Incredible research but leaves too much unanswered
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In 1593, the brilliant playwright Christopher Marlowe was stabbed to death in a tavern brawl in Deptford, London. The official record stated that this row was over the bill, or "recknynge". The truth, believes Nicholl, is much darker: a murder, by the shadowy agents of the Elizabethan secret service.
Nicholl's investigation rarely concerns itself with the playwright or his texts, instead beginning with the three men present at Marlowe's death. Ingram Frizer was a swindler and a loan-shark, who admitted the stabbing but claimed self-defense, and was acquitted with unusual, probably suspicious, speed just weeks later. Nicholas Skeeres was a government intelligence agent, probably paid by the Earl of Essex or his faction. And Robert Poley seems to have been the very epitome of a contemporary spy, double-dealing, double-crossing, trusted by nobody, listened to by all. Nicholl takes these three men, questioning why Marlowe should have been dining with them, and builds an incredibly detailed picture of the lower eschelons of society, those circles seldom seen beneath the glamour of the Court.
Following the meagre clues left in government, judicial and prison records, and Cambridge kitchen bills, Nicholl painstakingly builds up a picture of what life was like for these men, collecting information for their superiors for which they might be thanked or might be imprisoned, creating treasonous plots to see who joined up, passing on scandalous libel. Though records relating to Marlowe himself are frustratingly infrequent, he plausibly supplements them with evidence about the other young and talented writers also taken into government service.
The resulting picture, of a police state where everyone watched their back and their mouth, will be a shock to those brought up on the idea of an Elizabethan golden age. What Nicholl does demonstrate very well is that the pro-Catholic, anti-Elizabeth plots we know so well were just the tip of the iceberg, and were promulgated, if not instigated, by government agents just like Poley.
Though Nicholl never promised a biography, I would have liked more about Marlowe himself. One thing I did think I knew about Marlowe before I began this, was that he was gay. Nicholl dismisses this as another meaningless slur on Marlowe's character by the informer Baines: "We do not quite know what it meant to be gay in Elizabethan England" [p. 432]. Well, no, we probably don't, but passing up the chance to try to find out isn't going to change that. Considering the quantity of dead trees expended on Shakespeare's lovely boy, I think there is at least a question to be asked about Marlowe's "Come live with me and be my love", and (the much older) Sir Walter Raleigh's response, "If all the world and love were young". As Nicholl ultimately attributes Marlowe's death to those aiming to discredit Raleigh, the relationship between the two men needs proper consideration.
Similarly, as so many of his contemporaries met their end in prison and torture, I would like to have known, or at least speculated, just what it was about Marlowe that, after eight hours' discussion, necessitated his murder. There was enough evidence on file, be it fabricated or not, to have arrested him ten times over: so why the knife? Nicholl has done an incredible job of research here, uncovering the details and the personae of the shady world in which Marlowe moved; yet central to the mystery must be the man himself, and he seems to remain in shadow. I cannot help thinking that the central question has not yet quite been answered.
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Fascinating Book
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The mysterious death of Kit Marlowe is a starting point for an investigation into a murky world of Elizabethan spies and secret agents. It's true that at the end of the book there is no clear idea of who really murdered Marlowe, other than that the offical version is clearly implausible, but the details revealed along the way are well worth the price of admission. Entertaining and informative, I found this book very interesting.
