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IT WAS MARLOWE.
A Story of the Secret of Three Centuries.
by
WILBUR GLEASON ZEIGLER.
“_It is not for any man to measure, above all it is not for any
workman in the field of tragic poetry lightly to take on himself
the responsibility or the authority to pronounce what it is that
Christopher Marlowe could not have done._”--_Algernon Charles
Swinburne._
Chicago
Donohue, Henneberry & Co.
407-429 Dearborn St.
[Illustration: “She had turned her face for a last look at the
Combatants.” P. 78.]
Copyright, 1895, by
Wilbur Gleason Zeigler.
All rights reserved.
TO MY WIFE,
WHOSE PRAISE IS AMPLE MEED
FOR MY WORK;
AND
TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER,
THE ONE WHOSE ENCOURAGEMENT WAS THE
KEENEST SPUR FOR BEST EFFORT,
THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED.
[Illustration]
Wilbur Gleason Zeigler
June 8, 1898.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAGE.
Preface 5
The Meeting in Finbury Fields 13
A Chance to Serve the Church 33
The Drawn Sword 47
A Clash of Steel 60
The Cover of His Fame 77
The Apprehension of Anne 91
A Precarious Existence 103
The Passing of Tabbard 118
The Molding of the Mask 131
A Point of Confluence 144
In the Prince’s Wardrobe 153
Where Lamentation Prevailed 165
Over the Body of the Dead 175
Into the Lion’s Mouth 191
The Sacking of St. Olave 203
Guilty on General Principles 217
The Master Hand is Here 235
Death to Thy Client or Mine 250
The Ride to Tyburn 267
Finis Coronat Opus 280
Appendix 297
PREFACE.
_Nature doth strive with Fortune and his stars
To make him famous._
--_I Tamburlaine, ii, 1._
_Nature and Fortune joined to make him great._
--_King John, iii, 1._
A number of years ago I read the plays of Christopher Marlowe; and as
evidence of the impression they made upon me, there is still among my
recent notes gathered for this romance, the extracts I then wrote down
from his Tamburlaine and Faustus. There was something in them to excite
more than the passing interest of a boy; and for a long time I mourned
over the accepted account of the untimely, and disgraceful ending of
that unfortunate poet--“our elder Shelley,” as Swinburne has termed
him. Later the Bacon-Shakespere controversy attracted my attention;
and while I became skeptical concerning the authorship by William
Shakespere of the dramas that bear his name, I could not attribute them
to the pen of Francis Bacon.
There are many reasons for my disbelief, in the solution of the mystery
as presented by the Baconians, but it has not arisen from my failure to
study the proofs and argument. One reason, however, must be mentioned.
A man, so solicitous of his fame as to leave it in his will “to
foreign nations and the next ages,” would not, if he had written the
plays, have departed this life without some mention of them. Whoever
wrote them was not blind to their merits; and of his knowledge of their
enduring quality we have the author’s own opinion in the lines:
“Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme.”
Shakespere also left a will, as mean and petty in its details of “gilt
boles,” “wearing apparel” and money to “buy them ringes,” as though
conceived by a tiller of the soil whose eyes had never been raised
above his plow-handles. It had been carefully prepared three months
before his death, and subscribed while his “mind was yet unclouded;”
but, as in the case of Bacon, we listen vainly for one word from the
testator concerning the grandest productions of all time. Ye who have
sweat in striking “the second heat upon the Muse’s anvil,” think of the
utter indifference of both these men concerning the “living lines” of
Hamlet and of Richard!
With the fame of Shakespere thus rudely shaken, and that of Bacon
firmly set upon the enduring monument of law and philosophy which he
alone had raised for himself, I began groping for a solution of these
mysterious questions. Who wrote the plays? Why was their authorship
concealed?
As to the first inquiry, my belief that Christopher Marlowe could
have written the plays, had his life been sufficiently prolonged,
was supported by the opinions of Phillips, Collier, Dowden, Malone,
Swinburne and Dyce [notes 1-6.]
This belief was founded upon the striking similarity of the strongest
portions of his acknowledged works to passages of the Shakespere
plays; the tendency of each to degenerate into pomposity and bombast
in passages of tragic pathos [note 7]; the similar treatment of
characters, and the like spirit that pervades them. (The Shakespere
plays, free as they are from any trace of a hand during the period when
it was moved by an immature mind, seem like a continuation of the works
of the earlier master, and evolved when the author was at the meridian
of his power.)
It has been said that “Marlowe could not don alternately the buskin
and the sock,” and that he “never attempted to write a comic scene,”
and thus it would have been impossible for him to have written the
light and witty portions of the plays. The conclusion of Bullen, above
quoted, is not well founded. There are comic scenes in Faustus, and
originally there were like scenes for “vain, conceited fondlings” in
the “stately history” of Tamburlaine.
