ARTicles vol. 3 i.2b: Heavenly Wit, Hellish Vice

Above: Christopher Marlowe. Below: a pageant wagon full of actors. Christopher Marlowe’s life is the stuff of legend. Marlowe was born in 1564, the same year as Shakespeare. The two men were rising stars of the London theatre, but unlike Shakespeare, Marlowe’s notoriety revealed a dark shadow behind his genius. In addition to being celebrated for his five popular plays, all written in his twenties, Marlowe was also widely known as an atheist, suspected of spying and being a double agent, arrested for counterfeiting and assault, and accused of murder. Marlowe was the greatest playwright England had yet seen, but his career ended abruptly when, at twenty-nine, he was killed by a wound to the eye during a brawl. Given his reputation as a rabble rouser, his untimely end was not surprising at a time when suspected traitors to the church and government were imprisoned, tortured, and murdered. However, the exact circumstances of Marlowe’s life and death are unclear, despite conjectures by scholars. Marlowe left behind no first-person documents, so our knowledge comes solely from his writings and from the fiercely divided opinions of his contemporaries. Literary genius or vice-ridden criminal? Marlowe remains one of the most fascinating and mysterious artists in theatre history. Marlowe was born in Canterbury to parents John and Katherine. John, a shoemaker, had little money or property, but he utilized his literacy, a rare commodity in the tradesman community, to pick up odd jobs and keep his family afloat. As soon as Christopher was six, his parents saw to it that he entered school and learned to read and write. Scholarship agreed with the young Marlowe, who continued his studies after the age of eight, when most tradesmen’s sons left school to begin apprenticeships. He received rigorous instruction, first in religion during grammar school and in the classics during secondary school at King’s College. In 1580, upon winning a scholarship, Marlowe moved to Cambridge to attend university. From that point in his life, the mystery of his activities deepens. Marlowe lived in Cambridge for six and a half years. He finished his bachelor’s degree, which required ongoing residency and attendance, in four years. He began pursuit of his master’s degree in 1584. Scholars believe that in 1584 or 1585 he wrote Dido, Queen of Carthageto be performed by the Blackfriars’ Chapel Children, one of several popular troupes of boy actors who performed plays both at court and for paying audiences. These troupes offered young university men like Marlowe a way into the theatrical world and a chance to see their work performed publicly. While pursuing his master’s degree, Marlowe took long leaves of absence from school. Few records exist indicating his whereabouts during these three- to four-month periods, but correspondence between the Queen’s Privy Council and the authorities at Cambridge stated that Marlowe “had done her Majesty good service … in matters touching the benefit of the country.” These letters, in addition to records of Marlowe’s increased financial expenditures during this time, indicate the government’s employment of Marlowe as a spy. The ongoing upheavals in the church and government created a need for continuous surveillance of potential traitors. Intelligent scholars like Marlowe were perfect candidates for the job. With all the plots and counterplots spinning in Europe, however, many spies were simultaneously employed by opposing sides, which put them in grave danger. Marlowe may well have been a double agent, but the government would not accuse him of seditious activities for another ten years. The turning point of Marlowe’s career came in 1587. He finished Tamburlaine the Great, his first successful play for an adult acting company, received his master’s degree, and moved to London to pursue a career as professional writer. Marlowe took up residence in a northern suburb called Norton Folgate, which housed most members of the tightly knit London theatre community. The newly erected theatres in the vicinity of this seedy neighborhood stood among other houses of ill repute: taverns, gambling halls, brothels. Life in these squalid surroundings was a far cry from the sheltered environment of Cambridge. Theatres were violent places – one spectator described a performance of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine in which an actor playing a soldier, using real bullets, “missed the fellow he aimed at and killed a child and a woman great with child forthwith, and hit another man in the head very sore.” Official law was rarely enforced in this setting, and disputes were settled among individuals, often with tragic consequences. During Marlowe’s years in London, he was involved in numerous street fights. One incident gave Marlowe notoriety. On September 18, 1589, Marlowe was seen arguing publicly with William Bradley, an inn-keeper. Marlowe’s acquaintance, the poet Thomas Watson, stepped into the fray to separate the two men. Watson and Bradley drew their swords; the confrontation concluded with Watson’s sword six inches into