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Born with Teeth
'"O, Jesus bless us, he is born with teeth!"
And so was I, which plainly signified
That I should snarl and bite, play the dog.'
Henry VI, Part 3
Christopher Marlowe – rockstar of Elizabethan theatre and notorious spy for the Crown – danger and seduction combined. William Shakespeare – jobbing actor and promising young playwright – dazzled by Marlowe, but with ambitions of his own.
When the pair meet in the backroom of a pub to collaborate on a cycle of history plays, tensions rise as they navigate the perils of art under an oppressive regime, and flirt like young men with everything to lose…
An explosively entertaining duel of wits, words and powerplay, Liz Duffy Adams's Born With Teeth is a playful and daring imagining of the relationship between two literary icons. The play was first performed in Houston, Texas, in 2022, where it won several major awards. In 2025, it received its European premiere at Wyndham's Theatre in London's West End, produced by Playful Productions, the Royal Shakespeare Company and Grain of Sand Productions, directed by RSC Co-Artistic Director Daniel Evans, and starring Ncuti Gatwa as Kit and Edward Bluemel as Will.
And so was I, which plainly signified
That I should snarl and bite, play the dog.'
Henry VI, Part 3
Christopher Marlowe – rockstar of Elizabethan theatre and notorious spy for the Crown – danger and seduction combined. William Shakespeare – jobbing actor and promising young playwright – dazzled by Marlowe, but with ambitions of his own.
When the pair meet in the backroom of a pub to collaborate on a cycle of history plays, tensions rise as they navigate the perils of art under an oppressive regime, and flirt like young men with everything to lose…
An explosively entertaining duel of wits, words and powerplay, Liz Duffy Adams's Born With Teeth is a playful and daring imagining of the relationship between two literary icons. The play was first performed in Houston, Texas, in 2022, where it won several major awards. In 2025, it received its European premiere at Wyndham's Theatre in London's West End, produced by Playful Productions, the Royal Shakespeare Company and Grain of Sand Productions, directed by RSC Co-Artistic Director Daniel Evans, and starring Ncuti Gatwa as Kit and Edward Bluemel as Will.
88 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 28, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 77 reviews
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October 6, 2025“It is madmen like us who reinvent the world, when no one is noticing. Will you?”
I have very complicated feelings about this play, and I’ll be transparent in the fact that they’re shaped by my introduction to the work having first encountered it through its west end performance.
Wit is at the heart of this work. It is not only easily summed up as a collision of early modern England’s greatest wits and wills but is just really witty on its own. Shakespeare and Marlowe are well-characterized foils, their personalities and the friction between them filling the pages so utterly that the play feels almost over-populated with just the two. (And as it turns out, it is just that.) Marlowe is agile and intimidating, circling a clever and nimble yet wary Shakespeare like prey. They are ferocious and passionate and brilliant characters, both honoring their historical counterparts and crafting an entirely new tension-filled, utterly electrifying dynamic.
Adams’ allusions and references are apt and sharp, funny and impressive to early modernists such as myself. There’s always the fear, in fictional works about Shakespeare (I was going to say early modern dramatists, but let’s be honest, Shakespeare), that they won’t really understand the culture’s nuances of the time, instead feeding into the 18th-century-made image of the bard before his time. But this was a damn well-researched play, and was far more historically accurate than I anticipated (though not always chronologically accurate, which is fine. I’d rather the Beaumont and Fletcher joke be in there than lose it for the fact that they didn’t emerge in the scene until after Marlowe’s death.)
The structure and themes are also incredibly smart and well saturated. Unfortunately, these were completely over my head in the stage version and am glad I decided to read the text to understand what I missed. I love that here, Shakespeare is the storyteller, the Horatio to Kit’s Hamlet, the mind and mouth that literally and figuratively shapes the narrative with his words. This is, yes, a Shakespeare/Marlowe fanfiction, but it is also a play about the way two seemingly different, but actually very similar, men learn to survive in the dog-eat-dog climate of a surveillance state. It’s about faith and about anxieties and about how crisis can make or break faith and anxiety into something all-consuming. And it’s incredibly relevant and timely; I think most readers will see parts of our world in Adams’ early modern England.
