by David Riggs
The unspeakable crimes: Empson 1946.
CHAPTER ONE Citizen Marlowe
John Marlowe: Urry 1988 12–13. This chapter is continuously indebted to the account of John Marlowe’s life and times in Urry 1988 1–41.
Agents of King Henry VIII: Butcher 1988 xxii; Kuriyama 2002 34.
A city in crisis: Clark 1977 101–03, 158–59, and passim; Butcher 1988 xx xxiii.
William Lambarde: Lambarde 1826 267–68.
The influenza epidemic: Moore 1993 53, 55; Siraut 1982 65; Slack 1985 184–85.
John Marlowe apprenticed himself: Urry 1988 13, 21; Butcher 1996 4–5.
John Marlowe’s neighbours: Urry 1988 8–9.
Katherine Arthur: Urry 1988 13–14; Butcher 1996 4, 7–8.
Migrants entering provincial cities: Butcher 1996 4–5.
The weakened condition of religious life: Clark 1977 158. Urry 1988 8–9 gives biographical details about William Sweeting.
Demoralized parish life: Clark 1977 158.
The conflicts that plagued Canterbury from the 1530s to the 1570s: Butcher 1988 xx–xxiii; Butcher 1996 4, 9; Clark 1977 57–66, 93–107, 152–63.
Children discover their identities: Butcher 1996 10–11.
The protagonist of his tragedy: Butcher 1988 xxvi.
Childhood memories: Wraight 1965 26, 27–39; Butcher 1988 xxvi.
To join the Shoemakers’ Guild: Urry 1988 4, 13 ; Butcher 1996 4–5; Bakeless 1942 I 21–22; see also Siraut 1982 65 and Slack 1985 184–85.
Goodwife Chapman’s daughter: The details of this affair are in Bakeless 1942 I 24–26; Urry 1988 29–30; and Kuriyama 2002 12–13, who cites the magistrate’s remark from Urry’s unpublished manuscript ‘Christopher Marlowe and Canterbury’.
A bad name: Kaplan 1997 26; Amussen 1988 98–104.
The lower end of the middling classes: Cressy 1976a esp. 37–41; Cressy 1976b 314–16. Urry 1988 reprints John Marlowe’s signatures on 140–42.
Injunctions of 1536: Baldwin 1943 32; see also Cressy 1976b 303.
The ability to write: Cressy 1980; Cressy 1976b 314–16. Thomas 1986 questions Cressy’s methodology on 102–03, but confirms his overall conclusion about ‘the uneven social distribution of literary skills’ on 116–18.
New opportunities for artisans: Clark 1977 186; Ben-Amos 1994 199.
Katherine Marlowe bore children: The vital statistics are in Urry 1988 14–16 and Kuriyama 2002 176–77, which corrects Urry’s transcriptions.
This family history is typical: See Wrightson and Levine 1979 43–72 and Wrightson 1982 104–118 on childbearing. On childhood experience, see Hanawalt 1986 156–187; Pelling 1988 141; and Ben-Amos 1994 41–45.
Laurence Applegate let his privy overflow: Urry 1988 3.
The Marlowes’ story: See Urry 1988 for John Marlowe’s apprentices (23–25), the unpaid loan of 1569–70 (26) and the petition of 1570 (23). Kuriyama 2002 39n70 quotes the Churchwardens’ citation of July 1569 from Urry’s manuscript ‘Christopher Marlowe and Canterbury’. See also Butcher 1996 and Siraut 1982.
John Marlowe’s closest associates: Urry 1988 29–39 and Butcher 1996 7–9.
The plea books of the Borough Court: Urry 1988 27 cites Marlowe’s disputes with Osbertson, Browne, Jones and Michael Shawe. Canterbury Cathedral Archives provide further evidence that John Marlowe frequented the Borough Court. For John Marlowe vs Thomas Ovington and John Marlowe vs Robert Shawe see Canterbury Cathedral Archives (CCA) BAG J/B 370/iv; for Marlowe’s suit against George Sherrocke, see CCA BAC J/B /372/i.
What prompted him to take this course?: Amussen 1988 164–65; Clark 1977 186; Prest 1987 69; and Butcher 1996 5.
