Thomas Kyd (baptised 6 November 1558; buried 15 August 1594) was an English dramatist, the author of The Spanish Tragedy, and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama.

Although well known in his own time, Kyd fell into obscurity until 1773 when Thomas Hawkins (an early editor of The Spanish Tragedy) discovered that Kyd was named as its author by Thomas Heywood in his Apologie for Actors (1612). A hundred years later, scholars in Germany and England began to shed light on his life and work, including the controversial finding that he may have been the author of a Hamlet play pre-dating Shakespeare's.

Early life[link]

Thomas Kyd was the son of Francis and Anna Kyd and was baptised in the church of St Mary Woolnoth in the Ward of Langborn, Lombard Street, London on 6 November 1558. The baptismal register at St Mary Woolnoth carries this entry: "Thomas, son of Francis Kydd, Citizen and Writer of the Courte Letter of London". Francis Kydd was a scrivener and in 1580 was warden of the Scriveners' Company.

In October 1565 the young Kyd was enrolled in the newly founded Merchant Taylors' School, whose headmaster was Richard Mulcaster. Fellow students included Edmund Spenser and Thomas Lodge. Here, Kyd received a well-rounded education, thanks to Mulcaster's progressive ideas. Apart from Latin and Greek, the curriculum included music, drama, physical education, and "good manners". There is no evidence that Kyd went on to either of the English universities. He may have followed for a time his father's profession; two letters written by him are extant and his handwriting suggests the training of a scrivener.

Career[link]

Evidence suggests that in the 1580s Kyd became an important playwright, but little is known about his activity. Francis Meres placed him among "our best for tragedy" and Heywood elsewhere called him "Famous Kyd". Ben Jonson mentions him in the same breath as Christopher Marlowe (with whom, in London, Kyd at one time shared a room) and John Lyly in the Shakespeare First Folio.

The Spanish Tragedie was probably written in the mid to late 1580s. The earliest surviving edition was printed in 1592; the full title being, The Spanish Tragedie, Containing the lamentable end of Don Horatio, and Bel-imperia: with the pittifull death of olde Hieronimo. However, the play was usually known simply as "Hieronimo", after the protagonist. It was arguably the most popular play of the "Age of Shakespeare" and set new standards in effective plot construction and character development. In 1602 a version of the play with "additions" was published. Philip Henslowe's diary records payment to Ben Jonson for additions that year, but it is disputed whether the published additions reflect Jonson's work or if they were actually composed for a 1597 revival of The Spanish Tragedy mentioned by Henslowe.

Other works by Kyd are his translations of Torquato Tasso's Padre di Famiglia, published as The Householder's Philosophy (1588); and Robert Garnier's Cornelia (1594). Plays attributed in whole or in part to Kyd include Soliman and Perseda, King Leir, Arden of Feversham and Edward III. A play related to The Spanish Tragedy called The First Part of Hieronimo (surviving in a quarto of 1605) may be a bad quarto or memorial reconstruction of a play by Kyd, or it may be an inferior writer's burlesque of The Spanish Tragedy inspired by that play's popularity.^[1] Kyd is more generally accepted to have been the author of a Hamlet, the precursor of the Shakespearean play (see: Ur-Hamlet). Some poems by Kyd exist, but it seems that most of his work is lost or unidentified.

The success of Kyd's plays extended to Europe. Versions of The Spanish Tragedy and his Hamlet were popular in Germany and the Netherlands for generations. The influence of these plays on European drama was largely the reason for the interest in Kyd among German scholars in the nineteenth century.

He is also the presumed author of a pamphlet in prose entitled The Murder of John Brewen (1592), a grisly report on murder in a family, in which a goldsmith is murdered by his wife.

Later life[link]

From 1587 to 1593 Kyd was in the service of an unidentified noble, since, after his imprisonment in 1593 (see below), he wrote to have lost "the favours of my Lord, whom I haue servd almost theis vi yeres nowe". Proposed nobles include the Earl of Sussex,^[2] the Earl of Pembroke,^[3] Lord Strange, ^[4] and the Earl of Oxford.^[5] He may have worked as a secretary, if he did not also write plays. Around 1591 Christopher Marlowe also joined this patron's service, and for a while Marlowe and Kyd shared lodgings, and perhaps even ideas.

On 11 May 1593 the Privy Council ordered the arrest of the authors of "divers lewd and mutinous libels" which had been posted around London. The next day, Kyd was among those arrested; he would later believe that he had been the victim of an informer. His lodgings were searched and instead of evidence of the "libels" there was found an Arianist tract, described by an investigator as "vile heretical conceits denying the eternal deity of Jesus Christ found amongst the papers of Thos. Kydd (sic), prisoner ... which he affirmeth he had from C. Marley (sic)". It is believed that Kyd was tortured brutally to obtain this information. Marlowe was summoned by the Privy Council after these events, and, while waiting for a decision on his case, was killed in an incident involving known government agents.

