by Tim Rayborn
Go, and return to mighty Lucifer,
And meet me in my study at midnight …
It’s remarkable that Marlowe was able to get such a work past the censors.
It did not help that his reputation was already under question; the most persistent rumor insisted that Marlowe was an atheist, a serious charge given the state’s reliance on the idea of divinely ordained rule.
In 1593, Marlowe was questioned for unorthodox beliefs and behavior. Richard Baines (fl. 1568–1593), a double agent, accused him of a number of charges, especially heretical views:
This Marlowe doth not only hould them himself [atheist beliefs], but almost into every Company he Cometh he persuades men to Atheism willing them not to be afeard of bugbeares and hobgoblins, and vtterly scorning both god and his ministers …
In other words, Marlowe was charged with viewing religious beliefs as superstitions, a very serious accusation. He was accused of saying that the fear of hell, demons, and other such terrors (including folk beliefs like fairies) was foolish, and those who promoted these ideas were worthy only of disdain.
This controversy started because of an inflammatory note put up on the Dutch Church in London, a warning about Protestants coming from France and the Netherlands. It was written in Marlowe’s style, alluded to his plays, and was signed “Tamburlaine.” Marlowe probably had nothing to do with it, but if his enemies were trying to frame him, they did a good job. He was investigated, which was how the authorities were led to Thomas Kyd, and the dangerous papers in his possession.
Kyd, as we saw, also accused Marlowe of a lack of belief, though this may have been to save his own neck. He and another who had spied on Marlowe testified that Marlowe believed that Jesus was a bastard (in the literal sense), that Mary was a prostitute, that Moses had cleverly deceived the Jews, that the existence of the Native Americans disproved the Old Testament, and that Jesus and John the Baptist were homosexual lovers, among other blasphemies. It was claimed in another document that Marlowe was so well able to argue for atheism that he could confound theologians and prove the lack of a god better than they could prove the existence of one. With this kind of reputation, it seems almost inevitable that he would make powerful enemies who would wish to do him harm, and that is probably exactly what happened.
Of all the mysteries surrounding Marlowe, his death in 1593 is the greatest, and has spawned countless conspiracy theories. The timing was certainly suspicious, for as we saw with Kyd, Marlowe was under investigation and was ordered on May 20 to stay nearby and report to the council daily. On May 30, he was at an inn in the company of three other men: Ingram Frizer, Nicholas Skeres, and Robert Poley. All three had been at one time or another involved with the Walsingham family, which pretty much guarantees that they were engaged in espionage of some sort; further, the building they were in was noted for being used by spies. According to their testimony, a dispute over the food and drink bill arose, and Marlowe stabbed at Frizer with a dagger, slightly wounding him. Frizer fought back, and in the ensuing struggle, stabbed Marlowe in or just above his right eye, killing him. The inquest ruled that Frizer’s actions were self-defense and he was pardoned a month later. Marlowe was buried in an unmarked grave and there the matter rested. Or did it?
The problem was that all three men were of dubious character, to say the least, being involved not only in spying, but also in various scams and criminal activities in the ever-growing Elizabethan underworld. Their testimonies could hardly be considered truthful or reliable, especially since this put a convenient end to a man with allegedly dangerous ideas just when he was under investigation. So, what happened? We don’t know, but there are many theories:
• The glittering courtier Sir Walter Raleigh arranged his murder, because he shared Marlowe’s lack of religious belief and feared that Marlowe would incriminate him.
• Lord Burghley (Lord High Treasurer and chief advisor to Elizabeth) had him murdered because Marlowe was secretly promoting Catholic propaganda.
• Various members of the Privy Council conducting the investigation had him murdered, because they shared his views and feared that he might expose them as fellow nonbelievers.
• Queen Elizabeth ordered his murder because of his subversive activities.
• He was killed as a result of involvement in criminal dealings.
• His murder was faked so that he could be sent abroad to continue his spy work under a new name.
• His murder was faked so that he could continue a secret relationship with the courtier Sir Thomas Walsingham.