Marlowe began to do entry-level legal and clerical work: Bakeless 1942 I 26–27; Urry 1988 26–27, 156n109; Carlson 1995.
Still had no rector: Clark 1977 186
CHAPTER TWO Lessons Learned in Childhood
Petty school: Mulcaster 1994 231–2. See Clark 1977 187 for the Canterbury benefactor. Cressy 1976b 306–9 notes the restrictive meaning of ‘poor’ in Tudor educational charters. Baldwin 1943 gives a well-documented history of the Tudor petty school.
The horn book: See Thomas 1986 99 and Baldwin 1943.
Marlowe learned his Catechism: See Booty 1976 286 for the passage quoted from The Book of Common Prayer 1559. See also Baldwin 1943 93, 104–7 and Wright 1988 205.
King Henry VIII: Passages quoted from Baldwin 1943 44–45, 43.
Catholic imagery and ritual: Haigh 1975 311–12; Tudor 1984 401; Leach 1911 463–65; and Urry 1988 44. Baines quoted from the transcript in Kuriyama 2002 219–22.
The reformers overestimated: Brigden 1982; Ben-Amos 1994 184; and Riggs 1997, esp. 93–98.
Bullinger: Riggs 1997 45, 57n13; Lévi-Strauss 1967 292.
The agnostic reaction: The account of early modern atheism in the three following paragraphs is drawn from Buckley 1932; Levy 1981 122–223; Hunter 1985; Wooton 1983 (esp. 62–69); and Riggs 1997. For supporting documentation see esp. Riggs 1997 43–46, 56–57.
The massacre at Paris: I follow the narrative of the massacre in Noguères 1962. For the English response see Kingdon 1988 125–35.
The word took on its modern meaning: Briggs 1983 268. Jean de Serres’ contemporary account is quoted from Poole 1988 10–11.
Queen Elizabeth visited Canterbury: See Nichols 1983 1345 for the passages quoted and I 341–47 for contemporary accounts of the visit.
Monarchy as a dramatic spectacle: Greenblatt 1980 166–69; passage quoted from 167. See also Rowse 1964 6 and Urry 1988 7.
A grammar school in the vicinity of Eastbridge hospital: Kuriyama 2002 21–22.
The Royal Grammar: Baldwin 1943 17–18, 31, 40, 76–78, 86 and Heath 1971, esp. 9–41.
Nowell’s Catechism: Baldwin 1943 86, 108–120. See Kuriyama 2002 182–190 for a reliable transcript of the inventory of Gresshop’s library.
Handwriting was a manual art: Goldberg 1990 13–169. Vives quoted from Goldberg 1990 112. Hamlet quoted from Shakespeare 1986 V.ii.34. All quotations from Shakespeare in my text are from this edition.
A standard school text of Terence: Baldwin 1947 570–71.
Coercive styles of teaching: Brinsley 1612 276; Thomas 1976 5–6; and Mulcaster 1994 154.
No noun or verb: Leach 1911 467.
Apprentices and idle boys: Thomas 1976 6, 9–12 and Ben-Amos 1994 192–93.
The pureness of the Latin tongue: Baldwin 1943 115.
Nowell’s Catechism: For passages quoted in this and the following paragraphs see Nowell 1570 17, 18, 20, 23, 44, 38, 36, 40, 48–9, 47.
Atheists and other wicked persons: Whitgift 1851 III 176 and I 382; passages cited in Lake 1988 35 and 68n69.
External conformity: Bacon 1861 I 98. See also Collinson 1985 178.
A downside. ‘Of Atheism’ in Bacon 1887 VI 414.
CHAPTER THREE Speaking Like a Roman
The King’s School: See Urry 1988 42–48 and Woodruff 1908 77–99 for the King’s School in Marlowe’s era. The statutes are in Leach 1911 456–69.
When the statutes were drawn up: The exchange between Cranmer and the commissioners is in Strype 1812 I 127–28.
Cranmer’s intuition proved correct: O’Day 1979 29–30; Barrie-Curien 1988 esp. 453–54; and Mulcaster 1994 150–51.
The scholarships: Leach 1911 457–49.
This gruelling process: Baldwin 1944 II 371; Brinsley 1612 193, 195; Mulcaster 1994 157.
