The Marliad - a rap epic poem about the Age of Shakespeare

The Marliad
a rap epic-in-progress about Christopher Marlowe and the Age of Shakespeare

by David A. More
www.marlovian.com

Table of Contents

First
Marley’s story
Circles
What’s in a name?
Enter Christopher (and William)
Meet William
Willy's pickle, 1582-85
Enter a Spy, 1585
The Queen(s) adviser(s)
Massacre at Paris
Mary Queen of Scots I
King Philip IV
Land War with Spain
Essex and violence
Degree to Disagree, 1586-87
Babington Plot
Tichbourne's elegy
Philip Sidney's funeral, 1587
N.B. Poley and Skeres
Dissent and suppression
Welsh wizard
High Court, Low Quartering
The punishment for dissidents
Mar who? 1588-90
That's Entertainment 1576-88
The Earl of Oxfraud
Is that a canon in your pocket?
First things Fustian
Tamburlaine the Great (1587-88)
Willy make it? 1589
Too many Toms
Bradley duel, 1589
Penry in Scotland
Coining, 1592
Atheist Lecture
Drury Letter
Greene, with envy, 1592
Upstart Crow
Penry arrest and trial, March 93
Ovid
School of Night 2
Venus and Adonis, 1
Cursus (foiled again)
Lewd verses
No Kydding
Star treatment
Essex and violence
Suicide Hero
Faked Death scenario
The Plan
Go Down, Marley
Baines' Note
Conclusion?

First

To all you "Shakespeare" fans out there, I say:
The man from Stratford never wrote a play,
Oh no. Kit Marley is the man to quote--
Some mighty lines from poems and plays he wrote,
Like Hero and Leander, Lucan's First Book
(Translated from the Latin)--have a look
At Ovid, too, and Venus & Adonis,
Rape of Lucrece, The Shrew, Merchant of Venice,
Titus Andronicus, Coriolanus,
The tales of Romeo and Juliet,
King Lear, King John, Cymbeline, and Hamlet,
Six King Henry plays, The Richards two,
The Tempest, As You Like It, Much Ado,
Twelfth Night, Winters Tale, and Othello.
In brief, most lines in the First Folio
Of 'Shakespeare' plays, and many Sonnets, too,
Plus other verses some of you may know:
Whoever loved, that loved not at first sight?
Have you ever heard this saw of might?
It's one of many Christopher did write.

Now I invoke Calliope, the muse
Of epic poetry for pleasing words to use,
And phrases fresh (like water clear and cold),
Plus a plot that's straightforward and bold,
To tell 'the second greatest story ever told.'
So, listen up, if you have ears to hear--
Kit Marley used the nom de plume "Shake-speare,"
And William of Stratford, a player (no more),
Didn’t realize whom he stood-in for.

Marley’s story

At the age of only 23,
Our hero burst upon the theater scene
With two parts of Tamburlaine the Great,
In 1587-88,
Then followed up with plays of equal skill
When Christopher was in his twenties still:
The Jew of Malta entertains us well,
As does crooked Faustus going straight to hell,
And widow Dido, Carthage's sad Queen
And gay King Edward 2, royal has-been.

None stood above Kit in dramatic art;
On top of that, he played a secret part
In England's anti-Catholic War. A spy,
Kit Marley was a ‘stand-up, go-to guy’,
But his belief in Jesus Christ fell short
According to a slanderous report
Made by another agent of the court:
The hearsay was heresy--'dangerous', it said,
It added up to a knife stuck in the head
And the face of reputation smeared with mud.
But Marley's 'sudden end' was staged ‘real good’,
And he continued writing, as a writer should
(And the actor, Will, did what he could).

Circles

Because Kit Marley was a literary genius
And a trusted agent of the Queen, he was
Accepted in the high-brow company
Of Mary Sidney Herbert's muse, whose honey
Inspiration dripped into Kit's cup
Throughout his life, until his jig was up;
And her brother Philip Sidney, poet-knight,
And Walter Raleigh's "School of Night",
And Giordano Bruno's infinite Space and Light
Were known to Christopher alright,
And Bruno's confidante John Florio,
The Earl of Essex, Robert Devereux,
(To whom the Queen Herself could not say 'no')
And Francis Bacon, who offered wise advice
To youthful Henry Rosely, Earl of great price,
Who was so kind to poets, and so nice,
That "Shakespeare" dedicated poems to him twice;
And Ferdinando Stanley, Derby's Earl of parts,
Patron of theatrical and catholic arts;
And Henry Percy, called the wizard Earl,
(Because he studied Bruno’s many worlds.)
And Thomas Walsingham, Kit’s patron,
And mysterious Mr. Matthew Royden,
And Latin poet-scholar Thomas Watson,
And the laurel-headed Georges: Chapman,
Jesting Peele (another writer friend),
And, of course, Carey, the Lord Chamberlain,
(Whose famous company of acting men,
Was headed by the Burbages trio
And Phil Henslowe, theater impresario
(Whose notes reveal so much of what we know
About the London theater business then)
And his actor son-in-law, Edward Alleyn,
Who made his name performing Tamburlaine
And big Ben Jonson's somber tragedies,
And Thomas Nashe's knavish comedies.

The company included William, Stratford's own,
Whose greatest role, as yet, has not been shown--
As a secret literary front
For a (said-to-be) dead man who didn't want
To be-or rather couldn't be-popularly known,
Although he didn’t have to act alone,
Thanks to Thomas Thorpe and Edward Blunt,
Two publishers who knew of Marley’s stunt.

Our hero knew them all, before he fell
From grace into the everlasting (?) hell
His friends devised to please his enemies
Seeking, thereby, the gods (and God) to please,
While saving Kit from certain prosecution
For heresy, and painful execution.
The equation was simple. Do the moral math:
Instead of ridding the great Marley’s mouth
Of breath—they banish him for life 'til death,
Because his work was valued in small circles--
Of rich, free-thinking intellectuals
Such as the Sidneys, Walsinghams and Cecils,
Who all believed that Marley was a vessel
Filled with nectar, sweet and overflowing
(Mr. Marley? uh, your spear is showing:
Griped in an armèd hand; [yourself] behind
[You] leave unseen, save to the eye of mind.)

What’s in a name?

If Kit is known to history as "Marlowe,"
Then why (you wonder) do I call him Marley?
To simply set the "poetry bar" low,
Because it sounds like Raleigh and Lord Burghley?
No--because he spelled it that way early
In his life, when he was brash and surly
And his hair was bushy, kind of curly,
Before receding like an ocean wave
Or tide that's waned, to hide his face, and save
His breath, but punish Marley just the same,
Through banishment and trashing his good name:
By making Marley Marlow on title pages,
And so his name's remembered for the Ages.

Enter Christopher (and William)

Now let's go back to February 1564,
The year the baby Christopher was born,
In the Cathedral town of Canterbury, Kent,
Where Queen Elizabeth occasionally went:
Where Marley got his literary start,
Exposed to music, books of poetry, and art.

While in April that same year,
William was born to the Shaksperes
In a small town in Warwickshire,
Where her Majesty not once appeared,
Because there wasn't much to see there;
Unlike romantic Canterbury, Kent,
Where pilgrims high and low were sent
To see the ‘holy blissful martyr’s’ monument.

