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Image: First Night edition, not an official production poster · Art: Aernout van Buchel after Johannes de Witt, The Swan playhouse, London, c. 1596 · Utrecht University Library · Public domain · objects.library.uu.nl

Play

Born With Teeth

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Wyndham's Theatre · London

In the back room of a pub in 1591, two rival playwrights are made to write together in a country full of spies, where betrayal is always tempting.

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DramaHistory

The story

Liz Duffy Adams's two-hander imagines Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare, both 27, forced into a creative partnership in the winter of 1591. Marlowe is a Cambridge graduate working as a spy for the Crown; Shakespeare is an actor with a wife and family in Stratford. As they collaborate, compete and flirt, the conspiracy and paranoia running through England make every confidence between them a risk.

In the room

It unfolds over three secret meetings, setting quick verbal sparring and flirtation against the menace of informers and torture in Elizabethan England.

Good fit if you like

Elizabethan history, two-hander plays, literary rivalries and espionage.

Details

From 13 Aug 2025

Running time not recorded.

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Cast & crew

No cast or crew recorded yet.

Details are edited by First Night.