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.
Edmund Musgrave Barttelot
Barttelot has been portrayed as a source for Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's novel "Heart of Darkness". Jerry Allen considered him the principal historical source, though Harold Bloom argued that there was no single source, and the many of Kurtz's actions were more likely to be based on Barttelot's contemporary Tippu Tib. Hochschild also considers him a likely source, since he "went mad, began hitting, whipping, and killing people, and was finally murdered", but also thinks that other participants in the expedition and contemporary figures contributed to the character.