7. The World of Christopher Marlowe, pp. 159-189

Chapter Eight: Proceeding in the Arts

_____

In 1587, turning twenty-three, Marlowe "suddenly vaulted into the tripartite roles of wayward scholar, secret agent and innovative poet-playwright." He completed his work for the M.A., which required attending "lectures in philosophy, astronomy, optics and the Greek language," as well as participating in eleven public disputations. And he somehow did this while taking multiple leaves of absence.

One thing the M.A. course curriculum did was teach students "to conceive of the cosmos as a poetic and theatrical spectacle." The field called "optics" included math, geometry and cosmography, which was a mixture of geography and history; its focus on the rise of the Roman empire inspired Marlowe's Tamburlaine, which is about world conquest. When Tamburlaine besieges Damascus, he speaks of it terms of map-making: His "poetic understanding of mapmaking glosses over the horror of what he is about to do. Were Zenocrate sees the destruction of an existing city, Tamburlaine appeals to the root sense of geo-graphy as 'world-writing.'"

Elizabethan England was on the verge of its own campaign of world conquest: "The impending war with Spain intensified the need for cartographers, navigators and military engineers." These were generally recruited not from the aristocracy, whose "sense of class privilege made them wary of science, which was hard to do, morally dubious and smacked of artisan labour," but from the ranks of the educated lower classes. "The mental labour of actually doing calculations in physics and astronomy could be left to the scholars. For them, the MA course opened up new opportunities for advancement." Marlowe's friends Thomas Hariot and Walter Warner were both employed by Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, as mathematician and physician respectively. Thomas Watson also was acquainted with Northumberland, and Marlowe claimed that he was "very well-known" to this "scion of a noble Catholic family with a long record of hostility to the queen," which made him "an excellent target for a would-be spy." Although study of the sciences was still bound up with religion, "Instead of seeking God in the heavens, Marlowe's generation charted the earthly course of imperial conquest."

Study of the classic poets also tended to lead away from religion toward science. In his pastorals Virgil invoked "Silenus, the Orphic bard who 'sang how, through the vast void, the seeds of earth, and air, and sea, and liquid fire withal were gathered together; how from these elements all nascent things, yes all, and even the young globe of the world grew together.'" Virgil also paid homage to Lucretius for study of the laws of nature, and Lucretius honored Epicurus, whose study of nature overcame superstitious beliefs. "Epicurus liberated humanity from the fear of the gods and the spectre of divine punishment after death.... Epicurus and Lucretius were primary sources for what the Romans referred to as 'impiety' and the Renaissance called 'atheism.'"

The celebration of the Orphic bards "reinvigorated the classical myth of the poet-seer." Horace asserted that "Orpheus, the first poet, had conveyed divine wisdom from the gods and elevated the human race from savagery to civility." Marlowe portrays Tamburlaine as a kind of poet-seer who, at the end of the second part of the play "becomes the Epicurean poet-hero who ascends the heavens in order to conquer his fear of death."

When Tamburlaine overthrows the king of Persia, he says, "What better precedent than mighty Jove?" Jupiter had devoured his father, Saturn, who had in turn killed his father, Uranus. But Tamburlaine identifies more with the Titans than the Olympians. Marlowe had begun translating Lucan's Civil War, in which the Titans "personify the destructive and creative forces that bring the degenerate Roman republic to ruin." The Titans were "imprisoned beneath Tartarus -- the word meant both 'hell' and 'central Asia' -- but still had the capacity to break loose in winds, earthquakes and storms." Tamburlaine's enemies refer to him as "Tartarian thief" and his men as "Tartarian rout" and "base born Tartars." And Tamburlaine "likens his sword to a force of nature now unleashed," and at the end imagines Jove as "pale and wan" when beholding him. "Tamburlaine has reduced the Olympian gods to a state of abject fear."

The study of astronomy overlapped that of astrology, which M.A. candidates studied even though it "had no formal place in the university curriculum." The brother astrologers Gabriel and Richard Harvey were on the university faculties. Unfortunately for Richard, he made a prediction of some major event when Jupiter and Saturn conjoined on April 28, 1583, and suffered ridicule when nothing significant took place. Thomas Nashe, Robert Greene and Marlowe were among those who mocked Harvey. But Marlowe retained his fascination with astrology, at least as a vehicle for metaphor, using it in Tamburlaine's speech about "A heaven of heavenly bodies in their spheres / That guides his steps and actions to the throne."

Astrology led to the study of magic. "John Case and Everard Digby, the pre-eminent natural philosophers at Oxford and Cambrdige, introduced students to the occult principles that controlled the natural world. Both men spent their careers synthesizing Aristotle's scientific works with texts about the universe of spirits." Continental books on magic by John Dee and Giordano Bruno sparked an interest in conjuring, which "was not a freak diversion at Oxford and Cambridge" but "a foreseeable outcome of the MA course.... This turn from study to sorcery supplies the rudimentary plot of Dr Faustus."