Like any boy, our hero early played
With toys and games, and sometimes disobeyed
His mother Kate, a Dover girl (portrayed
Perhaps in some of Christopher's first plays),
While John, his dad, made leather goods and shoes,
And paid his Canterbury Cobbler dues,
So his boy Kit could go to The King’s School,
And learn to tell a scholar from a fool,
From tutors who then stood among the best.

At King’s, our hero's teachers were impressed
By his reading of old Latin texts,
Singing in the choir, and writing verse--
Archbishop Parker blessed him purse,
And, at 16, Marley upped and headed north,
To be a scholar of Divinity,
And study Anglican theology
At stately Cambridge University,
In December 1580, A.D.

Meet William

A far cry from Will's biography,
120 miles north of Canterbury,
In the podunk town of Stratford-on-the-Avon,
Where Will (arrayed in blood-stained apron)
Soliloquized while killing calves and capons.
Nine years before, his dad had been on top:
High Bailiff of his town--a real good job.
But his father's luck went south,
And Will (another hungry mouth)
Dropped out of school at twelve or thirteen, tops,
Following the downfall of his pops.

Whatever things Will knew, he'd learned
Before his father's fortune turned,
Since books were not available, it's true,
For a boy to "home school" if he wanted to.
The printing press was recently invented, so
Our modern public libr'y was unheard of,
And William's parents didn't read a word of
English--or the languages of love.
He'd have to buy a book, or borrow from a friend
But his unlettered chums had none to lend,
And no bookstores could be found there then,
If he'd had sufficient cash to spend
On Latin poetry, a history tome
In Greek, or English tract to read at home,
If Will could read those antique tongues;
Unlikely, since his schooling wasn't long.

Tush. No matter. Soon, his ears pricked up
To Love’s music, between hiccups.

Willy's pickle, 1582-85

Have you heard of Stratford William's Anns?
Engaged to one, then wed another without banns?
Well, first Ann Whatley got to Will,
Then but 18, horny and hot to spill
His seed into a wet and willing wench.
But soon Willie was called before the bench,
Because another Ann named Hathaway
Got our William into the family way,
The two of them got married right away,
And daughter Sue was born in half a year.
By 1585, two more kids appeared:
The twins, Hamnet and Judith, so-named
After a long-time neighbor and his dame--
(No connection to the Hamlet play
Which hadn't yet been written, anyway)

So there's our altar-hero, Will, at 21
Possessed of wife, three kids, and no books-none!
Which causes one to wonder, all in fun,
If, instead of stealing deer and being on the run,
(As has been charged by some Stratfordians)
Our William might’ve joined an actors' troupe,
To escape the wife and baby poop.
Three kids under-3 at so young an age,
Might spur a man to flee the cage,
And be a player on a Strange stage,
Or battle Spanish Catholics overseas.
(Fighting in the Low Countries would be a breeze,
Compared to wife and three babies.)
No one is certain how he came into
Such prominence as he would later do.
For now, let's leave him at a meal with Ann,
The twins, and 3-year-old Susannah,
Or belching beer with pals at 21,
Or poaching Lucy's deer without a gun.
I'm poking fun at Will, but it's the truth:
His town was small, its residents uncouth.

Enter a Spy, 1585

Now Kit, at 21, apparently,
Did secret service for Her Majesty,
While attending University.
His reading of Theology prepared him for
The role of spy in the religious war
To gain poor souls and garner rich terrain
In England, France, Italy, and Spain.
Cambridge U. was fertile, common ground,
Where homegrown boys like Christopher were found
And groomed for the Elizabethan underground
By men behind the throne, protective of the crown:
By whom I mean Cecil and Walsingham
Who orchestrated deadly stings and scams
Against home enemies, and those abroad,
Who would depose Elizabeth for good,
Replaced by Catholic Mary, who, by blood
Stood next in line to England's throne all said,
Should, suddenly, Elizabeth fall dead.

The Queen(s) adviser(s)

Meet William Cecil (Sessel), the Lord Treasurer,
And Francis Walsingham--two measurers
Of probabilities, and weatherers
Of Catholic ‘Bloody’ Mary’s storm together.

William Cecil‘d been in power since
Elizabeth (in innocence) assumed her father's sins,
Succeeding older brother Edward’s throne
When she was 25 years old. Too young
To rule the land without advisers strong
And wise, to offer guidance and insight,
And thwart what stratagems the Catholics might
Devise to seize her doubtful Divine Right,
Since she was child of mistress, Ann Boleyn,
The second wife of Henry 8th, whose sin
Engendered a new Church. Henry was no dope,
He made Bishops wealthy, like the Pope,
And expropriated Old Church properties.
A trend which displeased Catholic dioceses
From coastal Spain to France's Pyrenees.

Massacre at Paris

Another of Elizabeth’s advisors
Sir Francis Walsingham, Ambassador
To Paris, watched in horror, at the massacre
Outside his home. He thought he’d have the word
On what went down, before events occurred.
So after that, the Catholics made him nervous,
He organized an English Secret Service.
To Italy and France his spies were sent
Where English-speaking Catholic converts went
To hear the Latin Mass, and in True Faith convent,
At seminary schools in Rome and Rheims
Where papists trained their undercover priests
To teach good folks in England Catholic Feasts,
And keep the Saints and Martyrs in their hearts
And Latin Mass in English-speaking parts,
Because a Catholic Queen was still around,
Presuming to Elizabeth’s disputed crown.

Mary Queen of Scots I

Scotland’s Mary Stuart, stood by right of blood
Next in line to England’s throne, some said.
Her co-religionists had sought to claim
Supreme authority for her, in God’s name.
This Mary was a smart, attractive dame
As France's Queen, but widowed at 18,
And then becoming Scotland’s lawful Queen,
Where things got like a gothic movie scene:

First, she wed a royal 'wannabe',
A twit of the nobility named Darnley,
Who was so mean, he killed her closest friend
While she was pregnant, and unable to defend
As David Rizzio was brutalized
By Darnley and his men before her eyes
(An embryonic King inside her belly,
Queen Mary’s tired legs turned into jelly--
She fainted like the screen goddess, Grace Kelly)
You think that's horrible? There’s more to tell:
Lord Darnley soon got killed by Earl Bothwell,
Who kidnapped widow Mary--who then fell
In love with Bothwell, and then married him as well!
Well, this the Scottish Earls found unacceptable--
They chased Queen Mary to a safer world
(England, where Elizabeth, her cousin, ruled)
For refuge, but the unchaste Queen was fooled--
Imprisoned for no crime for twenty years,
Because of English Crown succession fears.

Elizabeth's advisers thought: "Mary's a slut,"
Although no charge of anything was brought
Against the shut-up Queen, ‘til she got caught
In a dirty machiavellian plot,
Set up by Secretary Walsingham,
Who orchestrated deadly stings and scams.

"Machiavellian" means expedient,
Deceitful, dirty tricks--obedience
To principles described by Machiavelli,
The sage of politics in Italy,
Whose masterpiece of strategy, The Prince,
Gave power-minded readers helpful hints
And Francis Walsingham’s fingerprints
Were all over Machiavelli’s book:
He practiced covert war; just take a look.