Kyd was eventually released but was not accepted back into his lord's service. Believing he was under suspicion of atheism himself, he wrote to the Lord Keeper, Sir John Puckering, protesting his innocence, but his efforts to clear his name were apparently fruitless. The last we hear from the playwright is the publication of Cornelia early in 1594. In the dedication to the Countess of Sussex he alludes to the "bitter times and privy broken passions" he had endured. Kyd died later that year, and was buried on 15 August in London. He was only 35 years of age. In December of that same year, Kyd's mother legally renounced the administration of his estate, probably because it was debt-ridden.

References[link]

• Philip Edwards, The Spanish Tragedy, Methuen, 1959, reprinted 1974. ISBN 0-416-27920-1.
• Charles Nicholl, The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe, Vintage, 2002 (revised edition). ISBN 0-09-943747-3 (especially for the circumstances surrounding Kyd's arrest).

Notes[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Thomas Kyd

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Thomas Kyd

• Thomas Kyd at the Lumniarum website
• Works by Thomas Kyd at Project Gutenberg
  • The Spanish Tragedie Full text of the play
• The Spanish Tragedy Full text of the play, modern spelling
• The Spanish Tragedy Shorter version of the play for a modern audience
• Text of Kyd's letter to Puckering
• Thomas Kyd and The Spanish Tragedy (University of West Alabama)
• Perverse justice in Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, by John Nettles (University of Georgia)

Andrew John Gurr (born 23 December 1936) is a contemporary literary scholar who specializes in William Shakespeare and English Renaissance theatre.

Life and work[link]

Born in Leicester, Gurr was raised in New Zealand, and educated at the University of Auckland and at Cambridge University. He has taught at the Universities of Wellington, Leeds, and Nairobi (1969–73); at the latter institution he was also head of his department. He taught at the University of Reading before his retirement.

Gurr co-wrote a 1981 study of Katherine Mansfield (with Claire Hanson) and two books on African literature; but he is best known for his books on Shakespeare and his contemporaries, and the theatre of that historical era— books that are recognized and utilized as essential references on English Renaissance drama. He has authored a wide range of articles for both scholarly journals and general-interest periodicals, and has edited several of Shakespeare's plays and several plays in the John Fletcher canon. He was chief academic advisor to the project to rebuild the Globe Theatre in London and also advised on the construction of the Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton, Virginia, where he has also lectured at the Blackfriars Conference and for Mary Baldwin College's M.Litt/MFA Program. For ten years (1988–98), Gurr was the editor of the Modern Language Review.

Books by Andrew Gurr[link]

• Shakespeare's Opposites: The Admiral's Company 1594 - 1625 (2009) Cambridge University Press
• The Shakespeare Company (2004) Cambridge University Press
• The First Quarto of Henry V by William Shakespeare, editor, (2000) Cambridge University Press
• Staging in Shakespeare's Theatres, with Mariko Ichikawa (2000) Oxford University Press
• William Shakespeare: The Extraordinary Life of the Most Successful Writer of All Time (1996) HarperCollins
• The Shakespearean Playing Companies (1996) Clarendon
• The Shakespearean Stage, 1574–1642 (1992) Cambridge University Press
• King Henry V by William Shakespeare, editor, (1992) Cambridge University Press
• Rebuilding Shakespeare's Globe, with John Orrell (1989) Weidenfeld & Nicolson
• Studying Shakespeare: an Introduction (1988) Arnold
• Playgoing in Shakespeare's London (1987) Cambridge University Press
• King Richard II by William Shakespeare, editor, (1984) Cambridge University Press
• Writers in Exile: the Identity of Home in Modern Literature (1981) Harvester Press
• Katherine Mansfield, with Claire Hanson 1981 Macmillan
• Hamlet and the Distracted Globe (1978) Scottish Academic Press (for Sussex University Press)
• Black Aesthetics, editor with Pio Zimiru, (1974) East African Literature Bureau
• Writers in East Africa, with Angus Calder (1973) East African Literature Bureau
• The Maid's Tragedy by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, editor, (1969) University of California Press
• Philaster by Beaumont and Fletcher, editor, (1969) Methuen
• The Knight of the Burning Pestle by Francis Beaumont, editor, (1968) University of California Press

See also[link]

External links[link]

• Gurr on Sonnet 145.
• Excerpt from Staging in Shakespeare's Theatres with Mariko Ichikawa (2000).

References[link]

• Magill, Frank Northen, et al., eds. Cyclopedia of World Authors. Pasadena, CA, Salem Press, 1997.

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Christopher Marlowe
An anonymous portrait in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, believed to show Christopher Marlowe.
Born	Baptised 26 February 1564 Canterbury, England
Died	30 May 1593(1593-05-30) (aged 29) Deptford, England
Occupation	Playwright, poet
Nationality	English
Period	circa 1586–93
Literary movement	English Renaissance theatre
Notable work(s)	Hero and Leander, Edward the Second, The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus
Influenced William Shakespeare
Signature

Christopher Marlowe^[1] (baptised 26 February 1564; died 30 May 1593) was an English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe was the foremost Elizabethan tragedian until his mysterious early death.^[2] Marlowe greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was born in the same year as Marlowe and who rose to become the eminent Elizabethan playwright after Marlowe's death. Marlowe's plays are known for the use of blank verse, and their overreaching protagonists.

