The document discusses two influential Elizabethan playwrights, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. It notes that Marlowe's most famous play was Doctor Faustus, about a man who sells his soul to the devil for knowledge and power. It also provides a brief overview of Shakespeare's life and career, dividing his works into early, high-productivity, gloomy, and late periods, and categorizing his plays as histories, tragedies, or comedies.