King Philip IV

In the religious war for souls and land
In 16th Century England,
Between the Pope in Rome (named Sixtus 5th)
And the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth,
The Pope's most powerful ally was Spain:
And King Philip's Main concern and pain
Throughout his 26 year reign
Was seeing England Catholic once again.
***
Phil first proposed to wed Elizabeth,
Who told him (in few words) ‘don’t hold your breath’.
To her, the Spanish King was no great catch;
She didn’t want him in her royal snatch,
Or he might snatch authority from her
Assume her crown, her sacred royal power,
And send her chief advisers to the Tower.

Land War with Spain

Rejected Philip ordered troops to France
And in the northern river Lowlands,
Where Spanish Catholic soldiers shouldered arms,
And aimed to do French Protestants grave harm.
But doughty Robert Dudley, Earl of Lester,
Reportedly Elizabeth’s old lover,
Step-father of Essex, full of bluster
Got up all the soldiers he could muster:
3000 men, and rifles and horse enough
To kick some Spanish ass. For Huguenots
It was a new ball game. For English Prots
A hero (poet Philip Sidney) ‘made his name’
In love and war, in battle against Spain.
Courageously, Phil’s time on earth ended:
Love didn't kill him, the battle at Zutphen did.

Sidney, the sonneteer, had briefly ruled
The poet scene. Oh yes, Philip fulfilled
The very definition of poet-courtier,
Political adviser, and brave soldier,
A hero for a Protestant nation.
His voice was heard against Spain's domination,
In favor of New World colonization.
He fully blessed Sir Walter Raleigh’s colony
At Chesapeake, a brisk economy
To flourish mightily for years to come,
And to become a new "... emporium
For the confluence of all nations
That love or profess ...virtue or commerce.
And to stop the Catholic “axis's” advance:
The Spanish-Roman, Jesuit alliance
Which had the goal of global dominance.

Essex and violence

Young Robert Devereux now dashes on the scene
As the 6th Earl of Essex, only 19,
But keen to bring the Spanish to their knees,
With step-dad, Dudley, in the Low Countries,
Where his friend, Sir Philip Sidney died
Of a bullet wound in his right thigh,
But Phil had time to write Frances, his wife,
(Daughter of Francis Walsingham besides)
Who, after lengthy boat and short horse rides,
Sat by her noble man, as he lay dying
In her arms. Frances, of course, was crying
When Phil gave Robert Devereux his sword,
And the brave Earl gave “Astrophil” his word
To kindly treat his wife in widowhood.
Eventually the widow and the Earl were wed,
Three families conjoined in marriage bed,
(And Marley knew them all, it’s said.
In a book by Herbert Lom, I’ve read.)

Degree to Disagree, 1586-87

No one is certain where Kit Marley was
Assigned during those early years, because
Not much was written down--except for this:
He did Her Majesty good service
In 1586, away from University,
Possibly at Rheims, two months or three,
Pretending to be Catholic, probably,
Or in the web of Babington, maybe.
In any case, the deans did not agree
That Marley should be given his M.A.
(Imagine Christopher’s shocked look,
After all the books he'd read.) It took
A haughty statement from Lord Burghley
(And other Privy Counc'lors) to convey
Kit Marley’s service to Her Majesty,
For University authorities
To give our hero his Master’s degree.
Burghley surely knew, what he’d been up to
During those weeks away from Cambridge U,
When a machiavellian coup de grace
Went down (to a sainted lady's loss).
Lord Burghley was Kit Marley’s main boss--
The Queen's top man--a Privy Councillor--
And, of Cambridge University, the Chancellor!

Babington Plot

One of the saddest tales this saga's got:
Is that of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots,
Confined for 16 years within the walls
Of castles in North England, ‘though no law
Was broken by the Scots’ unbroken Queen
(Unvisited by royal kin, or seen
By young King James (Darnley’s and) her son.
Her plight much-moved Anthony Babington,
And 13 of his idealistic friends--
Young Catholics whom the very dangers led…
To grisly ends. Then Mary lost her head.

If you haven’t heard the tale by now, here's how
The Virgin Queen’s men brought the harlot Queen down:
In 1586, Walsingham and Burghley framed
A double-cross on the above-named
Babington, by sending men to him one day--
Two spies who knew exactly what to say--
I mean, Nick Skeres and Mr. Robin Poley,
Who swore to God to love Queen Mary wholly,
Which Babington swallowed--hook, line and sinker,
(Not knowing Poley was a bloody winker,
A double-dealing Machiavellian thinker.)
So it was secretly arranged for words between
The Plotters and the imprisoned queen
To be conveyed in kegs of beer, concealed,
But intercepted to find treason well revealed!
Which panicked Babington, who tried to scram
And plea bargain with Francis Walsingham--
To no avail. Too bad. For Anthony & friends
Were given rope enough for gutsy ends:
First they were hanged, but kept alive,
Then sliced open, and quartered with knives,
Their entrails set aflame before their eyes,
And mutilated genitals stuffed in their mouths
For the titillation of the crowd.
Their property by law went to the crown.

For Mrs. Babington, tough luck.
Sir Walter Raleigh got her home and stuff
The families of the suckered men received
No succor from Lord Burghley or the Queen.
They lost their family heirlooms, land and homes--
All handed to the Queen’s well-favored groom:
Sir Walter Raleigh, the courtier, to whom
The Queen gave ear, which angered Walsingham
Who, after all, had brought about the scam!
(But he would get revenge on Raleigh soon,
By sending Walter’s Roanoke colony to doom.)
Queen Mary’s trial came six months later
The sentence was unnerving: "Decapitate her."

Tichbourne's elegy

Now hear another Catholic man who fell
From grace through Robin Poley’s lying spell.
Writing from The Tower, in a room or cell,
Chidioch Tichborn turned 25 in June
But he was facing execution very soon.
My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
my feast of ioy is but a dish of paine:
My Crop of corne is but a field of tares,(n. 4)
and al my good is but vaine hope of gaine.
The day is past, and yet I saw no sunne,
And now I liue, and now my life is done.
Four more stanzas Tichborne wrote, depressed
Because his days of youth would end so fast.

Philip Sidney's funeral, 1587

Do you remember Philip Sidney's noble end
From a bullet wound at Zutphen?
It took six months to get his body in a vault,
For whatever reason, or whoever's fault.
Was it Philip's debts? Was that a pretext
To defer his burial ‘til February next?
Until the very week the Queen of Scots was offed,
A funeral with heads of State well-coifed.
Today, it seems more like a PR ploy
Devised by William Cecil's hunchbacked boy,
Or by Sir Francis Walsingham, himself,
To put his son-in-law’s cadaver ‘on the shelf’
For months, then have a funeral procession--
To scotch Queen Mary’s saintly execution
You see, the Realm required a new hero,
And after Sidney, would come Devereux,
Whom Shakespeare praised, as some of you may know,
In Henry V, of love and war, his crowning show.