Any or none of these could be true, and some are more plausible than others. A few believe that the faked death scenario allowed him to continue to write plays, which he sent to London and consented to have published under the name of—you guessed it—Shakespeare (see the Shakespeare chapter in act II for more on the so-called authorship controversy). A government-ordered assassination seems likely, especially given how quickly his killer was let off the hook.
What actually happened that day was known only to a few, and they took that knowledge to their graves. Just as importantly, a remarkable talent was removed too early and English literature was robbed of many fine works yet to come. But of course it’s fun to speculate, and an unrepentant, bohemian, shocking genius like Marlowe would probably revel in the attention that his death (or lack of it) has been given over the centuries.
Ben Jonson (1572–1637)
Rule of thumb
Jonson is the third of the great “trinity” of Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights, standing alongside Marlowe and Shakespeare. He was born in London; his father died before his birth, and his mother then married a bricklayer. Jonson was fortunate to be able to attend the well-regarded Westminster school, where he developed a love for a variety of subjects, such as history, language, and literature. He was set to attend Cambridge University, but this plan was interrupted, apparently by his being made to apprentice to his stepfather, which must have seemed a terrible anticlimax to his scholarly pursuits. He left this position sometime afterward, joining the military and going to the continent, where, he later said, he killed an enemy soldier in hand-to-hand combat and took his weapons and armor as trophies; it would not be the last time that violence found its way into Jonson’s life.
On his return to London, he began to work as an actor, taking roles such as the tongue-biting Hieronimo in Kyd’s bloody Spanish Tragedie. As a younger contemporary of that first wave of playwrights that included Marlowe and Shakespeare, he wasn’t in their company, but pursued his career separately. His first great work was his comedy Every Man in His Humour from 1598, which established Jonson as a genuine talent. Part of a genre known as the “comedy of humors,” it represents each of its characters as exhibiting one or more traits associated with the humors, the four personality types believed since ancient Greek times to make up a human being. The plot tells how the practical Edward Knowell spies on his son, concerned about his moral character and his interest in poetry. However, Knowell’s attempts are hindered by his servant, Brainworm, who is employed as the spy but deliberately screws up his master’s commands. Other characters bring in their own foibles and much fun ensues.
It wasn’t as fun for Jonson offstage, however. Shortly after the play’s production, he was arrested and brought to trial for killing Gabriel Spenser. Spenser was an actor who had been in trouble himself in 1596, also being charged with killing a man. However, Spenser wasn’t punished, so he must have defended himself admirably in court. The following year, he was also charged with acting in a seditious play, The Isle of Dogs, which was cowritten by Jonson and Thomas Nashe. A “lewd” play that may have even satirized the queen, it was suppressed and no known copies survive. Several people involved in it were arrested, including Spenser, who spent nearly two months in prison, but Jonson seems to have only spent a brief time under arrest.
Maybe Spenser resented the fact that the playwright was spared. In any case, he seems to have challenged Jonson to a duel,
which was fought on September 22, 1598. While Spenser had a longer sword and wounded Jonson, Jonson struck the fatal blow, a deep stab wound. Regardless of who started it, the authorities were not pleased; duels had been outlawed by Queen Elizabeth in 1571. Jonson had no real excuse and confessed freely to killing Spenser.
This should have been enough to have him executed, but he found a convenient, if strange, way out of it. He claimed something called “benefit of clergy.” This was a legal loophole used by the literate. If you could prove that you could read Latin (specifically the Bible), you could legally be classified as part of the clergy and therefore not subject to secular law, but rather to ecclesiastical, which had no death penalty. And if you were not literate? You were basically screwed. Even the literate perpetrators did not get off completely scot-free, however. Jonson was branded on the thumb and his possessions were confiscated. He was then released; but such offenders only received one pass. If they committed any further offenses, the hand of the law would smash them as harshly as anyone.