Though this play is incredibly smart, I find its emotionality lacking support. Its dialogue is unbelievably beautiful, and there are these really intense load-bearing emotional lines that feel disjointed from the rest of the play. And though those lines were very moving, beautiful emotional lines require, nay, deserve, the narrative foreplay to let them reach their greatest potential, whereas Adams seems to expect the lines on their own to do that work. And I think the crux of this is that the play spends a lot of time allowing these two characters to sharpen their teeth on each other, clarifying their own characters rather than defining the space between them, and by the end of the play, I still struggled to articulate what they meant to each other, really.
But this really is, overall, a great play. It’s damn funny, it’s metatheatrical, it’s urgent, it’s historically inoffensive, it’s smart as all hell, and it’s beautifully horny. I WILL be going back literally tonight to go see it again.
I have very complicated feelings about this play, and I’ll be transparent in the fact that they’re shaped by my introduction to the work having first encountered it through its west end performance.
Wit is at the heart of this work. It is not only easily summed up as a collision of early modern England’s greatest wits and wills but is just really witty on its own. Shakespeare and Marlowe are well-characterized foils, their personalities and the friction between them filling the pages so utterly that the play feels almost over-populated with just the two. (And as it turns out, it is just that.) Marlowe is agile and intimidating, circling a clever and nimble yet wary Shakespeare like prey. They are ferocious and passionate and brilliant characters, both honoring their historical counterparts and crafting an entirely new tension-filled, utterly electrifying dynamic.
Adams’ allusions and references are apt and sharp, funny and impressive to early modernists such as myself. There’s always the fear, in fictional works about Shakespeare (I was going to say early modern dramatists, but let’s be honest, Shakespeare), that they won’t really understand the culture’s nuances of the time, instead feeding into the 18th-century-made image of the bard before his time. But this was a damn well-researched play, and was far more historically accurate than I anticipated (though not always chronologically accurate, which is fine. I’d rather the Beaumont and Fletcher joke be in there than lose it for the fact that they didn’t emerge in the scene until after Marlowe’s death.)
The structure and themes are also incredibly smart and well saturated. Unfortunately, these were completely over my head in the stage version and am glad I decided to read the text to understand what I missed. I love that here, Shakespeare is the storyteller, the Horatio to Kit’s Hamlet, the mind and mouth that literally and figuratively shapes the narrative with his words. This is, yes, a Shakespeare/Marlowe fanfiction, but it is also a play about the way two seemingly different, but actually very similar, men learn to survive in the dog-eat-dog climate of a surveillance state. It’s about faith and about anxieties and about how crisis can make or break faith and anxiety into something all-consuming. And it’s incredibly relevant and timely; I think most readers will see parts of our world in Adams’ early modern England.
Though this play is incredibly smart, I find its emotionality lacking support. Its dialogue is unbelievably beautiful, and there are these really intense load-bearing emotional lines that feel disjointed from the rest of the play. And though those lines were very moving, beautiful emotional lines require, nay, deserve, the narrative foreplay to let them reach their greatest potential, whereas Adams seems to expect the lines on their own to do that work. And I think the crux of this is that the play spends a lot of time allowing these two characters to sharpen their teeth on each other, clarifying their own characters rather than defining the space between them, and by the end of the play, I still struggled to articulate what they meant to each other, really.
But this really is, overall, a great play. It’s damn funny, it’s metatheatrical, it’s urgent, it’s historically inoffensive, it’s smart as all hell, and it’s beautifully horny. I WILL be going back literally tonight to go see it again.
September 18, 2025
4.5, rounded up.
Although this premiered in '22 (in Texas, of all places), it is just now getting due attention, through a starry RSC production currently a commercial hit on the West End. The reviews, however, have been somewhat mixed, extolling the two actors, yet finding the script a bit lacking. I put that down to sour grapes nationalistic xenophobia - had this had the name Stoppard or Hare attached as author, they'd be proclaiming it the play of the year. Sorry, but brilliant performances are simply NOT given in mediocre plays.