Against the theory of the authorship of Marlowe, was the record of his
death in June, 1593, when at the age of 29 years, a period of life
all too short to have enabled him to have produced much, if any, more
than the work which is known, beyond reasonable doubt, to be his. The
accredited account is that he was slain with his own sword in a tavern
brawl. Upon a careful examination of all the reports, I found them
loose and contradictory. In September, 1593, Harvey wrote that his
death was from the plague [note 8]; in 1597, Beard, the Puritan, wrote
that he was killed in the streets of London [note 9]; in 1598, Meres
referred to Beard’s account without correcting it [note 10]; in 1600,
Vaughn wrote that he was killed by “one named Ingram” [note 11]; in
1600, Rowland attributed the death to drinking [note 12]; about 1680,
Aubrey wrote that he was the victim of the famous duel of 1598, when
Ben Jonson killed his adversary [note 13]; and the burial register of
the parish church of St. Nicholas, in Deptford, contains the entry that
he was slain by Francis Frazer [note 14].
But no investigation brought to light what became of his slayer. There
is no record yet discovered of his escape or trial. Although Ben
Jonson was thrown into prison and “brought near the gallows” for his
duel on Bunhill, the alleged slayer of “kynd Kit Marloe” appears to
have vanished so utterly that it was not until within the last quarter
of this nineteenth century that even his name written in the burial
register became correctly known to the world.
It might be said that this obscurity concerning the death of Marlowe
was occasioned by the dearth of facilities for the conveyance of news,
but we can not close our eyes to the fact that it was not an ignorant
age, but one of criticism, violent controversial correspondence, and
pamphleteering. And then it was not the case of an obscure person
suddenly removed from the walks of life. Although violently attacked
a few years previously by contemporaries [note 15], for his allusion
to “the jigging veins of rhyming mother-wits” [note 16], and for the
innovations that his genius brought about upon the English stage [note
17], the height of his fame and the reverence in which he was held by
the English intellectual world was shown by Petowe, Chapman, Peele,
Blunt, Harvey, Chettle, and Drayton [notes 18-24]. It was praise that
emanated from the lips of these poets and writers before the close
of the year 1600. To them he was “the famous gracer of tragedians,”
“the highest mind that ever haunted Paul’s,” the “king of poets,” “the
muses’ darling,” that
“Free soul whose living subject stood
Up to the chin in the Pierian flood.”
How striking appears this praise when contrasted with the meager
contemporary notices of Shakespere by obscure writers [note 25]!
Among this crowd of admirers we catch no glimpse of the man from
Stratford-on-Avon, whom the most devout of his followers recognize, in
the earliest of the plays, as merely a “pupil” of “the earlier master.”
If it were his voice that was then uttering the “parrot-like note of
plagery,”[1] how unpardonable seems his silence, standing, as he did,
in the presence of the mighty dead!
These tributes to the memory of Marlowe, all with the omission of
the exact nature of his death; and on the other side, the full but
contradictory reports by rancorous Puritan scribblers, of the killing
of “this barking dogge,”[2] led me irresistibly to an answer to the
second question. Why was the authorship of the plays concealed?
The most plausible answer was that that master spirit labored until his
death under some tremendous fear. What else but the fear of arrest and
capital punishment for some crime could have kept him silent until,
unwarned and unprepared, he entered “the undiscovered country?”
Was it not possible that this crime was committed in 1593? If so, would
it not have kept this “king of poets” hidden in just such condition
of darkened vision, isolation and solitude as Frederic Schlegel [note
26] deemed imperative for the production of these austere tragedies?
Suppose this condition had existed for five years; that is, from 1593
to 1598; all of the stronger plays which it is possible to attribute
to the pen of one man could have been written. And what occurred
during those five years? Several of Marlowe’s acknowledged dramas were
published under his name [note 27], and at least Titus Andronicus,
Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, and Richard III appeared without the
name of any author on their title pages [note 28]. In 1598 the name
of “W. Shakespere” made its first appearance [note 29] on some of the
editions. Did Marlowe die in 1598, instead of 1593? Was Aubrey right?
Upon these conjectural answers to the questions of who was the author,
and why did he conceal his identity, I have built the story of “It
Was Marlowe,” and I trust that in its narration I have made my theory
plausible. But whether or not such has been the result, if through this
effort I have awakened, or increased the reader’s interest in a being
as grandly illumined with the flame of pure intellect as any who have,
since his consecration, knelt at the shrine of ideal beauty, or aspired
to ideal power, my work has not been entirely futile.
THE AUTHOR.
“IT WAS MARLOWE.”
THE MEETING IN FINBURY FIELDS.
_The man that on the forehead of his fortune
Bears figures of renown and miracle._
--_I. Tamburlaine, ii._
_A combination, and a form, indeed, Where every god did seem to set his
seal, To give the world assurance of a man._
--_Hamlet, iii, 4._
At the point where the path from the Theater penetrated the brick
wall on the eastern boundary of Finbury Fields, late in the afternoon
of June the first, 1593, a man had paused, apparently to prevent
overtaking a crowd that was preceding him in the direction of the
Shore-ditch Highway.
A fog of varying density, that had already enveloped the streets of
London, was drifting across the fields, and hid not only the Theater
and Curtain from view, but also the buildings, nearer at hand, of the
dissolved Priory of Holywell. In spite of the obscuring mist, if one
had stood at one end of the broken wall while the man, just spoken of,
had paused in the center of the opening, the form and features of the
latter could have been seen to advantage. His face would first have
attracted attention. Both energy and sensibility could have been traced
upon it even in repose when the dark and glowing eyes were closed. The
first characteristic was displayed in a close-shaven chin which was
almost pugnacious in its squareness, and in a nose which, while too
fine for that of a Cæsar, had all the lordly outline of the latter.
