Part 2

How Marlowe would have met these grave charges, each punishable by death, must remain a matter of conjecture. He was not destined to reply to them, however, for on the very next day, May 30, this "famous gracer of tragedians" was assassinated by Ingram Frizer, "gentleman," a notorious rascal and a proved habitual swindler. The only witnesses to the homicide were one Nicholas Skeres and one Robert Poley, the former a cheat and jailbird who had been associated with Frizer in some of his nefarious schemes, and the latter a spy.[29] Here, it will be acknowledged, was an excellent trio for a contrived murder. I say "contrived murder" because, from Mr. Hotson's account of the matter, it is clearly apparent that the story told at the Coroner's inquest by Skeres and Poley (the only witnesses to the assassination) is incredible.[30] The circumstances considered, it seems to me much more likely that on that fatal Wednesday, Marlowe was lured[31] to Eleanor Bull's inn at Deptford Strand, was wined liberally till he fell into a drunken stupor; the time being ripe and Eleanor Bull safely out of the way in another part of the building, Ingram Frizer deliberately plunged his dagger into Marlowe's brain to a sufficient depth to cause his instant death.

The assumption that Marlowe's death, contrary to the Coroner's report (_q.v._), was premeditated assassination, not accidental homicide in self defence, is warranted by the following considerations.

1. The two wounds on Frizer's head were too slight to have been inflicted by a man in a rage wielding a sharp dagger. In this connection we must not overlook the significance of the fact that no physician seems to have been called in to dress Frizer's wounds, which were probably too slight to require medical attention. That each of the two wounds on Frizer's head was two inches long and a quarter of an inch deep is so curious a phenomenon as to warrant the assumption that they were self-inflicted. A dagger thrust from above downward or from below upward is much more likely to make a punctured wound of variable depth than an incised wound two inches long and only a quarter of an inch deep. (Parenthetically it may be noted that the number "two" seems to have been a favorite with the Coroner in this case.)

2. The only witnesses to the fatal fray were two disreputable friends of the man charged with the killing.

3. Frizer and his friends kept Marlowe company in the tavern, or the grounds adjoining it, from about ten o'clock in the forenoon until night. None of these men explained to the Coroner's jury how he happened to be idle that day and disposed to loaf at Eleanor Bull's tavern all those hours. There is nothing in the evidence to show they had ever been there before or even that they knew the place. And it certainly is strange that both Poley and Skeres (who, as far as the Coroner's evidence shows, may not have been acquainted with Marlowe) should have expected Marlowe to pay for their suppers.

4. It is incredible that Marlowe should have been lying on a cot and that Frizer should have had his back toward him while they were engaged in an acrimonious discussion.

5. The Coroner's statement that Frizer, while sitting in a chair and wrestling with a man in bed behind him, inflicted "a mortal wound over his [assailant's] right eye of the depth of two inches & of the width of one inch" is so improbable as to throw doubt on the whole of his account of the matter.

6. Neither Skeres nor Poley made the slightest attempt to interfere with or to part the combatants. There is no indication that they attempted to summon help.

7. The Coroner apparently made no attempt to find any other persons who ate or drank at Eleanor Bull's that day and who might have testified to the behavior of this remarkable quartet. How was it that none of the habitués of the place, a cheap tavern frequented mainly by sailors, were called upon to say what they knew or saw? The Coroner's strange silence suggests that Frizer, Skeres, and Poley probably managed to keep Marlowe most of the day in a private room and out of view of any of Eleanor's patrons. We must not overlook the significance of the fact that the Coroner reports that Marlowe and his associates "met together in a room in the house ... & there passed the time together & dined" and that, after walking about in the garden belonging to the house, they "returned ... to the room aforesaid & there together and in company supped."

8. The Coroner's failure to get Eleanor Bull's testimony is a highly suspicious feature, especially in view of the fact that the law required him to question the neighbors and any other persons who might throw any light on the homicide. It would surely have been of the utmost importance to know whether there were any evidences of a struggle, _e.g._, overturned chairs, broken dishes, the position of Marlowe's body, etc. As matters stand, we do not even know for certain whether the dead Marlowe was discovered in bed or on the floor, whether there were bloodstains in the bed, whether the Coroner found the dagger in the wound and in the clutch of the deceased--surely very material facts in an inquiry regarding a possible murder. And yet Eleanor Bull did not testify. The only likely explanation for this fact is that the assassin or assassins kept Marlowe in a private room in a remote part of the house until they were ready to dispatch him. Having got him sufficiently drunk, one of them thrust a dagger into the sleeping Marlowe's brain just above his right eye.

