The Assassination of Christopher Marlowe (A New View)

Title: The Assassination of Christopher Marlowe (A New View)

Author: Samuel A. Tannenbaum

Release date: June 7, 2021 [eBook #65544] Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

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The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Assassination of Christopher Marlowe, by Samuel A. (Samuel Aaron) Tannenbaum

THE ASSASSINATION

OF

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

MURDER, THOUGH IT HAVE NO TONGUE, WILL SPEAK WITH MOST MIRACULOUS ORGAN.—Shakspere.

THE ASSASSINATION

OF

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

(A New View)

BY

SAMUEL A. TANNENBAUM

The Shoe String Press, Inc. Hamden, Connecticut

Samuel A. Tannenbaum All Rights Reserved

Offset 1962

from the 1928 edition

Printed in the United States of America

TO

ERNEST H.C. OLIPHANT

A GOOD FRIEND

AND

A FINE SCHOLAR

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Among the many friends who have patiently or enthusiastically, as the case might be, read my essay on Marlowe's assassination, and who have freely expressed their views on my theory and ungrudgingly argued the subject with me, raising and meeting difficulties, I am especially obliged to Professor Joseph Quincy Adams, Mr. Max I. Baym, Professor Joseph Vincent Crowne, Mr. Alexander Green, Professor E. H.C. Oliphant, and Professor Ashley H. Thorndike. Others to whom I am indebted are the distinguished physicians whose opinions I quote in Appendix A. In common with the rest of the literary world, I am grateful to Professor James Leslie Hotson, whose inspiration, intelligence and perseverance brought to light the new documents in the case—the Coroner's report and the Queen's pardon.

S.A.T.

April 1928.

[Pg 13]

THE ASSASSINATION OF CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

I

The arrest, on May 12, 1593, of Thomas Kyd, the first of the great Elizabethan dramatic poets, on the grave charges of atheism, of meddling in dangerous matters of state, and of publishing seditious libels tending to incite insurrection and rebellion in the English capital, had far more important causes and much more far-reaching consequences than have hitherto been suspected.

Among the causes which led to the inhuman torture on the rack and the untimely death of the popular dramatist, we must reckon—if my reading of the history of the period be right—the idyllic love of one of the most remarkable couples of whom we have any record, the fierce and vindictive resentment of England's greatest queen, as well as the[Pg 14] fantastic ambitions and exalted dreams of one of the most gifted and brilliant men of all time.

Among the consequences of the passions thus brought into conflict, we must include the non-completion of the revision of one of the best and most characteristic historical dramas of the period—the tragedy of Sir Thomas Moore.[1] This play, undoubtedly written with political intent, was being rushed to completion by no less than six of England's most virile and most versatile poets: the veteran playwright, Anthony Mundy, young Thomas Heywood, fat Henry Chettle, kindly Thomas Dekker, industrious Thomas Kyd, and one—out of all whooping, the best of the group—who has not yet been identified and whom some very able scholars consider to have been none other than Shakspere himself.[2]

But the non-completion of the play was only a trifle in comparison with the[Pg 15] effects Kyd's arrest had on his career as well as on that of the marvellous Christopher Marlowe, and therefore on the history of English letters. That its completion and performance would have affected the political history of the world in any way may well be doubted.

The more or less immediate circumstances leading to the imprisonment of "sporting Kyd" were these:

Living conditions in London, owing to the increase of population and to unwise legislation, were very hard on the native artisans, mechanics, petty tradesmen, and apprentices. As is usual in such cases, the presence of thrifty and prosperous foreigners was bitterly resented by the natives. This resentment had for several years taken the shape not only of public disturbances and riots, but of admonitions to the unwelcome aliens, mainly refugees from France and Belgium, to get out of the country. Unobserved by the authorities, during the small hours of a night in May 1593, some dissatisfied citizens posted up in various sections of the city placards which warned the foreigners to depart, with bag and baggage, before July 9. One of these posters, only a fragment of which has come down to us, was[Pg 16] found on the wall of the Dutch churchyard. It read:

You strangers, that inhabit in this land, Note this same writing, do it understand; Conceive it well, for safe-guard of your lives, Your goods, your children, and your dearest wives.