The last year of Marlowe's M.A. course, 1587, was the one in which the university authorities investigated the rumor that he had gone to the seminary at Rheims and the Privy Council was moved to defend him. The letter vouching for him was signed by Lord Treasurer Burghley, Archbishop Whitgift, Lord Chancellor Hatton, Lord Chamberlain Hunsdon and Sir James Crofts. There is some ambiguity in the letter. For one thing, after the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, the Duke of Guise withdrew his patronage of the Rheims seminary, which ceased to be a center of espionage. Antwerp had been conquered by the Duke of Parma in 1585, and Brussels became a staging area for plans to move into northern Holland and from there invade England. Burghley, Whitgift, Hatton and Crofts were involved  in negotiations with Parma to prevent that from happening. So it would have made more sense to send Marlowe to Brussels. And it was there that he might have become acquainted with the Faust legend: The German History of John Faust was published in 1587 and was "an overnight sensation in northern Europe."

Marlowe's Faustus, like his real-life counterpart, is German, [but] he unaccountably places himself in Holland during the opening scene of the play.... Marlowe's Dr Faustus vows to 'chase the Prince of Parma from our land.' Whenever he wrote these lines, Marlowe was thinking about -- and like -- a recent graduate who found himself in the Low Countries soon after Parma's conquest of Antwerp.

Marlowe was not unique among Elizabethan poets in doing this sort of spywork: "Samuel Daniel, Thomas Watson, ... and Ben Jonson all carried messages for the government." But of these only Marlowe had been accused of going over to the Catholic side. Burghley and Walsingham often recruited people who had been part of the Catholic intelligence network. In his accusations against Marlowe, Baines claimed that Marlowe had spoken approvingly about Catholicism. "Bear in mind, finally, that Marlowe always appears in the government documents as an object of surveillance."

Marlowe's role-playing as a spy dovetails neatly with his career in the theater: "he was the first university graduate to forge a lasting professional bond with the adult players" in "the newly erected London theatres." Jobs in the field for which he was nominally prepared, the church, were growing scarce. "The going rate for a minor parish priest was ten pounds a year. Against this backdrop of exclusionary job placements and low-paying work, Marlowe's decision to become a professional writer looks like a shrewd career move." He "belonged to the group of poets who were born around the time of Elizabeth's accession, attended grammar school and university during the early decades of her reign and flourished during the 1580s and early 1590s." Sir Philip Sidney stood out from this group as an aristocrat. Others in this company include Edmund Spenser, Abraham Fraunce, George Peele, Samuel Daniel, Thomas Watson and John Lyly. All of them "kept a safe distance from the disreputable adult acting companies."

Marlowe seems like a rebel in this respect, and also because he set himself up in opposition to Spenser, "the English Virgil," by taking Ovid as his model. And his "fascination with ancient models of anti-authoritarian writing soon led him to the kindred of Lucan," whose Civil War he began to translate into English, completing the first book in 1592-93. Lucan is a major influence on Tamburlaine, which Marlowe wrote in 1587. Marlowe's Tamburlaine, like Lucan's Caesar, has the gift of oratory that persuades others to follow him.

Lucan's panoramic view of soldiers flocking to join Caesar's army foreshadows the hordes that rise in response to Tamburlaine's call: "All Asia is in arms with Tamburlaine ... All Afric is in arms with Tamburlaine." .... Marlowe was about to cross his professional Rubicon.

6. The World of Christopher Marlowe, by David Riggs, pp. 127-158

Chapter Seven: Plots and Counter Plots

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One reason for Marlowe's absences from the university during the last years of his scholarship after receiving the B.A. degree may be that he was involved in espionage. In June 1587, the university authorities were told by the Queen's Privy Council that Marlowe "had done her Majesty good service ... in matters touching the benefit of the country." He may have gone to France, to the English seminary at Rheims, which was where exiled Catholics studied for the priesthood. It also "housed many of Queen Elizabeth's mortal enemies." The letter from the council doesn't specify what Marlowe's "good service" was, but it has been inferred that he was a spy. When he returned to Cambridge, he seems to have been in possession of more money than his scholarship, which wasn't paid during absences, afforded. "The theory that he was being paid for doing Her Majesty good service looks more compelling with the benefit of hindsight." Many of the people who figure in his postgraduate life were known to have spied on the seminary at Rheims, including Richard Baines, Thomas Watson, Thomas Walsingham and Robert Poley. 

The plots emanating from Rheims centered on Mary, Queen of Scots, whom Catholics considered the rightful heir to the English throne, particularly after Queen Elizabeth had been excommunicated in 1570. Mary was suspected of having conspired with the Earl of Bothwell in the murder of her husband, Lord Darnley. After her marriage to Bothwell provoked an uprising in 1567, she abdicated in favor of her son, James VI, and fled to England, only to be put under house arrest by her cousin Elizabeth. The prospect of overthrowing Elizabeth and installing Mary in her place was very appealing to Catholics.

