The World of Christopher Marlowe

by David Riggs

  here, against the truce,

  The rock is hollow, and of purpose digged

  To make a passage for the running streams

  And common channels of the city.

  Now whilst you give assault unto the wall,

  I’ll lead five hundred soldiers through the vault,

  And rise with them i’th’middle of the town,

  Open the gates for you to enter in,

  And by this means the city is your own.

  (V.i.86–94)

  The spy’s deictic lines conflate the cellar at the Rose with the subterranean regions of Malta. The textually suspect ‘truce’ looks like a variant spelling of the ‘truss’ that supported the main playing area. Uniting the technologies of theatre and war, Barabas raises the drapery that concealed the truss, leads the Turkish soldiers into the cellar, up through the trap door that opened on to the main stage, and captures the town with ease.

  12.2 Interior of the Swan Theatre, from a contemporary sketch by Johannes de Witt, 1596

  The reconquest of Malta signals the triumph of pure theatre. Barabas enters the final scene ‘with a hammer above, very busy’, issuing directives to the carpenters. His final stratagem is a fake floor in the upper gallery of the Rose playhouse. When Barabas cuts the hidden cable securing the trapdoor, the Turkish nobles will be plunged into the cauldron of boiling oil hidden below. This is where Barabas’s genius deserts him. Ignoring Machiavelli’s warning never to trust anyone whom you have injured, he gives away his secrets, bragging to Ferneze about the inner workings of his contraption. When the governor springs the trap door on the unwitting Barabas, the cauldron turns into a grand moral spectacle:

  12.3 The covetous boiled in lead and oil. From the Shepherd’s Calendar, 1570.

  Now, Selim, note the unhallowèd deeds of Jews:

  Thus he determined to have handled thee,

  But I have rather chosen to save thy life.

  (V.v.91–93)

  The governor’s rescripting of the execution scene employs the public symbolism of religion in the way that Machiavelli recommended to his followers. Public executions in Renaissance Europe were staged events that simulated the operations of divine justice. The ruler represented God’s will; the accused stood for evil incarnate. The gruesome severity of the punishment (burning, mutilation, disembowelling and even, as here, boiling alive) foreshadowed the endless pain that awaited the criminal in Hell. Marlowe mobilizes the lurid fascination that attended these spectacles, but withholds any sense of moral resolution. The killing of Barabas is theatrical, contingent and self-interested rather than divinely ordained. The substitution of Barabas for Selim-Calymath preserves the body that matters. Where the Jew makes a perfect scapegoat, the Turkish prince can fetch a king’s ransom.

  As the Prologue reminds us, Machiavelli’s truest followers never admit that they are Machiavellians: ‘But such as love me guard me from their tongues’ (6). Governor Ferneze knows full well that religion is not ‘a childish toy’; it is a powerful instrument of political solidarity. But the governor is too adroit a politician to reveal this secret in public, or applaud his own handiwork. In his closing couplet, the pious Christian statesman orders his subjects to celebrate an act of divine intervention: ‘So march away, and let due praise be given / Neither to fate nor fortune, but to heaven’ (V.v.122–23).

  Ferneze did not have the last word. When Thomas Heywood revived The Jew of Malta at court, thirty years later, he added an Epilogue addressed to King Charles I. Where Heywood’s Prologue to the theatre-going public speaks in glowing terms about the title role that won Edward Alleyn ‘the attribute of peerless’ (8) his Epilogue at Court is apologetic and evasive. The closing couplet spoken before the king says: ‘And if aught here offend your ear or sight, / We only act and speak what others write’ (5–6). Heywood could hardly assume that Charles I, who really did aspire to be a Christian king, would be gratified either by Barabas’s blasphemies or Ferneze’s platitudes. Heywood’s Epilogue shifts the blame back on to the author. The players only speak and act; the long-deceased Marlowe is responsible for the content of The Jew. This nice distinction between text and performance suggests that The Jew confirmed Marlowe’s reputation with contemporary audiences. Tamburlaine and The Jew of Malta were crowd-pleasing spectacles written in a bravura theatrical style; Marlowe’s politics went beyond the pale.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Counterfeiters

  After writing, and probably living, ‘in one chamber’ with Thomas Kyd, Marlowe set out for the Continent late in 1591 or early in the following year. His journey took him to the Dutch town of Flushing, which lay at the mouth of the Schelde and controlled maritime access to the Spanish-occupied seaport of Antwerp. The Dutch had ceded control of Flushing to the English in exchange for military aid in their conflict with Spain. The harbour town currently housed the English garrison in the Low Countries. The garrison attracted a fluid population of soldiers heading to and from the front lines, camp followers and religious refugees. The English governor, Sir Robert Sidney, was instructed to guard against ‘Sectaries, Anabaptists, Libertines, and such like so that her majesty’s subjects may not be infected by them’.

