[1] Goffe was asked to be a rector of the church in East Clandon, Surrey after receiving his B.D., an offer worth about eight pounds a year.
(1) However, Goffe began delivering Latin orations and writing poems in tribute to Sir Thomas Bodley and Queen Anne of Denmark as well as to the dean of Christ Church, William Godwin.
His wife and her children from her previous marriage continued to disrespect Goffe and are blamed for his death which occurred on 27 July 1629, shortly after his wedding day.
Furthermore, Goffe's The Courageous Turk, contains a few lines from the prologue that imply this was the third play to be acted in front of Christ Church.
[2] The lines are as follows: "Our hope which intends,/ The sacred Muses Progeny to greet,/ Which under roofe, now the third time meet…" [3] The Raging Turk is a tragedy of Emperor Bajazet II, who is desperately trying to hold onto his power.
[2] Many scholars believe in this play, “Goffe appears to be fascinated with the reputed evil of the Turks and their insatiable greed.
When the truth is revealed, Orestes kills the baby born of Aegisthus and his mother and forces the parents to drink the child’s blood.
However, The Courageous Turk's audience in the seventeenth-century liked the play because of the character of Amurath, the elaborate staging, the subject of Turkish history, and Goffe's vision the frailty of kings and the ultimate reward given to Christians who fought against earth's heathens.
In The Courageous Turk, the speeches of a Turkish princess intervening in a quarrel between her father and husband are liberally adapted from a scene in Phoenissae in which Jocasta, the wife of Oedipus, comes between her warring sons.
Ben Jonson said, in a conversation recorded by Bishop Plume, "So Tom Goff brings in Etiocles and Polynices."
Ben Jonson was much admired at Christ Church, and may have been invited to read a manuscript play by Goffe on the theme of the Phoenissae.
[6] In addition, unlike many writers and producers of academic drama in the Jacobean era, Goffe was not contemptuous of popular theatre, and included many scenes and lines that were influenced by Hamlet and Antonio's Revenge in his tragedy, Orestes.