SECTION 2 - The Marlowe fiction

Summary

Dr Hotson's book, The Death of Marlowe (1925), is a monument of patient research resulting in a surprising discovery. It is equally remarkable as proving the worthlessness of gossiping tales, even when they are concerned with nearly contemporary matters, and of the inferences which in later times have been piled on such unsubstantial foundations.

Christopher Marlowe unquestionably died by a dagger-stroke on May 30, 1593. The circumstances of his death were utilised by contemporary precisians to illustrate their homilies on the evils of ‘atheism’ and debauchery. The first account appears in Thomas Beard's Theatre of God's Iudgements, printed in 1597. Omitting prolix and pious scurrilities, we learn from it that the fray which resulted in Marlowe's death happened ‘in London streets.’ Francis Meres, in his Palladis Tamia (1598), citing Beard's authority, amplifies the details: Christopher Marlowe ‘was stabd to death by a bawdy serving man, a rivall of his in lewde love.’ In 1600, William Vaughan had a variation of the story: the scene of the fatality is laid by him at ‘Detford, a little village about three miles distant from London,’ the slayer is ‘one named Ingram,’ and the two were playing ‘at tables’ just before the quarrel: the ‘lewde love’ disappears in his version. Some eighty years after the event comes John Aubrey—one of the first remembrancers of Shakespeare—with the amazing statement that Ben Jonson ‘killed Mr Marlow, the poet, on Bunhill, coming from the Green Curtain playhouse.’