleyn (; 1 September 156621 November 1626) was an English actor who was a major figure of the Elizabethan theatre and founder of the College of God's Gift in Dulwich. Early life Alleyn was born on 1 September 1566 in Bishopsga ...

as The Jew of Malta. The statue has been resited on a number of occasions; first to King Street to make way for a

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

memorial; thence to Dane John Gardens in 1921. The memorial was damaged in a 1940 (or 1942)

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

bombing of the city, the muse being thrown to the ground. She was remounted, but facing in a new direction, an error corrected only in 1964. Two statuettes were stolen in 1977. Most recently the statue was again relocated to stand outside the Marlowe Theatre,

Ian McKellen Sir Ian Murray McKellen (born 25 May 1939) is an English actor. His career spans seven decades, having performed in genres ranging from Shakespearean and modern theatre to popular fantasy and science fiction. Regarded as a British cultural i ...

performing a rededication ceremony in 1993.

References

External links

* {{Christopher Marlowe Christopher Marlowe 1891 sculptures 1891 establishments in the United Kingdom Bronze sculptures in the United Kingdom Buildings and structures in Canterbury Sculptures of women in the United Kingdom