A warrant was issued for Marlowe's arrest on 18 May 1593. No reason for it was given, though it was thought to be connected to allegations of blasphemy—a manuscript believed to have been written by Marlowe was said to contain "vile heretical conceipts". On 20 May he was brought to the court to attend upon the Privy Council for questioning. There is no record of their having met that day, however, and he was commanded to attend upon them each day thereafter until "licensed to the contrary." Ten days later, he was stabbed to death by Ingram Frizer. Whether the stabbing was connected to his arrest has never been resolved.^[3]

Early life[link]

Marlowe was born in Canterbury to shoemaker John Marlowe and his wife Catherine.^[4] His date of birth is not known, but he was baptised on 26 February 1564, and is likely to have been born a few days before. Thus he was just two months older than his contemporary Shakespeare, who was baptised on 26 April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Marlowe attended The King's School in Canterbury (where a house is now named after him) and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he studied on a scholarship and received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1584.^[5] In 1587 the university hesitated to award him his Master of Arts degree because of a rumour that he had converted to Roman Catholicism and intended to go to the English college at Rheims to prepare for the priesthood. However, his degree was awarded on schedule when the Privy Council intervened on his behalf, commending him for his "faithful dealing" and "good service" to the Queen.^[6] The nature of Marlowe's service was not specified by the Council, but its letter to the Cambridge authorities has provoked much speculation, notably the theory that Marlowe was operating as a secret agent working for Sir Francis Walsingham's intelligence service.^[7] No direct evidence supports this theory, although the Council's letter is evidence that Marlowe had served the government in some secret capacity.

Literary career[link]

Marlowe was christened at St. George's Church, in Canterbury.

Of the dramas attributed to Marlowe Dido, Queen of Carthage is believed to have been his first, and performed by the Children of the Chapel, a company of boy actors, between 1587 and 1593. The play was first published in 1594; the title page attributes the play to Marlowe and Thomas Nashe.

Marlowe's first play performed on the regular stage in London, in 1587, was Tamburlaine the Great, about the conqueror Timur, who rises from shepherd to warrior. It is among the first English plays in blank verse,^[8] and, with Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, generally is considered the beginning of the mature phase of the Elizabethan theatre. Tamburlaine was a success, and was followed with Tamburlaine the Great, Part II.

The two parts of Tamburlaine were published in 1590; all Marlowe's other works were published posthumously. The sequence of the writing of his other four plays is unknown; all deal with controversial themes.

• The Jew of Malta, about a Maltese Jew's barbarous revenge against the city authorities, has a prologue delivered by a character representing Machiavelli. It was probably written in 1589 or 1590, and was first performed in 1592. It was a success, and remained popular for the next fifty years. The play was entered in the Stationers' Register on 17 May 1594, but the earliest surviving printed edition is from 1633.
• Edward the Second is an English history play about the deposition of King Edward II by his barons and the Queen, who resent the undue influence the king's favourites have in court and state affairs. The play was entered into the Stationers' Register on 6 July 1593, five weeks after Marlowe's death. The full title of the earliest extant edition, of 1594, is "The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England, with the Tragical Fall of Proud Mortimer."
• The Massacre at Paris is a short and luridly written work, the only surviving text of which was probably a reconstruction from memory of the original performance text,^[9] portraying the events of the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572, which English Protestants invoked as the blackest example of Catholic treachery. It features the silent "English Agent", whom subsequent tradition has identified with Marlowe himself and his connections to the secret service.^[10] The Massacre at Paris is considered his most dangerous play, as agitators in London seized on its theme to advocate the murders of refugees from the low countries and, indeed, it warns Elizabeth I of this possibility in its last scene.^[11][12]
• The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, based on the German Faustbuch, was the first dramatised version of the Faust legend of a scholar's dealing with the devil. While versions of "The Devil's Pact" can be traced back to the 4th century, Marlowe deviates significantly by having his hero unable to "burn his books" or repent to a merciful God in order to have his contract annulled at the end of the play. Marlowe's protagonist is instead torn apart by demons and dragged off screaming to hell. Dr Faustus is a textual problem for scholars as it was highly edited (and possibly censored) and rewritten after Marlowe's death. Two versions of the play exist: the 1604 quarto, also known as the A text, and the 1616 quarto or B text. Many scholars believe that the A text is more representative of Marlowe's original because it contains irregular character names and idiosyncratic spelling: the hallmarks of a text that used the author's handwritten manuscript, or "foul papers", as a major source.

Marlowe's plays were enormously successful, thanks in part, no doubt, to the imposing stage presence of Edward Alleyn. Alleyn was unusually tall for the time, and the haughty roles of Tamburlaine, Faustus, and Barabas were probably written especially for him. Marlowe's plays were the foundation of the repertoire of Alleyn's company, the Admiral's Men, throughout the 1590s.

Marlowe also wrote the poem Hero and Leander (published with a continuation by George Chapman in 1598), the popular lyric "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love", and translations of Ovid's Amores and the first book of Lucan's Pharsalia. In 1599, his translation of Ovid was banned and copies publicly burned as part of Archbishop Whitgift's crackdown on offensive material.