  After the death of Sir Francis Walsingham in 1590, Lord Burghley’s faction gradually took control of the queen’s secret service. Under the new regime, Robert Poley oversaw English agents in the Low Countries for Burghley and the queen’s Vice-Chamberlain Sir Thomas Heneage. Flushing offered a convenient meeting point for couriers, spies and double agents; it was among Poley’s ports of call. The records are silent about Poley’s whereabouts in the winter of 1591–92, but his correspondent and old companion from the Tower, Michael Moody, turned up in Flushing early that February, bearing ‘matters of great concern to Her Majesty’ and seeking passage to England.

  Like any English subject travelling to the Continent, Marlowe required a passport from the Privy Council stating the reason for his journey. Upon his arrival in Flushing, he would have presented his passport to the English governor. Since Flushing was a small town, and Governor Sidney kept an eye out for strangers, Marlowe presumably complied with these regulations.

  Marlowe found lodgings in Flushing with Richard Baines and Gifford Gilbert, an English goldsmith (not to be confused with the Catholic plotter Gilbert Gifford). When and how this trio came together is unknown, but they soon arrived at a mutual understanding. Taking advantage of the goldsmith’s expertise, the three men began to make counterfeit money. Flushing was a fine town for counterfeiters, who throve in fluid multinational settings where money quickly changed hands. Under English law, counterfeiting was high treason, punishable by death. The law had long since been extended to cover making and importing counterfeits of foreign coin allowed to pass current in England, but the Dutch authorities did not enforce these statutes, and a steady stream of counterfeit foreign coin flowed from the Low Countries into England throughout the sixteenth century. Urged on by Marlowe and Baines, the goldsmith struck some Dutch shillings and a variety of other money, part of which ‘was Her Majesty’s coin’. In his Note to the Privy Council, Baines later wrote that Marlowe, ‘having learned some things’ from Poole in Newgate, ‘meant through help of a cunning stamp maker to coin french crowns, pistolletes [Spanish pistoles] and English shillings’.

  Towards the end of January, the novices put one of their newly minted Dutch shillings into circulation. The next day, Baines paid a surprise visit to the English authorities. Governor Sidney’s letter to Lord Burghley, dated 26 January, describes what happened next:

  The matter was revealed unto me the day after it was done, by one Richard Baines … He was their chamber fellow, and fearing the success, made me acquainted with all. The men being examined apart never denied anything, only protesting that what was done was only to see the goldsmith’s cunning … And indeed they do one accuse another to have been the inducers of him, and to have intended to practise it hereafter, and have as it were justified him unto me.

  Th
e claim that Marlowe and Baines collaborated with Gifford Gilbert out of sheer curiosity, ‘only to see the goldsmith’s cunning’, rings hollow, especially since ‘part of that which they did counterfeit was Her Majesty’s coin’. The statutes were quite explicit and made no exceptions for self-professed amateurs. Counterfeiting was a very serious crime. Marlowe and Baines accused one another of intending ‘to practise it hereafter’.

  Sidney, who took a serious interest in coinage, thought that the counterfeiters’ problem lay in the inferior quality of their product: ‘I do not think they would have uttered [put into circulation] many of them for the metal is plain pewter, and with half an eye to be discovered.’ His appraisal helps explain why Baines, ‘fearing the success’, betrayed his confederates the day after the first shilling went into circulation. Better turn informant than suffer the consequences of discovery and incrimination yet again. Marlowe’s readiness to move ahead with the job is just as understandable. The stereotypical figure of the poor scholar recurs throughout his work; now he was embarking on a ‘counterfeit profession’ that promised to deliver him from penury.