9. That the Coroner's inquest was a perfunctory matter and that his story cannot be accepted as a faithful account of what actually transpired is sufficiently evident from the facts that he made no inquiry into how much liquor Marlowe had imbibed and that he was willing to believe that a two-inch wound above the eye would result in instant death. One who knows the anatomy and pathology of the human brain knows that it is almost impossible for death to follow immediately upon the infliction of such a wound.[32] That Marlowe's brain--"the abode of the poet's vaulting imagination," as Hotson poetically calls it--was not examined is, therefore, certain, and yet the Coroner says that the wound was two inches deep and one inch wide. Such a wound, if made horizontally, traversing the eye socket, would not have involved the brain for more than half an inch, and would not have affected any vital area; if the wound was made vertically, the injury would have been in the frontal lobe of the brain and would not have proved fatal, certainly not immediately. To have caused instant death the assassin would have had to thrust his dagger horizontally into Marlowe's brain to a depth of six or seven inches--and that could not have happened if Frizer and Marlowe had been wrestling as the witnesses described. Portions of the frontal lobe have been shot away without fatal consequences. Bullets have been known to enter the brain through one temple and to come out through the other without causing death. The Coroner's "grim tale" of Marlowe's violent and untimely end is, therefore, not a true account of what happened.

* * * * *

Taking all the known facts into consideration, we must, it seems to me, conclude (1) that Marlowe was assassinated while he was asleep, probably in a drunken stupor; (2) that while he was in this condition, Ingram Frizer thrust his twelve-penny dagger, which he had brought with him for the purpose, deeply into Marlowe's brain; and (3) that the Coroner was influenced by certain powers not to inquire too curiously into the violent death of an "outcast _Ismael_".[33]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Harl. MS. 7368, at the British Museum.]

[Footnote 2: That the sixth man, hitherto known as "D", was _not_ Shakspere, I have tried to show in my books, _Problems in Shakspere's Penmanship_ and _The Booke of Sir Thomas Moore_. The latter of these presents my case for the dating of this play (the spring of 1593) as well as for the identification of Heywood, Chettle, and Kyd.]

[Footnote 3: For additional details regarding the quarrel between the aliens and the natives, the reader is referred to my _Booke of Sir Thomas Moore_.]

[Footnote 4: _The Acts of the Privy Council of England_, 1901, vol. 4, pp. 187, 200, 201, 222.]

[Footnote 5: See _The Booke of Sir Thomas Moore_, pp. 96-98.]

[Footnote 6: They were rediscovered by Professor F.S. Boas in 1898 and are preserved in the British Museum, where they bear the mark _MS. Harl. 6848, ff. 187-189_. Professor Boas reprinted them, in reverse order, in his book, _The Works of Thomas Kyd_, London, 1901. His book contains a facsimile of the first page of the alleged treatise. A correct transcript of all three pages and a facsimile of the second page appear in my _Booke of Sir Thomas Moore_.]

[Footnote 7: _Op. cit._, pp. 43, 47.]

[Footnote 8: "On a document concerning Christopher Marlowe," in _Studies in Philology_, April, 1920, vol. 20, pp. 153-159.]

[Footnote 9: It is not impossible, however, that the endorsement was the work of a clerk of the Privy Council or of the prison to which Kyd was committed.]

[Footnote 10: That the Lord whom Thomas Kyd served, probably in the role of secretary, was Ferdinando Stanley, I have shown in my _Booke of Sir Thomas Moore_, pp. 38-41.]

[Footnote 11: The whole of this interesting and important letter (_B.M., MS. Harl., 6849, ff. 218-19_) is finely facsimiled (but not accurately transcribed) in Professor Boas' book. The reader will find it in my book, pp. 108-11.]

[Footnote 12: _B.M., MS. Harl. 6848, ff. 154._]

[Footnote 13: In Virgil's _2d. Eclogue_ Alexis is a beautiful youth beloved by the shepherd Corydon. This therefore amounts to a charge of homosexuality.]