Intelligence and sensitiveness were written on the full and finely
curved lips, and the glow upon his cheeks pronounced the extreme of
temperance in habit, or an inexhaustible power of recuperation. In the
eyes and broad and compact forehead evidences of genius were disclosed,
but it could not be determined whether it was in the fiery glance of
the former, or in the serenity of the latter, that such proof was
written. The letters were of a type intelligible to all readers. The
lines of thought, between his brows and on his cheeks, were indicative
of age, but his laugh was from the heart of youth alone. Between the
two one would have guessed his years correctly as close to thirty.
He was slender in stature and slightly above medium height. His dress
was of the extreme style of the period; but although rich in texture,
was worn with much use, and stained from evident dissipation. The
black cloak, with buff silk lining, was torn across one shoulder. The
scarlet doublet, because of missing buttons, was open more than its
maker intended, to show the vest of same color, and gayly embroidered
shirt front. The belt around the doublet was enriched with silver
cord, and held a long rapier, whose bejeweled hilt was enough to excite
the cupidity of vagrants or rufflers. The trunk hose of black fabric,
reaching half way down his upper leg, was slashed so as to admit the
protruding of purple silk, while tights of the latter color extended
from the bottoms of the trunks down into the low shoes. He wore a flat
cap with single white feather, and under it a mass of black hair hung
to his shoulders.
The crowd before him was one dispersing after a short afternoon
performance[3] at both theaters. It was smaller than usual and was the
last of the season. The Plague had firmly engrafted itself in the city,
and was gathering new life with increase of deaths.
Even in the suburbs the red crosses were being marked upon the doors
of infected houses. A week previously, the Lord Mayor had issued a
proclamation prohibiting the holding open of places of amusement during
the prevalence of the epidemic. This order, aimed at the gathering of
multitudes where germs of disease might be readily propagated, was
nugatory outside the city walls, but it had had its effect upon the
theater-going public. It was a warning of greater force than those
thundered from the pulpits. The hegira of the wealthier class of people
to the country had begun, and the poorer classes were closing their
doors and venturing out only as necessity compelled.
It was this condition of affairs that had caused the managers of the
play-houses in Finbury Fields to announce a closing of their doors, and
the prospect of a reopening before the fall, or possibly the winter
season, was not encouraging.
Such a cessation of occupation assured discomfort and perhaps misery
to the man described; for his livelihood depended upon the prosperity
of the theaters; but if he had at any time seriously considered the
matter, the consideration had in no wise affected his perennial good
humor. He laughed at the unsuccessful attempts of several crows at
lighting upon one of the wings of a near windmill that turned slightly
one way and then another in the shifting breeze. And then again he was
amused at the actions of an apparently intoxicated man, who, having
stumbled from the path, had in the fog encountered the wall near by,
and with one hand against it was repeating in loud voice the lines he
had lately heard from the lips of a ranting actor:
“Swing back the gates, thou triple-headed fiend,
Or by the gods this hand will draw a blade
To make thy shoulders strangers to thy head.”
The laugh which these words and gestures awakened on the part of the
quiet observer just described was joined in by another man who was
approaching by the same path. The latter had been whistling with all
the ardor and enthusiasm of tender years and an undisturbed mind, until
the loud voice of the drunkard provoked him to laughter.
He was a beardless youth of apparently twenty years of age. As he
laughed his little blue eyes were almost closed beneath his red
eyebrows, so that their expression alone was enough to excite the
merriment of an observer. His wide open mouth revealed two rows of
white teeth, separated by at least two inches of space at the moment
that the loudest peal of laughter came forth. His round cheeks were
red with superabundance of health, and proclaimed contact with country
air. It was not an overshrewd face nor one showing resolution; but it
was so open, so frank and good natured, that even a person injured by
carelessness on the part of its owner would have paused in expressing a
natural remonstrance.
One would have expected to have seen a rough doublet of Kendal green,
or of homespun russet, with patched trousers and low cockers upon the
slender figure beneath this face; but, on the contrary, he was attired
in a neat-fitting garb appropriate for the page of a lord or rich
country squire. His blue coat, with velvet facing, had even an Italian
ruff with a hundred double turnings upon it. A short sword was belted
at his waist, and his trunks, of strong material, disappeared into top
boots. The latter, however, were patched, of crude manufacture, and
looked to have been worn through plowed fields at some recent period.
Neither was his hat in keeping with his new body apparel, but was one
evidently picked, for wearing on this particular expedition, out of
some pile of discarded garments of the man whom he served.
As he saw the man first described a gleam of recognition showed in his
face.
“Ho!” he exclaimed, joyfully, “Is that you?”
“None else,” returned the other, carelessly, as though the discovery of
himself by the stranger was of the least concern.
“Sir Kit?” queried the youth, taking off a hat, still adorned with a
broken feather, and bowing with a grace which was evidently a recent
acquirement, for it savored of a contact with people far removed from a
service in which he must have acquired his rough field boots.
“‘Sir,’ if so you will have it, but ‘Kit’ without doubt,” answered the
man addressed, smiling at the youth’s appearance, and at the same time
taking an interest in the jolly face of its owner. The latter feeling
caused him to inquire:
“Hast thou any matter of concern to communicate to me?”