The Privy Council—in reality, the National Government—had for more than a year been protesting against the outrages perpetrated on the foreign residents and had solicited the Lord Mayor of the city to apprehend the disturbers and to seek out and imprison the agitators.[3] Their Lordships went so far as to instruct the Mayor to have the person guilty of having written the "libel" apprehended and tortured (though torture was no part of the English legal system) if he did not disclose his meaning and purpose and the identity of his accomplices. This was in the early part of April, 1593. But the Mayor, whose sympathies were evidently with the natives,[Pg 17] made no arrests. On April 22, the Privy Council[4] again considered the matter and appointed a special commission "to examine by secret means who maie be authors for the saide [seditious] libelles." Less than two weeks after this, a highly alliterative and bombastic placard was displayed in London in which "the beastly Brutes, the Belgians, or rather Drunken Drones, and

faint-hearted Flemings," as well as the "fraudulent Frenchmen" were ordered "to depart out of the Realm of England." Six days later, on May 11, the Council—fearing international complications even more than domestic broils—ordered another commission to use "extraordinary pains" (the equivocal wording may have been intentional) to apprehend the malefactors and to "put them to the Torture in Bridewell and by the extremitie thereof, to be used at such times and as often as you shall think fit, draw [!] them to discover their knowledge concerning the said libells."[5]

The very next day, May 12, 1593, officers of the law entered the study of[Pg 18] Thomas Kyd with a warrant for his arrest and made a careful search of the premises for documents of a seditious nature. Inasmuch as it could not have been the literary qualities of the posters—verse tests had not yet been discovered—which made the authorities suspect Kyd, we are almost compelled to assume that he had been betrayed to the Commission by an informer. That Kyd probably thought so will appear from what follows. Whether his arrest was due solely to his connection, real or supposed, with the minatory placards, or whether it was also due to his share in the authorship and contemplated production of the incendiary play of Sir Thomas Moore, or both, it is impossible to say. But the combination is certainly suggestive.

The search, it is fairly certain, brought to light nothing of a seditious or politically objectionable nature. But that did not save Kyd; his arrest had evidently been determined on by the Government. Searching his chamber, the officers discovered something else, something which furnished them with an excuse for arresting him and conveying him to Bridewell prison. This discovery consisted of three sheets of paper (written in a neat[Pg 19] and easily legible hand) which the officers regarded, or pretended to regard, as a treatise on atheism.[6] The possession of such a document was in those days a dangerous matter, certainly far more dangerous than to have in one's possession literature attacking the French and Dutch residents of the city. The Privy Council frowned on atheism, even though they often dared not prosecute those they suspected to be guilty of the offence.

Fortunately these three sheets of paper have been preserved. The back of the third sheet bears the following inscription, in all probability in the hand of the officer making the arrest: "12 May 1593/ Vile hereticall Conceiptes/ denyinge the deity of Jhesus/ Christe or Savior fownd/ emongest the paprs of Thos/Kydd prisoner/."

In connection with this almost lawless arrest three significant facts stand out in bold relief:

[Pg 20]

1. The alleged treatise is, as I have tried to prove in my book on the Moore manuscript,[7] in Kyd's handwriting.

2. Kyd, though he must have been aware of the seriousness of the charge against him and of the danger he was in, refrained from entering a general denial in his defence. He could have maintained—correctly, as Professor Boas informs us—that the papers were not atheistical; that they were, in fact, "a defence of Theistic or Unitarian doctrines," and that they were (as Professor W.D. Briggs[8] has recently shown) only a transcript of material contained in John Proctor's book, The Fall of the Late Arrian (published in 1549). Instead of making this perfectly obvious plea, Kyd, apparently accepting the officer's characterization of the documents, chose a most remarkable line of defence. He asserted that these papers were not his, that the alleged disputation had, as a matter of fact, emanated from Christopher Marlowe. Thereupon the officer making the arrest added the following words to the[Pg 21] previously quoted notation on the back of the third page: "wch [papers] he [Kyd] affirmethe That he/ had ffrom Marlowe."[9] That these words were added

some time, probably a few days, after Kyd's arrest, may be inferred from the following circumstances: the ink in which they were written is not that of the rest of the memorandum (Boas), and the writing, though in the same hand, is slightly different (larger and freer).

