Marlowe, who was accused of atheism, took the protestant accounts of the massacre and amplified them with some extra juicy bits of his own invention. One critic I'm reading at the moment, Wilbur Sanders, accuses Marlowe of "psychic decay" and a failure (especially when compared to Shakespeare) "to free his drama from the mere 'ideas' which gave rise to it. The ideas are ministering to urges which are only partially understood."
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