May 30th: a large reckoninge

or: Marlowe in a tight spot

A fine May day in Deptford Strand, on the south bank of the River Thames. The year is the year of our Lord 1593. A widow related to the Queen’s astrologer, Dr John Dee, and to one of her lady companions, owns a public establishment which is associated with the scarily powerful, and intrigue-crazed, Walsingham family. It sits quiet in the sunshine by the river, loaded with a secret freight of espionage. Four men spend the afternoon in an upstairs room – “a small room” – and walk for a bit in the garden.

One of them is a known intelligence agent for Queen Elizabeth’s Privy Secretary and “spymaster,” Sir Francis Walsingham, as well as a loan shark and (along with Walsingham’s relative Thomas Walsingham) con man, “bilking one Drew Woodleff of his inheritance.” His name is Ingram Frizer.

Two of them, Nicholas Skeres and Robert Poley, are impeccable spies and heavies, instrumental in uncovering the famous plot against Elizabeth, the Babington Plot, which resulted in the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. Skeres, erstwhile employee of the Earl of Essex, and also with a record for fraud, actually has with him on this day confidential papers belonging to the Queen, in transit to her at Nonsuch Palace.

The fourth, a poet, was arrested for heresy ten days ago – suspected author of the “Dutch church libel,” a total of eighteen items which “scoff at the pretensions of the Old and New Testament,” “vile heretical conceits denying the eternal deity of Jesus Christ,” etc etc – in blank verse, of course. He was released, in spite of evidence of his guilt; and is under orders “give his daily attendance on their Lordships, until he shall be licensed to the contrary”.

Well, our arrested friend, suspected variously of being an atheist and a Catholic as well as a homosexual, is in a tight spot. It is possible that his supposed atheism and Catholicism are only a cover for his own espionage activity, and spies do not protect their own. Sir Walter Raleigh and the Earl of Northumberland just happen to be implicated in the charge against him. He in turn was implicated by being named, under torture, by a colleague, Thomas Kydd, who will later say he himself was betrayed by an informer – in other words, set up. Kydd will be dead in a year. The informer, in the Netherlands, is named: Richard Baines. By the end of the afternoon the con man Ingram Frizer will have picked a fight with our friend over the bill – though why that should be is never explained – and enraged him to the point where he will grab his dagger and make for the con man. The con man will have stabbed him above the eye, killing him instantly. Of course he will have been acting in self-defence.

The con man will face trial only two days later, and be let off. Four weeks after that he’ll be pardoned by the Queen. A few years later, under James I, he will receive “numerous beneficences” through the auspices of the wife of Thomas Walsingham, a friend of the King’s consort, Queen Anne.

Thomas Walsingham, by the way, was the patron of the victim  in the tavern.

Something fishy in the state of Denmark?

I suggest that the following has a poignant tone to it now. Written by the deceased. Christopher Marlowe, of course.

Stipendium peccati mors est.
Ha!
Stipendium, &c.

The reward of sin is death: that’s hard.

[Reads.]
Si peccasse negamus, fallimur, et nulla est in nobis veritas;

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and
there’s no truth in us. Why, then, belike we must sin, and so
consequently die:
Ay, we must die an everlasting death.
What doctrine call you this, Che sera, sera,
What will be, shall be? Divinity, adieu!
These metaphysics of magicians,
And necromantic books are heavenly;
Lines, circles, scenes, letters, and characters;
Ay, these are those that Faustus most desires.
O, what a world of profit and delight,
Of power, of honour, of omnipotence,
Is promis’d to the studious artizan!
All things that move between the quiet poles
Shall be at my command: emperors and kings
Are but obeyed in their several provinces,
Nor can they raise the wind, or rend the clouds;
But his dominion that exceeds in this,
Stretcheth as far as doth the mind of man;
A sound magician is a mighty god:
Here, Faustus, tire thy brains to gain a deity.

Enter WAGNER.

Wagner, commend me to my dearest friends,
The German Valdes and Cornelius;
Request them earnestly to visit me.

WAGNER. I will, sir.
[Exit.]

FAUSTUS. Their conference will be a greater help to me
Than all my labours, plod I ne’er so fast.

Enter GOOD ANGEL and EVIL ANGEL.

GOOD ANGEL. O, Faustus, lay that damned book aside,
And gaze not on it, lest it tempt thy soul,
And heap God’s heavy wrath upon thy head!
Read, read the Scriptures:–that is blasphemy.

EVIL ANGEL. Go forward, Faustus, in that famous art
Wherein all Nature’s treasure is contain’d:
Be thou on earth as Jove is in the sky,
Lord and commander of these elements.
[Exeunt Angels.]

FAUSTUS. How am I glutted with conceit of this!
Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please,
Resolve me of all ambiguities,
Perform what desperate enterprise I will?
I’ll have them fly to India for gold,
Ransack the ocean for orient pearl,
And search all corners of the new-found world
For pleasant fruits and princely delicates;
I’ll have them read me strange philosophy,
And tell the secrets of all foreign kings;
I’ll have them wall all Germany with brass,
And make swift Rhine circle fair Wertenberg;
I’ll have them fill the public schools with silk,
Wherewith the students shall be bravely clad;
I’ll levy soldiers with the coin they bring,
And chase the Prince of Parma from our land,
And reign sole king of all the provinces;
Yea, stranger engines for the brunt of war,
Than was the fiery keel at Antwerp’s bridge,
I’ll make my servile spirits to invent.

Enter VALDES and CORNELIUS.

Come, German Valdes, and Cornelius,
And make me blest with your sage conference…

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