Palace of Westminster, c. 2015. Photo: Carlos Cunha/Wikimedia Commons.

Christopher Marlowe (1564 –1593, also known as Kit Marlowe) was, after William Shakespeare, the most famous playwright of the Elizabethan era.

His brilliant career was cut short when he was murdered in a controversial fight over a meal check. Experts to this day argue about the circumstances, with endless conspiracy theories abounding. Even an official coroner’s account of Marlowe’s death, discovered in 1925, did little to persuade scholars that it told the whole story.

But no one doubts his brilliance and his influence on English literature. Some even think that he wrote much of Shakespeare’s work. Marlowe wanted to challenge and shock, which in the atmosphere of Elizabethan England, was a huge risk. His plays combined controversial ideas of power and anti-clericalism and humanism with extreme physical violence, cruelty and bloodshed.

At that moment in time, England was at a crossroads. It was a divided, poor country caught between the richer and more powerful Catholic powers of Spain, France, and Portugal. It was under constant threat of invasion and was riven with religious conflicts, with different ideologies being forced on reluctant citizens by successive monarchs.

Favorites jockeyed for power and rose to the top, only to be cut down on whims, suspicions, and jealousies. England was weak economically and resorted to piracy to fill government coffers. Almost everyone was suspected of heresy or betrayal, and the punishment was a horrible death. Friends and families turned against each other. Marlowe was almost constantly under suspicion of heresy precisely because he was not afraid to shock — to challenge authority and convention. Anyone at that time who thought the sun revolved around the earth, or that it was older than a few thousand years, was regarded as dangerous.

Marlowe was born into a modest family at a time when England was a highly stratified society dominated by the aristocracy and landed gentry. Unlike Shakespeare, Marlow went to Cambridge University, which meant that he was immersed in the classics. But to survive and rise with neither class nor wealth, he had to struggle financially and find ways of being useful to the hierarchies. That’s why he got involved in various nefarious activities and unsavory people.

Of his plays, three stand out from the rest: Tamburlaine the Great, The Jew of Malta, and Dr. Faustus. All are concerned with lust for power and wealth. I will ignore the crude Jew hatred poured into the character of the Jew in The Jew of Malta. Marlowe was after all a child of his times even though there were no Jews in England. It made Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice look positively benign.

Marlowe was influenced by Niccolo Machiavelli the controversial Florentine political thinker known for his pragmatic theory of power.

Some of his highlights include, “It is much safer to be feared than loved”; “Men must either be caressed or annihilated”; and “the end justifies the means.” And most relevant to us at this moment of political upheaval, uncertainty, and hypocrisy: “He who studies what ought to be done, rather than what is done, will learn the way to his downfall rather than his preservation.”

Much of this is summed up in an impressive book, Christopher Marlowe: Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival. Written by Stephen Greenblatt, it’s a delight, combining history with literature.

The story is a warning — or a sign of hope — about what can happen during political upheaval.

We have just witnessed in New York politics what can happen when the mob, blinded by insecurity and the record of failed ideology takes charge of the asylum. One can only pray that wiser counsel will prevail.

The author is a writer and rabbi based in New York.