John Elmley: Urry 1988 103.
Settlement of Gresshop’s estate: Urry 1988 45–47, 107.
The aspiring scholar: For the passages quoted in this paragraph, see Mulcaster 1994 154; Leach 1911 467, 469; and Erasmus 1974 25 274–75.
His first taste of preferment: Urry 1988 43–44 and Woodruff 1908 95–97, 79–80.
Urry has identified about half of them: Urry 1988 9–10, 48–54, 99–107 and passim. My demographic analysis of Marlowe’s cohort at the King’s School is based on Urry’s findings.
His workload set him apart: Baldwin 1944,
II, 355–56, 358 and Harrison 1968 76. Cf. Grafton 1986 17: ‘The technical work and the drudgery … are to be left to the poor scholarship boy.’
In the fifth form: Leach 1911 467–469 and Brinsley 1612 195.
This two-part curriculum: Quintilian 1920 I 63 and Bonner 1977 189–276. See Attridge 1974 21–29 on Elizabethan pronunciation of classical Latin.
Aphthonius: Nadeau 1952 267–68. See Clark 1952 on Aphthonius’s ‘remarkable popularity in Renaissance Europe’.
Brinsley reports: Brinsley 1612 191.
Harrison: Harrison 1968 76. For John Parker see Bakeless 1942 I 64–5 and Masters 1831 116. The stipulation that Parker Scholars should be able ‘if it may be, to make a verse’ appears in the Archbishop’s original endowment: see Masters 1831 98.
Eighteen Parker Scholars: See ‘Audits 1575–1590’ in the Corpus Christi Archives and pertinent entries in Venn 1922.
A seventeenth-century grammarian: John Bird, Grounds of Grammar (1639), quoted in Attridge 1974 65.
Marlowe’s textbook: Walther 1573 Sig. B7r ‘Absolutissima certissimaque cognoscendi syllabas ratio in exemplis consistit. Qualicumque enim Quantitate probatos Poetas usos fuisse conspexeris, eam & tibi usupare concessum est’ and Sig. F7v: ‘nunc quomodo eadem in pede, hi vero in certum ordinem & compositionem legitimam adeoque, carmen dispondi sint, docebimus’.
The kingdom of poetry: Susenbrotus 1562 Sig. B3r: ‘Haec in regno solum Poetico’.
Hyperbole: Susenbrotus 1562 Sigs. B2r–B3r. Passage quoted from Marlowe’s 1 Tamburlaine, V.i.111–12.
A power of utterance: Susenbrotus 1562 Sig. A4r: ‘cum aliqua dicendi virtute’. Brinsley 1612 192.
Vivid description: Susenbrotus 1562 Sig. F4v: ‘quando persona, res, locus, tempus, aut aliud quipiam tum scribendo tum dicendo ita verbis exprimitur, ut cerni potuit ac coram geri, quam audiviri videatur’ and Sig. F5r: ‘auditorem sive lectore, jam extra se positum, velut in theatro, avocet’. Erasmus 1974 24 577–89.
When the subject matter: Susenbrotus 1562 1967 Sig. A4r: ‘cum res poscet utetur, velut asperso quodam condimento, oratio jucundior erit’.
The poet: Ascham 1967 21–22 and Mulcaster 1994 267. The passages quoted in this and the following paragraph are cited in Halpern 1991 51–60. See also Nadeau 1952 268–272. I am indebted to Halpern’s pertinent and enlightening account of the division between poetry and rhetoric in Renaissance England.
Sir Philip Sidney: Smith 1904 I 156, 194. See Epicoene, II.iii.109 in Jonson 1925 V 186 for Sir John Daw.
Mulcaster: Mulcaster 1994 154, 153.
Second thoughts: Urry 1988 48–54, 99–105. Baines quoted from Sir Robert Sidney’s letter in Kuriyama 2002 210.
The most conspicuous failures: Bacon 1887 VI 410; Mulcaster 1994 148, 139; Ellesmere quoted from Curtis 1962 27–28, 42n.9; Bacon 1861 IV 252–53; Mulcaster 1994 141; and Halpern 1991 24.
CHAPTER FOUR Scholars and Gentlemen
His college stipend: Bakeless 1942 I 47–50 and Kuriyama 2002 40, 43.