“You do not recognize me,” returned the stranger, as though the matter
of his identity was first necessary to be established.
The gentleman studied the other for a moment, and then said:
“I have seen thy face before, but can not place thee. Where was it and
who are you?”
“You saw me in Deptford, and my name is Tabbard. I come now from Sayes
Court, where I have lately entered into better service than that of an
attendant upon gentle folk in a wayside inn. The duke took a fancy to
me.”
“And gave you a new doublet, and his old hat, eh?”
“True,” said Tabbard, “and the promise of long service, good wages and
promotion.”
“Your star is in the ascendant,” laughed the other, and then added,
“but what do you want to tell me?”
“It is this. The Duke of Sussex is at Sayes Court now, and many more
who have left London with him. You are to attend there a masque with
the remainder of the Earl’s actors.”
“Well,” interrupted the other, impatiently.
“But I am not here to tell you that alone. When I last saw you, you
were at the Golden Hind, Dodsman’s tavern, in Deptford. They called me
Tabbard there, and so did you when I waited upon you, and you gave me
an angel for my attendance.”
“I do not remember the gold. When I give gold my memory is gone as
well,” said the other, while an expressive smile played upon his lips.
“Well,” again began Tabbard, hurriedly, “at the same time that you were
there, a gentleman named Manuel Crossford, from Canterbury, was there
also with his daughter.”
“Yes, yes,” the man addressed as Kit exclaimed, and with it all the
reserve that he had maintained vanished.
“Let details go,” he continued, grasping Tabbard’s arm, “I remember it
all and you too. What of her?”
“The father did not look favorably upon your suit.”
“You evidently learned more than was proper for one in your position,”
again interrupted the other, “but you are certainly not here to badger
words with me. What else have you to say?”
The two men had moved close to one end of the brick wall, so as to
avoid being brushed against by the occasional stragglers, who were
still issuing from the mist in one direction and vanishing in the
other. These stragglers came singly, in pairs, and in groups. Here
would ride by a mounted cavalier in Spanish hat, loose velvet cloak
that covered him to his knees, and high boots rattling with clumsy
silver spurs. Then close in the latter’s wake would follow a ragged,
sneaking vagrant of the Straits,[4] who having caught a glimpse of the
spurs and the gold cord on the rider’s hat, was now intent on dogging
him, until upon the latter’s dismounting at some ordinary or ale-house
within the city, a groat might be earned by holding the horse. After
these, a line of truant apprentices would stagger by with locked arms
and swaying black-capped heads, endeavoring, by blocking the path, to
keep a group of gayly dressed women from hurrying toward the tenements
in the Garden Alleys.[5]
The sight of these trailing members of the great body of people which
had disappeared did not seem to disturb the attention of the gentleman
or his inferior; and pausing but for a moment the latter continued:
“Well, she is there at the Golden Hind to-day. I saw her face at one
of the windows as I was riding by and then I remembered your words to
never fail to inform you if I ever saw her again. I dismounted and went
in.”
“Was she there alone?” asked Kit, without endeavoring to conceal his
interest.
“I do not know, except----”
“And what do you know?”
“Let me proceed. Thou art too impatient. A line of horses was before
the place and a crowd inside. I went through the tap-room and up the
staircase without having made up my mind how to announce myself as
coming from thee--coming from thee, mind--or for what purpose; and
marry sir, she was at the head of the stairs and I simply blurted out:
‘Kit will be here to-night, and would see thee.’”
“And what answer made she, thou fool?”
“‘At nine,’ she said sir, ‘and tell him not to fail,’ and at that
moment a man who had followed me into the hall set his foot on the
lower stair and stumbled. This must have startled her, for she stopped
speaking.”
“And didst thou not ask the number of the room?”
“Wait. I heard the step and looked below, and when I turned again her
finger was on her lips and she drew back.”
“Canst thou never learn expedition?” exclaimed the other, biting his
lip.
“She was behind the balustrade,” resumed Tabbard, unmindful of the
interruption, “and where the light from the skylight fell upon her. He
could not see her, nor she him, but she heard him hit the stairs. I say
he could not see----”
“Go on, you stumble in your speech.”
“----not see her, but I could. She was dressed like a lady; her cheeks
pink, her eyes as dark as thine own; her hair golden.”
“The same,” uttered the other, nodding his head.
“She went into the room with carved panels on the door.”
“Are they not all carved?”
“May be so; but I think not. No, ’twas the first guest’s room; the
second door on the right from the head of the stairs. The man passed me
as I went down.”
“Who was he?”
“I never saw him before.”
“Was he not her father?”
“Oh, no. He was a young man dressed in grand style. In face he was so
like thee that I almost stopped him as I have thee now.”
“And did you make no inquiry at the bar?”
“The tapster was busy; the serving men were strangers to me, and
Dodsman was not in sight.”
“And you learned nothing more?”
“No; I mounted and came on.”
“Marry, and why didst thou not wait, and why didst thou not find me
before?” questioned the other, in tones of reproof. “It is now near six
o’clock and three miles lie between here and London bridge and then
another three miles or more to Deptford.”
“Is that not time enough?”