The Catholic cause gained a martyr in 1577 when the Jesuit priest Cuthbert Mayne, who had studied at the English seminary at Douai, was hanged, drawn and quartered after a trial for high treason. The senior judge at the trial was Sir Roger Manwood, who overruled another judge's observation that the worst offense with which Mayne was charged -- "possession of an innocuous papal bull that had already expired" -- was trivial. Another assembly of judges reversed Manwood's sentence, but the Privy Council upheld it and ordered that Mayne's head and the quarters of his body be displayed in five towns as a warning to papists. Riggs notes that "Justice Manwood would prove more lenient when Marlowe and Thomas Watson came before him 'on suspicion of murder' twelve years later," and that Marlowe wrote a Latin epitaph for Manwood singling out the judge's "remarkable capacity to instil terror."

At the time of Mayne's mission to England, Watson was at the seminary at Douai, but he fled after Protestant forces seized the city in 1577. The seminary itself, under the leadership of Father William Allen, was evicted from Douai in 1578 and relocated in Amiens. Watson's knowledge of who had been at the seminary was valuable when he returned to England and went to work for the Privy Council. He posed as a recusant Catholic, gathering information on foreign Catholics in England, and working as a messenger to the Paris household of Sir Francis Walsingham, the queen's principal secretary. "His new job brought him to within seventy miles of his friends and former colleagues who had moved from Douai to Rheims; now, however, Watson was employed by the other side."

The seminary at Rheims was under the protection of the Duke of Guise, who is the villain of Marlowe's Massacre at Paris. Guise was also a cousin of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the seminary "now became the major launch point for plots against the monarchy and life of Elizabeth I." Richard Baines entered the seminary in 1579, but the record is contradictory about whether he was sent to spy or did so out of religious conviction. Riggs comments that "Baines is a hard man to pin down." He claimed that his initial impulse was religious and that he changed sides later, although this admission was elicited under torture: "A lapsed Catholic who confessed and repented stood a better chance of leaving Rheims alive than a confirmed heretic and professional spy did." The transcript of his oral confession to Father Allen also contains testimony by witnesses. In the confession Baines denies the existence of Purgatory, but a witness says he also denied the existence of hell. He also denounced other Catholic doctrines such as transubstantiation, "clerical celibacy, the Papacy and prayers for the dead." The interesting thing is that many of the things he confessed to are precisely the things he accused Marlowe of to the Privy Council in 1593. "Was Baines an informant, a mentor or a ventriloquist?"

One of the most complex plots uncovered by Walsingham's spies involved Esme Stuart, who was male and French and in 1579 became the lover of his cousin James VI. Stuart converted to Protestantism and James made him Duke of Lennox in 1581. He had been sent to Edinburgh by the Duke of Guise to convert James to Catholicism and set in motion an invasion of England, the liberation of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the return of England to Catholicism. In the summer of 1581, Walsingham went to France to negotiate a marriage between Elizabeth and the Duke of Anjou. He was joined in Paris by his cousin Thomas Walsingham and by a messenger who was very probably Thomas Watson, who knew Father Allen and other seminarians at Rheims from his stay at the seminary in Douai. "He was ideally placed to brief Thomas Walsingham and to debrief Richard Baines," who was ordained a priest in September.

The Lennox plot, which was coordinated by Father Allen, began to come together in early 1582: The Duke of Guise was ready to send soldiers to land as a diversion on the coast of Sussex, and Mary sent word from prison to Philip II of Spain urging him to get involved. The pope was asked to name Allen Bishop of Durham, to rally Catholics in the north of England, and the papal nuncio in France assured the pope's secretary of state that Catholic priests in England would rally the faithful to support an invasion. But then a friend of Baines's revealed to Allen that Baines was spying for the Privy Council. Baines was tortured but held out until the summer when he finally confessed. But Walsingham now had enough evidence to persuade the Protestant lords in Scotland to act, and when they kidnapped King James in the Raid of Ruthven in August, "Lennox had lost his only substantial asset," and he was banished from Scotland in January 1585.

Baines, who had been imprisoned since his confession, recanted that confession in May in "what looks suspiciously like a plea bargain": Baines gained his freedom and Father Allen got a document in which Baines "cast himself in the role of a penitent papist. He substituted an anti-Protestant diatribe for his earlier attacks on the Catholic religion" -- he blamed it on the devil. This made it possible for Allen to "whitewash" the role of the Rheims seminary in the plot. Baines's confession was included in a collection of recantations by Catholics who had strayed over to the Protestant side. The Lennox plot is reflected in Edward II, written about nine years later, in which the king's relationship with Gaveston echoes that of James and Esme Stuart.

