InfoBritain

 

Christopher Marlowe, Biography and Visits

King's School, Canterbury

Canterbury is the place where Christianity was re- established in Britain, following the Roman withdrawal at the beginning of the fifth century. The missionary St Augustine founded his church here in 597AD. Canterbury is also the birth place of Christopher Marlowe, a fascinatingly ambivalent sixteenth century playwright, who was possibly assassinated for atheistic views.

Christopher Marlowe was born in the same year as Shakespeare,1564. The tower of St George the Martyr, the church where he was christened on the 26th of February, still survives in St George's Street Canterbury, although the rest of the church was destroyed by bombing during the Second World War. His father was a cobbler, his family a rather tumultuous one. Young Christopher seemed to inherit the fiery Marlowe disposition. He was also bright, and attended King's School in Canterbury, which still survives just behind Canterbury Cathedral. He then went on to Corpus Christie College, Cambridge. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker, had established a scholarship which paid for students of King's to attend Corpus Christie College, a tradition that continues today. It was a Matthew Parker scholarship that paid for Marlowe's years at Cambridge. The fact that he received a scholarship from the Archbishop suggests the young man must have been expected to go into the church. But Marlowe was not destined to take an expected path in life. He graduated in 1584, with the university threatening to withhold his degree because of poor attendance during term time. There were also suspicions that Marlowe had converted to Catholicism after a stay at the English college in Rheims. Then the Queen's Council stepped in with information that Marlowe had been on Her Majesty's business, both in Rheims, and during his absences from college. These intriguing facts suggest that Marlowe may have been on Her Majesty's Secret Service, conducting espionage work amongst the Jesuits of Rheims. The minister responsible for security in Queen Elizabeth's government was Francis Walsingham, and Marlowe was at Walsingham's brother's house when he was killed in 1593, so there seemed to be some sort of link between the playwright and the head of the Elizabethan secret service.

 

Whatever Marlowe may have been up to for the government, the main focus of his short working life was to be the theatre. Abandoning a career in the church which his education had prepared him for, in 1587 he became a playwright in London. His plays were performed at the Rose Theatre, where he worked with the actor Edward Alleyn and his company the Admiral's Men. Part of the original Rose Theatre has been excavated, and in summer months these excavations can sometimes be viewed as part of the Globe Theatre tour on Bankside in London. The Rose was built to a very similar design to the Globe, and the present reconstructed Globe gives a very clear picture of what the Rose would have looked like (see below). In fact the foundations of the Rose, accidentally found during excavations for an office building, provided guidance for the designers of the reconstructed Globe.

The chronology of the plays performed at the Rose is not clear. Dido, Queen of Carthage, may have been an early play, perhaps written at Cambridge, but some commentators put this play in the middle or end of his career. Doctor Faustus may come after Tamburlaine, a play it seems to answer; or it may have been written in 1592, after Edward the Second. There were also translations of Ovid, and collections of poetry, with Hero and Leander being the best known.

Not much is known of Marlowe's life in London. There is the record of an arrest in 1589, following a street fight. In 1592 he was bound over to keep the peace. A week before his death in 1593 he was summoned to report to the Queen's Council. A "heretical tract" had been found among the papers of the playwright Thomas Kyd, and possibly under torture, Kyd had claimed the tract belonged to Marlowe. A week later, on the 30th of May, Marlowe was at the house of Thomas Walsingham, brother of Francis Walsingham, in Deptford. He was with three other men, who all had links to the secret service. Apparently these four men were simply having a day out in Deptford together. They didn't really seem the sort to go on days out, and were seen in deep discussion all afternoon, "in quiet sort" as the coroner's report put it. The coroner's report then claims that after supper a fight broke out when Marlowe grabbed Ingam Frizer's dagger and started attacking him with it. In the struggle that followed Marlowe was accidentally stabbed and killed instantly. The true facts of Marlowe's death have never been finally established. It seems strange that three tough secret service men and a playwright with an anger management problem should take a pleasure trip to Deptford. It seems strange that Marlowe should be killed only a week after his arrest for possible heresy. Two days later a document written by Richard Baines was handed into the authorities claiming that Marlowe was a militant and dangerous atheist. The document includes this ominous line: "I think all men in Christianity ought to endeavour that the mouth of so dangerous a member may be stopped." Senior members of the government were close to Marlowe and would not have wanted to be pulled into a scandal with a prominent atheist. On the other hand, his death could well have been the accidental result of a fight, as the coroner's report claimed. Hanging around in a house in Deptford all afternoon is a strange way to assassinate someone, and Marlowe did seem to have a vicious temper.

