Okay, I admit it. I have a huge literary crush on Christopher Marlowe. The man was a sexy, sexy beast (Marlowe is named after him, and kind of modeled after him!). Several chapter titles in The Devil's Due series come from his work.

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Kit Marlowe was the preeminent playwright of Elizabethan times, yes, contemporaneously with Shakespeare. After his mysterious death in 1593, Will rose in favor, but Kit was there first, thrilling audiences with his plays (Doctor Faustus; Dido, Queen of Carthage; Tambourlaine) and poems (The Passionate Sherherd to His Love: Hero and Leander), and possibly mentoring Shakespeare. 

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He might have been a spy for Queen Elizabeth. He might have been bisexual. He was almost certainly an atheist at a time when that was very, very dangerous. At one point, he was imprisoned and possibly tortured, but it's unclear if that was for being an atheist or for being a spy (they didn't keep great records in 1500s England).

 

Kit was greatly admired by his contemporaries - Shakespeare even referenced his work in As You Like It and Love's Labour's Lost. 

He was known for his somewhat salacious lyricism - really delicious stuff, honest and bold, though not as messy as Rabelais!

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His work is referenced throughout the series, for example, "I Can ___ thee Soundly", which is the title of chapter 6 in Deals with the Devil. The line comes from his poem Ignoto, which begins "I love thee not for sacred chastity,— Who loves for that?" before listing all the things the poet cannot or will not do for his love, until he whispers in her ear "I can ___ the soundly" and finishes the poem with "by the chaps of hell, to do thee good, I'll freely spend my thrice-decocted blood."

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I mean: {swoon}, right?