[Footnote 14: This important document was discovered by Mr. F. K. Brown in 1921 and is described in _The Times Literary Supplement_ (London), June 2, 1921, p. 335. It is finely facsimiled and accurately transcribed in Dr. W.W. Greg's _Literary Autographs from 1550-1650_. See also my book, _op. cit._, pp. 38, 41-44, 52.]

[Footnote 15: This probably alludes to the felony with which Marlowe was charged in 1588. (See Professor Hotson's essay, "Marlowe among the Churchwardens," in the _Atlantic Monthly_, July, 1926, vol. 138, pp. 37-44.)]

[Footnote 16: _The Acts of the Privy Council_, May 20, 1593.]

[Footnote 17: That Marlowe was a spy in the service of the Queen and of Sir Francis Walsingham we know from the labors of Professor Hotson (_cf._ the work cited, pp. 63-4) and of Miss Eugenie de Kalb (_cf._ "The Death of Marlowe," in _The Times Literary Supplement_, May 21, 1925, p. 351).]

[Footnote 18: _Cf._ _The Dictionary of National Biography._]

[Footnote 19: Thomas Harriott, one of the "three magi" who frequently attended the Earl of Northumberland in the Tower, had acknowledged himself to be a deist He was a member of Walter Ralegh's group of freethinkers.]

[Footnote 20: Walter Warner, the distinguished mathematician, another one of the Earl of Northumberland's "three magi," was also one of Ralegh's group. Some think that Kyd may have meant William Warner, the poet, the author of the highly praised _Albion's England_.]

[Footnote 21: Edward de Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford and Lord Great Chamberlain, was one of the most talented, eccentric, extravagant, irresponsible, and intersting men of the Age of Elizabeth. He was born in 1550 and died in 1604. He was inordinately quarrelsome, temperamental and reckless, and therewithal endowed with a high degree of musical talent and literary ability. Men of letters found him friendly and helpful, and he was the patron of a company of actors. He was as erratic in his relations with the Queen as with others, and in 1592 he fell out with her because she refused to grant his petition for a monopoly to import into England certain oils, wool, and fruits--a refusal which doomed him, for financial reasons, to live in retirement. This is the man who, in the opinion of some writers, was the "real Shakespeare."]

[Footnote 22: This was the "wizard Earl," as he was popularly known, whom the Roman Catholics had instigated to assert and fortify his claim to the English crown and who fearlessly protested against King James' severity in his treatment of Ralegh. He was, in all probability, the first owner of the famous _Northumberland Manuscript_. For an interesting and entertaining account of this eccentric patron of the arts and sciences, consult the _Dictionary of National Biography_.]

[Footnote 23: In their edition of _Love's Labour's Lost_ (1923, p. xxxiii), Mr. Dover Wilson and Professor Quiller-Couch erroneously include the name of the ingenious Stanley, fifth Earl of Derby, in this group. George Chapman, the authorities say, was one of the coterie; Shakspere was not, as far as we know.]

[Footnote 24: An account of these documents (_MS. Harl. 6842, ff. 183-90_) and extracts from them were published by Mr. J.M. Stone ("Atheism under Elizabeth and James I." in _The Month_ for June, 1894, vol. 81, pp. 174-87) and by Professor Boas (in _Literature_, Nos. 147 and 148).]

[Footnote 25: _Works of Thomas Kyd_, p. lxxiii.]

[Footnote 26: Harriott was again coupled with Marlowe in a letter (_Harl. MS. 6848, f. 176_) written to Justice Young by a spy concerning Cholmely and his "crues." We may recall that at Sir Walter's trial, in 1603, Lord Chief Justice Coke branded the accused as "a damnable atheist" and denounced him for associating with that "devil" Harriott.]

[Footnote 27: This "note Containing the opinion of on[e] Christopher Marly, Concerning his damnable Judgment of Religion and scorn of gods words" (_Harl. MS. 6848, fol. 185-6_, also _Harl. MS. 6853, fo. 320_) has been reprinted in an expurgated version by Boas (_op. cit._, pp. cxiv-cxvi), by Ingram (_op. cit._, pp. 260-2) and in Mr. H. Ellis's "unexpurgated" edition of Marlowe's _Plays_ in the _Mermaid Series_ (1893, pp. 428-30). It is transcribed, without abridgement, in my _Notes and Additions to 'The Books of Sir Thomas Moore_.']