  The contraband mint in Flushing offered Marlowe more than a source of private funds. Governor Sidney glances at the wider implications of the counterfeiters’ scheme in the final sentences of his letter, where he writes that ‘the scholar’ Marlowe,

  says himself to be very well known both to the Earl of Northumberland and my Lord Strange. Baines and he do also accuse one another of intent to go to the enemy, or to Rome, both as they say of malice to one another. Hereof I thought fit to advertise your Lordship, leaving the rest to their own confession, and my ancient’s report.

  There is more to these charges than meets the eye. Sidney himself calls attention to what he has left unsaid: ‘the rest’ – the full story – is for Lord Burghley’s ears only. But it has to do with ‘the enemy’ at the Duke of Parma’s headquarters in Brussels and Sir William Stanley’s encampment at Nijmegen.

  At the time of Marlowe’s expedition to Flushing, the Catholic insurrectionists at Brussels and Nijmegen were in the formative stages of the so-called Stanley plot. This undertaking recalls the Babington conspiracy, repeating itself as farce. The ever-alert Thomas Phelippes noted the emergence of the plot in a memorandum dated October 1591. Their ‘design’, wrote Phelippes, ‘was that the Queen should be killed, Sir William Stanley enter the realm with a number of men, and joining some competitor make head against all the rest, till more force and further directions came from the Pope’. Stanley’s ‘competitor’ (that is, partner) was to be his cousin Lord Strange. Strange had moved on to the insurrectionists’ front burner during the previous spring. In May 1591, a renegade priest named John Cycell furnished Burghley with an incriminating letter that the mutinous Jesuit Robert Persons had allegedly written to Lord Strange. Unfazed by Cycell’s arrest, Father Persons and Sir William Stanley continued urging Roman Catholics to ‘cast their eye upon Lord Strange’ as one who ‘if the Spaniards could not prevail might be made King by the Catholics unanimously’.

  In the absence of material aid from Spain, Stanley’s backers financed their ventures through theft and counterfeiting. That August, a gang of Catholic insurrectionists in England, including Lord Strange’s servant Edward Bushell, used an ‘engine’ to break into Winchester Cathedral and steal £1800 worth of plate. The plate was ‘melted and coined’ in the chambers of Sir Griffin Markham, a cousin of the gang leader Richard Williams. Williams then followed the Earl of Essex into France where he went over to the enemy and joined Stanley’s regiment at Nijmegen. Williams later testified that ‘There was speech in Brussels about killing the Queen; offered to do it if they would give money enough, and advance his house.’ The conspirator Edmund Yorke confessed in 1594 that he had been promised 40,000 crowns ‘if he performed the required service of killing the Queen, by his own agents, or by Tipping, or Garrett, ensign to Jaques, who were to be sent over’. The Yorkshiremen John Tipping and Ensign Garrett were officers in Stanley’s regiment. ‘Some spoke of a poisoned arrow or rapier, or a dagger as she walked in the garden.’

  Burghley had an inkling that the conspiracy was afoot. He had read Father Persons’ letter to Strange. His agent Robert Poley received further intelligence about the plot from the wily Michael Moody, who had wormed his way into the inner circle of the conspirators at Brussels. In October 1591 Moody was corresponding with John Tipping’s brother James, a veteran of the Babington conspiracy. Poley, Moody and James Tipping had all been imprisoned together in the Tower after the conspiracy collapsed.

  Were Baines and Marlowe on a mission to gather intelligence about the Stanley plot? The elements of such an operation were all in place. Baines had helped uncover the Lennox plot and knew people in the exile community (Father Clitherow, for example); Marlowe had connections to Lord Strange and John Poole. Marlowe was better positioned to infiltrate the enemy ranks than Baines was. Catholics viewed Baines with deep suspicion. He had after all plotted to poison an entire seminary; his Confession would soon go into its third printing on the Continent. Marlowe was more opaque. His self-professed connection with Lord Strange enhanced his prospects of finding a warm welcome in the enemy camp. As the premier writer for Strange’s company of actors, Marlowe could plausibly claim that Lord Strange knew him ‘very well’.