“And how much can one spare from it for a full meal and a glass of
Canary at the Red Bull or the Mermaid? I would not chance more than a
mug of sack and a square of black bread at the ale-house next to the
London wall. And how can one push his horse faster than a walk through
such a fog as this? But let us press on.”
Through the fields they proceeded along a wide path unfenced and
bordered with stretches of grass and rushes.
“You ask me why I did not wait for knowledge about the lady,” at length
said Tabbard, thinking that some explanation was still due. “It was
then late, and besides the message I had for the Earl’s actors, I
wished to see Gabriel Spencer as the king in ‘Edward the Second,’ at
the Theater. I could not miss that, Sir Kit.”
“And nearly missed seeing me,” said Kit, absently.
“I expected to see thee there, too. For admission I paid my last penny,
or at not seeing thee on the stage I should have gone to the other
playhouse. I tried to go into the galleries, but an upstart youth in
bare head and with sword at his side, like one of the Queen’s men,
forced me back, demanding another penny. Before me went a crowd of
women, and the galleries were filled with them. Unlike those in the
open pit, they sat under roof and without fear of rain.[6] So into the
pit I went, and must needs have paid another penny for a seat had not
Dudden, a countryman of mine from near Maidstone, in Kent, whom I had
not seen for four years, touched me on the shoulder and bade me squeeze
in between him and a friend. They had brought bottles of sack in with
them,[7] and not a drink would they take without my joining them.”
“And did that require much urging?”
“Little at first,” answered Tabbard, “but when once the play was well
on, I could not drink for fear of taking my eyes from the stage; not
that the devil heads on the tops of the posts on each side interested
me, or the dandies on the stools and dried rushes on the stage-floor[8]
under these heads, but the actors! Ah, but the actors, Sir Kit! Were
there ever such crimson doublets and cloaks with copper lacings worn?
And the rich dresses that the men wore, who played the parts of the
Queen and ladies, made me think that they had broken into the wardrobe
at Whitehall. And do ladies never play such parts, Sir Kit?”
“Never,”[9] answered the other, shaking his head.
“But Dudden swore they were ladies, and when one of the spectators
on the stage hissed the Queen for forgetting a line he threw one of
the empty bottles of sack at him. It was all so grand, so fierce, so
bloody. And Dudden went into a drunken fit when the head of Mortimer
was brought in. But that was at the end. My own heart was in my throat
at the sight of the mowers, with their Welch hooks, taking the king
captive.”
“Art thou so easily disturbed, fellow?” asked Kit, with a twinkle in
his eye.
“Prut!” exclaimed Tabbard, “Thou couldst never have seen the play, if
you say that. What man could sit still when the king moaned; ‘Lay me on
a litter and to the gates of hell----’”
“Hold,” interrupted the other, “not quite so. These are the words:
‘A litter hast thou? Lay me in a hearse,
And to the gates of hell convey me hence:
Let Pluto’s bells ring out my fatal knell,
And hags howl for my death at Charon’s shore.’”
“Then he throws off his disguise,” continued Tabbard, excitedly. “Why
those sound like the very words. Didst thou ever play the part of
Edward?”
“Nay,” said Kit, shaking his head.
“Or Gaveston or Mortimer?”
“Nay, neither.”
Tabbard looked at his companion with open mouth, and then asked:
“And what says the king when he hands the Bishop his crown?”
“Now, sweet God of Heaven, make me despise this transitory pomp,”
answered the other without hesitation.
“Well, and dost thou know all the play?” asked Tabbard in amazement.
“Much of it,” came the answer.
“And never was in it as an actor?”
“Never.”
“And how comes it that you know it all?”
“I wrote it,” quietly answered the other.
“Wrote it!” exclaimed Tabbard, “and then thou art----”
“Christopher Marlowe,” continued the gentleman, “commonly called Kit.”
The effect on the excited youth was something magical. He stopped
talking but gave vent to a prolonged “Oh,” that died into a whisper.
He was in the presence of genius; this was the man who had written
the lines which for three hours under a hot sun, he had listened to
in silent awe and tremblings of terror. He could scarcely believe his
eyes; and Marlowe noticing Tabbard’s stupid amazement said:
“How much sack did you punish, Tabbard?”
The question was designed to bring the latter-mentioned person out of
his stupefaction, and it had this effect; but in his recovery Tabbard’s
wonder ran along the mental line of inquiry concerning how it was that
genius could be interested in such common matters.
“Enough to have lost my way and the place where I tied my horse,” at
length answered Tabbard, recovering his voice, and looking about him.
“Tied him? Witless, you should have had a boy hold him,” said Marlowe,
exhibiting some interest in the welfare of the man who had brought him
the message of all others the most pleasing to his ear.
“Then I needst must have cheated the boy, for I have not an old Harry
Groat in my pocket,” answered Tabbard, spreading his hands open before
him, with palms turned up.
“It is not safe to trust one’s animal with rope and post in these
fields nor in this lane,” said Marlowe in the tone of an adviser.
“Well a boy held two horses near where I tied mine to a tree not a
great way from this opening. But for the fog I could see him. And I
said ‘keep an eye on him. He can not be held.’”
“Which was false, undoubtedly,” nodded Marlowe, smiling.
“Ay, for the brute needs spurs for walking smooth roads. But the
watching required no labor.”