 In the "Rainbow Portrait," Queen Elizabeth's gown 

is embroidered with ears and eyes, symbols of surveillance.

"Intelligence gathering was a major growth industry during Marlowe's student years." Leicester, Burghley and Walsingham each had his own corps of spies, and in 1581-82, Elizabeth "authorized Walsingham to organize the first state-sponsored secret service in English history." The Jesuits targeted university students, so Walsingham began recruiting students for counterintelligence. "The industrious Parker Scholars -- quick-witted, needy and beholden to the Church of England -- were just the kind of men the Secretary was looking for." In the followup to the Lennox plot, most of the elements had been discovered: the involvement of the Duke of Guise and Mary, Queen of Scots, and the support of the pope. "Secretary Walsingham now realized that the conspiracy to depose Elizabeth had become vast, international and self-perpetuating.

Assassination plots against the queen now began to be uncovered. Pope Gregory XIII had opined that England should "be freed by any means from oppression," which gave license to plotters such as George Gifford, a member of the queen's household, who told the Duke of Guise that he would murder the queen for 800 crowns. The murder of the Protestant Prince William of Orange in 1584 sent a shock through the English parliament, which passed the Act for the Queen's Surety that prescribed the death penalty for would-be assassins and also for any potential successor to the crown who knew about a plot -- i.e., Mary, Queen of Scots.

In 1585, Sir Francis Walsingham's expenditures for surveillance jumped almost tenfold. This was also the year that Marlowe began his frequent absences from Cambridge. Thomas Walsingham acted as his cousin's recruiter and liaison with agents in the field, such as Robert Poley, who was a Catholic and was married to a member of the Watson family. "These facts make it likely that Watson and Poley were allied to one another as brothers-in-law, cousins by marriage, double agents in Secretary Walsingham's employ or simply as members of the recusant community." In 1583, Poley arranged to be imprisoned in the Marshalsea, which had many Catholic priests who were detained and tortured there. Secretary Walsingham did not entirely trust Poley because he sometimes took steps such as corresponding with an agent of Mary, Queen of Scots, without checking in with Walsingham first. This "brings out the fundamental dilemma of freelance intelligence work. Spies conspired with the enemy in order to extract their secrets; but if they did so without 'consent and direction' from the Council, they were apt to be accused of the very crimes they sought to discover."

George Gifford, meanwhile, was still in the pay of the Duke of Guise for his promise to kill the queen, and in the summer of 1585 his brother William, who would become Archbishop of Rheims and Primate of France, and his cousin Gilbert Gifford enlisted a soldier, John Savage, to carry out the murder. Also involved in the plot was the priest John Ballard, who posed as a soldier named Captain Fortescue, or "Foscue." In England, Ballard/Fortescue began recruiting members of the Catholic gentry such as Anthony Babington, Charles Tilney and Edward Windsor to support an invasion. He also met with John Savage and with Bernard Maude, who had connections at court and was able to obtain a passport for Fortescue to return to France in 1586. But Maude was a spy in Walsingham's employ. And Walsingham had a bigger target in mind: Mary, Queen of Scots. Walsingham had managed to get Gilbert Gifford on his side to move the plot along so that he could trap not only the conspirators but also Mary.

Don Bernardino de Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador to France, was informed of the plot by Ballard, who was eager to get the Spanish involved in an invasion plan. Mendoza was cautiously optimistic, writing to Philip II about the details of the plot, and telling Ballard to keep him apprised of the details. He especially wanted to know how many English Catholics could be counted on to support the conspiracy. Spain would prepare to invade if they could be supplied with the information.

Back in London, Ballard assumed the Fortescue role again and related the details of the plot to Anthony Babington, who somewhat reluctantly agreed to join the plot to assassinate Elizabeth. Babington needed a friend at court who could obtain a passport for him to travel abroad, and he found it in Robert Poley, whom Babington began calling "Sweet Robin." Poley egged him on, and Babington fell for the trap: He "rashly sent Queen Mary a letter 'touching every particular of this plot.' Mary wrote back endorsing the conspiracy. [Walsingham's right-hand-man] Thomas Phelippes intercepted her letter and the trap snapped shut." Many of the agents involved in exposing the assassination plot would later appear again in the murder of Christopher Marlowe.

Queen Elizabeth was reluctant to carry out the prescribed sentence for Mary's involvement in the plot. She "took extraordinary measures to contrive that Mary die a 'natural' death. The queen twice jailed her cousin in a draughty, foul-smelling addition to Tutbury Castle, where Mary was afflicted by the odour of manure heaps." She also hinted that she would be pleased if someone else took the initiative of getting rid of Mary and "made it clear that one of her ministers would have to trick her into signing Mary's death warrant." The French ambassador, who was the only person in England who could have effectively protested Mary's execution, was tricked by one of Walsingham's operatives into knowledge of a phony assassination plot against Elizabeth. The ambassador was put under house arrest and "Secretary Davidson obligingly placed Mary's death warrant in a stack of routine documents that required the queen's signature." Mary was executed on February 14, 1587. "Elizabeth flew into a rage" and "had Davidson, the scapegoat, arrested and fined 10,000 pounds for transmitting the warrant that she had signed.... The theatre of the world, however, was wider than England. Instead of being pacified by Elizabeth's show of grief, King Philip II began to assemble the Spanish Armada."

