CHRISTOPHER MARLOW
Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe (baptised 26 February 1564 – 30 May
1593), was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe was
the foremost Elizabethan tragedian of his day. He greatly influenced William Shakespeare,
who was born in the same year as Marlowe and who rose to become the pre-eminent
Elizabethan playwright after Marlowe's mysterious early death. Marlowe's plays are known
for the use of blank verse and their overreaching protagonists.
A warrant was issued for Marlowe's arrest on 18 May 1593. No reason was given for it,
though it was thought to be connected to allegations of blasphemy—a manuscript believed to
have been written by Marlowe was said to contain "vile heretical conceipts". On 20 May he
was brought to the court to attend upon the Privy Council for questioning. There is no record of
their having met that day, however, and he was commanded to attend upon them each day
thereafter until "licensed to the contrary." Ten days later, he was stabbed to death by Ingram
Frizer. Whether the stabbing was connected to his arrest has never been resolved.
EARLY LIFE
Marlowe was born in Canterbury to shoemaker John Marlowe and his wife Catherine. His
date of birth is not known, but he was baptised on 26 February 1564 and is likely to have
been born a few days before. Thus he was just two months older than his
contemporary William Shakespeare, who was baptised on 26 April 1564 in Stratford-upon-
Avon.
Marlowe attended The King's School in Canterbury (where a house is now named after him)
and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he studied on a scholarship and received his
Bachelor of Arts degree in 1584. In 1587 the university hesitated to award him his Master of
Arts degree because of a rumour that he intended to go to the English college at Rheims,
presumably to prepare for ordination as a Roman Catholic priest. However, his degree was
awarded on schedule when the Privy Council intervened on his behalf, commending him for his
"faithful dealing" and "good service" to the Queen. The nature of Marlowe's service was not
specified by the Council, but its letter to the Cambridge authorities has provoked much
speculation, notably the theory that Marlowe was operating as a secret agent working for
Sir Francis Walsingham's intelligence service. No direct evidence supports this theory, although
the Council's letter is evidence that Marlowe had served the government in some secret
capacity.
LITERARY LIFE
Of the dramas attributed to Marlowe, Dido, Queen of Carthage is believed to have been his
first. It was performed by the Children of the Chapel, a company of boy actors, between
1587 and 1593. The play was first published in 1594; the title page attributes the play to
Marlowe and Thomas Nashe.
Marlowe's first play performed on the regular stage in London, in 1587, was Tamburlaine the
Great, about the conqueror Tamburlaine, who rises from shepherd to war-lord. It is among the
first English plays in blank verse, and, with Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, generally is
considered the beginning of the mature phase of the Elizabethan theatre. Tamburlaine was a
success and was followed by Tamburlaine the Great, Part II.
The two parts of Tamburlaine were published in 1590; all of Marlowe's other works were
published posthumously. The sequence of the writing of his other four plays is unknown; all
deal with controversial themes.
• The Jew of Malta (first published as The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew of Malta), about a
Maltese Jew's barbarous revenge against the city authorities has a prologue delivered
by a character representing Machiavelli. It was probably written in 1589 or 1590 and
was first performed in 1592. It was a success and remained popular for the next fifty
years. The play was entered in the Stationers' Register on 17 May 1594, but the earliest
surviving printed edition is from 1633.
• Edward the Second is an English history play about the deposition of King Edward II by his
barons and the Queen, who resent the undue influence the king's favourites have in court
and state affairs. The play was entered into the Stationers' Register on 6 July 1593, five
weeks after Marlowe's death. The full title of the earliest extant edition, of 1594, is The
troublesome reign and lamentable death of Edward the Second, King of England, with the
tragicall fall of proud Mortimer.
• The Massacre at Paris is a short and luridly written work, the only surviving text of which
was probably a reconstruction from memory of the original performance text, portraying
the events of the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572, which English Protestants
invoked as the blackest example of Catholic treachery. It features the silent "English
Agent", whom subsequent tradition has identified with Marlowe himself and his connections
to the secret service. The Massacre at Paris is considered his most dangerous play, as
agitators in London seized on its theme to advocate the murders of refugees from the low
countries and, indeed, it warns Elizabeth I of this possibility in its last scene. Its full title
was The Massacre at Paris: With the Death of the Duke of Guise.