 

Globe Theatre, Bankside, London

Whatever happened in Deptford, Marlowe was definitely working on the outer edges of acceptability, in his daily behaviour and in his fascinating writing, which has the difficulties of faith at its centre. He was a man who had trained for the church, with a scholarship from the Archbishop, and ended up having people suggest his "mouth should be stopped" for his atheistic views. His play Tamburlaine celebrates an enemy of Christianity, but does not deny spirituality in its widest sense. Dr Faustus, on the other hand, appears to be a Christian morality play, graphically demonstrating what happens to someone who sells their soul to the devil. It is not difficult to see parallels between Marlowe and Faustus, a character born to humble parents, who attends the university in Wittenberg and studies theology. But then Faustus rejects the church and sells his soul to Lucifer, in return for twenty four years of limitless power on earth. Reading Dr Faustus I get the feeling of great energy taking a person along their path in life. But then where does the path end? There seems to be no ending, no final point where all the effort pays off and where everything is clear. The path is as endless as a circle, and like a circle the path turns back on itself. In the Rose these words must have been all the more resonant, as the theatre was built in a circle to reflect the great circle of the world. The doctor of theology ends up turning his back on his course and selling his soul to Lucifer. Lucifer himself was once one of God's most loved angels, but at what pitch of perfection does the good angel start to move in the opposite direction? Faustus himself is fascinated by the circular nature of the universe. He is described at the beginning of Act 3 as viewing the clouds, planets and stars, the Primum Mobile itself: "whirling round with this circumference, within the concave compass of the pole." (3.1.10 - 11) This is one of a number of references to the circling of the heavens. After enjoying himself for his allotted time Faustus eventually must face the reckoning. Terrified, he waits for midnight on the appointed day, looking up at the circling planets and stars. He urges them to stop in their endless course. But of course they do not. Faustus looks towards his endless future in hell:

 

Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years,

A hundred thousand, and at last be saved,

Oh, no end is limited to damned souls (5. 2. 179 - 181)

 

Statuette of Dr Faustus outside the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury

The endless nature of life seemed to take Faustus from conscientious efforts in the church into the arms of Lucifer. Now the same endlessness seems to stretch before him in hell. And of course the idea of an endless course with no final homecoming might seem hellish. But the only truly endless course is circular, and to me it seems that even for Faustus there is hope that an endless fate will bring him back home again. An endless journey with no hope of homecoming is also a promise of a journey that will overcome any ending. Life will be endless and has nothing to fear. What Faustus threw away was the promise of eternal life in heaven, the same kind of endlessness he now faces in hell. The situation that creates hell also creates heaven. The planets will continue to move, and heaven will return. That's how I read Dr Faustus. It seems to be a play with a simple moral about not being arrogant, and actually has a much more humane message about the endless nature of life, promising heaven for anyone who seems to endure hell with no possibility of relief. This message is too big to fit into an orthodox sixteenth century view of the world, but it is still a promise of salvation in its own way. It is a message that seems relevant no matter where we are on our journey through life and history. The planets turn now just as they did in the 1590s.

There is a display dedicated to Marlowe at the Canterbury Museum in Stour Street, which consists of an "Elizabethan treasure chest" containing items relating to Marlowe's mysterious death. The theatre in Canterbury is named after Marlowe, but unlike the Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, the Marlowe offers a general programme of productions.