N.B. Poley and Skeres

A footnote to this telling tale is this,
I tell you now--or fail in this analysis:
Poley and Skeres, who hoodwinked Babington,
A few years later, witnessed Marley's killing done,
At Deptford, in a safe house of Burghley's cousin,
By a friend of Christopher’s best Patron.
That's all I'll say on Marley's death for now,
As to who, where, when, and how,
Because another subject must be sung--
About the Separatists, and one who hung
For Marley's benefit. It won't take long,

Dissent and suppression

With the major Catholic claimant (Mary) gone,
Another faction had to be undone:
Besides the roamin' Romans, wights within
The English Church refused to say "Amen"
To hierarchic practices and rites
Not followed by disciples of the Christ.
For when the Protestants first put the crown
Upon Eliza's head, they soon put down
All doubts about church rites in every town,
Through a common prayer-book liturgy:
Meaning no preaching, just dumb clergy
Reading from the Book of Common Prayer
And puppet Bishops, repetitious sayers
Of formulaic phrases, propped by Civil Law
Which angered John Penry and Nick Udall,
Who sought the Bishops’ quick downfall,
And Henry Barrow and John Greenwood,
Who both did everything on earth they could
To bring about religious tolerance
As did Separatists and Puritans,
Congregationalists and Presbyterians,
Who joined their hands and faith applied
To teach the Bishops better rules, supplied
By Christianity's New Testament--
Such as, God’s holy preachers need no vestment.
***
The man Elizabeth had oversee
The task of silencing effectively
The opposition's voice, lived lavishly,
Like Royalty, a prodigal spendthrift--
A certain stiff Archbishop John Whitgift.
Whose job it was to stifle all dissent
In print against the Church Establishment.
Archbishop John was quite a potentate
In charge of all the Anglican episcopate
(He even executed one some think a saint;
Maybe you think it’s Marley, but it ain’t.)

Welsh wizard

John Penry was a thorn in Whitgift's hide,
By sticking out his neck, in Welsh, he tried
To sharply criticize church polity
In The Exhortation and The Equity.
The upshot of John's argument was this--
Amend the Roman Catholic hierarchic
Structure of the English Church—and quick!

Penry believed he could convince the Queen
To make the changes needed for a clean
Renewal of her Church establishment,
If given leave to voice his argument
Against the Bishops, in her Royal presence.
John hoped to give the Bishops simple lessons:
What the Gospels and Epistles teach,
And state the need for learned Christian preachers
Who speak Welsh, in Wales, to native speakers.
(As Penry may have stated, tongue-in-cheek:
English ain’t the language that God speaks
In the land of Wales, where folks eat leeks.)

John Penry entered Cambridge when Kit did
When both of them were 16--kids
Intending to become men of the cloth
By working hard at school, avoiding sloth.
But John was not a literary "Wit"
He chose instead an Anglican church pulpit,
While Kit wrote poetry, he couldn’t help it.
***
John Penry was a family man. His wife
(Fair Eleanor Godfrey) and he gave life
To four sweet girls, one after another,
Each year after they conjoined together:
Safety, Comfort, Deliverance and Hope,
A source of strength for El, to help her cope
During the time that she was on the run
With John, in Scotland, fearing Whitgift's gun
(Which is metaphor, his true weapon
Was the royal Court of High Commission
With powers like the Spanish Inquisition,
To stamp out anti-factions and division,
Through torture and confinement in a prison.
(To overcome this state, was Penry’s mission,
Replace oppression with a Christian vision,
Based on the Bible’s plan and admonitions.)

High Court, Low Quartering

The Court of High Commission was set-up
By 12 Bishops in clerical get-up,
(Robes, big hats and staffs, that sort of stuff)
To force fanatic nonconformists to ‘shut up’--
To stop protesting the Official Faith.
At this High Court, no one pled 'the 5th':
A person could be asked to speak against himself,
Or give the name and deeds of someone else,
By means of painful torture if it helped
To unlock lips, or loosen silent tongues,
To stretch the limbs of luckless victims, hung
For long stretches of time, pulled this way and that
By the device of torture called 'the rack'.

The punishment for dissidents
Was execution. Ancient precedent
Dictated hanging, disembowelment
And quartering. Or burning at the stake
Could be the fate for doctrinal mistake,
As was the case with heretic Frank Kett,
A visionary preacher burned to death
For doubting Jesus (His Divinity), yet
"Blessed be God," Kett said, to his last breath.

And yet, the man Whitgift desired to get
His hands on most, was not Penry or Kett,
But one who used the pseudonym "Marprelate,"
Whose satire mocked Whitgift, who tried to quell it
Literarily, and thus I’ll tell it:

Mar who? 1588-90

Even as the Spanish launched Armada ships,
This landed enemy took pot-shots at Bishops,
In satirically persuasive essay tracts,
In which the writer revealed ribald facts
About the Bishops, making wise cracks
About their ignorance that couldn't be ignored
Oh yes, "Martin Marprelate" made holy war
On Archbishop Whitgift, and adjured
The Bishops under him, who lived like Kings,
(But didn't practice truly Christian things)
To change their ways, give up their rings.

Marprelate taunted Whitgift, urged "Sir John,"
(The Canterbury Caiphas) to 'bring it on',
So Whitgift hired Thomas Nash's wit,
Who smartly answer Martin's words with it,
Out-quipping the satirical Marprelate
In a pamphlet called An Almond for a Parrot.
Also, an all-out search of homes was made
To find the stealthy printer Walde-grave
Detain suspects, confiscate the press,
Interrogate until someone confessed.
This plan was carried out with small success:
For Martin's identity remained unsolved,
Because so many people were involved.
Tom Nash believed that Penry was to blame-
And others have suggested other names.
Some say Kit Marley wrote the first two tracts,
The other four by friends, to hide Kit’s tracks.
But there is this fact, that should be mentioned:
The first Martin Mar-prelate texts were penned
Expressly by the author for his friend --
A man of great learning--Anthony Bacon,
Francis's big brother, who had taken
Leave of home for Switzerland and France,
In order to improve his circumstance,
By meeting deep thinkers and leaders there
Like Beza, Montaigne, and (Prince) Henry Navarre.
In world affairs, the Bacons had few betters
(As Robert Devereux's most shrewd abettors),
Advising Earls of court matters in letters.
More on the Bacons and the Cecils later,
Because the curtain’s rising at the Theater,
In five-beat lines of rimed iambic meter:

That's Entertainment 1576-88

Our windy Prologue states: “By Jove, this blows!
Enough about old England’s civil woes,
Let’s hear about those London theater shows.”
And so, with no further ado, here goes:
On stages far and near, stage-plays for years
Were done by companies of players
Under the patronage of wealthy peers,
From Oxford, Pembroke, and Derby shires.
Each company pursued its own agenda:
Art for art's sake, or courtly propaganda.
Stage-plays could be 'morality' or 'mystery',
Conveying tales of Virtue or Church history,
While other plays were entertaining 'toys'
Performed at class establishments by boys.

The first theater was built in Southwark, London
When Kit was 12, by James Burbage and sons,
The handsome up-and-coming actor, Dick,
And cunning Cuthbert, who kept books and fixed
The theater’s stage props when they broke
While Richard coached the actors who misspoke.
The Burbages were smart, ambitious blokes.
The new establishment was named The Theater.
A decade later, a competitor
Named Henslowe built one on another street
(The Rose, he called it) with more seats.

You've heard of Philip Henslowe's Diary?
When Philip hired a play-writer, he'd
Make a note, to know how much was paid
To whom, and how much money each play made
With entries back to 1591,
You might say Philip rose to the occasion,
Employing the Lord Admiral's acting men,
Featuring his son-in-law, Edward Alleyn,
Who triumphed in the role of Tamburlaine
On the brand new theater stage, The Rose,
For whom Kit Marley and the 'wits' wrote shows.
By "wits" I mean Tom Nash and Robert Greene
George Peele and even Francis Bacon, lean
And mean, who teamed up for dramatic scenes
When patronage demanded--which made cents--
Fine penmanship commanded recompense.