• Doctor Faustus (or The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus), based on
the German Faustbuch was the first dramatised version of the Faust legend of a scholar's
dealing with the devil. While versions of "The Devil's Pact" can be traced back to the 4th
century, Marlowe deviates significantly by having his hero unable to "burn his books" or
repent to a merciful God in order to have his contract annulled at the end of the play.
Marlowe's protagonist is instead carried off by demons, and in the 1616 quarto, his
mangled corpse is found by several scholars. Doctor Faustus is a textual problem for
scholars as two versions of the play exist: the 1604 quarto, also known as the A text, and
the 1616 quarto or B text. Both were published after Marlowe's death. Scholars have disagreed on which text is more representative of Marlowe's original, and some editions are based on a combination of the two. The latest scholarly consensus (as of the late 20th century) holds that A text is more representative because it contains irregular character names and idiosyncratic spelling, which are believed to reflect a text based on the author's handwritten manuscript, or "foul papers." The B text, in comparison, was highly edited, and censored because of shifting theatre laws regarding religious words onstage, and contains several additional scenes which scholars believe to be the additions of other playwrights, particularly Samuel Rowley and William Bird (alias Borne).
Marlowe's plays were enormously successful, thanks in part, no doubt, to the imposing stage
presence of Edward Alleyn. Alleyn was unusually tall for the time and the haughty roles of
Tamburlaine, Faustus, and Barabas were probably written especially for him. Marlowe's plays
were the foundation of the repertoire of Alleyn's company, the Admiral's Men, throughout the
1590s.
Marlowe also wrote the poem Hero and Leander (published in 1598, and with a continuation
by George Chapman the same year), the popular lyric "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love",
and translations of Ovid's Amores and the first book of Lucan's Pharsalia. In 1599, his
translation of Ovid was banned and copies were publicly burned as part of Archbishop Whitgift's
crackdown on offensive material.
LEGEND
As with other writers of the period, little is known about Marlowe. What evidence there is can
be found in legal records and other official documents. This has not stopped writers of both
fiction and non-fiction from speculating about his activities and character. Marlowe has often
been described as a spy, a brawler, and a heretic, as well as a "magician", "duellist",
"tobacco-user", "counterfeiter", and "rakehell". J. A. Downie and Constance Kuriyama have
argued against the more lurid speculation, but J. B. Steane remarked, "it seems absurd to
dismiss all of these Elizabethan rumours and accusations as 'the Marlowe myth'"
Spying
Marlowe is often alleged to have been a government spy (Park Honan's 2005 biography
even had "Spy" in its title) The author Charles Nicholl speculates this was the case and suggests
that Marlowe's recruitment took place when he was at Cambridge. As noted above, in 1587
the Privy Council ordered the University of Cambridge to award Marlowe his degree of
Master of Arts, denying rumours that he intended to go to the English Catholic college in
Rheims, saying instead that he had been engaged in unspecified "affaires" on "matters
touching the benefit of his country". Surviving college records from the period also indicate
that Marlowe had had a series of unusually lengthy absences from the university – much
longer than permitted by university regulations – that began in the academic year 1584–
1585. Surviving college buttery (provisions store) accounts indicate he began spending lavishly
on food and drink during the periods he was in attendance – more than he could have
afforded on his known scholarship income.
It has sometimes been theorised that Marlowe was the "Morley" who was tutor to Arbella
Stuart in 1589. This possibility was first raised in a TLS letter by E. St John Brooks in 1937; in a letter to Notes and Queries, John Baker added that only Marlowe could be Arbella's
tutor due to the absence of any other known "Morley" from the period with an MA and not
otherwise occupied. If Marlowe was Arbella's tutor, (and some biographers think that the
"Morley" in question may have been a brother of the musician Thomas Morley it might
indicate that he was there as a spy, since Arbella, niece of Mary, Queen of Scots, and cousin
of James VI of Scotland, later James I of England, was at the time a strong candidate for
the succession to Elizabeth's throne. Frederick Boas dismisses the possibility of this
identification, based on surviving legal records which document his "residence in London
between September and December 1589". He had been party to a fatal quarrel involving his
neighbours in Norton Folgate and was held in Newgate Prison for a fortnight. In fact, the
quarrel and his arrest were on 18 September, he was released on bail on 1 October, and he
had to attend court – where he was cleared of any wrongdoing – on 3 December, but there is
no record of where he was for the intervening two months.