While Jonson was in jail awaiting his painful fate, he secretly converted to Catholicism, a bold and astonishing move, given the country’s hostility toward the older faith. Maybe he figured that he had nothing to lose at that point. Regardless, he was released and would live on well into the reign of King Charles I. His conversion lasted a little over ten years. In 1610 he reconverted to the Anglican faith after the assassination of King Henry IV of France, a Catholic monarch who had been tolerant of Protestants but was murdered by a Catholic fanatic, François Ravaillac. Perhaps sensing new danger to Catholics in England in the form of a backlash, Jonson declared his renewed Protestantism by defiantly drinking wine from a communion chalice, something normally reserved for the Catholic priest alone.
Despite his long life, tragedy and controversy continued to dog him. His son died of bubonic plague in 1603, and he was embroiled in another controversy between 1599 and 1602, the so-called “War of the Theatres,” a literary battle between Jonson and two other playwrights, who satirized each other in their plays, sometimes very harshly. Jonson claimed that his rivals were plagiarists and hacks, inferior and bombastic. He in turn was attacked as being full of pride and a cuckold.
As if this conflict weren’t enough, Jonson just couldn’t seem to stay out of trouble. In 1605, he was briefly imprisoned for cowriting a play, Eastward Hoe, that contained some anti-Scottish references. This was not the brightest idea when the new king, James I, was from Scotland. Jonson, also of Scottish heritage, claimed that he voluntarily offered to go to prison to atone for this offense, and this action may have led to his avoiding the punishment of having his ears and/or nose cut off. Once again, fortune favored him, and he escaped a dreadful punishment.
Jonson had a temper and was rather vain, probably at this point thinking that he could pretty much get away with anything. Though he was a friend of Shakespeare, he may have resented the older man’s genius. Scottish poet William Drummond wrote of Jonson:
He is a great lover and praiser of himself; a contemner and scorner of others; given rather to losse a friend than a jest; jealous of every word and action of those about him, (especiallie after drink, which is one of the elements in which he liveth).
He suffered a series of strokes in the 1620s, but continued writing plays and lived on until 1637. He was interred in Westminster Abbey, with a curious condition: his grave is a mere eighteen-inch square, meaning that he was buried standing up. This may have been for financial reasons; longer graves were more expensive to obtain, though it would seem that an equal amount of work was required to dig down that much deeper. He may have been much poorer by this time, and seems to have asked the king for this size of grave, though given that he still had a good reputation, it does seem odd that no one ponied up some extra cash for a proper horizontal burial. Maybe there was some sort of private joke, or he was trying to make one last point, but if so, he took the meaning with him to his tiny grave.
Moll Cutpurse (ca. 1584–1659)
A.k.a. Mary Frith, a.k.a. Mary Markham, a.k.a. the Roaring Girl
“Moll Cutpurse” was the popular name of Mary Frith, one of the most remarkable and notorious women of early-seventeenth-century England. She was famous for her connections to organized crime, for dressing as a man and smoking a pipe, for swearing frequently and unapologetically, and for being one of the first women to appear onstage in the London theaters of the 1600s. Her notoriety was such that she became a very popular figure with the common people; she was even the subject of a play, The Roaring Girle (published in 1611), a fictionalized and sensationalist account of her life. She also appeared as a character in the comic play Amends for Ladies (1618), concerning (among other things) a husband testing his wife’s fidelity, and she may have been the subject of an earlier lost pamphlet, “The Madde Pranckes of Merry Mall of the Bankside” (1610).
From her beginnings as a humble pickpocket to being something of a celebrity in the London underworld, Moll always seemed able to elude capture, or least any severe punishments. She was first indicted in 1600 for stealing a small sum of money and her lack of interest in being a law-abiding citizen only increased afterward. She admitted to being present on the stage at the Fortune theater, where, dressed in a man’s clothing, she delivered bawdy monologues, sang dirty songs, and played the lute, no doubt to the great amusement of the audience, if not the authorities. She admitted to making “some other immodest & lascivious speaches” in this stage show, which occurred, it seems, after a performance of The Roaring Girle, with the full consent and cooperation of the players and playwrights, and delighted the audience, despite (or perhaps because of) its illegal nature.
