Christopher Marlowe, (1564 –1593)

The Massacre at Paris 
(c. 1593)
 
This play concerns the Saint Bartholomew's Day 
Massacre, which took place in Paris in 1572, and the part 
played by the Duc de Guise in those events.
The Lord Strange's Men acted a play titled 
The Tragedy of 
the Guise
, thought to be Marlowe's play, on Jan. 26, 1593. 
The Admiral's Men performed 
The Guise
or 
The Massacre
ten times between June 21 and Sept. 27, 1594. There are 
a surprising number of Shakespearean borrowings and 
paraphrases in the text.
The only surviving text is an undated quarto that is too 
short to represent the complete original play and in all 
probability it is a memorial reconstruction by the actors 
who performed the work. It preserves a lot of the 
violence and stabbing jokes but deletes most of whatever 
social value the play may have had, except for one long 
soliloquy near the beginning.