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Great Archival Work, Terrible Writing/Editing
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There are only three reasons to read this prize-winning reconstruction of the events surrounding the death of Elizabethan playwright and poet Christopher Marlowe: (1) if you have some particular previous interest in Marlowe; (2) if you have a particular interest in Elizabethan politics, international relations, and espionage circa 1580-1600; (3) if you are interested in the use of archival materials to tell a story. I came to this book for none of these reasons, and so found it sporadically interesting, but overall rather tedious and agonizing to read. Nicholl's strategy is to examine the biographies of the other people in Marlowe's life (including those present at his killing/murder), and to try and connect them to the larger political context. It was a time of deep intrigue, with Elizabeth's court deeply concerned about a Franco-Spanish Catholic invasion and a Catholic fifth column inside England. Plots abounded and there was a correspondingly extensive murky world of informants, semi-official spies, dirty tricks, and many agents provocateur. Nicholl attempts to position Marlowe within this world as a sometime government spy on the Catholics, and tries to demonstrate how many writers turned to such intelligence work in order to make a more comfortable living. As educated men with skills in foreign languages, writers were often forced to supplement their meager writing income by whatever means they could, and spycraft offered a fairly lucrative, if somewhat dangerous option. The problem was that it was all to easy to get caught up in some complex double- or triple-cross, and secure patronage was very hard to maintain. Nicholl provides examples of various agents who were arrested based on flimsy denunciations and paid for it with their lives. His ultimate, unprovable hypothesis is that Marlowe was a small fish who got in the way of court jockeying for position in relation to all this, and that the Earl of Essex ordered that he be dealt with. The book is full of speculation and leaps of conjecture that will have history buffs gnashing their teeth in annoyance, but he does establish some things rather persuasively. If nothing else, it should put to bed the notion that Marlowe died in some brawl over a tavern bar tab. The setting was actually the home of a respectable widow with high court connections, it was a private meeting between Marlowe and three others which started in the morning and lasted all day, and the three other men involved were all part of the demimonde of Elizabethan espionage. While I admire Nicholl's extensive archival work in piecing together events from some 400 years ago from so many different obscure sources, the prose is so laden with extraneous details and tangents that it's hard to keep track of what is truly relevant. No figure is too trivial to merit inclusion -- for example, consider that a quick survey of the index shows some 364 different names listed, which works out to the reader having to absorb slightly more than one new person per page. This is especially irksome given that a little more than half of these individuals appear only once in the narrative! Moreover, spot checking ten pages turned up another seven names not in the index—so perhaps the book has a cast of some 500 people! A good example of how this plays out of the prose can be found on page 179: "Like Ingram Frizer at Deptford, Watson and Marlowe stood their ground. They were arrested by the constable of the precinct, Stephen Wyld, a tailor, and marched off to the nearest Justice. This was Sir Owen Hopton, Lieutenant of the Tower of London, whose home was at Norton Folgate. Later that day they were led to Newgate prison..." If one rewrote the above omitting the extraneous detail, it would read as follows: "Watson and Marlowe stood their ground and were arrested and taken to Newgate prison." This is just one example of how Nicholl's account would have benefited from a tighter focus and control over the material, as he appears overeager to share every last archival finding with the reader, at the expense of lucid prose. Ultimately, it's a book whose value depends largely on the reader's interest in the three areas mentioned above.
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Keeping an eye on Marly
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Part of the reason this story is so captivating is the unknown element; there are things that we don't know about and questions we will never know the answer to. Marlowe's life between his time at Corpus Christi and his death was intertwined with that of the Elizabethan secret service, distancing it even further from the truth. But that's what makes you want to read this book - you want to know what happened, where he went and with who. You want to be able to solve the mystery of why he was murdered. Short of some significant new evidence coming forward we will never really know what happened in Deptford on 30th May 1593, but this book proves that all is not as it seems with the official story. It walks down the back streets and alleyways of Elizabethan England and reports to you what it sees. I'm in the process of reading this book for the fourth time, and I know it won't be the last. The story is fascinating, and I guarantee that once you start it you will want to follow it through every twist and turn it takes.
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nice little historical who dun it! utterly brilliant work
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I love history and all the details. I also love riddles and mysteries. So, when someone combines both into a tale, as Charles Nicholl did, it's bound to please me. This book is the Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography and the Crime Writers' Gold Dagger Awards for non-fiction thriller - both well earned!! Marlowe was a very controversial poet and playwright. In 1593, he was stabbed to death in a lodging house in Deptford. To say the least, the manner and circumstances of death was up to question. There was a violent quarrel concerning Marlowe's bill and the official finding has been called dubious at best. Nicholl brings to life this historical riddle with style and ingenuity weaving facts, supposition and fiction into one wonderful mix. He presents a very complex study of Marlowe's death, but it is also a marvellous study of the seedier side of Elizabethan society. Nicholl walks the masterful tightrope between historical study on Marlowe's murder, a well-written 'who dun it' and portrays with rich detail the period that leaves one wondering if he is not reincarnated!! So buy it for the history, writers need to read it if they write about the period for it is also a scholarly work, but most of all sit back and enjoy a real British Who do it.
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