3 The cautious wording of the allegation regarding Marlowe must be noted. Kyd was careful not to say that Marlowe had written the alleged atheistical treatise. Had he done so, Marlowe would unquestionably have been able to prove that the penmanship was not his. Kyd did not say that the opinions expressed in the document were Marlowe's, nor even that the papers were Marlowe's property. All he said was that he "had" them from Marlowe. From all of which it is fairly certain that when these memoranda were written, Marlowe was still alive and that Kyd thought it best to be cautious in attacking his former associate.

[Pg 22]

How he came into possession of the dangerous document, Kyd explained subsequently (the date is not known) to the President of the Star Chamber, Sir John Puckering, in a letter in which he pleaded for his Lordship's assistance in recovering his former position in the service of Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange,[10] and in which he tried to minimize his relations with the atheist Marlowe. He wrote to his Lordship: "When I was first suspected for that libell that concern'd the state, amongst those waste and idle papers (wch I carde not for) & wch vnaskt I did deliuer vp, were founde some fragments of a disputation, toching that opinion [atheism], affirmd by Marlowe to be his, and shufled with some of myne (vnknown to me) by some occasion of or wrytinge in one chamber twoe yeares synce."[11]

It will be noticed that, even though Marlowe was dead when this letter was[Pg 23] written, Kyd did not say that the alleged atheistical papers were in Marlowe's handwriting. He contented himself with vehemently reiterating his innocence and with alleging that Marlowe, who (he said) made no secret of his atheism, had shared his room with him and that in this way their papers might have got mixed. How long they had shared one chamber he did not say; but it is clear that he was trying to give the impression that it was for only a very short time ("some occasion"), even though that makes it extremely improbable that any of Marlowe's papers should have accidentally got mixed with his without either one having noticed it, and even more improbable that he would not have returned them to his associate or thrown them out.

From Kyd's unnecessarily venomous attack on the character and opinions of "this Marlowe" (as he contemptuously designates him) it seems reasonable to infer that Kyd hated Marlowe and thought that it was he who had betrayed him to the Council. How otherwise, Kyd might have thought, would the authorities have selected his study for such a search, and known what they evi[Pg 24]dently knew—the very day after the special commission had been appointed. It was impossible for the officers to have pounced on him by chance. Fretting under his supposed betrayal by his quondam room-mate, he wrote to Sir John: "his L[ordshi]p never knewe his [Marlowe's] service, but in writing for his plaiers, ffor never co[u]ld my L[ord] endure his name, or sight, when he had heard of his conditions [i.e., of his atheism], nor wo[u]ld indeed the forme of devyne praiers vsed duelie in his L[ordshi]ps house, haue quadred [—squared] w[i]th such reprobates. That I sho[u]ld loue or be familer frend, w[i]th one so irreligious, were verie rare, when Tullie saith Digni sunt amicita quib[u]s in ipsis inest causa cur

diligantur, w[hi]ch neither was in him, for p[er]son, quallities, or honestie, besides he was intemp[er]ate & of a cruel hart...."

The inference that Kyd suspected Marlowe to be the author of his woes is further supported by the fact that in a document[12] which was almost certainly written during Kyd's incarceration, and therefore before the letter to Puckering,[Pg 25] the prisoner declares—in his own handwriting—that it was Marlowe's custom "in table talk or otherwise to iest at the deuine scriptures/gybe at praiers, & stryve in argum[en]t to frustrate & confute what hath byn/spoke or wrytt by prophets & such holie men/He wold report S[ain]t John to be o[u]r savior Christes Alexis.[13] J [—I] cover it with reverence/and trembling that is that Christ did loue him w[i]th an extraordinarie [—unnatural] loue."[14]

That Kyd thought he had been betrayed to the Council by an informer is clearly implied in his attributing his troubles to an "outcast Is[h]mael" who "for want [i.e., in hope of reward] or of his own dispose to lewdness [i.e., wickedness] had ... incensed yo[u]r L[ordshi]ps [the Council] to suspect me" (quoted from his letter to Puckering).