The legend[link]

As with other writers of the period, little is known about Marlowe. What evidence there is can be found in legal records and other official documents. This has not stopped writers of both fiction and non-fiction from speculating about his activities and character. Marlowe has often been described as a spy, a brawler, a heretic and a homosexual, as well as a "magician", "duellist", "tobacco-user", "counterfeiter" and "rakehell". J. A. Downie and Constance Kuriyama have argued against the more lurid speculation,^[13] but J.B. Steane remarked, "it seems absurd to dismiss all of these Elizabethan rumours and accusations as 'the Marlowe myth'".^[14]

Spying[link]

Title page of the earliest published text of Edward II (1594)

Marlowe is often alleged to have been a government spy (Park Honan's 2005 biography even had "Spy" in its title^[15]) The author Charles Nicholl speculates this was the case and suggests that Marlowe's recruitment took place when he was at Cambridge. As noted above, in 1587 the Privy Council ordered the University of Cambridge to award Marlowe his degree of Master of Arts, denying rumours that he intended to go to the English Catholic college in Rheims, saying instead that he had been engaged in unspecified "affaires" on "matters touching the benefit of his country".^[16] Surviving college records from the period also indicate that Marlowe had had a series of unusually lengthy absences from the university – much longer than permitted by university regulations – that began in the academic year 1584–1585. Surviving college buttery (dining room) accounts indicate he began spending lavishly on food and drink during the periods he was in attendance^[17] – more than he could have afforded on his known scholarship income.

It has sometimes been theorised that Marlowe was the "Morley" who was tutor to Arbella Stuart in 1589.^[18] This possibility was first raised in a TLS letter by E. St John Brooks in 1937; in a letter to Notes and Queries, John Baker has added that only Marlowe could be Arbella's tutor due to the absence of any other known "Morley" from the period with an MA and not otherwise occupied.^[19] If Marlowe was Arbella's tutor, (and some biographers think that the "Morley" in question may have been a brother of the musician Thomas Morley^[20]) it might indicate that he was a spy, since Arbella, niece of Mary, Queen of Scots, and cousin of James VI of Scotland, later James I of England, was at the time a strong candidate for the succession to Elizabeth's throne.^[21] Frederick Boas dismisses the possibility of this identification, based on surviving legal records which not only document his presence in London from summer to the end of 1589, but also as a party to a fatal quarrel involving his neighbours in Norton Folgate, and was imprisoned at Newgate Prison for a fortnight.^[22]

In 1592 Marlowe was arrested in the town of Flushing in the Netherlands for his alleged involvement in the counterfeiting of coins, presumably related to the activities of seditious Catholics. He was sent to be dealt with by the Lord Treasurer (Burghley) but no charge or imprisonment resulted.^[23] This arrest may have disrupted another of Marlowe's spying missions: perhaps by giving the resulting coinage to the Catholic cause he was to infiltrate the followers of the active Catholic plotter William Stanley and report back to Burghley.^[24]

Arrest and death[link]

Marlowe was buried in an unmarked grave in the churchyard of St Nicholas, Deptford. The plaque shown here is modern.

In early May 1593 several bills were posted about London threatening Protestant refugees from France and the Netherlands who had settled in the city. One of these, the "Dutch church libel",^[25] written in blank verse, contained allusions to several of Marlowe's plays and was signed, "Tamburlaine". On 11 May the Privy Council ordered the arrest of those responsible for the libels. The next day, Marlowe's colleague Thomas Kyd was arrested. Kyd's lodgings were searched and a fragment of a heretical tract was found. Kyd asserted that it had belonged to Marlowe, with whom he had been writing "in one chamber" some two years earlier.^[26] At that time they had both been working for an aristocratic patron, probably Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange.^[27] A warrant for Marlowe's arrest was issued on 18 May, when the Privy Council apparently knew that he might be found staying with Thomas Walsingham, whose father was a first cousin of the late Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's principal secretary in the 1580s and a man more deeply involved in state espionage than any other member of the Privy Council.^[28] Marlowe duly presented himself on 20 May but, there apparently being no Privy Council meeting on that day, was instructed to "give his daily attendance on their Lordships, until he shall be licensed to the contrary".^[29] On Wednesday 30 May, Marlowe was killed.

Various accounts of Marlowe's death were current over the next few years. In his Palladis Tamia, published in 1598, Francis Meres says Marlowe was "stabbed to death by a bawdy serving-man, a rival of his in his lewd love" as punishment for his "epicurism and atheism."^[30] In 1917, in the Dictionary of National Biography, Sir Sidney Lee wrote that Marlowe was killed in a drunken fight, and this is still often stated as fact today.

The official account came to light only in 1925 when the scholar Leslie Hotson discovered the coroner's report of the inquest on Marlowe's death, held two days later on Friday 1 June 1593, by the Coroner of the Queen's Household, William Danby.^[31] Marlowe had spent all day in a house in Deptford, owned by the widow Eleanor Bull, and together with three men: Ingram Frizer, Nicholas Skeres and Robert Poley. All three had been employed by one or other of the Walsinghams. Skeres and Poley had helped snare the conspirators in the Babington plot and Frizer would later describe Thomas Walsingham as his "master" at that time^[32] although his role was probably more that of a financial or business agent as he was for Walsingham's wife Audrey a few years later.^[33] These witnesses testified that Frizer and Marlowe had argued over the bill (now famously known as the 'Reckoning') exchanging "divers malicious words" while Frizer was sitting at a table between the other two and Marlowe was lying behind him on a couch. Marlowe snatched Frizer's dagger and wounded him on the head. In the ensuing struggle, according to the coroner's report, Marlowe was stabbed above the right eye, killing him instantly. The jury concluded that Frizer acted in self-defence, and within a month he was pardoned. Marlowe was buried in an unmarked grave in the churchyard of St. Nicholas, Deptford immediately after the inquest, on 1 June 1593.

