Marlowe Memorial
| Marlowe Memorial - The Muse of Poetry | |
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_-_The_Muse_of_Poetry_(1891)_left,_Marlowe_Memorial_nr_Marlowe_Theatre,_The_Friars,_Canterbury,_UK,_October_2012_(8111622455).png) |
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| Artist | Edward Onslow Ford |
| Year | 1891 |
| Type | Bronze |
| Location | Canterbury |
| 51°16′50″N 1°04′41″E / 51.28066°N 1.07815°ECoordinates: 51°16′50″N 1°04′41″E / 51.28066°N 1.07815°E | |
The Marlowe Memorial is a statue and four statuettes erected in memory of the playwright and poet Christopher Marlowe in 1891 in Canturbury, England. The memorial was commissioned by a Marlowe Memorial Committee, and comprises a bronze statue, The Muse of Poetry sculpted by Edward Onslow Ford, standing on a plinth decorated with statuettes of actors playing Marlowe roles. The statue is now situated outside the city's Marlowe Theatre.
A Marlow Memorial Committee was established in 1888, arising out of a conception on the part of the Elizabethan Society of Toynbee Hall, that Marlowe, perhaps because of his reputation of as atheist, lacked the national recognition that he deserved. James Ernest Baker of the Society wrote to the Standard newspaper on 28 July 1888 to draw attention to Marlowe's work and legacy, stating that he had "laid the foundations of English blank verse, which, in its more developed form through the medium of Shakespeare and Milton, has become the life-blood of English literature and the supreme instrument of tragic poetry."
A committee was formed in reaction to the letter, numbering amongst its officers Sidney Lee and Frederick Rogers of the Society, the former acting as treasurer; Lord Coleridge, the Lord Chief Justice of England acting as chairman; and with members including poets Robert Browning, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, James Russell Lowell, Edmund Gosse, Algernon Charles Swinburne, John Addington Symonds, Andrew Lang, Alfred Austin and Henry Beeching; the publisher Arthur Henry Bullen, editor Alexander Balloch Grosart, actor-manager Henry Irving; writers & critics Leslie Stephen, Richard Garnett; and scholars Horace Howard Furness and Francis James Child. The committee raised funds by suscription, and held a public reading at St James's Hall involving Irving and Ellen Terry, which raised £100.
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