The Earl of Oxfraud

The Earl of Oxford fits-in neatly here:
Edward DeVere. Was he “William Shakespeare”
As his proponents say? Small chance, I fear,
Although his roots were old aristocrat,
And he possessed a flair for the dramatic.

At 12, young Edward lost his dad,
And gained the oldest earldom in the land.
But Oxford 17, turned out to be a cad--
As the record shows, his acts were bad.
It’s true, he paid for complimentary verse,
And scenes his group of players could rehearse,
His comedies were judged among the best.
Read Ogburn if you want to know the rest.

Our subject is a poet much more great
Than Ned DeVere (despite his obscure fate):

Unless a well-versed Oxfordite can state
In poetry to expedite their candidate's
Hard case, accounting for no facts--zero--
That Ned DeVere was any kind of hero.

Is that a canon in your pocket?

While in his twenties, Marley wrote 6 plays,
Not published in his own name right away.
Some elegant translations, and a poem
About a lover-boy who swims from home:
Leander, who ‘falls hard’ at his first gander
At lovely Hero, of the tender gender:
A celibate virgin, a nun of Venus,
Quite ‘taken by’ Leander’s face and keenness.
In short, they ‘get it on’ in bed, he bangs her,
When she falls out of bed, the poet dangs her
Loathsome carriage to hell. Why? The answer
Lay in an illicit love affair
Of Kit’s involving one whose name was Audrey,
His best friend’s paramour, a bawdy story.
***
To tell the love-life of our hero, Kit,
Requires words as lovely as exist:
Phrases fragrant as a thousand posies;
Sentences more lyrical than prosey,
Like likening his lover’s mouth and pussy
To soft-moist clouds spread-out in sky above,
That stirred in bed his lightning bolt of love,
And she rained down on him and wet his head.
But so this narrative is not x-rated,
I’ll speak of Marley’s stage career instead,
And list the plays he penned while in his twenties,
With summaries, and helpful comment’ries.

First things Fustian

A few choice words for all my readership
About 16th century censorship:
The printing press was like the internet
To ignorant Elizabethans, but
Those writers had no freedom to express
Ideas and thoughts about forbidden subjects,
Such as the Elizabeth’s future successor:
Who would the ruler be? Anyone’s guess!
(Thanks to Henry VIII, a royal mess.)
On this, and other touchy or bad matters,
A careful watch was kept by Stationers,
Who registered all manuscripts, while Players
Answered Edward Tilney, Master of the Revels,
Whose role ensured that plays contained no evil
Scenes of sudden government upheaval
(Starring Kenneth Branagh and Vin Diesel)
If a stage-play sounded critical
Of government officials, or political,
Or was perceived to be inimical
To the church-state status quo, oh no,
The players were informed a scene must go,
Or substituted with another show.
***
On stage, in print, despite such censorship,
A brilliant wit like Thomas Nash could slip
A dig, small heap of praise, or slyly hip
Allusion to some well-known person or event:
A playwright understood--to circumvent
The censor's strict intent, and still be relevant,
Meant cloaking "here and now" things of the Age
In past events and places on the stage.

It's said that Tamburlaine was Walter Raleigh,
And Polonius in Hamlet was Lord Burghley
The character Hamlet, troubled Prince,
Was really Scot King James. The hints
Were obvious to playgoers of ‘92
If you were ‘in on it’ and had a clue.
Bards borrowed plots and stories from the past,
To make it possible to write plays fast,
And hit the boards before a reference passed
Into oblivion, where nothing lasts.

Tamburlaine the Great (1587-88)

Kit Marley soared to great dramatic heights
At 25, with Tamburlaine the Great
For the acting company of the Lord Admiral
About an atheist who conquers all.

A Shepherd, who became a … puissant
And mighty Monarch, who by rare
And wonderful Conquests, and for his tyranny
And war, was termed was termed The Scourge of God,

Hear what Prologue says (the voice is Kit’s):
From jigging veins of rhyming mother-wits,
And such conceits as clownage has in pay,
We'll lead you to the stately tent of war,
Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine
Threatening the world with high astounding terms,
And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword,
View but his picture in this tragic glass,
And then applaud his fortunes as you please.
A sequel came, by popular applause,
Because the general welcomes [it] receiv'd,
When he arrived last upon the stage
...Made our poet pen his Second Part,
Where Death cuts off the progress of his pomp,
And murderous Fates throw all his triumphs down.
Here (the play concludes)... let all things end...
Let earth and heaven his timeless death deplore
For both their worths will equal him no more!
The same was true for Kit Marley, for sure.
***

Willy make it? 1589

Let’s stretch our legs, reach for a foamy beer,
And visit Mr. Willie, um, Shakspere
At home, in Stratford, poaching deer
At 25, shacked-up with his wife, Ann,
Three little kids, and zero land.
But William had a simple little plan
To travel two days’ journey south
To London, England's largest town,
And be an actor--learn to smile, frown,
Speak dialogue by others written down.
***
Within a decade, William had it made
A one-tenth share of the Globe Theater trade,
A big house in his town, up on a hill,
And London colleagues calling upon Will
To come up with a play occasionally,
Which he accommodated easily
(Because he knew a man who knew Kit Marley).
***
But still, in 1589, Willy
(Our altar-hero) stayed with his family,
Considering the army, possibly,
While Penry was in Scotland munching lamb,
And Christopher in London in a jam
In ‘rapic’ poetry, with lines enjambed,
As creeks at flood will overflow a dam.
For now it’s time to sing to you of Tom,
And Tom, and Tom, and Tom, and Tom…and Tom

Too many Toms

Nash rambler

Six “Thomases” strut on the stage with Kit:
Like Thomas Nash, a close associate,
One of the Age’s most prolific Wits,
Nash called Kit an alchemist of eloquence,
Who sought to outbrave better pens,
By … swelling bombast of bragging blank verse.
Tom Nash was Marley’s friend (he could do worse),
More on this great prose writer later, first
Let’s meet the other Thomases in ruffs

No Kydding

Tom Kyd, a noverint, wrote plays and stuff
That paid enough for rent and puffs
Of smoke with Marley, with whom Kyd
Wrote dramas of revenge like Romans did.
Kit Marley must have got up this Tom’s dander,
Because the latter wrote two scathing letters
To Puckering, the Keeper, and his betters,
Implying that our hero was a traitor,
A secret Scot's succession perpetrator,
A violent haughty arrogant blasphemer
Tom Kyd, it seems, was quite a Marley-hater.
(He died without a patron one year later.)

Walsingham snapshots

The Thomas dearest to our hero’s breast
A noble man, his right hand on his chest,
The Tom who liked Kit Marley’s poems best
(As Shakespeare publisher, Ned Blount, attests).
Was Thomas Walsingham, whose special guest
Kit Marley was when placed under arrest.
***
His entrance to the story is belated,
But Tom’s effect on Marley’s life was fated
Early in the poet’s life. It’s stated
That the two of them were secret agents
Under Tom’s uncle Francis’ royal aegis,
Sir Francis Walsingham, spy for the ages.
***
At 25, Tom gained a large estate
Called Scadbury, where he and Kit would meet
To talk about the world, or the defeat
Of Spain, as Tom’s girlfriend was seated
By the window, feeling overheated.
Sex was how she got the things she needed,
Like getting Kit to get his poem completed.
She crossed her ankles, gazed at the bird-feeder,
She liked to listen, not much of a reader.