Marlowe's death is alleged by some to be an assassination for the following reasons:

1. The three men who were in the room with him when he died were all connected both to the state secret service and to the London underworld.^[34] Frizer and Skeres also had a long record as loan sharks and con-men, as shown by court records. Bull's house also had "links to the government's spy network".^[35]
2. Their story that they were on a day's pleasure outing to Deptford is alleged to be implausible. In fact, they spent the whole day together. Also, Robert Poley was carrying urgent and confidential despatches to the Queen, who was at her residence Nonsuch Palace in Surrey, but instead of delivering them, he spent the day with Marlowe and the other two, and didn't in fact hand them in until well over a week later, on 8 June.^[36]
3. It seems too much of a coincidence that Marlowe's death occurred only a few days after his arrest, apparently for heresy.^{[citation needed]}
4. The manner of Marlowe's arrest is alleged to suggest causes more tangled than a simple charge of heresy would generally indicate. He was released in spite of prima facie evidence, and even though other accusations about him received within a few days, as described below, implicitly connected Sir Walter Raleigh and the Earl of Northumberland with the heresy. Thus, some contend it to be probable that the investigation was meant primarily as a warning to the politicians in the "School of Night", or that it was connected with a power struggle within the Privy Council itself.^[37]
5. The various incidents that hint at a relationship with the Privy Council (see above), and by the fact that his patron was Thomas Walsingham, Sir Francis's first cousin once removed, who had been actively involved in intelligence work.

For these reasons and others, Charles Nicholl (in his book The Reckoning on Marlowe's death) argues there was more to Marlowe's death than emerged at the inquest. There are various hypotheses with different degrees of probability as to what really happened and who was behind it, one theory even being that Marlowe's death was faked to save him from trial and execution for subversive atheism.^[38] Since there are only written documents on which to base any conclusions, and since it is probable that the most crucial information about his death was never committed to writing at all, it is unlikely that the full circumstances of Marlowe's death will ever be known.

Atheism[link]

A foul sheet from Marlowe's writing of The Massacre at Paris (1593). Reproduced from Folger Shakespeare Library Ms.J.b.8

Marlowe was reputed to be an atheist, which, at that time, held the dangerous implication of being an enemy of God.^[39] Some modern historians, however, consider that his professed atheism, as with his supposed Catholicism, may have been no more than an elaborate and sustained pretence adopted to further his work as a government spy.^[40] Contemporary evidence comes from Marlowe's accuser in Flushing, an informer called Richard Baines. The governor of Flushing had reported that each of the men had "of malice" accused the other of instigating the counterfeiting, and of intending to go over to the Catholic "enemy"; such an action was considered atheistic by the Protestants, who constituted the dominant religious faction in England at that time. Following Marlowe's arrest in 1593, Baines submitted to the authorities a "note containing the opinion of one Christopher Marly concerning his damnable judgment of religion, and scorn of God's word."^[41] Baines attributes to Marlowe a total of eighteen items which "scoff at the pretensions of the Old and New Testament"^[14] such as, "Christ was a bastard and his mother dishonest [unchaste]", "the woman of Samaria and her sister were whores and that Christ knew them dishonestly", and, "St John the Evangelist was bedfellow to Christ and leaned always in his bosom" (cf. John 13:23–25), and, "that he used him as the sinners of Sodom". He also implies that Marlowe had Catholic sympathies. Other passages are merely sceptical in tone: "he persuades men to atheism, willing them not to be afraid of bugbears and hobgoblins". The final paragraph of Baines' document reads:

These thinges, with many other shall by good & honest witnes be aproved to be his opinions and Comon Speeches, and that this Marlow doth not only hould them himself, but almost into every Company he Cometh he perswades men to Atheism willing them not to be afeard of bugbeares and hobgoblins, and vtterly scorning both god and his ministers as I Richard Baines will Justify & approue both by mine oth and the testimony of many honest men, and almost al men with whome he hath Conversed any time will testify the same, and as I think all men in Cristianity ought to indevor that the mouth of so dangerous a member may be stopped, he saith likewise that he hath quoted a number of Contrarieties oute of the Scripture which he hath giuen to some great men who in Convenient time shalbe named. When these thinges shalbe Called in question the witnes shalbe produced.^[42]

Similar examples of Marlowe's statements were given by Thomas Kyd after his imprisonment and possible torture (see above);^[43][44] both Kyd and Baines connect Marlowe with the mathematician Thomas Harriot and Walter Raleigh's circle. Another document^[45] claimed at around the same time that "one Marlowe is able to show more sound reasons for Atheism than any divine in England is able to give to prove divinity, and that ... he hath read the Atheist lecture to Sir Walter Raleigh and others."^[14]

Poster for WPA performance of Marlowe's Faustus, New York, circa 1935

Some critics believe that Marlowe sought to disseminate these views in his work and that he identified with his rebellious and iconoclastic protagonists.^[46] However, plays had to be approved by the Master of the Revels before they could be performed, and the censorship of publications was under the control of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Presumably these authorities did not consider any of Marlowe's works to be unacceptable (apart from the Amores).

