THE author of a recent brilliant work on Sir Thomas
More states in his preface that he has striven to
imitate More's early biographers, who 'brooded for twenty
or thirty years before writing the life of their hero'. I
doubt whether I have the philosophic capacity to brood,
but I have been engaged in the study of Marlowe's life
and writings for over forty years. And since 1920 I have
had to record annually in the English Association's The
Year's Work in English Studies the new contributions to
Marlovian scholarship.

In 1929, in Marlowe and his Circle, I tried to sum up
the biographical results achieved in the era that had been
opened by Professor J. Leslie Hotson The Death of Christo-
pher Marlowe ( 1925). The completion, in 1933, of the
six-volume edition of Marlowe Life and Works, under
the general editorship of Professor R. H. Case, to which
I contributed Doctor Faustus, suggested to me that it
would be opportune to attempt a comprehensive study
from both the biographical and the critical angles. Various
causes, including two visits to the U.S.A., have delayed
the fulfilment of this plan till now, but I have thus been
enabled to refer to the chief recent additions to Marlovian
research. These include the documents relating to the
Marlowe and Baines families printed by Professor C. F.
Tucker Brooke in his Life of Marlowe in the six-volume
edition; the new facts about Robert Poley supplied in
articles by Miss Ethel Seaton and Miss E. de Kalb; the
new light thrown from the Middlesex Guildhall archives
by Mr. Mark Eccles on Marlowe's London life; the
details about the Coroner's jury gathered from their wills
by my lamented friend, Edgar Vine Hall; and the results
of the researches by Mr. John Bakeless in the archives
preserved at Canterbury and at Corpus Christi College,
Cambridge.

Twenty years ago Professor G. C. Moore Smith drew

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