The usual route: Harrison 1968 403. The German traveller Paul Hentzner is quoted from Bakeless 1942 I 55.
Corpus Christi College: Willlis 1886 I 250–312 and IV 10.
The built-up part of Cambridge: Salzman 1938 III 1, 83, 79, 92, 178; Bakeless 1942 I 53–54.
Public schools: Salzman 1938 III 312, Willis 1886 III 10.
An old city: Lyly 1964 232.
The student body: Bakeless 1942 I 48–9, 50, 57, 48; Stone 1964; Stone 1974 I vii, 5–7, 82–83, 218–245; Masters 1831 131; Kearney 1970 40.
His first meal: See Urry 1988 55–57, Kuriyama 2002 41–43 and Roberts 1996 22–23 for commentary on Marlowe’s first months in Cambridge. There is a transcript of entries in the Buttery Book that pertain to Marlowe in Bakeless 1937 335–347.
Manual labourer: Masters 1831 133; Willis 1886 I 291.
Faculty and students who lived in the college: My analysis of Marlowe’s cohort at Corpus Christi is based on manuscripts in the college archives, supplemented by pertinent entries in Venn 1922 and other standard reference works. Venn used the university matriculation records, which lump Scholars and Pensioners together under the one-size-fits-all designation of ‘Pensioner’. But the college’s Parvum Registrum, which records the names of incoming students, has separate lists for Pensioners and Scholars. The college Audit Books, which record the sums paid to the latter, in turn list the scholars under the names of the foundations that supported them, such as the various scholarships established by Archbishop Parker, the Nicholas Bacon Scholars and so on. Finally, these same groupings reappear in the college Buttery Book, which lists the weekly charges that every member of the college incurred in the dining hall. My account draws upon the college Audits 1575–1590, the Parvum Registrum 1573–1590 (found in the Chapter Book) and the Buttery Books for 1580–86.
Master Norgate and the twelve college Fellows: See Masters 1831 129–35, 326–28, and entries for individual Fellows in Venn 1922.
Fellow Commoners: Holdsworth 1956 647.
If the Scholar was well connected: Cooper 1842 II 53, 344; Harrison 1968 70–71.
The Sizars: Venn 1922 I 13.
Wealthy undergraduates: Venn 1922 I 14; Harrison 1968 71.
The poor scholar: Cooper 1842 II 53, 161–62; Bakeless 1942 I 50–53; Nashe 1958 II 122–23.
Scholar’s prospects: Cecil quoted from Great Britain 1883 IV 163. See Bakeless 1942 I 47–49 and Masters 1831 98 for the terms of Marlowe’s scholarship.
The Scholars’ university education: Mullinger 1873 I 630, II 7–8, 109–11; Heywood 1854 I 1–16; Kearney 1970 15–45; Curtis 1959 185; Schmitt 1983 17–46; and Chapter 5 below.
A standard inventory: Wraight 1965 55 and Ingram 1904 63.
Bed sharing: Bray 1982 42, 46–47, 51–52, 78; Masson 1965 I 151; Stone 1979 516; Smith 1991 84–86, 180.
A pedagogical cast: Ascham and Spenser quoted from Goldberg 1992 79. For the homoerotics of humanist pedagogy, see Goldberg 1992 79, Barkan 1991 and Stewart 1997 xix–xlv and passim.
Seminal ancient works: Smith 1991 35–37; Winkler 1990 67–69; EK quoted from Spenser 1989 33–34; Jayne 1995 115–16; Plato 1963 501.
Aristotle’s Problems: Heywood 1854 I 5. See Winkler 1990 67–69 for the passage translated from the Problems.
The Latin poets: Ovid 2000 251; Ovid, Ars Amatoria II 683–84 as quoted in Cheney 1997 57 (translation slightly modified); Boswell 1980 72–73.
Impulse to demonize: Bray 1982 13, 24–32; Smith 1991 41–43, 46–53.
The answer was obvious: Barrow 1966 222; Stone 1979 516–17; Smith 1991 193. Stewart 1997 90–91 is more sceptical about the evidence for institutionalized homosexuality at the universities. Masters 1831 457 indicates that Barrow was admitted to Corpus Christi in 1576.