Duffy Adams creates two fascinating, albeit probably NOT 100% historically accurate, characters out of playwrights Kit Marlowe and Will Shakespeare. The two are collaborating on the Henry VI trilogy (which has recently been corroborated), while dancing around issues of their relative fame, legacies, politics, religious freedom, and some flirtatious banter.
Marlowe has long been acknowledged as primarily homosexual, and Will undoubtedly showed some such tendencies in his love sonnets, so that cannot be faulted. The reviews have applauded the sexiness and chemistry between the two London leads, but seem to have wanted even more - I think the balance is exactly right, and Duffy does capture an Elizabethan flavor in her dialogues without going full iambic pentameter on us (except for some late quotations from the actual Henry VI, Pt. 3).
Hopefully the London production will encourage other mountings of the script, as I'd love to see this performed.
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/202...
https://www.thetimes.com/culture/thea...
https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/revie...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/w...
https://www.timeout.com/london/news/r...
https://www.whatsonstage.com/news/bor...
https://www.broadwayworld.com/westend...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6k8r...
Although this premiered in '22 (in Texas, of all places), it is just now getting due attention, through a starry RSC production currently a commercial hit on the West End. The reviews, however, have been somewhat mixed, extolling the two actors, yet finding the script a bit lacking. I put that down to sour grapes nationalistic xenophobia - had this had the name Stoppard or Hare attached as author, they'd be proclaiming it the play of the year. Sorry, but brilliant performances are simply NOT given in mediocre plays.
Duffy Adams creates two fascinating, albeit probably NOT 100% historically accurate, characters out of playwrights Kit Marlowe and Will Shakespeare. The two are collaborating on the Henry VI trilogy (which has recently been corroborated), while dancing around issues of their relative fame, legacies, politics, religious freedom, and some flirtatious banter.
Marlowe has long been acknowledged as primarily homosexual, and Will undoubtedly showed some such tendencies in his love sonnets, so that cannot be faulted. The reviews have applauded the sexiness and chemistry between the two London leads, but seem to have wanted even more - I think the balance is exactly right, and Duffy does capture an Elizabethan flavor in her dialogues without going full iambic pentameter on us (except for some late quotations from the actual Henry VI, Pt. 3).
Hopefully the London production will encourage other mountings of the script, as I'd love to see this performed.
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/202...
https://www.thetimes.com/culture/thea...
https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/revie...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/w...
https://www.timeout.com/london/news/r...
https://www.whatsonstage.com/news/bor...
https://www.broadwayworld.com/westend...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6k8r...
January 24, 2026
I want to disappear. I want to be invisible. I want to write about kings and villains and love and war and life and be as unknowable at the end of it all as I was before I wrote a word. I want to hide in my work like an outlaw in the forest—hunt as you might, you won’t find as much as a potshard left behind.
HEY WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUUUCK
🎵It's Hard To Say I Do When I Don't--Fall Out Boy🎵
HEY WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUUUCK
🎵It's Hard To Say I Do When I Don't--Fall Out Boy🎵
January 17, 2026
This is my Heated Rivalry
April 15, 2025
"I suppose I thought we could both be kings." -- I can't remember the last time I was so locked in while reading a script, I can't imagine what it would be like to see it actually performed. Hopefully I'll get to find out. People who don't care about Shakespeare are always trying and failing to make Shakespeare sexy and modern and irreverent, and Adams succeeds BY caring, by virtue of taking Marlowe and Shakespeare very seriously, not with worship but with incisive, deliberate recklessness. I need to be in this play really really really bad.
September 22, 2025
4.5 rounded up.
such a delight, cannot wait to see it again
such a delight, cannot wait to see it again
January 6, 2026
Fantastic. Cried. Must see it performed.
July 27, 2025
A little corny at times, but super fun and sexy, and, unsurprisingly, I've found a new dream role in Marlowe.
September 11, 2025
My god, I fear it's perfect.
Here's a breakdown of each of the stars:
The first star is for all of the details I noticed on my second read, which I hadn't noticed before.
The second star is for making me laugh out loud reading the text after already seeing it with my own two eyes.
The third star is for when I saw it with my own two eyes (Ncuti and Edward, the men that you are).
The fourth star is exclusively for the stage direction: "KIT gets sexy up on him. WILL is into it." True poetry.