Sexuality[link]

Like his contemporary William Shakespeare, Marlowe is sometimes described today as homosexual. Others argue that the question of whether an Elizabethan was gay or homosexual in a modern sense is anachronistic; for the Elizabethans, what is often today termed homosexual or bisexual was more likely to be recognised as a sexual act, rather than an exclusive sexual orientation and identity.^[47] Some scholars argue that the evidence is inconclusive and that the reports of Marlowe's homosexuality may simply be exaggerated rumours produced after his death. Richard Baines reported Marlowe as saying: "All they that love not Tobacco and Boys are fools". David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen describe Baines's evidence as "unreliable testimony" and make the comment: "These and other testimonials need to be discounted for their exaggeration and for their having been produced under legal circumstances we would regard as a witch-hunt".^[48] One critic, J.B. Steane, remarked that he considers there to be "no evidence for Marlowe's homosexuality at all."^[14] Other scholars,^[49] however, point to homosexual themes in Marlowe's writing: in Hero and Leander, Marlowe writes of the male youth Leander, "in his looks were all that men desire"^[50] and that when the youth swims to visit Hero at Sestos, the sea god Neptune becomes sexually excited, "imagining that Ganymede, displeas'd ... the lusty god embrac'd him, call'd him love ... and steal a kiss ... upon his breast, his thighs, and every limb ... [a]nd talk of love",^[51] while the boy, naive and unaware of Greek love practices, said that, "You are deceiv'd, I am no woman, I ... Thereat smil'd Neptune."^[52]

Reputation among contemporary writers[link]

Whatever the particular focus of modern critics, biographers and novelists, for his contemporaries in the literary world, Marlowe was above all an admired and influential artist. Within weeks of his death, George Peele remembered him as "Marley, the Muses' darling"; Michael Drayton noted that he "Had in him those brave translunary things / That the first poets had", and Ben Jonson wrote of "Marlowe's mighty line". Thomas Nashe wrote warmly of his friend, "poor deceased Kit Marlowe". So too did the publisher Edward Blount, in the dedication of Hero and Leander to Sir Thomas Walsingham.

Among the few contemporary dramatists to say anything negative about Marlowe was the anonymous author of the Cambridge University play The Return From Parnassus (1598) who wrote, "Pity it is that wit so ill should dwell, / Wit lent from heaven, but vices sent from hell."

The most famous tribute to Marlowe was paid by Shakespeare in As You Like It, where he not only quotes a line from Hero and Leander ("Dead Shepherd, now I find thy saw of might, 'Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?'") but also gives to the clown Touchstone the words "When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with the forward child, understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room." This appears to be a reference to Marlowe's murder which involved a fight over the "reckoning", the bill, as well as to a line in Marlowe's Jew of Malta – "Infinite riches in a little room".

Shakespeare was heavily influenced by Marlowe in his work, as can be seen in the re-using of Marlovian themes in Antony and Cleopatra, The Merchant of Venice, Richard II, and Macbeth (Dido, Jew of Malta, Edward II and Dr Faustus respectively). In Hamlet, after meeting with the travelling actors, Hamlet requests the Player perform a speech about the Trojan War, which at 2.2.429–32 has an echo of Marlowe's Dido, Queen of Carthage. In Love's Labour's Lost Shakespeare brings on a character "Marcade" (three syllables) in conscious acknowledgement of Marlowe's character "Mercury", also attending the King of Navarre, in Massacre at Paris. The significance, to those of Shakespeare's audience who had read Hero and Leander, was Marlowe's identification of himself with the god Mercury.^[53]

As Shakespeare[link]

Given the murky inconsistencies concerning the account of Marlowe's death, a theory has arisen centred on the notion that Marlowe may have faked his death and then continued to write under the assumed name of William Shakespeare. However, orthodox academic consensus rejects alternative candidates for authorship, including Marlowe.^[54] On the other hand, in August 1819 an anonymous writer in The Monthly Review asked, "Can Christopher Marlowe be a nom de guerre assumed for a time by Shakespeare?"^[55]

Works[link]

The dates of composition are approximate.

Plays[link]

• Dido, Queen of Carthage (c.1586) (possibly co-written with Thomas Nashe)
• Tamburlaine, part 1 (c.1587)
• Tamburlaine, part 2 (c.1587–1588)
• The Jew of Malta (c.1589)
• Doctor Faustus (c.1589, or, c.1593)
• Edward II (c.1592)
• The Massacre at Paris (c.1593)

The play Lust's Dominion was attributed to Marlowe upon its initial publication in 1657, though scholars and critics have almost unanimously rejected the attribution.