  The counterfeiting scheme took Marlowe a step closer to the Stanley conspirators at Brussels and Nijmegen. He had learned about coining from John Poole in Newgate, and Poole, of course, was related to Sir William Stanley and to Lord Strange. The contraband mint at Flushing signalled Marlowe’s readiness to make common cause with Stanley and the Winchester gang. Michael Moody, the go-between, was in Flushing on 5 February, shortly after Baines went to Governor Sidney. Baines’s accusation that Marlowe intended ‘to go to the enemy or to Rome’ takes on a sharper edge in this light. If Marlowe was angling for an entrée into the Stanley plot, he was supposed to go to the enemy. But his partner got cold feet after the first shilling went into circulation. Baines, a seasoned double agent who was in a position to know, decided that Marlowe could no longer be trusted. Perhaps the playwright really did intend to join the enemy, or go ‘to Rome’.

  Sidney gave the counterfeiters a wide berth. Just two months previously Queen Elizabeth reprimanded him for acting on his own initiative in dealing with Michael Moody. This time Sidney sent all three of his suspects to Lord Burghley and let the Lord Treasurer deal with them. Since letters were always liable to be intercepted, Sidney kept his written account of the incident to a minimum. It is hard to believe that the governor, who was responsible for keeping an eye on everyone who turned up in Flushing, did not know who ‘one Richard Baines’ actually was. Or who Marlowe was: in addition to being an aspiring poet in his own right, the governor was the brother of Sir Philip Sidney and of the renowned woman of letters Mary, Countess of Pembroke. He had more in common with ‘the scholar’ than one would gather from the letter that he sent to Burghley. Sidney’s arraignment of Marlowe leaves us guessing. By placing Marlowe and Gilbert, but not Baines, under arrest, he implied that the scholar and the goldsmith were the guilty parties, while Baines was merely being sent back for questioning. On the other hand, if Marlowe was an English agent, putting him under arrest reduced the likelihood of blowing his cover. From the enemy’s standpoint, the spectacle of Marlowe in manacles could only improve his attractions.

  The Low Countries provided a haven for underground printers as well as counterfeiters. The earliest edition of Epigrams and Elegies by J[ohn] D[avies] and C[hristopher] M[arlowe] bears the imprint ‘At Middleborough’. The inscription refers to the Dutch town of Middelburg, which lay adjacent to Flushing. Dutch printers at Middelburg produced clandestine editions of unlicensed texts aimed at the English market. Epigrams and Elegies certainly merited this treatment. Many of Davies’s epigrams are sexually explicit and quasi-libellous; the first printing of Marlowe’s forty-eight elegies would not appear until the third edition of 1603. Editors have read the imprint
‘At Middleborough’ as a blind intended to conceal the identity of Davies and Marlowe’s English printer; perhaps it was. But both Davies and Marlowe were in the Low Countries during 1592. Marlowe lodged with Baines in Flushing, while Davies turned up at law school in nearby Leiden that summer.

  The influx of seditious pamphlets from the Low Countries, many of them by Catholics and sectarians, vexed the queen and her Council. Poley and Moody spent much of their time hunting down books and authors. What brings Marlowe still closer to this network of printers and book-smugglers is the persistent rumour that he himself wrote a lost book of anti-Trinitarian theology. In 1597, four years after Marlowe’s death, the minister Thomas Beard wrote that Marlowe ‘not only in word blasphemed the trinity, but also (as it is credibly reported) wrote books against it’. Three years later, William Vaughan, another divine, called Marlowe ‘a play-maker who as it is reported, about seven years ago wrote a book against the Trinity’. Vaughan’s ‘about seven years ago’ matches up with the date of Marlowe’s journey to Flushing. The cleric Simon Aldrich, one of the playwright’s younger contemporaries at Canterbury and Cambridge, recalled that Marlowe ‘had writ a book against Scripture; how it was all one man’s making, & would have printed it but it would not be suffered’. Less explicitly, Gabriel Harvey refers to ‘that book where St Peter and Christ himself are Lucianically and scoffingly alleged’. Harvey does not say who wrote the book, but he does call Marlowe a ‘Lucian’.

  This mysterious treatise may be a chimera, but perceptions do matter, especially to prospective printers of scandalous books. Since Marlowe was both an author and a secret agent, he stood to gain in two ways from the perception that he sought a publisher for his heretical book. The rumour that he had this manuscript in hand created an opportunity for him to gather intelligence about the underground book trade. If the manuscript did exist, its publication at Middelburg, or elsewhere in the Low Countries, gave Marlowe an opportunity to disseminate his own radical critique of Christian doctrine.