The fifth star is for the combination of real high stakes and hypnotising sexual tension. I could read these two characters interacting for the rest of my life and be quite content.
I cannot quite articulate how this play has everything. The character writing is masterclass. The context is a character within itself, constantly looming over the pair, refusing to leave them in peace. Once they meet for the first time, you can feel the clock ticking on them both. Liz Duffy Adams creates a forced proximity in which not both can survive for long.
The MOTIFS, the CALLBACKS, the shear BANTS of it all. I can't cope GUYS.
There are so many quotes in here that I will not stop rereading until I'm in my literal grave.
"Forgiveness, absolution, death and resurrection, love lost and found - its all we can do, all of us grievous grieving souls, forever willing our immortal longings into whatever being our pitiful powers may. Oh Kit. You should have died hereafter, you should have lived."
Honourable mention: "Ineffable. There's nothing I can't eff."
I am done now. I don't know how I will ever read again.
All five stars and throw in a few more if possible.
Here's a breakdown of each of the stars:
The first star is for all of the details I noticed on my second read, which I hadn't noticed before.
The second star is for making me laugh out loud reading the text after already seeing it with my own two eyes.
The third star is for when I saw it with my own two eyes (Ncuti and Edward, the men that you are).
The fourth star is exclusively for the stage direction: "KIT gets sexy up on him. WILL is into it." True poetry.
The fifth star is for the combination of real high stakes and hypnotising sexual tension. I could read these two characters interacting for the rest of my life and be quite content.
I cannot quite articulate how this play has everything. The character writing is masterclass. The context is a character within itself, constantly looming over the pair, refusing to leave them in peace. Once they meet for the first time, you can feel the clock ticking on them both. Liz Duffy Adams creates a forced proximity in which not both can survive for long.
The MOTIFS, the CALLBACKS, the shear BANTS of it all. I can't cope GUYS.
There are so many quotes in here that I will not stop rereading until I'm in my literal grave.
"Forgiveness, absolution, death and resurrection, love lost and found - its all we can do, all of us grievous grieving souls, forever willing our immortal longings into whatever being our pitiful powers may. Oh Kit. You should have died hereafter, you should have lived."
Honourable mention: "Ineffable. There's nothing I can't eff."
I am done now. I don't know how I will ever read again.
All five stars and throw in a few more if possible.
November 2, 2025
So many great lines, was going to quote but won’t be a prick! The good news is I can read!!!!
January 22, 2026
4/5 ⭐️
“If I can understand God, with my poor understanding, then He cannot be very great. I need Him to be greater than I can know.”
I wasn’t sure if I liked it at first. However, once I caught up with what was happening, I started to REALLY like it. Overall, I think the play is stupidly clever, and knowing some of the history behind the characters surely helps. There’s some quotes in there that really kill me, but I didn’t really love the final monologue. Anyway, I would kill to watch this live.
“If I can understand God, with my poor understanding, then He cannot be very great. I need Him to be greater than I can know.”
I wasn’t sure if I liked it at first. However, once I caught up with what was happening, I started to REALLY like it. Overall, I think the play is stupidly clever, and knowing some of the history behind the characters surely helps. There’s some quotes in there that really kill me, but I didn’t really love the final monologue. Anyway, I would kill to watch this live.
October 21, 2025
“You expose yourself with every breath, with every line. To read you is to know you with glittering specificity, I knew you before we’d even met”
___
Flew from Belfast to London to see this on stage and I am not even remotely sorry
___
Flew from Belfast to London to see this on stage and I am not even remotely sorry
January 9, 2026
so kind of liz duffy adams to write a play specifically for me. thank you, liz! how did you know i spent my early university years writing about shakespeare/marlowe content?
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December 21, 2025Something about this play just gets me. Seeing it on stage was absolutely wonderful, but reading it made me emotional as well.