In Edward II, "King Edward's estranged queen and her consort, Lord Mortimer, take extraordinary steps to avoid the blame for murdering the king." Edward is imprisoned in a sewer in hope that he'll die, and the queen says he wishes his death "were not by my means." Mortimer makes the order of execution ambiguous so that it can be read as either an order to spare the king or to kill him, and he has the executioner murdered. In The Jew of Malta Barabas says

As good dissemble that thou never mean'st 

As first mean truth, and then dissemble it; 

A counterfeit profession is better 

Than unseen hypocrisy. 

Hypocrites like William Allen "refused to acknowledge ('dissembled') the unseen discrepancy between their religious vocation and their violent takeover plots." Baines, Maude, Poley and Gilbert Gifford pretended to believe in a religion so they could infiltrate it. "Barabas sides with the counterfeit professors. An agent who sees another person's religion as a fiction has the advantage over a believer deluded by his own cant." The Massacre at Paris, written in 1592, is "a retrospective history of the period when Marlowe became involved with the secret service.... The only way to survive in this world is to know your enemies' plans ahead of time; the losers in this play are always those without reliable intelligence."

2. The World of Christopher Marlowe, by David Riggs, pp. 25-44

Chapter Two: Lessons Learned in Childhood

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At the age of six, Marlowe started attending petty school, which taught children to read and write. Instruction largely consisted of learning the ABC's and memorizing religious texts, including a Catechism that contained the Apostle's Creed, the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments. Parents whose children, eight years and older, who could not say the Catechism were subject to a fine of ten shillings. The petty schools had been founded by Henry VIII: "He and Elizabeth viewed the instruction of children in English as a way of fashioning obedient subjects." The aim was to wean Englishmen off of Catholic iconography by instructing them in the Scriptures, but the method was not particularly successful. In one of the charges of atheism leveled against Marlowe by Richard Baines, Marlowe was said to have proclaimed, "if there be any god or any good Religion," it would be found in Catholicism because of its ritualistic and ceremonial character -- its theatricality. "The reformers overestimated the capacity of words to impose uniform meanings on the impressionable minds of young readers."

Moreover, because the method of instruction relied on memory of the text and not on examination of the ideas within the text, those who actually did think about what they had memorized began to question it. "The Tudor programme of popular religious instruction created the agnostic reaction that it was meant to pre-empt." The doctrine of the Trinity was a particular stumbling block, partly because it was not specifically based in the Scriptures. "During Marlowe's lifetime, atheism, a category unknown to the pre-Reformation world, became the 'sin of sins.'" Early "atheists" also questioned the doctrine of eternal damnation. "The fear of God was the bedrock of moral order in Marlowe's England." Contributing to the burgeoning unbelief was the instability of the church: "As the state church changed back and forth between Protestant and Catholic regimes, the dubious assertion that God upheld princely rule had the unintended consequence of compromising divine authority."

Meanwhile, young Marlowe also learned about the world on the streets of Canterbury, which because of its location on the way between Dover and London "attracted a steady stream of diplomats, soldiers, merchants and messengers going to and from France." The event that caused the greatest stir was the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in Paris on August 24, 1572, when Catholics led by the Duke of Guise murdered three thousand Protestants. Then, with the encouragement of Charles IX, another ten thousand were killed in other French cities. Refugees fleeing to England told the grisly stories, and bought the word massacre to England. In French the word originally referred to a slaughterhouse, but it now came to mean "mass murder." In Lyons, the soldiers had refused to carry out the execution of Protestants, so the authorities sent butchers into the prisons to do the killing. Two of Marlowe's early plays, Tamburlaine and The Jew of Malta contain scenes of massacre, and the last of his plays to be performed was The Massacre at Paris.

In 1573, when Marlowe was nine years old, Queen Elizabeth visited Canterbury and on September 7 celebrated her fortieth birthday.

The queen had a genius for incorporating the rejected symbols of the Catholic faith into her own self-image.Trading on the discarded cult of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Elizabeth would fashion herself into the secular counterpart of the virgin queen.... Marlowe shared the queen's fascination with theatrical constructions of sovereignty. His early masterpiece Tamburlaine the Great considers monarchical self-fashioning from the standpoint of a young playwright at the outset of a stunning career. 

