Who Killed Kit Marlowe?
by M. J. Trow
Kit Marlowe was the bad boy of Elizabethan drama. His 'mighty line' of iambic pentameter transformed the miracle plays of the Middle Ages into modern drama and he paved the way for Shakespeare and a dozen other greats who stole his metre and his ideas. When he died, stabbed through the eye in what appeared to be a tavern brawl in Deptford in May 1593, he was only 29 and many people believed that he had met his just deserts.But Marlowe's death was not the result of a brawl. And it did not take place in a tavern. The facts tell a different story, one involving intrigue, espionage, alchemy and the highest in the land.Born the son of a shoemaker in Canterbury, Marlowe read Theology at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and was destined for a career in Elizabeth I's new Church of England. But in 1583, he moved to London and wrote dazzling new plays like Dido, Queen of Carthage, Tamburlaine, the Jew of Malta and Doctor Faustus. He was the 'Muse's darling', 'all fire and air'...