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And as I strategy my thirty ninth yr on this sky marble, I’ve seen a serious uptick in my obsession with historical past. It is that comparatively latest love that led me to choose up one of my favourite reads of 2022, Allison Epstein’s A Tip for the Hangman. It’s an Elizabethan espionage thriller the place the playwright Christopher Marlowe spies on Mary, Queen of Scots, whereas navigating politics, theater, romance, and homicide. It’s historic, it’s a spy thriller, it has homicide and my private catnip: fictionalized variations of actual historic figures. It appeared like an excellent time, and it was.
The draw for me was Mary, Queen of Scots as a result of she and I’ve historical past. When I used to be 5 years outdated, an older classmate requested me if I ever missed my actual mother whereas pointing at an illustration of Mary Stuart in a historical past guide. She then knowledgeable me that Mary was my actual mom and that my “parents” solely adopted me when she went and received her head chopped off. After yelling, “You’re not even my real mom!” within the again of a Honda Accord that afternoon, my path in direction of therapeutic entailed me studying as a lot about this lady as potential to be double tremendous further certain that she was not, certainly, my mama. True story.
I say all this to say that I used to be ready for tons of enjoyable, juicy bits about The Queen of Scots and likewise Elizabeth I, each of whom are clearly formidable girls with an extended record of what makes them fascinating research. But I walked away needing to know extra about Christopher Marlowe, determined to understand how a lot of Epstein’s novel was rooted in fact and the way a lot was a deliciously entertaining fabrication. I discovered that I’d been sleeping on Mr. Marlowe, whose actual life could have been stranger than fiction as historical past usually is. If you aren’t already within the know or simply desire a refresher, be a part of me on this temporary have a look at his story.
Christopher Marlowe was an Elizabethan poet and playwright. He was born in February 1564, only a couple of months earlier than William Shakespeare, and is taken into account ol’ Billy Shakes’ most vital predecessor in English drama. A vibrant pupil, Marlowe studied at prestigious establishments just like the King’s School in Canterbury and Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, incomes his B.A. from Cambridge in 1584. And this, expensive pals, is the place issues get spicy.
Kit stayed on as a resident at Cambridge and was engaged on a grasp’s when my dude started disappearing for lengthy durations of time with no nice rationalization when pressed as to the place and why. Cambridge wasn’t having it, suspecting that Marlowe had gone off to the Catholic Seminary at Rheims to drink the Catholic Kool-Aid. In 1587, the college was on the cusp of denying Marlowe that Master of Arts diploma when the Privy Council intervened in a very regular, completely plausible, not-at-all suspicious method. They really helpful he obtain the diploma, citing “services for the state” as their reasoning:
“Whereas it was reported that Christopher Marlowe was determined to have gone beyond the seas to Rheims, and there to remain, their Lordships thought good to certify that he had no such intent, but that in all his actions he had behaved himself orderly and discreetly, whereby he had done Her Majesty good service, & deserved to be rewarded for his faithful dealing. Their Lordships’ request was that the rumour thereof should be allayed by all possible means, and that he should be furthered in the degree he was to take this next Commencement, because it was not Her Majesty’s pleasure that anyone employed, as he had been, in matters touching the benefit of his country, should be defamed by those that are ignorant in th’ affairs he went about..”
So the place was Kit all that point? And what “good service” did he full?
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