Poetry[link]

• Translation of Book One of Lucan's Pharsalia (date unknown)
• Translation of Ovid's Elegies (c. 1580s?)
• "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" (pre-1593)
• Hero and Leander (c. 1593, unfinished; completed by George Chapman, 1598)

Fictional works about Marlowe[link]

• Wilbur G. Zeigler's It was Marlowe, about Marlowe faking his death after a duel. 1895 (Novel)
• Philip Lindsay's One Dagger for Two, fictionalised account of Marlowe's life. 1932 (Novel)
• Leo Rost's Marlowe, stage musical based on Rost's book. 1981
• David Grimm's, Kit Marlowe, about Marlowe's spying activity. 2000 (Play)
• Louise Welsh's Tamburlaine Must Die, about the last two weeks of Marlowe's life. 2004 (Novel)
• Anthony Burgess' A Dead Man in Deptford, fictionalised account of Marlowe's death. 1993 (Novel)
• Peter Whelan's The School of Night, about Marlowe's playwriting career after his faked death at Deptford. (Play)

References[link]

Further reading[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Christopher Marlowe

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Christopher Marlowe

Media related to Christopher Marlowe at Wikimedia Commons

• The Marlowe Society
• The works of Marlowe at Perseus Project
• Works by Christopher Marlowe in e-book
• The complete works, with modernised spelling, on Peter Farey's Marlowe Page.
• BBC audio file. In Our Time Radio 4 discussion programme on Marlowe and his work
• Works by or about Christopher Marlowe in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• http://www.themarlowestudies.org The Marlowe Studies, an online library of books claiming that Marlowe was Shakespeare

v t e Christopher Marlowe Plays Dido, Queen of Carthage Tamburlaine the Great, Parts One and Two The Jew of Malta Doctor Faustus Edward II The Massacre at Paris Poems Lucan's Pharsalia Ovid's Elegies The Passionate Shepherd to His Love Hero and Leander People Thomas Nashe Philip Henslowe Thomas Heywood Ingram Frizer Eleanor Bull Nicholas Skeres Robert Poley George Chapman Edward Alleyn Fictional representations Marlowe (Rost) The School of Night (Whelan) Tamburlaine Must Die (Welsh) A Dead Man in Deptford (Burgess) It Was Marlowe (Zeigler) Adaptations Edward II (Jarman) The Life of Edward II of England (Brecht and Feuchtwanger) The Massacre at Paris (Murphy) Miscellaneous English Renaissance theatre Blank verse Admiral's Men Shakespeare authorship question Marlovian theory Lust's Dominion (attributed play, rejected)

v t e Shakespeare authorship question (History) A series on alternative authorship theories for the works of William Shakespeare Theories Declaration of Reasonable Doubt Baconian theory Derbyite theory Oxfordian theory Prince Tudor theory Marlovian theory Candidates List of Shakespeare authorship candidates Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford Sir Edward Dyer Roger Manners, 5th Earl of Rutland Christopher Marlowe Sir Henry Neville William Nugent Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby Emilia Lanier Anne Whateley Supporters Joseph C. Hart Delia Bacon Orville Ward Owen James Wilde, 1st Baron Penzance George Greenwood Mark Twain Abel Lefranc J. Thomas Looney B. M. Ward Alden Brooks Charlton Greenwood Ogburn Calvin Hoffman Charlton Ogburn Roger Stritmatter Mark Anderson Charles Beauclerk Roland Emmerich John Orloff Bertram Fields Henry Albert Seymour

"Saxo" redirects here. For the car, see Citroën Saxo and for the bank, see Saxo Bank

Saxo Grammaticus (c. 1150 – 1220) also known as Saxo cognomine Longus was a Danish historian, thought to have been a secular clerk or secretary to Absalon, Archbishop of Lund, foremost advisor to Valdemar I of Denmark. He is the author of the first full history of Denmark.

Life[link]

The Jutland Chronicle gives evidence that Saxo was born in Zealand (Danish: Sjælland). It is unlikely he was born before 1150 and it is supposed that his death could have occurred around 1220. His name Saxo was a common name in medieval Denmark. The name Grammaticus ("the learned") was first given to him in the Jutland Chronicle and the Sjælland Chronicle makes reference to Saxo cognomine Longus ("the tall").

He lived in a period of warfare and Danish expansion, led by Archbishop Absalon and the Valdemars. The Danes were also being threatened by the Wends who were making raids across the border and by sea.^[1] Valdemar I had also just won a civil war and later Valdemar II led an expedition across the Elbe to invade Holstein.^[2]

Sven Aggesen, a Danish nobleman and author of a slightly earlier history of Denmark than Saxo's, describes his contemporary, Saxo, as his contubernalis meaning tent-comrade. This gives evidence that Saxo and Sven might have soldiered in the Hird or royal guard since Sven used the word contubernium in reference to them. There is also a Saxo to be found on a list of clergy at Lund, where there was a Sven recorded as Archdeacon. Likewise there is Dean Saxo who died in 1190, however the date does not match what is known about Saxo.