The record of Marlowe's education has a gap from the age of eight, which is when tradesmen's children usually left petty school, to the winter of 1578-79, when he won a scholarship to the King's School. During those six years, his father may have paid for his education at the King's School, but given the expense and his family's low income it's likely that he attended a free grammar school that Archbishop Matthew Parker had founded when Marlowe was five. "Since candidates for the Parker scholarship that sent Marlowe to Cambridge had to read music at sight, Christopher doubtless acquired this facility in the schoolhouse across the street from the Eastbridge Hospital."

The usual grammar school texts were William Lyly's Short Introduction of Grammar and A Catechism or First Instruction of Christian Religion by Alexander Nowell, Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral. Henry VIII and Elizabeth mandated Lyly's grammar because it was based on classical Latin texts and not on medieval church Latin: "It prepared Marlowe and his schoolfellows to think like Ovid and Cicero rather than St Thomas Aquinas." The Catechism instilled in students the basics of Calvinism: "bondage of the will, predestination, election and reprobation." The aim was to teach students obedience. Students copied these texts by hand and then repeated what they had transcribed under questioning. The entire system depended on "rote memorization and repetition." The Grammar involved learning "page after page of Latin verb forms and syntactical constructions with no overarching system to guide them through the maze." When they did begin to read Latin texts they were "actively discouraged from thinking about what they meant." It was, Lyly explained, "a discipline for governing boys by teaching, admonishing, rebuking, punishing and on all occasions." The whole system was designed to inculcate, as Riggs puts it, "a generalized attitude of deference to authority that suited the needs of Renaissance princes."

Classes were typically from six or seven in the morning to seven at night, six days a week, with religious instruction on Sundays and holidays. Meanwhile, boys who had left school at the age of eight and had not yet become apprentices, as they would in their teens, were left to run free. Even apprentices had the late afternoon, Sundays and holidays free. "Learning Latin was the labour-intensive alternative to indigenous youth culture."

The emphasis on classical Latin over medieval led to a contempt for the vernacular. "Medieval Latin incorporated the English word order; classical Latin dissolved it. Marlowe's introductory work on prose translation emphasized style at the expense of piety. It implied that the Holy Scriptures were inferior to the work of classical Roman authors." So when in one of his reported "blasphemies" Marlowe said that the New Testament was "filthily written," he was saying what "He had been taught to think ... since the age of ten." His dismissal of Christ's apostles as "base fellows" was also a consequence of his teaching.

The irony of these "damnable" opinions is that the apostles were supposed  to be base fellows. That was why Jesus chose them for his ministry; they spread the Word to all who had ears to hear in language that anyone could understand.

Marlowe also imbibed some of the contradictory messages of Calvinism. "Under Elizabeth I, external conformity became the master principle of church discipline." Even if you were not of the elect, those with a "true and lively faith," you were expected to behave as if you were. "In the Calvinist theology of the Catechism, only two or three of Marlowe's schoolfellows were presumed to speak from the heart, and God alone knew who they were." The rest were expected to go through the motions. "Queen Elizabeth, Archbishop Parker and Lord Burghley sought outward compliance with the state church, rather than inner assent to its doctrinal content," which Riggs aptly describes as a "'don't ask, don't tell' approach."

The tacit acceptance of hypocrites, commonly known as "close" or "inward" atheists, explains why unbelievers rarely came out of the closet.... Closet atheists were part of the social order; open atheists cried out for swift and violent retribution."

20. "The Complete Plays," by Christopher Marlowe, pp. 507-561

The Massacre at Paris

_____

As the note on the play says, the text "seems to have been assembled from the memories of actors, and perhaps as much as half the play Marlowe wrote is missing." So it's a fairly bare-bones play, without much of the verbal panache of Marlowe's other plays, and with a lot of suspiciously fervid anti-Catholicism and cheerleading for Queen Elizabeth I, especially in the latter half.


[Scene 1]
Charles IX congratulates Henri, King of Navarre, on the marriage to Charles's sister, Margaret. His mother, Catherine de' Medici, also congratulates Navarre, but pointedly mentions their "difference in religion" and in an aside vows to dissolve the marriage "with blood and cruelty." 


Navarre, however, believes in the sincerity of both the king and his mother. It is the Duke of Guise that he worries about because "the malice of his envious heart / ... seeks to murder all the protestants." He asserts that Guise does whatever "the Pope will ratify, / In murder mischief and tyranny." The Lord High Admiral notes that Guise, the Cardinal of Lorraine, and the Duke Dumaine were upset at Navarre's marriage to Charles's sister Margaret "Because the house of Bourbon now comes in / And joins your lineage to the crown of France." 


[Scene 2] 
Guise summons an apothecary whom he has commissioned to poison a pair of gloves, and sends him with them to Navarre's mother, the old queen. After that, he orders a soldier to assassinate the Admiral. In a soliloquy, he meditates on his motives, which are not entirely religious, and on how he controls King Charles, who gets the blame for whatever Guise does, and how Catherine is "Rifling the bowels of her treasury / To supply my wants and necessity." He also indicates his intention to get rid of Navarre. 


