Chapter 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.

To understand what Ralegh's state of mind was at this time it is necessary to recount the occurrences of the preceding year. After having for several years played the rôle of devoted and impassioned lover to the Virgin Queen--"love's queen and the goddess of his life"--he had permitted himself to fall a victim to the charms of one of the Queen's maids of honor, the witty, beautiful (tall, slender, blue-eyed, golden-haired) and altogether lovely Elizabeth Throgmorton, some thirty-five years younger than her royal rival. The Queen, "who loved the presence of handsome young men with unmaidenly ardour," notwithstanding her alleged prudery and the sixty years she carried on her ulcerous back, was furious--"fiercely incensed," says a contemporary. Sir Walter was immediately dismissed from the royal favor and committed to the Tower where he was detained from June to September, 1592. While imprisoned there, he behaved like a spoiled child, quarrelling with his keepers, bemoaning his hard lot, and writing lovesick letters to the Queen--even though his betrothed was confined in a suite only a few feet from his.

During his confinement in the Tower he discovered another grievance against his "Belphoebe:" she prohibited him from sharing to the full in the expedition of 1592 which ended in the capture of the great Spanish carack, the "Madre de Dios." And, besides, the Queen's greed made the division of the spoils so extremely unequal that he, "to whom the success was owing, who bore the toils and burden of it all, was considerably the loser," whereas Lord Cumberland (who had invested only a relatively small sum in the piratical venture) made £17,000 profit.

Circumstances into which we need not now enter brought about his release from the Tower. But "freedom from confinement did not bring with it a return of the royal graciousness, and for some years he was practically an exile from the Court" (Buchan). Early in 1593 he was in retirement at his manor of Sherborne in Dorset, where he spent the time in hunting, hawking, cultivating potatoes, and attempting to grow tobacco. That this sort of life, coupled with ostracism from the Court (the latter extended also to his wife), must have been dreadfully galling to this bold and adventurous spirit, always hankering for battle and enterprise, can hardly be doubted. He seems to have been firmly convinced that in his case the Queen--who had been known to overlook the fickleness of lovers--would be obdurate and never again have anything to do with him. Here, then, at the age of forty, he saw his career ended, his dreams of power and rule shattered.

Would he permit himself to be doomed to a life of inaction and obscurity, to "keep a farm and carters?" Of course he would not. We know that he brooded on schemes of maritime adventure as an escape from the boredom to which an insulted Queen had banished him. London fascinated him and drew him like a magnet; the records show that he paid frequent visits to the capital. To keep in touch with the world he had himself elected to Parliament--and to his credit be it said that, notwithstanding the odium in which he was generally held, he took a lively interest in public affairs and championed what was just and reasonable in popular demands.

The Queen took advantage of every means in her power to harass him and make him feel the settled hate in her heart. Thus, she now made him recall all his people from Ireland where he had established a colony on his estates in the Counties of Westford and Cork; after Michaelmas, 1594, she ordered him to pay a rental of 100 Marks (instead of the 50 Marks he had been in the habit of paying) for one of his Irish estates. (See Malone's _Variorum_, 1821, vol. 2, p. 573.)

That he was watching his opportunity to get back into power, to find an outlet for his talents, to get into the limelight in the political arena, rather than to be restored to the Queen's good graces, seems to be proved by several circumstances. He protested loudly--no doubt more loudly than the circumstances warranted--against the Government's blundering policies as regards Ireland, and advocated a resolute and consistent despotism, sustained, if necessary, by treachery and murder. About this time--on February 28, 1593, to be exact--he also advocated open war with Spain. Three weeks later he opposed the bill in the House of Commons for the extension of the privileges of aliens in England. In the discussion of the latter measure he was the only one who spoke of expelling the strangers.