“And I suppose that your horse is a pleasing sight to look upon,” said
the other.
“True, Sir Kit, and so the score will be even.”
“Was one horse gray that the boy held, and one black, and did the boy
wear a cap and stand under an apple tree next to the Priory wall?”
“That is all true,” responded Tabbard.
“Well, the gray horse is mine,” said Marlowe.
“And why did you leave him so far from the entrance to the
play-houses?” asked Tabbard.
“A man who has creditors must appear to be a beggar on foot. I limped
to the theater and have now let the crowd precede me as you see,”
explained the other, and then noticing a group emerging from the fog,
he exclaimed: “Ah! here the boy is now, and there is your horse where
you tied him.”
The pair had been following the path for some distance, and now
mounting their horses, rode down the lane between brick walls, over
which great orchard trees extended their branches, and again on between
low houses with green blinds where the miserable outcasts of the city
had located themselves. Before them ran the Shore-ditch highway, and
entering this they rode on toward the invisible city wall.
In this vacancy of event, there is space for an epitome of the period,
in so far as it affected the condition of the principal character
of this romance. The somberness of the natural scenery, and the
obscurity of the sky were in keeping with his social surroundings and
the uncertainty of his existence. The fog might rise disclosing a sky
conducive of joyous spirits, or it might gather so dense that naught
but the austere form of Melancholy, with her trailing robes of black,
could walk with firm and unfaltering strides within it. It was the
latter condition that was to follow. At that moment, in the mind of
Marlowe, the rosiest dreams of life pursued one another as though
conceived by an Ovid, and impelled by the spirit of a Homer; but they
were to be buried in the blackness of what seemed eternal night.
Fired with the ambition of a god, he had issued from the studious walks
of Cambridge in 1587. Finding dramatic art confined to a close circle,
wherein only rhyming productions were considered fit for presentation
on the stage, and the public clamorous for aught that possessed the
fire of action and the thunder of bombastic declamation, he cast from
his shoulders the splendid cloak of rhyme, in which for a moment he had
adorned himself, and with the plain but majestic front of a warrior,
with feet in the buskins of an actor, he presented himself before the
public. It fell in adoration at his feet. The thunder of his tread
shook all the gods of rhyme from their immemorial thrones, and from
amid the ruins Greene, Nashe and others lifted their protesting voices.
Recognizing him as the son of the clerk of the parish church of St.
Mary, Greene insisted that he could not “write true English without the
help of clerks of parish churches,”[10] and Nashe, like Gervinus in his
analysis of the “Shakespere” plays, saw in the productions of this late
graduate of Cambridge and dramatic innovator, the lines of Seneca read
under the light of the English candle.[11] But all in vain was the
outcry.
In the production of Tamburlaine he had with one bound reached an
eminence from which it was impossible to dislodge him,[12] and, in
quick succession, followed the dramas of Faustus, The Jew of Malta,
Edward the Second, and the Massacre at Paris. These plays had been
produced during a term of six years, wherein he had alternated his
afternoon occupation as an actor at the Curtaine,[13] with nights as
a dramatic writer. These productions, teeming with majestic lines,
and filled with a spirit from “translunary” sources, required not the
critical minds of a later school of commentators to establish their
worth.[14] Some passages are still recognized as having “no parallel in
all the range of tragedy.”[15] Thus it was that at this period he was
throned in a school where all his fellows were his servile imitators.
Among them were Nashe, Peele, and Lilly; but poor Greene, with one
more outburst against the “upstart crow,” with “his tygres heart,”[16]
who could have been none else than the writer whom he had attacked in
1587, had finished his unfortunate career. And his career was the one
being pursued by all these fiery and impatient souls. It was Marlowe,
especially, who had plunged into all the mad excesses of an unbridled
life,[17] the temporary drift of a youth with convictions unsettled by
draughts from Greek philosophers, senses inflamed by the voluptuousness
of Ovid, and an existence checkered by frequent shadows of poverty
and flitting gleams of plenty. It was the unsettled state of vigorous
youth, augmented by the peculiar social conditions then existing.
Upon the continent the civil wars of Henry IV. had approached their
close. In England the Starchamber held its secret sessions; the block
of the executioner was kept warm with the blood of the insecure
nobility; while the torch for the fires of heretics was never allowed
to smolder. Elizabeth had been on the throne 35 years; Francis Bacon,
with mind bent on pre-eminence as a philosophic writer, was her counsel
learned extraordinary, and William Shakespere, six years previously
arrived from the obscure village of Stratford-on-Avon, was a member of
Lord Pembroke’s Company of actors. There were no theaters at that time
within the walls of the city; histrionic exhibitions being presented
on the boards of the “gorgeous playing houses erected in the fields.”
The edict against strolling players was rigorously enforced; freedom
of expression in matters of religious belief was the subject of penal
laws, and any animadversions concerning the policy of the government
were declared treasonable.
As an evidence of the barbarity of the times, the Southwark end of
the London bridge was decorated with the heads of thirty traitors,
all of which had fallen beneath the axe of the executioner after the
hanging and disemboweling of the bodies. The tower held many martyrs
of religion; and Fleet Street prison, with its foul quarters, was the
abiding place of hopeless prisoners for debt. If the pinch of poverty
of itself was spur enough to have produced the poems of Goldsmith, the
wonder at the immortal dramas and poems of the Elizabethan era must
vanish upon consideration of what poverty and debt then meant, and the
insecurity of the beggar who gave expression to his coin-producing
thoughts.