The play is very funny and very sexy, but it's not just that. For one, it is just super interesting to put these two writers in one room and think about what that might have been like - after all, they were contemporaries, but there are absolutely no records that confirm they ever met (though, if you believe they cowrote some stuff, they probably must have). Their dynamic is compelling, too: today, Shakespeare is the most famous playwright ever and Marlowe oftentimes doesn't even get a passing mention, but back in the day, he was the superstar and Shakespeare was only up-and-coming. The play explores how and why this shift may have occurred. Of course, Marlowe died early (and under mysterious circumstances), but it's more than that. I am no Shakespeare or Marlowe expert by any means, but I took a class on Early Modern Drama this past semester, and we talked about many of the things this play also touches upon: the fun thing about Shakespeare is that he often seems to disappear behind his words and there's lots of freedom to how you interpret his plays - he is an ambiguous writer who doesn't like to openly share his beliefs and convictions. Marlowe was, well, not that, from what I've heard, considering that with Doctor Faustus, he literally wrote a play about conjuring the devil, and that he was generally rumored to be an atheist. The play very much gets into the politics of the time, into freedom of speech and the fact that artists always have to be careful about how much of themselves they put into their art in case someone wants to use it against them. Unfortunately, this is obviously not a problem of the past but, as we all know, especially pressing in times when authoritarianism is on the rise again. Art is always political, whether you intend/ want it to be or not. While Born With Teeth is a short play, it sure makes you think.
I also really like the introduction they included before the actual text; it's fascinating to me that you can use statistics to more or less determine whether two plays were written by the same author or - in this case - to say with some certainty that Marlowe and Shakespeare seem to have collaborated on Henry VI.
The play is very funny and very sexy, but it's not just that. For one, it is just super interesting to put these two writers in one room and think about what that might have been like - after all, they were contemporaries, but there are absolutely no records that confirm they ever met (though, if you believe they cowrote some stuff, they probably must have). Their dynamic is compelling, too: today, Shakespeare is the most famous playwright ever and Marlowe oftentimes doesn't even get a passing mention, but back in the day, he was the superstar and Shakespeare was only up-and-coming. The play explores how and why this shift may have occurred. Of course, Marlowe died early (and under mysterious circumstances), but it's more than that. I am no Shakespeare or Marlowe expert by any means, but I took a class on Early Modern Drama this past semester, and we talked about many of the things this play also touches upon: the fun thing about Shakespeare is that he often seems to disappear behind his words and there's lots of freedom to how you interpret his plays - he is an ambiguous writer who doesn't like to openly share his beliefs and convictions. Marlowe was, well, not that, from what I've heard, considering that with Doctor Faustus, he literally wrote a play about conjuring the devil, and that he was generally rumored to be an atheist. The play very much gets into the politics of the time, into freedom of speech and the fact that artists always have to be careful about how much of themselves they put into their art in case someone wants to use it against them. Unfortunately, this is obviously not a problem of the past but, as we all know, especially pressing in times when authoritarianism is on the rise again. Art is always political, whether you intend/ want it to be or not. While Born With Teeth is a short play, it sure makes you think.
I also really like the introduction they included before the actual text; it's fascinating to me that you can use statistics to more or less determine whether two plays were written by the same author or - in this case - to say with some certainty that Marlowe and Shakespeare seem to have collaborated on Henry VI.
April 15, 2025
“It is madmen like us who reinvent the world when no one is watching. Will you?”
I’m gnawing on the bars of my cage this was a transcendent experience THE GAGGERY??
The retired history student in me went feral. Shakespeare and Marlowe but queer as fuck but also all about what it means to be making art under threat, under surveillance, and under attack this shit was so delicious I actually feel high. Kit and Will my horrid, poetic, obnoxious, glorious pookie pies.
Rip Kit you would’ve loved the tortured poets department album 💀
The day I stage a gender-bent production of this it’ll be over for everyone I PROMISE.
Would sell my soul, my kidney, and my first born child to see the RSC production of this. Or at least the revised edition pretty please.
I’m gnawing on the bars of my cage this was a transcendent experience THE GAGGERY??
The retired history student in me went feral. Shakespeare and Marlowe but queer as fuck but also all about what it means to be making art under threat, under surveillance, and under attack this shit was so delicious I actually feel high. Kit and Will my horrid, poetic, obnoxious, glorious pookie pies.
Rip Kit you would’ve loved the tortured poets department album 💀
The day I stage a gender-bent production of this it’ll be over for everyone I PROMISE.