[Scene 3] 
The apothecary brings the gloves to the old queen, who dies of the poison, and the soldier wounds the Admiral, who realizes, "These are the cursed Guisians that do seek our death. / O, fatal was this marriage to us all."   


[Scene 4] 
Charles expresses reluctance to persecute the Protestants: "my heart relents that noble men, / Only corrupted in religion, / Ladies of honour, knights, and gentlemen, / Should for their conscience taste such ruthless ends." But his brother, Anjou, argues that they should "seek to scourge their enemies / Than be themselves base subjects to the whip." Guise and Catherine support his argument. So Charles wimps out and says, "What you determine, I will ratify." Guise proceeds to outline the plans for the St. Bartholomew's day massacre. They are interrupted by a man who brings the news of the attempt on the Admiral, and Charles decides to visit him. The Admiral (who is apparently in a curtained discovery space upstage) tells Charles that "these are the Guisians / That seek to massacre our guiltless lives. Charles assures him that he will be well-guarded. 


[Scene 5] 
Guise orders that the Admiral "Be murdered in his bed." When he is, Anjou suggests, "Cut off his head and hands, / And send them for a present to the Pope." Moreover, his body should be hanged in chains on a cross. Then Guise orders that the guns be fired and the bells tolled that signal the start of the massacre. 


[Scene 6] 
Guise and Anjou enter, chasing Protestants, with Guise shouting, "Tue, tue, tue! Let none escape. Murder the Huguenots," and Anjou urging, "Kill them, kill them!" 


[Scene 7] 
A preacher named Loreine is murdered by Guise, and though Anjou says, "Stay, my lord, let me begin the psalm," Guise insists, "Come, drag him away, and throw him in a ditch." 


[Scene 8] 
Mountsorrell enters the home of Seroune and his wife. Seroune requests to be allowed to pray before being killed, but when he invokes Christ, Mountsorrell says, "Christ, villain? Why dar'st thou to presume to call on Christ, without the intercession of some saint?" and kills him. 


[Scene 9] 
The scholar Ramus is murdered by Anjou because of his interpretation of Aristotle. Guise reports, "there are a hundred Protestants / Which we have chased into the river Seine / That swim about and so preserve their lives." Dumaine suggests sending archers to the bridge to shoot them. After Guise leaves, Navarre and Condé enter with two schoolmasters. Anjou claims that he tried to stop the massacre and, when Navarre objects that he had heard Anjou was involved in it, protests his innocence: "You are deceived, I rose but now." Guise returns with soldiers, and Navarre and Condé go to tell the king what Guise has been doing. Guise kills the two schoolmasters, and sends three of his men to Orleans, Dieppe, and Rouen to continue the massacre there. 


[Scene 10] 
The play here jumps ahead in time, no doubt because of the missing text. Anjou is now in Poland, where the electors have chosen him to be king. He agrees to it, on the condition that if his brother Charles should die and he be deemed heir to the French throne, "I may retire me to my native home." 


[Scene 11] 
We return to the time of the massacre. Two soldiers enter with the body of the Admiral and argue about what to do with it. They decide to hang it on a tree. Guise, Catherine, and the Cardinal enter, and Guise asks, "Now, madam, how like you the lusty Admiral?" She approves of the deed, but urges, "come, let's walk aside, th'air's not very sweet." So Guise has some attendants take the body and throw it in a ditch. 


Catherine brings up the subject of Charles, who has been expressing regret for the massacre. The Cardinal claims, "I have heard him solemnly vow / With the rebellious King of Navarre / For to revenge their deaths upon us all." This doesn't deter Catherine: 


For Catherine must have her will in France. 
As I do live, so surely must he die, 
And Henry then shall wear the diadem; 
And if he grudge or cross his mother's will, 
I'll disinherit him and all the rest; 
For I'll rule France, but they shall wear the crown.


[Scene 12] 
Guise and some others attack and kill a group of Protestants. 


[Scene 13] 
Charles is seized by "A sudden pang, the messenger of death," and dies. Catherine laments briefly and unconvincingly and then sends "ambassadors / To Poland to call Henry back again / To wear his brother's crown and dignity." (The time sequence, once again, has been switched around and/or telescoped.)    Navarre realizes that there's "no safety in the realm for me," so he and Pleshé go off to raise an army. 