The lady, Audrey Shelton Walsingham,
May well have known of Marley’s death plan.
The history that Kit was in a brawl
At Deptford, at the home of Mrs. Bull
And killed by Tom and Audrey’s personal adviser
A bawdy serving man (?) named Ingram Frizer,
On May 30, 1593
In self-defense, as witnesses could see.

Travelin’ Tom Lodge

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to dodge
Tom Lodge in this hodge-podge, or lodge
Him nigh to Munday, or another drudge.
Tom Lodge wrote prose, practiced medicine,
Further in this tale, I'll add the parts found missin’
From his novel, Rosalynd, which Kit
Turned into the stage play, “As You Like It”
(Which is pronounced: “As You Lie, Kit.”)
It’s time to meet the next Tom on the list.

Tom Harriot, Trumpter of Roanoke

Swing low, sweet Hariot, Great scientist
And author of Artis Analyticae Praxis,
In Latin words, grammar, and syntax--
It’s over my head; I’ll stick to the main facts:
Tom Hariot developed global Science,
Embodied Renaissance self-reliance.
Math’matics and astronomy,
Solar optics and geography.
***
Tom Harriot belonged to Raleigh’s crew,
(As did John White and Captain Art Barlowe)
To launch a colony in the New World,
Before the hated Spanish flag unfurled.
***
Tom wrote a long, inaccurate account longhand,
A Briefe and True Report of the New…Land
Of life among the natives, a ‘puff piece’
In fact, the settlers didn’t have much peace.

An indictment against Kit later supposes
Tom’s miracles surpass the prophet Moses,
Since he made thorns appear a bed of roses.
No doubt Harriot deserves more space
In this quick summary of guys named Thomas,
We’ll return to Roanoke, I promise.

Elementary Tom Watson

Apparently Tom Watson practiced knavery
And fictions you would not believe, and he
Predated Shakespeare’s sonnet poetry,
A published master of good memory,
A madrigal musician, a man of bravery.
***
Tom died at 36, in ‘92,
Perhaps of deadly plague that went around
But a Latin poem or two by him were found
For Philip Sidney’s sister, Mary Pembroke,
Praiseworthy muse of whom all poets spoke,
So Christopher waxed Latinate and wrote
A preface. So, she was by Marley graced
Delia born of laurel-crowned race...
You are imparting now to [my] crude pen
Breathing of high and mighty rage...
So will I (Kit wrote)...on the first page
Of every poem invoke thee ...to my aid.
Mary Herbert's muse was for (the/all) Ages,
Kit testifies, in lofty Latin phrases.
Tom Watson’s story merits a few pages.

Bradley duel, 1589

With all those Thomases touched on, we can
Return to Marley, walking down Hog Lane,
At 25, in late 1589,
A successful playwright, feeling fine
When he’s accosted by a William Bradley
Who’s furious at Tom Watson, badly
Wants to do him in. (The two had been to court
Before, about some money cost.) In short,
Bold words were tossed, the two of them 'got hot’,
It looked as if our hero might hurt Bradley,
Soon Watson showed, and then the duel got deadly:
“Art thou now come? I’ll have a bout with thee,"
Bill belched, but Watson dueled more skillfully
Th’ attacker was run-through, and killed
In self-defense—or so the poets told
The jury and the judge, Sir Roger Manwood.
Tom did what any self-protecting man would,
But still, both men got sentenced to do time
In Newgate Prison, for the uncivil crime
Of murdering a man, and disturbing peace.
Tom Watson got four months, and Kit three weeks.

Marley's love life (CENSORED)
To read these verses, you must be at least 18 years old.
A valid credit card will not be required. click here.

Penry in Scotland

When last we saw John Penry in this tale,
Archbishop John was ‘hot upon his trail’
The Welshman fled to Scotland for a spell,
Because the churchmen there would never tell
Where John was hiding-out with his wife, El.
The Penrys lived in highland harmony,
A thrifty, thriving farming family,
With a deep well, and sheep out back, a bell
To tell the herding man of God ‘soup’s on’
As Penry with a fervent quill wrote on:
Theses Genevenses, was translated by John
And learned tracts against England’s religion.
Eventually Penry returned to London,
Because he got a special invitation,
Inviting his family’s participation
In planting seeds for a new nation
By joining with the Stepney congregation.
In a few months, John was incarcerated,
Tried and sentenced to death for so-called treason,
The word the high court used, the trumped-up reason.

Coining, 1592

Now cut to Holland’s drizzly coastal rain,
Where Marley got in trouble once again
In ‘92, for coining a Dutch shilling
In the little seaport town of Flushing,
About a year before his sudden killing.
It seems that Marley’s nemesis, Dick Baines
And Kit got interested in making coins,
Consulting with a goldsmith’s expertise
To satisfy their curiosities
(Or so they told English authorities).
When apprehended, animosities
Between the two of them were flying--
Each accused the other one of lying,
So both got put onto the next boat out
And sailed to England, with a stern note
But owlish Burghley didn’t give a hoot.
No punishment was meted out or paid:
The incident an innocent charade,
Part of a spy plot Burghley laid
To flush out enemies without fighting.

So Christopher continued play writing
(Like ‘that forward child, Understanding’)
And Baines got back to undercover back-biting,
An ignoramus, mean and underhanded.

Atheist Lecture

In the Dark Age we call Elizabethan
Many men rebellious, and bright women
Were ‘fed-up’ with tyranny’s oppression
Of free-thinking dissident expression.

Kit Marley harped-on ignorant religion,
Made fun of it in plays and conversation,
Creating atheists through his persuasion,
By showing inconsistencies, equivocation,
And pointing out outright prevarication,
In the holy book of Christian nations.

Kit's learning and sincerity shone through,
Some people were converted, more than a few.
Hear "cursed Richard Chumley" now, won't you?

He sayeth and verily believeth,
That one Marlowe is able to show more
Sound reasons for atheism than
Any divine in England is able to give
To prove divinity & that Marlowe told him
That he hath read the Atheist Lecture
To Sir Walter Raleigh and others.

Now just what was this ‘atheist lecture’
Allegedly Kit read. Astute conjecture
Based on the facts, analysis acute
By England’s master literary sleuth,
Mr. Peter Farey, illuminates the truth:
It seems that Marley wrote a book against
The Scriptures and the Trinity nonsense
Based on Arian, and ancient documents,
So natch, Archbishop Whitgift took offense
At Marley’s atheistic evidence
That proved the Church to be more curse than blessing
I’d quote it, but the manuscript’s long missing.
We know about it, thanks to a brief letter
Sent to Robert Cecil by a go-getter,
Drury. Shall we get to know him better?

Drury Letter

Greene, with envy, 1592

Not all Kit’s enemies were paid-for spies,
For one well-rounded friend told flat-out lies.
Prodigiously productive Robert Greene,
Descended from the tower of academe
To write first-person(al) pop prose
And history plays for Philip Henslowe's Rose.