Sir Walter's attitude to the foreigners who were the objects of the city's "exceeding pitiful and great exclamations" at this time is deserving of careful attention. So grave was the situation that it occupied the House of Commons during several sessions (March 21, 23, and 24, 1593). Unmindful of the humanitarian pleas of some of his associates (Mr. Finch, Sir Robert Cecil, and others), Ralegh expostulated: "Whereas it is pretended, That for strangers it is against Charity, against Honour, against Profit to expel them; in my opinion it is no matter of Charity to relieve them.... I see no reason that so much respect should be given unto them. And to conclude, in the whole cause I see no matter of Honour, no matter of Charity, no Profit in relieving them."[37]

That his policies on public questions were the expression of his secret purposes cannot be doubted. A man, constituted as he was, conscious of his powers, his talents, his unemployed energy, his versatility, his military ability and skill, his scientific attainments, his popularity with the crews of his ships,[38] his ambitions, and smarting under the disabilities attendant on being in disgrace, would without a doubt be keenly on the alert for any opportunity that chance might offer to bring him back into a position of influence and power.

Sir Walter, like others of his distinguished contemporaries, was capable of treasonous intrigue against his Queen. This may reasonably be deduced from a letter of his written--on July 6, 1597--to the none too scrupulous Robert Cecil. In that letter he says: "I acquaynted the L: Generall [_i.e._, The Earl of Essex] w^{th} your ... kynd acceptance of your enterteynment; hee was also wonderfull merry att ye consait of Richard the 2. I hope it shall never alter, & whereof I shall be most gladd of, as the treu way to all our good, qu[i]ett, & advacemet, & most of all for her sake whose affaires shall therby fy[n]d better progression." This passage has been a hopeless conundrum to the biographers, but as Edward Edwards has shown,[39] there can be little doubt that it refers to Shakspere's _Richard the Second_ which was then being performed at the Globe Theatre. It will be recalled that this tragedy, destined to play an important rôle in 1601 in the treasonous enterprise of the Lord General Essex, at this time included the celebrated "deposition scene" (IV. i, 154-318) which the Queen, conceiving that Richard II was a mask for herself, sternly disapproved of.[40] To the psychologist there will be profound significance in the unusual (and hitherto unnoticed) subscription to the above letter by Ralegh: "Sir, I will ever be yours: it is all I can saye, & I will performe it with my life & w^{th} my fortune." He wrote better than he knew.

But let us return to 1593. Being in the frame of mind we have already described, and knowing that he could rely on the crews of his ships and the men of Devon, this malcontent must have thought of ways and means of bringing about some situation which would enable him to play a conspicuous part, get close to the Queen, oust his enemies from the Court, and possibly even take charge of the Government, as Essex planned to do a few years later. His life at the Court had acquainted him with the arts of indirect dealing. The hostility between the natives and the aliens and between the city and the national Government seemed to offer the coveted opportunity. We must remember that at this time he was in London a great deal; that he advocated publicly the expulsion of the aliens; that he was attempting to fan into a flame the smouldering anti-Hispanism, was openly criticising the Government's Irish policy, and was not without powerful political friends.[41]

It seems not too far-fetched, therefore, to conjecture that directly or indirectly, possibly with the assistance of his intimate associate, his other self, Harriott,[42] he convinced the manager of a theatrical company, preferably the Admiral's, that a play dealing with Sir Thomas More and the "ill May day" of 1517 would be timely and might prove a money maker.[43] Munday, "our best plotter," and his young associates, Heywood and Chettle, were entrusted with the task. They at once betook themselves to Hall's _Chronicle_, familiarized themselves with More's career, met together to outline the play, and set to work. Fortunately or unfortunately, however, for the course of history, the writing and revision of the play did not go on to completion.[44] The plague, which drove the actors out of London, may have had something to do with it, but the greater likelihood is that the revisers were interrupted by the informer's betrayal of Kyd's participation in a plot to expel French and Flemish subjects from London. And thus the plan centering around the tragedy of _Sir Thomas Moore_ came to naught. For the time being, Sir Walter Ralegh's plots to be revenged on an unreasonable and irascible queen were frustrated, but, unfortunately for English literature, not before Christopher Marlowe had become so enmeshed in them that they cost him his life.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 34: That such dastardly plotting was not beyond an Elizabethan nobleman is clearly shown by the statement in the _Dictionary of National Biography_ that the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, "was said to have deliberately planned the murder of an antagonist, and he very reluctantly abandoned what he affected to regard as a safe scheme of assassination."]

