I Must Have Wanton Poets

Christopher Marlowe 1564 (Canterbury, Kent) – 1593 (Deptford, Kent)



MUST have wanton poets, pleasant wits,
Musicians, that with touching of a string
May draw the pliant king which way I please:
Music and poetry is his delight;
Therefore I'll have Italian masks by night,
Sweet speeches, comedies, and pleasing shows;
And in the day, when he shall walk abroad,
Like sylvan nymphs my pages shall be clad;
My men, like satyrs grazing on the lawns,
Shall with their goat-feet dance the antic hay;
Sometime a lovely boy in Dian's shape,
With hair that gilds the water as it glides,
Crownets of pearl about his naked arms,
And in his sportful hands an olive-tree,
To hide those parts which men delight to see,
Shall bathe him in a spring; and there, hard by,
One like Actæon, peeping through the grove,
Shall by the angry goddess be transform'd,
And running in the likeness of an hart,
By yelping hounds pull'd down, shall seem to die:
Such things as these best please his majesty.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 16, 2023

50 sec read
176

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCDDEFGHIJKLMMNOPQNM
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 896
Words 164
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 21

Christopher Marlowe

Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe, was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Modern scholars count Marlowe among the most famous of the Elizabethan playwrights and based upon the "many imitations" of his play Tamburlaine consider him to have been the foremost dramatist in London in the years just before his mysterious early death. Some scholars also believe that he greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was baptised in the same year as Marlowe and later became the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright. Marlowe's plays are the first to use blank verse, which became the standard for the era, and are distinguished by their overreaching protagonists. Themes found within Marlowe's literary works have been noted as humanistic with realistic emotions, which some scholars find difficult to reconcile with Marlowe's "anti-intellectualism" and his catering to the taste of his Elizabethan audiences for generous displays of extreme physical violence, cruelty, and bloodshed. Events in Marlowe's life were sometimes as extreme as those found in his dramas. Reports of Marlowe’s death in 1593 were particularly infamous in his day and are contested by scholars today due to a lack of good documentation. Traditionally, the playwright’s death has been blamed on a long list of conjectures, including a barroom fight, church libel, homosexual intrigue, betrayal by another playwright, and espionage from the highest level: Elizabeth I of England’s Privy Council. An official coroner account of Marlowe's death was only revealed in 1925, but it did little to persuade all scholars that it told the whole story nor did it eliminate the uncertainties present in his biography. more…

All Christopher Marlowe poems | Christopher Marlowe Books

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