Dramatically, Greene earned the needed shillings
For wine, immodest women, and red herring,
By selling comedies and head-stirring
Journalistic pieces. That’s about it:
At the end of his life, he gave Kit Marley shit
In a booklet titled "A Groatsworth of Wit,"
Accusing Kit of being "atheist":
A sign that Kit was on the John Whitgift’s list.

"Wonder not, thou … gracer of Tragedians,"
Greene posed in somber prose death-bedian,
That he, the author, Robert, would give glory
To God’s greatness, tell a different story
Than what he boasted of in younger days
(When he was writing popular stage-plays)
And the idea of God was just an ancient craze.
Greene cautions Kit against Nick Machiavelli,
Whose Policy upsets the social belly,
“What are his rules, but … mockeries?” he asks.
For this and more, Greene takes the 'Wits' to task:
Telling Nashe, Kit Marley and George Peele
To use their writing skills for things more real
Than writing dialogue for upstart crows
On Philip Henslowe’s stage, The Rose.
(In Groatsworth Green’s friends all felt his foul fettle,
Though some said it really was penned by Hen Chettle.)

Upstart Crow

Penry arrest and trial, March 93

John Penry was arrested in March of '93,
And marched right into church-state custody,
Since private words discovered in his study
Implied Her Majesty to be ungodly.
John said he didn’t mean it, but too late,
His sentence was to hang, asphyxiate,
Unless some high-placed friend could obviate
The punishment, as had been done for Udall,
The theologian Separatist, that Fall.
But things did not look promising at all:
In April, John Greenwood and Henry Barrow,
Christian men, who walked the straight and narrow
Path of righteousness as Separatists
Were hanged and quartered--off the “hit list,”
Not boding well for John Penry’s requests
To Lord Burghley and the Earl of Essex.

Ovid

School of Night 2

Venus and Adonis, 1

As Penry penned those letters from the prison
Kit Marley dared pursue another vision,
Based on mythology, invention and revision.
In April, '93 (one month before
Kit shuffled off to Italy’s back door,
His mortal coil intact, but insecure)
A classic narrative was registered
With the Company of Stationers,
Anonymously. The name “William Shakespeare”
Was not given in the booklist entry,
But two weeks after Marley left the country,
Venus & Adonis was in print all pretty,
With the pen-name “William Shakespeare” signed
To Henry Rosely, on the bottom line
Of a lengthy dedication message.
You’ll find no name upon the title page,
Kit Marley sought more noble patronage.
The pearl of "Venus" (and gem "Rape of Lucrece")
Were penned by Kit, especially to please
The 3rd Earl of Southampton, Henry Rosely,
(A ward of Marley’s boss, Lord Burghley,
Who watched the youthful Earl quite closely.)

Henry went to Cambridge when Kit did:
Earned a “Masters” like him and read Ovid,
The banished Roman poet, whose poetic lines
Preceded "Shakespeare's" hasty dedication
Of *Venus* to Henry in humble supplication.
Vilia miretur vulgus: mihi flavu Apollo
Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua.
These are the first words Shakespeare sings:
Let the vulgar admire vile things
For me golden-haired Apollo brings
Cups full of water from Castillian springs.

Cursus (foiled again)

(Marlowe’s Ovidian versus Spenser’s “Virgilian” cursus)

Lewd verses

Archbishop Whitgift hated Marley’s attitude:
Kit’s statements made the prelate come unglued,
He hired a hack writer to pen some crude
Verses after Robert Greene’s Groatsworth, a lewd
Offensive poem by Richard Baines, who’d
Earlier been linked with Marley to the crime
Of coining, but now counterfeited rime:

“You strangers that do inhabit in this land,
“Note this same writing, do it understand.
“Conceive it well, for safeguard of your lives,
“Your goods, your children, and your dearest wives.”

For forty-nine more lines the Huguenots,
(Dutch Protestants) were damned by this have-not
In wretched verses signed by "Tamburlaine,"
As though by Kit, but actually by Baines.

Remember Thomas Kyd? He ‘took the fall’
For writing those lewd verses on the Wall.
His house was searched, his documents inspected,
Eventually they found what they expected:
An essay on the ancient heresy
Of Arian , who claimed no Trinity,
Maintaining only ONE divinity.
Tom Kyd denied the document was his,
“It must be Christopher Marley's,” he says,
"We shared a writing chamber for a year,
And Marley must've left that paper here.”

No Kydding

Then tragically Tom Kyd, was ‘taken in’
For torture and intense interrogation,
While Christopher enjoyed a brief vacation,
Away from deadly plays and London plague,
At Walsingham’s estate at Scadbury,
With Thomas and his well-red-headed Audrey,
George Chapman, Matt Royden, and the bawdy
Serving man of Walsingham, Frizer,
Who later helped commit Kit Marley’s murder.

The poet read his manuscript to friends
About two mortal lovers at the end
Of courtship: Hero and her hunk, Leander,
When in walked Sheriff Henry Maunder.
Kit’s mouth dropped. He knew he was ‘a goner’
He wished he’d stayed instead with William Vaughan--
For hanged, quartered, disemboweled, or burned
Like Francis Kett, was not the fate he'd earned
By being the Queen’s agent for 8 years,
And writing plays as great as early “Shakespeare’s.”

Star treatment

No record now exists (or ever will)
Of his examination by the Council,
Presided by Archbishop John Whitgift,
And other servants of Elizabeth
Like Lord Burghley, Lord Keeper Puckering,
Two friends of Christopher, and Lord Buckhurst,
Lord Chamberlain and Lord Derby (who cursed
The path he walked. Kit’s enemy, but not his worst.)
Archbishop Whitgift must’ve spoken first.
Yet, no one dropped the other shoe;
Somehow Marley was freed without ado
On one condition-- that he promise to
Return to Council Chambers every day
In case the Star Chamber had more to say.

Within ten days, Kit Marley was killed dead.
A two-inch stab-wound in his fore-head.
Yet even after this, poor Thomas Kyd
Was kept and tortured on the rack,
So he would ‘dish the goods’ on Kit. In fact,
Tom told of Marley’s blasphemies and jests
(Like Jesus loving John the Baptist best)
And of his plans to go to Scotland (spying,
Or sucking up to James, to be twice king)
Etcetera, in letters to Lord Puckering.

So why was Puckering so fixed on Marley,
While the poet walked away scot-free?
Why wasn't Marley also put to rack,
Instead of asked politely to come back?
It makes no sense, unless the Council gods
Gave Christopher a triple-headed nod,
A secret ‘off-the-books’ covert arrangement,
Involving banishment, life-long estrangement.
And just to ‘seal the deal’, make sure it stuck,
They’d kill him with a feathered quill-pen’s stroke.

Essex and violence

Who orchestrated Christopher’s release?
Did Devereux, the Earl of Essex, plead
Kit’s case to soften-up the tough old Queen?
His servant, Skere’s was at the murder scene.
Did Burghley cough-up politic advice?
(He’d bailed out Kit before--not once but twice.)
Would not great men help cushion Marley’s fall?
Sir Walter Raleigh teamed with Devereux that Fall
To save the preacher Nicholas Udall.
Would they do so for Christopher? Stand tall?
There’s no good reason why they wouldn’t at all.
Lord Burghley counsels mercy from the Queen.
"Banished for life," she answers, sounding mean.
“Like that Roman poet--Ovid, the lover,
Away from my realm, Marley goes forever."
(A sentence not without precedent, in fact--
A month before, the Council passed an Act
Against non-conformists, naming banishment,
Under some circumstances, which leant
Legal pretext to Kit’s punishment.)
Then wicked John Whitgift, of Canterbury, got
Our altered hero’s head, or so he thought.