In 1592 Marlowe was arrested in the town of Flushing (Vlissingen) in the Netherlands for his
alleged involvement in the counterfeiting of coins, presumably related to the activities of
seditious Catholics. He was sent to be dealt with by the Lord Treasurer (Burghley) but no
charge or imprisonment resulted. This arrest may have disrupted another of Marlowe's spying
missions: perhaps by giving the resulting coinage to the Catholic cause. He was to infiltrate the
followers of the active Catholic plotter William Stanley and report back to Burghley.
Arrest and death
In early May 1593, several bills were posted about London threatening Protestant refugees
from France and the Netherlands who had settled in the city. One of these, the "Dutch church
libel", written in rhymed iambic pentameter, contained allusions to several of Marlowe's plays
and was signed, "Tamburlaine". On May 11 the Privy Council ordered the arrest of those
responsible for the libels. The next day, Marlowe's colleague Thomas Kyd was arrested. Kyd's
lodgings were searched and a fragment of a heretical tract was found. Kyd asserted that it
had belonged to Marlowe, with whom he had been writing "in one chamber" some two years
earlier. At that time they had both been working for an aristocratic patron,
probably Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange. A warrant for Marlowe's arrest was issued on
May 18, when the Privy Council apparently knew that he might be found staying with Thomas
Walsingham, whose father was a first cousin of the late Sir Francis Walsingham,
Elizabeth's principal secretary in the 1580s and a man more deeply involved in state
espionage than any other member of the Privy Council. Marlowe duly presented himself on 20
May but, there apparently being no Privy Council meeting on that day, was instructed to "give
his daily attendance on their Lordships, until he shall be licensed to the contrary".On
Wednesday, May 30, Marlowe was killed.
Various accounts of Marlowe's death were current over the next few years. In his Palladis
Tamia, published in 1598, Francis Meres says Marlowe was "stabbed to death by a bawdy
serving-man, a rival of his in his lewd love" as punishment for his "epicurism and atheism." In 1917, in the Dictionary of National Biography, Sir Sidney Lee wrote that Marlowe was killed in a drunken fight, and this is still often stated as fact today.
The official account came to light only in 1925 when the scholar Leslie Hotson discovered
the coroner's report of the inquest on Marlowe's death, held two days later on Friday, June 1,
1593, by the Coroner of the Queen's Household, William Danby. Marlowe had spent all day
in a house in Deptford, owned by the widow Eleanor Bull, and together with three men: Ingram
Frizer, Nicholas Skeres and Robert Poley. All three had been employed by one or other of the
Walsingham. Skeres and Poley had helped snare the conspirators in the Babington plot and
Frizer would later describe Thomas Walsingham as his "master" at that time although his role
was probably more that of a financial or business agent as he was for Walsingham's wife
Audrey a few years later. These witnesses testified that Frizer and Marlowe had argued over
payment of the bill (now famously known as the 'Reckoning') exchanging "divers malicious
words" while Frizer was sitting at a table between the other two and Marlowe was lying
behind him on a couch. Marlowe snatched Frizer's dagger and wounded him on the head. In
the ensuing struggle, according to the coroner's report, Marlowe was stabbed above the right
eye, killing him instantly. The jury concluded that Frizer acted in self-defence, and within a
month he was pardoned. Marlowe was buried in an unmarked grave in the churchyard of St.
Nicholas, Deptford immediately after the inquest, on June 1, 1593.
The complete text of the inquest report was published by Leslie Hotson in his book, The Death
of Christopher Marlowe, in the introduction to which Prof. G. L. Kittredge said "The mystery of
Marlowe's death, heretofore involved in a cloud of contradictory gossip and irresponsible
guess-work, is now cleared up for good and all on the authority of public records of complete
authenticity and gratifying fullness", but this confidence proved fairly short-lived.