Both arguments, for a secular or religious Saxo, would confirm that he was well educated, as clergy he would have received training in Latin and sons of great men were often sent to Paris.^[3] Saxo comes from a warrior family and writes that he is himself committed to being a soldier. He tells us that he follows "the ancient right of hereditary service," and that his father and grandfather "were recognized frequenters of your renowned sire's (Valdemar I) war camp."^[4] Saxo's education and ability supports the idea that he was educated outside of Denmark. Some suggest the title "Grammaticus" refers not to his education but rather his elaborate Latin style.^[5] We know from his writing that he was in the retinue and received the patronage of Absalon, Archbishop of Lund, who was the foremost advisor to King Valdemar I. In his will Absalon forgives his clerk Saxo a small debt of two and a half marks of silver and tells him to return two borrowed books to the monastery of Sorø.^[6] The legacy of Saxo Grammaticus is the sixteen book heroic history of the Danes called Gesta Danorum.

[edit] Gesta Danorum

In the preface to the work, Saxo writes that his patron Absalon, Archbishop of Lund had encouraged him to write a heroic history of the Danes. The history is thought to have been started about 1185, after Sven Aggesen wrote his history.^[7] The goal of Gesta Danorum was as Saxo writes "to glorify our fatherland," which he accomplishes on the model of the Aeneid by Vergil.^[8] Saxo also may have owed much to Plato, Cicero and also to more contemporary writers like Geoffrey of Monmouth.^[9] Saxo's history of the Danes was compiled from sources that are of questionable historical value. He drew on oral tales of the Icelanders, ancient volumes, letters carved on rocks and stone, and the statements of his patron Absalon concerning the history that the Archbishop had been a part of. Saxo's work was not strictly a history or a simple record of old tales, rather it was "a product of Saxo's own mind and times,"^[10] he combines the history and mythology of the heroic age of Denmark and reworks it into his own story that exemplifies the past of the Danes.^[11]

The history is composed of sixteen books and extends from the time of the founders of the Danish people, Dan I of Denmark and Angul into about the year 1187. The first four are concerned with the history of the Danes before Christ, the next four with the history after Christ, books 9-12 Christian Denmark and 13-16 promote Lund and the exploits early before and during Saxo's own lifetime.^[12] It is assumed that the last eight books were written first, as Saxo drew heavily on Absalon's testament for evidence of the age of Saint Canute and Valdemar I and Archbishop Absalon died in 1202, before the work was completed. The first eight volumes share a likeness with the works of Snorri Sturluson. They deal with mythical elements such as giants and the Scandinavian pantheon of gods.^[13] Saxo tells of Dan the first king of Denmark who had a brother named Angul who gave his name to the Angles.^[7] He also tells the stories of various other Danish heroes, many who interact with the Scandinavian gods. Saxo's "heathen" gods however were not always good characters. They were sometimes treacherous such as in the story of Harald, legendary king of the Danes, who was taught the ways of warfare by Odinn and then was betrayed and killed by the god who then brought him to Valhalla.^[14] Saxo's world is seen to have had very warlike values. He glorifies the heroes that made their names in battle far more than those who made peace. His view of the period of peace under King Frode was very low and was only satisfied when King Knut brought back the ancestral customs.^[15] Saxo's chronology of kings extends up to Saint Canute and his son Valdemar I. What is arguably the most important part of Saxo's entire history of the Danes is the story of Amleth, the first instance of Hamlet. Saxo based the story on an oral tale^[16] of a son taking revenge for his murdered father. Saxo finished the history with the Preface, which he wrote last, about 1216^[17] under the patronage of Anders Sunesen who replaced Absalon as Archbishop of Lund. Saxo included in the preface warm appreciation of both Archbishops and of the reigning King Valdemar II.^[18]

Historical contribution[link]

Christiern Pedersen, a Canon of Lund, collaborated with Jodocus Badius Ascendius, a fellow enthusiast, to print the work of Saxo Grammaticus early in the sixteenth century. This was the first major step toward securing historical significance for Gesta Danorum. It was from that point that it began to spread amongst the academic community.^[19] Oliver Elton who was the first to translate the first nine books of Gesta Danorum into English wrote that Saxo was the first writer produced by Denmark. Saxo's skill as a Latinist has been praised by Erasmus, who wondered at how "a Dane of that age got so great power of eloquence."^[19] There have also been several attempts to understand his style of Latin and place it in history to glean more information about where he may have been educated. Some have considered Saxo's Latin to have more in common with legal training than ecclesiastical^[6] and his poetry is thought to have traces of parallelism.^[20] He is also seen by modern Danes as their first national historian.^[21] His works were received enthusiastically by Renaissance scholars who were curious about pre-Christian history and legends. Saxo's account of history has been seen to differ greatly from that of his contemporaries, especially between his account and those of Norwegians and Icelanders in that the titles of hero and villain switch between the characters of the various nationalities. There are even differences between Saxo's work, and that of fellow Danish historian Sven Aggesen. These differences often are the result of elaboration on the part of Saxo. His account of the tale of Thyri for example is far more fantastic and blown up than the tale that Sven presents and for this stylization and elaboration of the facts Saxo's history has often been criticized.^[22] Saxo's inclusion of Amleth is the most significant part of the Gesta Danorum, however the work also has value in its description of the canonization of Canute and further in comparison to Snorri, whose work shares many characters and stories, creating a better understanding of pre-Christian Scandinavia.

Notes[link]

Sources[link]

Print Sources[link]

Online Sources[link]

•  Arthur Remy (1913). "Saxo Grammaticus". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 
•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Saxo Grammaticus". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.