It was during a time, thus out of joint, that Hamlet and Richard the
III. walked, as embodied entities, from the brain of their author.
Besides the barbarity of the period, the intolerant spirit, and
the harsh laws, did any other factor add its motive power toward
these productions? Had some crisis been reached in the life of the
author greater than that evolved through poverty and the prospect of
imprisonment alone?
A CHANCE TO SERVE THE CHURCH.
_Now will I show myself
To have more of the serpent then the dove;
That is more knave than fool._
--_The Jew of Malta, ii, 3._
_And thus I clothe my naked villainy
With odd old ends stolen forth of holy writ,
And seem a saint when most I play the devil._
--_King Richard III, i, 3._
Under the newly-cast sign of an iron dolphin suspended before the
ale-house of that name, the two horsemen, who had ridden abreast from
Finbury Fields, dismounted for hasty refreshment. While Tabbard was
securing the horses near the end of the long stone trough, at the
front of the building, his waiting companion was idly surveying the
suroundings.
Directly across the unpaved highway, he could see the bulky steeple
of the parish church of Saint Botolph lifting itself into the misty
air, and just beyond the brick walls of the structure, the miserable
churchyard of Petty France. The few straggling headstones of the graves
of a multitude of buried foreigners could be faintly discerned under
scrubby trees inclosed with a fence of crumbling masonry. Its southern
edge was bordered by the town ditch, once broad enough for the defense
of the city, but now showing only a narrow black mouth under the
shadow of the old Roman wall. The latter was near enough to be visible,
and, coming out of the fog from east and west, terminated in stone
bulwarks against which the ancient gates of Bishopsgate were hung.
These were swung back, revealing a black expanse below which ran the
unseen road into the metropolis.
The scene was desolate in the extreme, but the spirits of the silent
observer had reached too high a pitch of exaltation to be affected by
any aspect of Nature. The news brought him by the present henchman
of the Duke of Sussex and past servant of the Golden Hind, had
lifted his mind above the plane where even thoughts of approaching
financial distress or fears of the plague could arise, much less any
sober-colored clouds be created by what passed before the eye.
The bearer of the message, menial though he was, had rendered too
valuable a service to be treated in any other manner than as a good
fellow of equal rank with himself. Hence, he had thrown off the
superiority he generally assumed amid the common rabble, and after
listening affably to the remarks of Tabbard, had held him for a meal at
the Dolphin.
“How long will those gates be open?” asked Tabbard, looking in the
direction of the wall.
“Until ten o’clock, and even after that hour you can pass through if
you pound upon their fronts loudly enough to wake the keeper, who
sleeps within the little black house close to the wall on the southern
side. But in pounding, mind thee, Tabbard,” continued the speaker, with
a smile, “see to it that you do not mar the stone features of the full
length figure of King Richard the Second, which with broken scepter
in his hand, stands out from the northern front of one of the rotting
gates.”
“He must have his face now against the wall, for they are swung
outward,” remarked Tabbard.
“Yes, for the nonce, as closely hidden as the manner of his violent
death.”
“Ah,” said Tabbard, his mind crowded with the thoughts of the existing
religious persecutions, “did he espouse the cause of the Papists?”
“Nay, my good fellow, that was two hundred years ago, when the
fury of the church, then in power, expended itself mainly in bulls
of excommunication. The violence of these days did not exist; but
still conflicting doctrines entertained by the clergy disturbed the
serenity of Rome, and the chief heretic was Wycliffe, whom the young
king protected. That priest sowed the most fruitful seeds of the
Reformation; but none of the Brownists or Puritans appear to recognize,
amid the tenets of their beliefs, the handwriting of that master
husbandman.”
“And I suppose that he was burnt, was he not?”
“After death.”
“In hell’s everlasting fire, eh?”
“Nay, I do not mean that. He died a natural death; but many years
after, his body was taken from its grave and publicly burned.”
“Little it disturbed him, I wot,” remarked Tabbard.
“So it seems that fanaticism rests not even with the death of the
person on whom it would wreak its fury, and it burns even in the
breasts of men as mild looking as yonder group of Puritans.”
He pointed to the middle of the road close before them where several
men were slowly walking toward Houndsditch. The plainness of their
dress, of the same color from head to foot, and of exactly similar cut,
was in striking contrast with the apparel of the two men whom they were
passing.
Their broad brimmed hats were high-crowned and flat at the top, and
pulled down so low that only four inches of face were visible above
the deep collars of their gray coats. The latter were hung with heavy
capes, and fronted with pin-head buttons to the lowest point below
their waists. Loose breeches disappeared at their knees into rough
looking high-boots with great rolling tops.
Their appearance excited Tabbard to laughter. Although still regarded
as objects of ridicule by the irreligious populace and the body of the
established church, the more thoughtful of those of adverse belief
were beginning to recognize in the Puritans’ open and covert attacks
upon the follies and vices of the times, the growth of a moral and
political power which likewise demanded forcible suppression. Their
railing libels against the clergy of the established church had at
length formed a pretext for Parliament to pass an act that year making
Puritanism an indictable offense. Their assembling had already been
prohibited by the Black Act of 1584.