Hotson himself had considered the possibility that the witnesses had "concocted a lying account
of Marlowe's behaviour, to which they swore at the inquest, and with which they deceived the
jury" but came down against that scenario. Others, however, began to suspect that this was
indeed the case. Writing to the Times Literary Supplement shortly after the book's publication,
Eugénie de Kalb disputed that the struggle and outcome as described were even
possible, and Samuel A. Tannenbaum (a graduate of the Columbia University College of
Physicians and Surgeons) insisted the following year that such a wound could not have possibly
resulted in instant death, as had been claimed. Even Marlowe's biographer John Bakeless
acknowledged that "some scholars have been inclined to question the truthfulness of the
coroner's report. There is something queer about the whole episode" and said that Hotson's
discovery "raises almost as many questions as it answers." It has also been discovered more
recently that the apparent absence of a local county coroner to accompany the Coroner of the
Queen's Household would, if noticed, have made the inquest null and void.
One of the main reasons for doubting the truth of the inquest concerns the reliability of
Marlowe's companions as witnesses. As an agent provocateur for the late Sir Francis
Walsingham, Robert Poley was a consummate liar, the "very genius of the Elizabethan
underworld", and is even on record as saying "I will swear and forswear myself, rather than I will accuse myself to do me any harm." The other witness, Nicholas Skeres, had for many years
acted as a confidence trickster, drawing young men into the clutches of people in the moneylending
racket, including Marlowe's apparent killer, Ingram Frizer, with whom he was currently
engaged in just such a swindle. In other words, despite their being referred to as "generosi"
(gentlemen) in the inquest report, they were all professional liars.
Some biographers, such as Kuriyama and Downie, nevertheless take the inquest to be a true
account of what occurred, but in trying to explain what really happened if the account
was not true, others have come up with a variety of murder theories.
• Jealous of her husband Thomas's relationship with Marlowe, Audrey Walsingham arranged for the playwright to be murdered.
• Sir Walter Raleigh arranged the murder, fearing that under torture Marlowe might incriminate him.
• With Skeres the main player, the murder resulted from attempts by the Earl of Essex to use Marlowe to incriminate Sir Walter Raleigh.
• He was killed on the orders of father and son Lord Burghley and Sir Robert Cecil, who thought that his plays contained Catholic propaganda.
• He was accidentally killed while Frizer and Skeres were pressuring him to pay back the money he owed them.
• Marlowe was murdered at the behest of several members of the Privy Council who feared that he might reveal them to be atheists.
• The Queen herself ordered his assassination because of his subversively atheistic behaviour.
• Frizer murdered him because he envied Marlowe's close relationship with his master
Thomas Walsingham feared the effect that Marlowe's behaviour might have on Walsingham's reputation.
There is even a theory that Marlowe's death was faked to save him from trial and execution
for subversive atheism. However, since there are only written documents on which to base any
conclusions, and since it is probable that the most crucial information about his death was
never committed to writing at all, it is unlikely that the full circumstances of Marlowe's death
will ever be known.
Atheism
During his lifetime, Marlowe was reputed to be an atheist, which, at that time, held the
dangerous implication of being an enemy of God and by association, the state. With the rise
of public fears concerning The School of Night, or the then-called "School of Atheism" in the
late 16th century, accusations of Atheism were closely associated with disloyalty to the then
Protestant monarchy of England.