[Pg 26]

But that is not all. The words "outcast Ismael" in the above quotation serve, almost without a doubt, to identify Kit Marlowe as the informer who betrayed Kyd to their Lordships of the dreaded Star Chamber. In the epithet "outcast" Kyd probably meant no more than that Marlowe's atheism made him a social outcast, but it is not at all impossible that he had something more specific in mind. In his letter to Puckering he says that the patron whom he and Marlowe served could not endure Kit's name "when he heard of his conditions." In the one-page memorandum or affidavit which Mr. Brown discovered, Kyd calls God to witness that this pious patron had commanded him, "as in hatred of his [Marlowe's] life and thoughts," to break off associations with one who entertained such "monstruous opinions." This considered, it would not be at all surprising if we should some day discover that Lord Strange had ordered the troupe of players bearing his name to sever its relations with the atheist poet. That the designation of the informer as an "Ishmaelite" (a term which the Standard Dictionary defines

as "a person whose[Pg 27] hand was against every man") refers to Marlowe's rashness in attempting "soden pryvie iniuries to men"[15] (Kyd's words) seems almost a certainty.

On May 18, 1593—six days after Kyd's incarceration—the Privy Council issued an order for Marlowe's arrest. It must always remain a matter for great regret that the minutes of the Council, as well as the warrant for Marlowe's apprehension, are silent about the nature of the charges against the younger poet and the identity of his accuser. But, considering the close similarity between the accusations brought against him in the other documents in the case and the offences enumerated in the Kyd memorandum, there can be but little doubt that Marlowe's arrest was due solely to Kyd's charges against him. So certain was Kyd that it was his erstwhile associate who had betrayed him to the authorities that he retaliated by divulging what he knew about him and even by threatening to involve the advanced spirits who permitted Marlowe to share in their freethinking and philosophical debates.

[Pg 28]

On the 20th day of May Marlowe was under arrest, but not imprisoned. Though at liberty, he was prohibited from leaving the precincts of the city and was "commanded to give his daily attendance to their Lordships [the Council] until he shall be licensed to the contrary."[16] This, it must be granted, was so extraordinary an act of leniency on the part of the Council that, in connection with its knowledge, as the records show, that Kit was to be found at "the house of Mr. T. Walsingham [one of the chiefs of England's secret service] in Kent," we are surely warranted in inferring that the Council did not take the matter too seriously, very probably because it knew that Marlowe was one of the Queen's secret agents, and perhaps, too, that he had been responsible for the arrest of his vindictive accuser.[17]

Just what happened during the first few days after Kyd's arrest can only be[Pg 29] conjectured. From his memorandum to their Lordships of the Council—which, in all probability, only repeats what he had told them orally—we may infer that, under the stress of "paines and vndeserved tortures," he had spoken of "men of quallitie" (members of the nobility) who kept Marlowe "greater company;" but, even though he admits that he can p[ar]ticularize (—name) some of these, he carefully refrains from divulging their identity. He evidently hoped that some of these men of quality would come to his rescue.

After Kyd had been given a preliminary treatment in Bridewells, perhaps with the "crewel garters" spoken of in Shakspere's King Lear, he began to realize that those who were in peril from him were not rushing to his rescue. He there-upon ventured a little further and certified to his torturers that Marlowe "wold p[er]swade w[i]th men of quallitie" [still unnamed] "to goe vnto the K[ing] of Scots whether [—whither] I heare Royden is gon and where if he [Marlowe] had liv[e]d he told me when I saw him last he meant to be." This was clearly intended to inform the Council[Pg 30] and the Queen that some of the foremost men in England were in secret communication with King James of Scotland. To understand the significance of this, we must remember that Queen Elizabeth, ever since the execution of Mary, was in constant fear of what James might do to avenge his mother's cruel death, and that he, on his part, was engaging in a succession of intrigues to secure what, by virtue of his hereditary right and his Protestantism, was virtually already his.[18]