Marlowe’s treatment of the familiar myth of Hero and Leander shows a distinctive originality. The poet endows the tragedy of the two young lovers with a sense of comedy and farce. The ironic and detached tone in which it is written sometimes leads the narration through the paths of absurdity. However, the story is not deprived of its conventional tragic aspect, though the elements which shape this particular version of the tragedy differ, to some extent, from those established by the two main possible sources of the Elizabethan text: The poem by the fifth century Greek poet, Musaeus, and Ovid’s Heroids. Fate and the power of desire frame the tragic development of the two ancient versions. Overwhelmed by desire, Hero cannot avoid to light the "pitiless lamp" which would guide Leander’s trip across the stormy sea. But the tragedy Marlowe’s Hero and Leander suffer is a personal and inner one. They struggle against their own selves in the battle between will and social and religious decorum, which is aggravated by the lovers’ inexperience concerning sex.
    The paper analyses in what terms does Marlowe deviate from the ancient sources of the myth to create a particularly irreverent version of the tragedy of the two young lovers.