Charles Marlow
Marlow's name may be inspired by the Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe. Conrad's father was a translator of William Shakespeare who doubtless would have known of Marlowe's work as well. Some intertextual interpretations of "Heart of Darkness" have suggested that Marlowe's "The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus" may have influenced Conrad. Charles Marlow describes a character as a "papier-mache Mephistopheles", a reference to the Faust legend. Marlow's and Kurtz's journey up the Congo River in "Heart of Darkness" also has similarities to another work by Marlowe, "Dido, Queen of Carthage", in which Aeneas is stranded on the shore of Libya and meets the African queen Dido.
Heart of Darkness
The novel "Hearts of Darkness", by Paul Lawrence, moves the events of the novel to England in 1666. Marlow's journey into the jungle becomes a journey by the narrator, Harry Lytle and his friend Davy Dowling out of London and towards Shyam, a plague-stricken town that has descended into cruelty and barbarism, loosely modelled on real-life Eyam. While Marlow must return to civilisation with Kurtz, Lytle and Dowling are searching for the spy James Josselin. Like Kurtz, Josselin's reputation is immense and the protagonists are well-acquainted with his accomplishments by the time they meet him.