[Footnote 28: Concerning Baines we are told by Mr. Havelock Ellis (_op. cit._, p. xliv) that he "was hanged at Tyburn next year for some degrading offence," but, as Mr. Ellis says, "there seems no reason--while making judicious' reservations--to doubt the substantial accuracy of his statements."]

[Footnote 29: That Poley was a "secret agent" we know from Conyers Read's _Mr. Secretary Walsingham_, 1925, II. 383. For additional information about him, see Mr. Chambers' review of Hotson's book, in _Modern Language Review_, 1926, vol. 21, pp. 84-85.]

[Footnote 30: For a translation of the Coroner's report, see pp. 71-75.]

[Footnote 31: William Vaughan, who has given us (in his _Golden Grove_, 1600) the most nearly authentic account of the assassination, tells us that Ingram invited Marlowe to Deptford "to a feast." Neither Frizer, Skeres, nor Poley, be it remembered, gave the Coroner any explanation of how they happened to meet Marlowe that morning and why they did not leave him out of their sight all day.]

[Footnote 32: For expert medical opinions on this matter, see pp. 65-67.]

[Footnote 33: It is at least interesting to note that the day before Marlowe's cruel end Richard Baines had included in his report to the Privy Council these words: "I think all men in Cristianity ought to indevor that the mouth of so dangerous a member [as this Marlowe] may be stopped." Was this a mere coincidence? or was it a broad hint to their Lordships of what was about to happen? or was it only an unintended betrayal of a secret of which the writer had cognizance? That it was not the pious indignation of a good Christian which prompted Baines' prophetic utterance is sufficiently evident from what we know of that worthy's career.]

II

If, then, Christopher Marlowe did not make his "great reckoning in a little room" accidentally but was the victim of a deliberate and planned murder, it seems impossible not to believe that the outrage was the outcome of the events immediately preceding it and intimately connected with Kyd's difficulties and accusations. To accept this view we need only think that Kyd, living in a city having a population of over one hundred thousand, was pounced upon by the police on the very day following the Privy Council's action; that Kyd could not but suspect that Marlowe, his quondam room-mate, had betrayed him to the officers of the law; that in his defence he attributed the incriminating "disputation" to Marlowe; that he subsequently charged Marlowe with numerous criminal offences (atheism, Socinianism, blasphemy, converting others to atheism, plotting against the State); that, not content with this, he named certain men--Harriott, Warner, Royden--with having associated with the "outcast _Ismael_" and listened to his atheistical doctrines; and that he very clearly threatened to divulge the identity of certain "men of quallitie" who (he implied) were not only intimates of the "outcast" but were leagued with him in conspiring with King James against Queen Elizabeth. At the same time we must not lose sight of this significant fact--Marlowe was the subject of attack from other quarters too. Baines' report to the Council not only duplicated and confirmed Kyd's charges, but added the grave accusations that Marlowe openly advocated sexual perversions, claimed to have as good a right to coin as the Queen of England had, and had converted at least one other to atheism. In another spy's memorandum (_MS. Harl. 6848, fo. 190_) "S^r Walter Raliegh & others" are coupled with "one Marlowe [who] is able to shewe more sounde reasons for Atheisme then any devine in Englande is able to geue to prove devinitie." That Marlowe, one of Walsingham's secret agents, was being apprised of the powerful forces at work to destroy him can hardly be doubted. He must have realized now that his ex-associate knew too much, suspected him, and was ready to sacrifice everything and everybody to save himself and to be revenged on the causer of his miseries. Kyd was safe in jail and was being closely guarded by the authorities, who hoped that the names of the "men of quallitie" he had implicated might yet be "drawn" from the prisoner.

And what about the "men of quallitie" whose lives were being threatened? From what we know of the characters of the Council's spies we may safely assume that these noblemen were not wholly ignorant of what Kyd had charged them with and what certain spies had reported to the Council. There were "leaks" in those days, as there are now. That Marlowe's situation was desperate is certain. The only ones who could have saved him--by the use of their political influence--were the men who were most in danger from him. From Kyd's reticence--a politic reticence, no doubt--the "men of quallitie" knew that they were safe if he was. Marlowe was the only one they had cause to fear. Marlowe, therefore, had to be silenced.[34] Ingram Frizer, a servant of Mr. Thomas Walsingham, and therefore an associate of Marlowe (and not likely to be distrusted), was assigned the task of stopping the poet-spy's career. Nicholas Skeres and Robert Poley were schooled to corroborate the assassin's defense. Kyd was instructed to hold his tongue and wait. May 30th came and Marlowe walked into the trap which had been set for him. What followed we know.