[Scene 14] 
Anjou has been crowned Henry III. Either his stay in Poland or his ascension to the throne has changed him, for he's a more agreeable fellow than he was as Duke of Anjou. He also now has two "minions," Joyeux and Mugeroun. The latter catches a cutpurse stealing the buttons from his coat, and cuts off the cutpurse's ear, but Anjou/Henry lets him go with a warning. Catherine and the Cardinal confer about this kinder, gentler Henry, and decide that they'll take advantage of his weakness. The Cardinal reveals that Guise has raised an army of his own, ostensibly to wage war on Protestants, but in fact on the house of Bourbon, to which Navarre belongs. Catherine assures the Cardinal that if Henry doesn't behave, she'll take care of him the way she took care of Charles. 


[Scene 15] 
The Duchess of Guise writes a letter to Mugeroun, who is her lover, but Guise surprises her and reads it. He spares her life because she's pregnant, but resolves to take care of Mugeroun. 


[Scene 16] 
Navarre enters "with drums and trumpets," having started his war against "the Guise, the Pope, and King of Spain." A messenger brings word that "A mighty army comes from France with speed." 


[Scene 17] 
Henry makes his minion Joyeux general of the army, which leaves "To march against the rebellious King Navarre." Then he taunts Guise for having been cuckolded by Mugeroun. Guise exits, vowing to kill Mugeroun. Henry regrets the taunt, and decides to find the duke and make friends between him and Mugeroun. 


[Scene 18] 
Joyeux is killed in the battle, which the forces of Navarre win. Navarre vows to "with the Queen of England join my force / To beat the papal monarch from our lands." 


[Scene 19] 
A soldier hired by Guise shoots and kills Mugeroun. Henry enters to tell Guise that it has come to attention that Guise has raised an army of his own, and "we presume it is not for our good." Guise demurs, but Henry charges him with treason. Guise protests that it's for his own good, because he's an enemy of the Bourbons and the Protestants, both of which would like to see him killed. He admits that he has strong support from the pope and the king of Spain, who, "Ere I shall want, will cause his Indians / To rip the golden bowels of America." But Henry persists, "Dismiss thy camp, or else by our edict / Be thou proclaimed a traitor throughout France." Guise decides to "dissemble," and says, "I kiss your grace's hand and take my leave, / Intending to dislodge my camp with speed." After Guise leaves, Epernoun urges Henry not to trust him: "My lord, I think for safety of your royal person, / It would be good the Guise were made away." Henry admits to Epernoun that he's aware of what's up, and that he's secretly going to Blois: 


For, now that Paris takes the Guise's part, 
Here is no staying for the King of France, 
Unless he mean to be betrayed and die. 
But, as I live, so sure the Guise shall die. 


[Scene 20]
Navarre decides to join forces with Henry against Guise. 


[Scene 21] 
Henry hires three murderers to kill Guise, then lures Guise to see him, pretending to be allowing him to keep his army. After the king leaves, Guise is triumphant. The Third Murderer enters and warns him that he's about to be killed, but Guise smugly invokes Julius Caesar: "Yet Caesar shall go forth. / Let mean conceits and baser men fear death." The murderers stab him, to his disgust: "To die by peasants, what a grief is this!" And he dies calling on the pope to excommunicate and Philip of Spain to wipe out the house of Valois. "Vive la messe! Perish Huguenots! / Thus Caesar did go forth, and thus he died." 


Henry enters, and sends an attendant to fetch Guise's son. He proclaims, "I ne'er was King of France until this hour." And he links Guise to the Spanish Armada: "Did he not cause the King of Spain's huge fleet / To threaten England and to menace me?" Guise's son enters and tries to throw his dagger at Henry, but is taken off to prison. Henry then gives orders to kill Dumaine and the Cardinal. Catherine enters, and proclaims Henry "Traitor to God and to the realm of France!" After they leave, she mourns Guise and says, "for since the Guise is dead, I will not live." 


[Scene 22] 
The murderers strangle the Cardinal. 


[Scene 23] 
Dumaine receives word that Guise and the Cardinal are dead. He vows to raise an army, and a friar volunteers to kill Henry. 


[Scene 24] 
Henry and Navarre meet to join forces. The friar enters with a letter, but Epernoun tells Henry, "I like not this friar's look, / 'Twere not amiss, my lord, if he were searched." Henry dismisses this suspicion: "our friars are holy men." But the friar stabs Henry, who gets the knife and kills the friar." Navarre sends for a surgeon, and Henry sends word to "my sister England" (i.e., Elizabeth) to "give her warning of treacherous foes." When the English agent arrives, he proclaims "eternal love to thee, / And to the Queen of England specially, / Whom God hath blessed for hating papistry." 


The surgeon announces that "the wound is dangerous, / For you are stricken with a poisoned knife." Navarre is hopeful: "The king may live." But Henry replies, "O no, Navarre, thou must be King of France /.... / Valois' line ends in my tragedy. / Now let the house of Bourbon wear the crown." And as Henry's body is borne out, Navarre vows that 


    Rome and all those popish prelates there 
Shall curse the time that e'er Navarre was king, 
And ruled in France by Henry's fatal death!