Towards the end of the Victorian era, Marlowe achieved great popularity in England. To do justice to this, a memorial was to be erected in Canterbury. A committee was formed to finance the project, including Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Henry Irving, Sir Sidney Lee, Algernon Charles Swinburne and Robert Browning.1 The famous sculptor Edward Onslow Ford designed a marble plinth with four niches containing figures of Marlowe’s dramatic heroes. A life-size image of the Muse of Poetry was to stand on the pedestal. However, the funds were only sufficient for the plinth, the muse and Tamburlaine, who was modelled after Henry Irving and at that time still held a spear. It was in this form that the Marlowe Memorial was unveiled by Irving in Canterbury on 16 September 1891.
Collis, H.B.: Henry Irving unveils the Marlowe Memorial. 1891 Folger Library. FSL collection. ART File I72no.27
It had been given a very prominent place: in the middle of Buttermarket opposite the entrance to the cathedral.2 The monument was popularly nicknamed "Kitty Marlowe". After the end of the First World War, she had to move to Kings Street. Its original site was needed for a war memorial.
It was not until 1928 that the three missing figures could be placed in the niches. Charles Leonard Hartwel, a student of Ford, had made them. They show Edward Alleyn as Barabas, Johnston Forbes-Robertson as Faustus and James Keteltas Hackett as Edward II.
Marlowe Memorial: Tamburlaine, Faustus, Edward II and Barabas. Private property ©
The ceremonial unveiling of these statues was undertaken by Hugh Walpole on 1 November 1928. By this time, the monument was already in Dane John Gardens, where it had been moved in 1921.3
The air raids of 1942, to which Marlowe’s baptistery had fallen victim, also caused the statue of the Muse to fall from its pedestal. In 1948 she was put back up, but the wrong way round.4 Faustus now stands at her feet instead of Tamburlaine and the inscription with Marlowe’s life data became the reverse.
Marlowe Memorial. Private property ©
Forgotten and neglected, the monument spent the next few decades in a sad existence until it was moved again. On 30 May 1993, Ian McKellen unveiled it in its current location opposite the Marlowe Theatre.5 However, the muse is still positioned incorrectly on the plinth.