When we attempt to answer the question what Englishman or Englishmen of that day could have been so situated as to be in sufficiently great danger from Marlowe's possible revelations to desire his death, it seems that we must restrict our investigation to the "men of quallitie" who constituted Sir Walter Ralegh's coterie. And when we consider that Sir Walter was not only hinted at in Kyd's accusing memorandum but was actually named in Baines' "Note," that he had a reputation for atheism, and that a few months later he had to submit to being examined regarding his religious views, we have no choice but to focus our attention on him. When, in addition to the facts just mentioned, we find him so constituted as to be eminently capable of so bold and ruthless an act as the assassination of an enemy in the furtherance of his own interests, and so situated as to be almost driven to such an act of desperation, it becomes a reasonable assumption that the responsibility for Marlowe's violent and cruel taking-off should be laid at his door.

Tradition says that Marlowe was one of the choice spirits who were received at the weekly gatherings of brilliant literary and scientific men at Sir Walter's house, "where religious topics were often discussed with perilous freedom." Mr. Ingram, following Dyce, says (_Christopher Marlowe and his Associates_, 1904, p. 184): "The earliest references to the poet not only allude to his friendship with Raleigh but even assert that he read a paper on the Trinity before Sir Walter Raleigh and his brother Carew and others at the Knight's house."[35] The alleged friendship is in all probability a myth, though Ralegh must have been fascinated by the creator of Tamburlaine and Faust, two portraits in which that bold and aspiring spirit may very well have seen himself. But the relations between them were probably of a sufficiently intimate nature to cause Sir Walter considerable anxiety on learning--as he must have learned--that this "god of undaunted verse," who had enjoyed his hospitality, was not only a disciple of Machiavelli but a secret agent of the Government and had been responsible for Kyd's arrest. That at this critical moment Marlowe might have made it clear to Sir Walter that he looked to him to save him is not at all improbable. But Ralegh knew that he was then in no position to do what was demanded of him.

To an ambitious, cruel, and unscrupulous Elizabethan adventurer, to such a "soldier, sailor, and courtier" as Ralegh was--careers which he himself subsequently blamed for his "courses of wickedness and vice" (his own words)--the removal by assassination of a dangerous foe, who might not only frustrate the fulfilment of his dreams but land him in the Tower, or worse (especially at a time when he was in disgrace with the furious Elizabeth and the subject of almost universal hatred and obloquy), was as obvious as it was practicable. This many-gifted, brilliant, enigmatical Englishman--as striking a case of dual personality as history affords--was capable of "unspeakable cold-blooded cruelty," of "treachery and false faith," of "bold unscrupulousness," of almost "any act of baseness." That is the verdict of those of his biographers (Stebbing, Gosse, Buchan, Thoreau) who are not obviously his apologists. Ralegh's wanton brutality and wholesale butcheries in Ireland--"that commonwealth of common woe," as he called it--is one of the saddest and darkest pages in the history of the English-Irish troubles. To attain his ends all means were permissible. Is it any wonder, then, that "he was hated by all and sundry, from the citizens of London to the courtiers who jostled him in the Queen's antechamber"?[36] To the popular mind, and even to the best men of his day, "Raleigh remained the ambitious courtier, the able and unscrupulous soldier, and the man who wrought ever for his own ends." To this vain, egotistical man, this victim of an insatiable passion for fame, wealth, and rule, who dreamed of founding empires, and who realized all too keenly how his many enemies--envying him for his great wealth, his ostentation, his adventures, his talents, his special privileges--would revel in his ruin,--to such a man it would have been the most trivial undertaking to sweep out of his path a hot-headed, quarrelsome, vainglorious, and treacherous son of a shoemaker, a fellow whom he had befriended and admitted into the privacy of his sanctum. He knew, none so well as he, that his and his friends' fortunes were desperate if Marlowe divulged what he knew.