Who Killed Kit Marlowe?: A Contract to Murder in Elizabethan England

by M . J . Trow (Author), TaliesinTrow (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2001

  $5.79

  An exploration of the crash-and-burn bard whose wayward life-style and bad-boy reputation led to his death at 29, stabbed through the eye in a tavern brawl in Deptford in 1593. Born the son of a Canterbury shoemaker, Marlowe went on to write Tamburlaine , The Jew of Malta and Doctor Faustus . He was soon the leading literary light of his generation. But he was also mixed up with political intrigue, spying, witchcraft, alchemy and the School of the Night, and was awaiting trial for atheism when he was killed. The book investigates the conspiracy surrounding Marlowe's death, the subject of conjecture for over 400 years. It proposes that Marlowe was a victim of a contract killing, a desperate measure to prevent him from revealing the names of other atheists including members of the Government and, perhaps, even Lord Burghley himself. There were plenty of motives for Marlowe's death and, in the seething melting pot of Elizabethan England, plots, real and imagined, were everywhere.

• Used

  Paperback
  2002

  $4.19

  Kit Marlowe was the bad boy of the Elizabethan drama, a schemer and player who inhabited a seamy underworld in which plots proliferated. When he died, stabbed through the eye at 29, it seemed he had met with the death that had been coming to him. But is this the whole story? Or did he know too much about those in power and so had to be expunged? This investigation of Marlowe's death - and the life which provoked it - unravels the evidence to suggest a new answer to a murder which has puzzled us over four centuries. Author of 'Tambourlaine', 'The Jew of Malta', and 'Doctor Faustus', Marlowe was the leading literary light of his generation. But while he excited admiration, he also made powerful enemies. For Marlowe had also become involved in a world of spies and counter-spies, and developed perilous interests in alchemy, witchcraft and the School of the Night. This work gives an insight into Marlowe's complex world.