Despite their persecution, the zeal of the dissenters continued in
their attacks upon what they considered crying evils. They stood ready
to apprehend all offenders against such ecclesiastical laws as upheld
the truth and sacredness of religion and the divinity of Christ.
So far as Romanism might be by them considered destructive of true
religion, they were ready to wield the sword forged by the Episcopalian
Parliament for the dismemberment of the Papists. Many a non-conformist
discovered in the person of the prosecuting witness swearing against
him a member of the sect of Brownists. But particularly in the case
of apostates and blasphemers the Puritans and Brownists directed
their efforts toward having meted out to the offender the effective
punishment provided by law.
As the two men turned and approached the door of the tavern, a man
with deep-set eyes, sunken nose and red-bearded face, and dressed
in the garb of a Puritan, hurriedly withdrew his face from a window
adjoining the entrance. The sinister expression of his face had grown
more pronounced during the last moment of his survey of the newcomers;
for it was at them that his gaze had been directed. It was evident
that their approach had disturbed him greatly; but the disturbance was
rather that of joy than of alarm. Still, whatever the sight created
or revived in the mind of Richard Bame, the fanatic, his movements
elicited the fact that he was either not desirous of the impending
meeting, or that he considered that his presence in another quarter
would be more to his advantage. He had seen the gentleman in the black
cloak before, but not to the knowledge of the latter, so it was not
the dread of an encounter that made Bame turn and hasten toward the
side-door of the dimly lighted tap-room. It was the second step which
he had taken in what he considered a holy cause; of most evil effect
it might be to the man approaching. As the former passed the big chair
in which the fat hostess of the Dolphin sat knitting he muttered not
too softly to be kept from ears already aroused at the note of his
departure:
“My chance to serve the church is ripe.”
He passed into the side alley leading to the high road when the two men
entered the room. The leader spoke without giving the woman chance for
words of greeting:
“Good hostess, a hasty snack is what we want.”
“Of what shall it be?” she asked.
“Sack, cheese, bread and two pieces of meat as big as your hand. Drop
yourself there, Tabbard?”
The speaker had tossed his cloak over the back of a chair as he spoke
and as hastily filled another. In impatience he drummed a tattoo with
one of his feet on the smooth oaken floor; and, apparently without
noting the freshness of the bare walls and the chimney in which no fire
had ever burned, his eyes roamed around the room.
“Just built,” remarked Tabbard.
“Yes,” returned the hostess, setting the dishes called for before
the two strangers and smiling as though she felt flattered over the
knowledge that her house was the subject of observation and comment.
“Where went the old building?” asked Tabbard.
The hostess turned her hand with thumb pointing upwards and said, “In
smoke.”
“Yes,” said Marlowe, whose scarlet doublet and silver-corded belt had
awakened the hostess’ admiration and almost hushed her into respectful
awe, “I saw its blaze from as far south as the Standard in Cheap. The
old tavern was twice as large as this, and being just outside the wall
was greatly frequented by travelers approaching London late at night.”
“Do many stop here now?” inquired Tabbard.
“Not many at this season,” answered the hostess.
“The last one before you, kind sir,” she continued, now turning her
attention to Marlowe and bowing so that her eyes caught only the
sparkle of his rapier’s hilt, “left just as you entered. He acted
strangely as he caught sight of you.”
“So, who was he?”
“He gave me no name, but as he went out I heard him say: ‘My chance to
serve the church is ripe.’”
“How was he dressed?” asked Marlowe, suddenly setting down his
half-raised mug, and fixing his eyes upon the hostess.
“Like a Puritan,” she answered.
“And what business have honest Puritans hanging around the bars of
ordinaries and taverns?” exclaimed Marlowe, while Tabbard sneered
audibly, and asked:
“And of what appearance was this man who was lounging here for the
service of God?”
“His long red beard was all I noted,” she replied.
“I know him not,” said Marlowe, shaking his head, and then he asked:
“Do you know his name?”
“Methinks that a man who was with him earlier called him Bame at times,
and again Richard.”
“Richard Bame!” exclaimed Marlowe, lifting his eyebrows and gazing
fixedly at the woman. “And he said that his chance to serve the church
was ripe?”
“True,” nodded the hostess, with her fists against her waist and
continuing to look at her interlocutor as though in expectation that he
would explain what interest he had in the man who had departed.
“Draw us two more cups, Mistress Bunbay,” he said, noticing the
inquisitive expression on the woman’s face and desirous to get her out
of earshot.
As the woman went towards the bar, he whispered to Tabbard, “Good
fellow, for the turn thou hast done me in bringing news of the lady
at Deptford I would knight thee had I the power, or enrich thee had
I gold, but I have neither the one nor the other, except a brace of
angels of which one is thine. Here put it in thy pocket and when
occasion offers drink to the health of thy friend and to the confusion
of all such fellows as just left here. But now I would ask another
service of thee.”
“Speak, I am ready,” said Tabbard, picking up the ten-shilling piece,
and holding it as though he would have it grow into his palm.
“The man who left here,” continued the other, “is Richard Bame, who has
sworn to secure my arrest.”
“And for what?” exclaimed Tabbard. “Hast thou committed a crime?”