[Footnote 35: In the spy's affidavit Cholmeley is reported as saying that Marlowe had told him that "he hath read the Atheist lecture to Sr Walter Raleigh & others." For Marlowe's relations with his contemporaries the reader should consult Professor Tucker Brooke's essay, "Marlowe's Reputation," in _Trans. of the Conn. Acad. of Arts & Sciences_, 1922, vol. 25, pp. 347-408.]

[Footnote 36: J. Buchan, _Sir Walter Raleigh_, pp. 41, 45.]

[Footnote 37: _Cf. A Compleat Journal of the Notes, Speeches and Debates, both of the House of Lords and House of Commons throughout the whole Reign of Queen Elizabeth._ Collected by ... Sir Simonds D'Ewes, London, 1693, pp. 504-9.]

[Footnote 38: When the Queen released Ralegh from the Tower to go to Dartmouth to settle the disputes about the distribution of the spoils taken on the "Madre de Dios," Robert Cecil wrote home: "I assure you, Sir, his poor servants to the number of one hundred and forty goodly men, and all the mariners, came to him with such shouts and joy, as I never saw a man more troubled to quell in my life; for he is very extreme pensive longer than he is busied, in which he can toil terribly."]

[Footnote 39: _The Life of Sir Walter Raleigh_, 1868, vol. 2, pp. 164-9.]

[Footnote 40: _Cf._ S. Lee, _A Life of William Shakespeare_, 1916, pp. 129, 254-5.]

[Footnote 41: That he had friends in the Privy Council seems to be indicated by the following interesting circumstance: in the official replica (_Harl. MS. 6853, fo. 320_), laid before Queen Elizabeth, of Richard Baines' note accusing Marlowe of blasphemy, the designation of Harriott as "Sir W. Raleighs man" was omitted--surely not for the purpose of sparing the Queen's feelings. And nine months later the Commission, which had been appointed to examine him at Cerne, apparently squashed the matter after it had heard all the witnesses and obtained sufficient evidence to convict him, his brother and Harriott, had it wished to do so.]

[Footnote 42: Harriott, and therefore Ralegh, was mentioned not only in every one of the documents we have referred to in connection with the charges of heresy and blasphemy but also in connection with plots against the Government.]

[Footnote 43: That _Sir Thomas Moore_ was written for a political purpose was dearly felt by Professor Ashley H. Thorndike; in 1916 (_Shakespeare's Theater, p. 213_), when we knew a great deal less about this play than we now know, he expressed surprise that Tyllney "should have permitted in any form a play intended to excite feeling against the foreigners dwelling in London." That the drama was 'universally used for political purposes' in Shakspere's time is convincingly shown in Richard Simpson's paper, "The Political Use of the Stage in Shakspere's Time," in _The Transactions of the New Shakspere Society_, 1874, part II, pp. 371-95.]

[Footnote 44: That Sir Walter, like some of his intimate associates, _e.g._, Edward de Vere, had intimate contacts with theatrical companies, is fairly certain. On January 30, 1597, Rowland Whyte wrote to Sir Robert Sydney as follows: "My Lord Compton, Sir Walter Rawley, my Lord Southampton doe severally feast Mr. Secretary before he depart, and have Plaies and Banquets." (_Letters and Memorials of State_, ed. by Arthur Collins, 1746, vol. 2, p. 86.)]

III

Appendix A

OPINIONS OF MEDICAL EXPERTS