Talks & Events: The Making of Marlowe
Sat 12th September 2026 to Sat 7th November 2026
The Beaney — How to get here
A series of Talks & Events alongside ‘The Making of Marlowe’ exhibition at The Beaney.
The Making of Marlowe: Canterbury in the Sixteenth Century
Talk by Catherine Richardson and Luke Farrell
Christopher Marlowe spent his formative years in one of the most important cities in Elizabethan England. As the seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury and a major centre of trade, learning, and religious life, Canterbury was a place where people, goods, and ideas converged. Its streets were filled with merchants, craftsmen, clergy, scholars, refugees, and travellers, creating a lively and cosmopolitan city at the heart of the Tudor world.
But what was Canterbury really like for the people who called it home? This talk explores the city that shaped Marlowe’s early years, revealing the places, communities, and daily experiences that made up life within its walls. From the city’s streets and the routes that linked it to London, the Continent, and the surrounding region, to the rhythms of work, family life, and neighbourhood, we will uncover what it was like to live in the city. We will consider in particular what life was like for ‘middling sort’ families such as the Marlowes, using the findings of a major research project on this group to compare Canterbury with other places across the country.
By bringing together the city’s physical form with the stories of its inhabitants, the talk offers a vivid picture of life in sixteenth-century Canterbury, placing Marlowe within the wider urban world in which he grew up and offering a fresh perspective on one of England’s most remarkable Tudor cities.
Tickets £6 (£5 Canterbury Museums & Galleries members)
11:00 – 12:30 Saturday 12 September 2026
Learning Lab, First Floor, The Beaney
Marlowe and Spycraft
Talk by Nadine Akkermann and Daniel Smith
Nadine Akkerman’s talk explores the slender threads connecting Christopher Marlowe and the dangerous trade that is espionage, drawing on fascinating insights from her latest book Spycraft: Tricks and Tools of the Dangerous Trade from Elizabeth I to the Restoration (co-authored with Pete Langman). She examines how spymasters such as William Cecil, Lord Burghley, and Sir Francis Walsingham, together with their familiars—intelligencers, moles, and spies—wrote secret letters in code, cipher, and invisible inks to entrap enemies, prevent and plot assassination attempts on Queen Elizabeth I. Akkerman also analyses the archival records that scholarship has used to suggest that Marlowe was an intelligencer, reassessing these texts by placing them into the context of 16th-century espionage. By placing Marlowe within this wider world of espionage, she offers a nuanced perspective on the relationship between tradecraft and literary culture in early modern England.
Following this talk, Daniel Smith will introduce demonstrate the historical technique of ‘letterlocking’, used widely before the invention of the modern envelope to keep messages secure. Although we do not have Marlowe’s own letters, he would have been familiar with these techniques—as were the intelligence communities keeping an eye on him.
Nadine Akkerman is the award-winning author of Invisible Agents, a history of women spies; her latest book is Spycraft: Tricks and Tools of the Dangerous Trade from Elizabeth I to the Restoration, which she co-wrote with Dr Pete Langman.
Daniel Smith is co-author with Jana Dambrogio of Letterlocking: The Hidden History of the Letter and was for ten years co-editor of the letterlocking YouTube channel of instructional videos.
Tickets £6 (£5 Canterbury Museums & Galleries members)
11:00 – 12:30 Saturday 17 October 2026
Learning Lab, First Floor, The Beaney
Walking Tour App Launch: ‘Marlowe’s Canterbury’
The Oxford Marlowe Project team (Rory Loughnane, Catherine Richardson, and Luke Farrell) have designed a new digital app that allows visitors to follow in Marlowe’s footsteps around the city of Canterbury. Choose one of three routes – ‘Young Marlowe’, ‘Adult Marlowe’, or ‘Canterbury’s Literary History’ – to learn more about Marlowe’s life and times and the city’s rich literary heritage.
Join us for the official launch of the free app!
Date TBC
Learning Lab, First Floor, The Beaney
Marlowe Vs Shakespeare
Talk by Rory Loughnane
Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare were born just eight weeks apart in the spring of 1564. One was the son of a Canterbury shoemaker who studied at Cambridge before transforming London’s commercial stage with Tamburlaine. The other came from Stratford-upon-Avon, married young, and arrived in London at about the same time to begin a theatrical career that would eventually eclipse all others.
Were they rivals, collaborators, or simply two ambitious dramatists emerging from the same rapidly changing theatrical world? This talk traces their intertwined early careers from the late 1580s until Marlowe’s untimely death in 1593. It explores how both authors helped shape England’s new commercial theatre, transformed poetry and drama, and—if recent scholarship is correct—may even have collaborated on several history plays.
Rory Loughnane is Reader in Early Modern Studies at the University of Kent, a General Editor of the forthcoming Oxford Marlowe: Collected Works, and author of Shakespeare at Thirty (Princeton University Press, 2026) and The Ends of Shakespeare (Oxford University Press, 2027).
Tickets £6 (£5 Canterbury Museums & Galleries members)
11:00 – 12:30 Saturday 7 November 2026
Learning Lab, First Floor, The Beaney
‘The Making of Marlowe’ exhibition was co-curated by Canterbury Museums & Galleries and the Marlowe Project, University of Kent.