Would sell my soul, my kidney, and my first born child to see the RSC production of this. Or at least the revised edition pretty please.
December 27, 2025
Having seen this play in the West End, it truly is a masterpiece to behold. Then being able to read the play in my own space and time, to slowly read the words at my own leisure and reimagine the performance, it’s like reading the plays of Shakespeare and Marlowe, it has that level of power. I love it so much!
On re-read: this will still be one of my favourite works ever, for both the words themselves and the memories of the performances I will never forget.
On re-read: this will still be one of my favourite works ever, for both the words themselves and the memories of the performances I will never forget.
October 15, 2025
10/10 Brilliant. Life-changing. My forever favourite kind of character dynamic and I wish I could copy every passage I loved here but there'd be too many. Note to self: I need to get into more theatre, I forget how evocative it is
September 3, 2025
ncuti gatwa and edward bluemel the men that you are
September 26, 2025
Even without Ncuti and Edward’s charm this was so moving. I’m going to reread this again and again. I don’t know that a play will ever move me as much as this one does.
September 27, 2025
He visto la obra en Wyndham’s Theatre y es una barbaridad. Compré el libreto y me lo leí de una sentada en el tren de vuelta de Londres a Bruselas. 10/10.
October 21, 2025
saw the play (absolutely gorgeous and witty and well played) ✅️
bought the play & got it signed by the actors ✅️
read it and loved it even more ✅️🙂↕️🫡
bought the play & got it signed by the actors ✅️
read it and loved it even more ✅️🙂↕️🫡
Read
October 27, 2025*watched! got major fanfiction vibes. a very fun time. gatwa and bluemel both fantastic!
March 24, 2026
history may be written by the victors, but we know they delegate to the poets.
May 11, 2026
one million re-reads in and this play still hits. #ineffable
May 23, 2026
Oh yeah, phenomenal character voice. This is Hamilton for English majors.
April 29, 2026
I wish I had seen the stage production live
November 23, 2025
It's my new favorite play, and it's not even close. I could have drenched it in highlighter. Wow.
The premise of a two-hander with Marlowe and Shakespeare working together to write the Henry plays in a police state amidst unresolved sexual tension was never not going to work for me. Never. But I have to say, this really, REALLY worked for me. It's so clever and sexy and dangerous and funny and ultimately shocking. I love how the limits of what we know about Shakespeare is built into it. I adore how the reality of Marlowe being a spy is depicted. The tension and the chemistry is palpable even through the page. I need a pro-shot or a U.S. transfer yesterday.
The premise of a two-hander with Marlowe and Shakespeare working together to write the Henry plays in a police state amidst unresolved sexual tension was never not going to work for me. Never. But I have to say, this really, REALLY worked for me. It's so clever and sexy and dangerous and funny and ultimately shocking. I love how the limits of what we know about Shakespeare is built into it. I adore how the reality of Marlowe being a spy is depicted. The tension and the chemistry is palpable even through the page. I need a pro-shot or a U.S. transfer yesterday.
September 15, 2025
An incredible play both off and on stage. I saw this last week with Ncuti and Edward and they truly brought Kit and Will to life. An absolute need in your playtext collection or if you can, go see it in Wyndham’s Theatre this autumn. A heartbreaking, humorous story of love in some way. Of betrayal. A tragedy as Shakespeare himself would want it. I loved it.
November 3, 2025
"I think there is heaven in the flesh and I don’t think I’ll go to hell for it but if I do it was worth it."
Witty, flirty, moving, and absolutely delicious!
Feeling so lucky that I got to see Ncuti Gatwa and Edward Bluemel performing it in person, they're phenomenal and I'm in awe.
Witty, flirty, moving, and absolutely delicious!
Feeling so lucky that I got to see Ncuti Gatwa and Edward Bluemel performing it in person, they're phenomenal and I'm in awe.
August 25, 2025
Just got back from seeing the show on the west end. It rewired my brain chemistry, it was incredible! I got back to my hotel room after and straightaway sat and read the script to be able to relive it. I am 100% planning on seeing it again 🤯
Displaying 1 - 30 of 77 reviews