Some modern historians, however, consider that Marlowe's professed atheism, as with his
supposed Catholicism, may have been no more than an elaborate and sustained pretence adopted to further his work as a government spy. Contemporary evidence comes from
Marlowe's accuser in Flushing was an informer called Richard Baines. The governor of Flushing had
reported that each of the men had "of malice" accused the other of instigating the
counterfeiting, and intending to go over to the Catholic "enemy"; such an action was
considered atheistic by the Protestants, who constituted the dominant religious faction in
England at that time. Following Marlowe's arrest in 1593, Baines submitted to the authorities a
"note containing the opinion of one Christopher Marly concerning his damnable judgment of
religion, and scorn of God's word." Baines attributes to Marlowe a total of eighteen items
which "scoff at the pretensions of the Old andNew Testament" such as, "Christ was a bastard
and his mother dishonest [unchaste]", "the woman of Samaria and her sister were whores and
that Christ knew them dishonestly", and, "St John the Evangelist was bedfellow to Christ and
leaned always in his bosom" (cf.John 13:23–25), and, "that he used him as the sinners
of Sodom". He also implies that Marlowe had Catholic sympathies. Other passages are
merely sceptical in tone: "he persuades men to atheism, willing them not to be afraid of
bugbears and hobgoblins". The final paragraph of Baines' document reads:
These things, with many others, shall be good & honest witness be approved to be his opinions
and Common Speeches, and that this Marlowe doth not only should them himself, but almost into
every Company he Cometh he persuades men to Atheism willing them not to be afraid of
bugbear and hobgoblins, and utterly scorning both god and his ministers as I Richard Baines
will Justify & approved both by my oath and the testimony of many honest men, and almost al
men with whom he hath Conversed any time will testify the same, and as I think all men in
Christianity ought to endeavour that the mouth of so dangerous a member may be stopped, he
saith likewise that he hath quoted a number of Contrarieties out of the Scripture which he
hath given to some great men who in Convenient time shall be named. When these things
shall be Called in question the witness shall be produced.
Similar examples of Marlowe's statements were given by Thomas Kyd after his imprisonment
and possible torture (see above); both Kyd and Baines connect Marlowe with
the mathematician Thomas Harriot and Walter Raleigh's circle. Another document claimed at
around the same time that "one Marlowe is able to show more sound reasons for Atheism than
any divine in England is able to give to prove divinity, and that ... he hath read the Atheist
lecture to Sir Walter Raleigh and others."
Some critics believe that Marlowe sought to disseminate these views in his work and that he
identified with his rebellious and iconoclastic protagonists. However, plays had to be
approved by the Master of the Revels before they could be performed, and the censorship of
publications were under the control of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Presumably these
authorities did not consider any of Marlowe's works to be unacceptable (apart from
the Amores).
Sexuality:
Like his contemporary William Shakespeare, Marlowe is sometimes described today as
homosexual. Others argue that the question of whether an Elizabethan was gay or
homosexual in a modern sense is anachronistic. For the Elizabethans, what is often today
termed homosexual or bisexual was more likely to be recognised as a sexual act, rather than
an exclusive sexual orientation and identity. Some scholars argue that the evidence is
inconclusive and that the reports of Marlowe's homosexuality may simply be exaggerated
rumours produced after his death. Richard Baines reported Marlowe as saying: "All they that
love not Tobacco and Boys are fools". David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen describe Baines's
evidence as "unreliable testimony" and make the comment: "These and other testimonials need
to be discounted for their exaggeration and for their having been produced under legal
circumstances we would regard as a witch-hunt". One critic, J.B. Steane, remarked that he
considers there to be "no evidence for Marlowe's homosexuality at all."Other
scholars, however, point to homosexual themes in Marlowe's writing: in Hero and Leander,
Marlowe writes of the male youth Leander, "in his looks were all that men desire" and that
when the youth swims to visit Hero at Sestos, the sea god Neptune becomes sexually excited,
"[i]magining that Ganymede, displeas'd, [h]ad left the Heavens ... [t]he lusty god embrac'd
him, call'd him love ... He watched his arms and, as they opened wide [a]t every stroke,
betwixt them would he slide [a]nd steal a kiss, ... And dive into the water, and there pry [u]pon
his breast, his thighs, and every limb, ... [a]nd talk of love", while the boy, naive and unaware
of Greek love practices, protests, "'You are deceiv'd, I am no woman, I.' Thereat smil'd
Neptune." Edward the Second contains the following passage supporting homosexual
relationships:
The mightiest kings have had their minions;
Great Alexander loved Hephaestion,
The conquering Hercules for Hylas wept;
And for Patroclus, stern Achilles drooped.
And not kings only, but the wisest men:
The Roman Tully loved Octavius,
Grave Socrates, wild Alcibiades.
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