Thomas Wilson: Quoted from Stewart 1997 xv. See also Bray 1990.
Whether or not Marlowe was a homosexual: Bray 1982 13–32.
His accusers: Baines quoted from Kuriyama 2002 221.
Poets that have lived together: Bodenham 1600 Sig. A5v; STC 3189 – not to be confused with STC 3189.5 which is online, but omits the reference to Marlowe.
CHAPTER FIVE Thinking Like a Roman
Marlowe’s BA course: Master Robert Norgate’s ‘Exercises of Learning in Corpus Christi College in Cambridge every day in the week from the beginning of the term until the ending thereof’ are in Hardin 1984 387–88. For the Cambridge BA course, see also Bakeless 1942 I 57–58, Holdsworth 1956 623–55, Masson 1965 I 136 and Jardine 1974b and 1975.
Limited objectives: Porter 1958 163–68; Kearney 1970 22, 37–39; O’Day 1979 73–74, 133.
Required texts: See ‘De temporibus lectionum et libris praelegendis’ in Heywood 1854 I 5.
Textbooks: STC I 236, 324, II 236, I 39; LeFanu 1964 21; Pollard 1919 30–43.
Dialectic, the all-purpose course: Jardine 1974b esp. 32–33; Jardine 1983; Jardine 1988; Jardine 1974a 26–48, 59–65.
Began to study dialectic: Hardin 1984 387–88; Bakeless 1942 I 58–59.
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br /> ‘Dialectic is the skill’: Seton 1584 Sig. Air ‘Dialectica est scientia probabiliter de quovis themate disserendi’; Wilson 1972 8; OED s.v. ‘probably’; Cicero quoted from Jardine 1983 263. Cf. Seton 1584 Sig. L2r.
drawing comparisons: Cicero 1949 397.
Here is an example: The phrases about probability are quoted from the translation of a crucial passage in Rudolph Agricola’s De inventione dialectica in Jardine 1988 183. See Wilson 1972 111–13 for Elizabethan definitions of the formal, final and material causes. Wilson explains the rules of dialectical disputation on 153–56. See also Jardine 1983.
Ways of arranging them: Jardine 1983; Seton 1584 Sig. L1v ‘Argumentatio est propositionum ad illatitiam notam connexio ut Chremes fuit ebrius, ergo futilis’ and Sig. N2r ‘Maxima vis in majore quia continet in se ipsem conclusionem’.
Enthymemes: Cicero 1949 423.
No knowledge of boundaries: Cicero 1956 584–87, as translated in Barnes 1982 34–35. See also Jardine 1983 272.
Erasing the boundaries: Wright 1976.
‘There is nothing which may not be disputed…’: Quoted from Jardine’s translation of a crucial passage in Lorenzo Valla’s Dialecticae disputationes; see Jardine 1983 259, 261 and passim.
Cicero: Cicero 1972 71; Wood 1988 71–73.
Studies of the afternoon: Holdsworth 1956 643, 637; Gabriel Harvey quoted from Jardine 1975 27.
Persuasion was the royal road: See Grafton 1986 192, 195 for the passages quoted from Harvey.
John Case’s undergraduate textbook: Case 1585 Sig. L2v ‘Nulla virtus virtuti contrariatur: sed magnaminitas virtute contrariatur, nempe humilitati: ergo magnaminitas non est virtus’.
Aristotle: Aristotle 1995 71.
Does not know what he is talking about: Bose 1991; Marlowe 1991 5–7; Marlowe 1993 16–17.
The scholastic revival: Schmitt 1983 26–46; Holdsworth 1956; Kearney 1970 77–90; and Lake 1988 226–27 and 145–230 passim.
A kind of elementary philosophy: Strabo 1917 I 55; Smith 1904 I 164; Barkan 1986 117; STC II 201–203; Ovid 1584 q7v ‘Poetica nihil aliud est nisi Philosophi numeris & fabulis concinna’.
Poems are repositories of scientific knowledge: Quintilian 1920 I 63; Seton 1584 Sig. I8r and Sig. K1r ‘in poetica descriptione maxima ex parte omittitur genus, e contra fit in Dialectica descriptione’.