Bradley’s chest. Both Watson and Marlowe were imprisoned on suspicion of murder. Marlowe was exonerated by a jury and released within two weeks, and though Watson was found not guilty by reason of self-defense, he remained in prison for another four months. After Marlowe’s time in prison, his trysts with the London underworld increased in frequency, and his social status took a dangerous turn. By the time Marlowe was arrested in 1592 for taking part in a counterfeiting scheme, the government was keeping a close eye on his activities. He may still have been working as a spy, which would explain why there is no record of either a conviction or a pardon for his counterfeiting operation. For reasons we do not know, the government let him go quietly. Since the theatre was seen as disreputable, Marlowe’s public standing was tenuous. On June 23, 1592, Queen Elizabeth’s Privy Council, responding to complaints that the theatre was the work of the devil and posed a menace to public safety, closed the playhouses. Since Marlowe had the dual reputation of an author of violent plays and sometime criminal, he found himself in the eye of the critical storm surrounding the theatre. Pamphleteer Robert Greene wrote a public letter criticizing Marlowe’s playwriting, claiming that the profession was clear evidence of his atheism. He claimed that if Marlowe did not repent of his tragic sins, God would strike him down. By publishing this letter, Greene placed Marlowe in real danger. Public anxiety about atheism was reaching fever pitch. The Royal Commissioners arrested Thomas Kyd, playwright and Marlowe’s former roommate, when they found documents among his papers containing “vile heretical Conceits denying the deity of Jesus Christ.” The Commissioners tortured Kyd, demanding information about his associates, and Kyd named Marlowe as the owner of these documents. The Privy Council continued to gather more information about Marlowe and his activities, culminating in his arrest on May 19, 1593. Curiously, when Marlowe posted bail the next day, the Council set him free without interrogating him. However, by May 27, the Council procured from Richard Baines, a former associate of Marlowe, a damning transcript of an atheist lecture given by Marlowe. Baines had been a government spy at the same time as Marlowe, and the two men had been involved in the counterfeiting operation of the year before until Baines turned himself in and implicated Marlowe. Baines’ second betrayal of Marlowe would prove Marlowe’s undoing. The document, titled “Note Containing the opinion of one Christopher Marly Concerning his Damnable Judgement of Religion, and scorn of God’s Word,” contained seventeen articles of atheism, supposedly written and delivered publicly by Marlowe. The document claims that religion is fiction, suggests that St. John was Christ’s bedfellow, and proclaims that “all they that love not boys and tobacco are fools.” This document was the smoking gun that could fully condemn Marlowe. He was never arrested for his crimes, but three days later he was dead. Was the barroom brawl in which Marlowe was murdered a cover-up for a government plot to kill him? Robert Poley, the man who invited him to dinner, worked for the Queen. Ingram Frizer, the man who stabbed Marlowe in an argument over the bill, was a known swindler who also worked for the government. Queen Elizabeth pardoned Frizer for Marlowe’s death two weeks after the stabbing, which is curiously soon for a capital offense. However, no hard evidence indicates a command from the Queen to kill Marlowe. Whatever the truth, Marlowe walked a fine line at a time when the free expression of thought was equated with treason. Marlowe’s plays interrogate religion and morality by presenting complex situations from numerous points of view. Consequently, each era since Marlowe has projected its own interests onto his work and character. Immediately following Marlowe’s death, the public quickly condemned him and viewed his death as divine retribution from God. Fellow poets remembered him fondly, including Shakespeare, who refers to him in a number of his works. Although forgotten for the next hundred years, he was reinvented by Victorian critics as a romantic hero who stood for free thought and intellectual values. Victorians needed to see Marlowe as a gentleman, and this image continued in biographies throughout the early twentieth century. However, with the advent of the New Historicism in recent years, Marlowe has come to represent, according to his most recent biographer, David Riggs, the “aspirations of blasphemers, sodomites, foreigners, unemployed scholars, and the mutinous poor in Renaissance England.” We cannot know exactly who Marlowe was, but we can embrace the contradictions of his character and genius. Eight years after Marlowe’s death, an anonymous playwright recalled the conflict aptly: “Marlowe was unhappy in his buskined muse, Alas unhappy in his life and end. Pity it is that wit so ill should dwell, Wit lent from heaven, but vices sent from hell.” Emily Otto is a second-year dramaturgy student at the A.R.T./MXAT Institute for Advanced Theatre Training.