She flaunted her lifestyle and almost dared the law to do something about it. She was arrested at the end of 1611 on charges of being dressed improperly (i.e., as a man) and being involved in prostitution (most likely as a pimp). She was forced in 1612 to do penance at St. Paul’s Cross, next to the great cathedral in London. However, one observer, John Chamberlain, noted that her sincerity about the whole thing was decidedly lacking:
Moll Cutpurse, a notorious baggage that used to go in man’s apparel, and challenged the field of diverse gallants, was brought to [St. Pauls’ Cross], where she wept bitterly and seemed very penitent; but it is since doubted, she was maudlin drunk, being discovered to have tippled of three-quarters of sack before she came to her penance.
Her defiant behaviors continued, and it seems that in the 1620s, she was in the habit of finding young male lovers for bored middle-aged housewives, for a fee, of course. She operated an ingenious pickpocketing racket, wherein her cutpurses would steal coins, those robbed would come to Moll for help, she would then have the thieves return the money to her, and she would keep a “fee” for recovering the items and handing them back to the relieved victims.
She was still active during the English Civil War, in which she was a strong Royalist, and thought nothing of resorting to highwayman behavior to add to her wealth. One legend says that she waylaid Thomas Fairfax, the Parliamentarian general, robbed him, and shot him in the arm. It was said that she was pursued, arrested, and sentenced to hang for this, but got out of it by paying a £2,000 bribe, at least £320,000 in modern money, an enormous sum in those days that shows just how profitable her profession was. Despite her scandalous activities, she survived and thrived, finally dying of dropsy in 1659, just before the restoration of the monarchy. That women were finally allowed to act after this momentous event would no doubt have pleased her greatly.
The fiery end of the Globe Theatre (June 29, 1613)
All good things must come to an end
The Globe was the playhouse most associated with Shakespeare and his company. Built in 1599 from the materials of an earlier playhouse (the Theatre), which, according to legend, were dragged across the frozen Thames secretly at night, the new building played host to the staging of Shakespeare’s most memorable works, performed by the greatest actors of the time. Ben Jonson’s plays and other dramas
were also shown there.
Since these theaters had no roofs and were open to the elements, it was necessary to perform plays during daylight hours. The shows went on regardless of the notoriously unpredictable English weather, which was actually a bit colder then than now. The problem with these structures was that they had no building codes or provisions for safety at all. They were just large square or circular constructions made of wood with thatched roofing around the sides (think of a small sports stadium, but with a stage). They were often put up in relative haste in an attempt to lure as many customers as possible (competition between theater companies was fierce), which could number a couple of thousand in a day. There were no safety regulations or plans for evacuation in the event of an emergency; they were basically disasters waiting to happen.
And just such a disaster did happen on June 29, 1613, during a performance of All is True, later retitled Henry VIII, a play that Shakespeare cowrote with John Fletcher (1579–1625). One of the Globe’s special effects was a large cannon that would fire during appropriate moments in plays, such as royal processions, depictions of war, and other dramatic moments. It was dangerously situated in a hidden attic near the roof and was loaded with gunpowder. Amazingly, it had been used for years without incident, so why would this day be any different? Except that it was. For whatever reason, sparks from the cannon flew into the thatch in the roof and quickly caused a fire. Sir Henry Wotton was in attendance and provided an eyewitness account of the ensuing chaos, and of one unfortunate fellow with burned britches:
Now King Henry making a Masque at the Cardinal Wolsey’s house, and certain cannons being shot off at his entry, some of the paper or other stuff, wherewith one of them was stopped, did light on the thatch, where being thought at first but idle smoak, and their eyes more attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly, and ran round like a train, consuming within less than an hour the whole house to the very ground. This was the fatal period of that virtuous fabrick, wherein yet nothing did perish but wood and straw, and a few forsaken cloaks; only one man had his breeches set on fire, that would perhaps have broyled him, if he had not by the benefit of a provident wit, put it out with a bottle of ale.