Suicide Hero

Perhaps you wonder, was it necessary
To kill Kit Marley legally? Yes, very!
Exile was not severe enough, back then,
For one espousing “anti-Christian” doctrine
(Although Marley was not the anti-Christ
He did mock hypocrites and criticize
Some biblical mistakes and tall-tale lies.)
So death, alone, would do--or a good sham.
But whose decision was the Deptford scam?
Francis Bacon’s? Thomas Walsingham’s?
Or was the hoax the poet’s own idea?
Self-abnegating rite of suicide?
The death of public self by legal quill,
A quasi-execution by act of Will?
***
Classical heroes played out such behavior:
Suicide like that of Christ, the Savior,
But with a philosophic twist to savor:
Like poisoned Socrates, or chaste Lucrece,
Who killed herself on purpose, to erase
The stain of Tarquin’s tyranny and sin.
Or the Latin poet (Seneca's kin)
Who wrote of Roman Civil Wars—Lucan.
He 'took his medicine' and didn't hide
When ordered to commit suicide
For plotting death to Emperor Nero.
Perhaps Kit Marley chose the same--to be a hero
(Starring Johnny Depp or Lee Decaprio)
Or, if you like, try this scenario

Faked Death scenario

At Essex Place, May 25th, at night,
A richly-furnished room, in candlelight,
Kit Marley hears the sentence of his fate--
Something he didn’t quite anticipate:
"Banished-to-death” the Earl of Essex states,
“By order of the Queen, so save your breath,”
...Banish[ed], Kit says, Be merciful, say ‘death,’
(Like in some William Shakespeare book)
For exile hath more terror in his look,
Much more than death. Do not say "banishment."
Your death is what Archbishop Whitgift wants,
As does Her Majesty.” “That old cunt,”
Thought Francis Bacon, “If I may be blunt:
Methinks a little literary hoax
Will let you keep on writing poetry for folks
With an invented name, and a new home
In Italy, far-off, for years to come.”
****
“Invent a name?” Kit thought, “How about Will?
To indicate a poet of some skill.
Will what? Something from my verse perhaps
With shivering spears enforcing thunder-claps . . . .    (3.2.80)
Shaking their swords, their spears . . . .          (4.1.26).
Sitting in scarlet on their armèd spears.        (5.2.55)
My words are swords, Kit mused, it’s really true
“I WILL (Achilles-like) shake spears,
I WILL be known as ‘William Shakespeare’
And first I’ll write a poem about Lucrece,
The woman who was raped, and to save face
Committed suicide for her own peace.
Perhaps I’ll leave some clues, a trace
Of my past life, in poems and plays,”
Kit thought. “My face unseen, save to the mind.”
“A man named Will Shakespeare, we’ll try to find,
Exactly your same age, with a face unlined,”
Said Francis Bacon, brilliant mastermind,
As he studied Thomas Walsingham’s behind.

The Plan

At Essex House that night, rough plans were laid
For Christopher to be stabbed in the head
By Walsingham’s close confidante and fixer,
Ingram Frizer, Audrey Walsingham’s adviser.
But not Kit's head, another’s would be struck:
A man his age, a prisoner out of luck.
I mean, John Penry, the reforming ‘Saint’
Nearby in a Newgate prison, seeking aid
From both the Earl of Essex and Lord Burghley,
Requesting help, so he’d treated fairly.
John had no clue whatever of the need
They had for a cadaver that could bleed
From a two-inch knife-wound in the head:
A lifeless ‘stunt-man’ lying nere the bed.
Of course, the corpse of John Penry would do
For the jury of 16 to view:
He was the age and status of our hero,
The chances of discovery were zero:
Since eyewitnesses were seasoned spies
Who made a lifelong living telling lies,
And the Coroner, one-of-the-guys.

Although his written pleas gave Penry hope,
Unfortunately for John, it was ‘no soap':
No matter how persuasive his appeal,
His fate, like Kit’s was permanently sealed
In a machiavellian ‘backroom deal’
To substitute the Welshman’s just-dead corpse
At Marley’s murder inquest in short course,
And the man who had dead bodies very handy
The Royal Coroner, named William Danby,
Was trustworthy a man as can be, surely,
A longtime colleague of Lord Burghley.

His task was simple--render an opinion
On cause of death, after an inquisition.
And just in case the facts should leave some doubt,
The Queen herself made sure to spell it out,
A few weeks afterwards, in legal parlance
To state that Ingram Frizer’s act of violence
Was done to Christopher in self-defense.

Go Down, Marley

So here’s how it ‘went down’, I’m thinking:
On the 29th of May, early evening,
(The day before the not-so sudden end
Of Kit, only 2 miles away, in Deptford Strand.)
Shortly after John was finished dining
With no notice to his kin, or warning,
He was escorted to St. Thomas Watering
Quickly, for slow hanging, but no quartering,
(Archbishop Whitgift did the ordering)

Neither John’s wife nor daughters saw his death,
Strangling, dangling by the neck,
As he struggled for his final breath,
A flash of Whitgift’s face, a violent kick--
John Penry’s life was over pretty quick
His body was transported that same night
To ‘stand-in’ for Kit Marley in a fight
The next day, soon after rigor mortis
Ran its stiff-to-slackened-muscles course.
***
The Coroner had been in Deptford at a friend’s
When he got word of Marley’s sudden end
From Mistress Bull, whose house nearby
Is where Marley got stabbed above the eye.
(He knew of Christopher, but from afar:
A gentleman and scholar gone too far,
A rising meteor, a shooting star).
So William Danby got up from his chair,
To go to Mistress Bulls, directly there,
Where witnesses all swore that Marley 'got it'.
"Self-defense," they lied, the jurors ‘bought it’.
Thanks to William Danby, no one caught it.

Baines' Note

It still was not enough that Marley died.
Archbishop Whitgift wasn’t satisfied,
So Richard Baines was duly authorized
To list Kit’s blasphemies and bad-taste jokes
Like loving boys and pipe tobacco smoke,
And scientific doubt about the holy Bible
(Its time-frame wholly unreliable)
And the new church liturgy not viable.
Baines swore Kit admired Catholic Mass,
Thought Protestants were hypocrites and asses.
The poet’s mouth must be stopped, he added
Before he ended his damnable note,
You can read it for yourself, quote for quote:

But note that when the Note was copied for the Queen
Phrases and dates were changed. What does this mean?
Treasonous and lewd remarks were cut,
And the date Kit's mouth finally got shut
Doesn’t fit the date he was interred.
And "Violent and fearful death" was altered
To read "sudden and fearful end of his life" instead.
Historian Nicholl suspects deliberate fudging,
A "tidying up" to remove some smudging,
But Nicholl's view of Christopher is grudging.

Either the Queen was totally deceived,
Or, Her Majesty also believed
Kit Marley’s life to be worth saving,
Despite free-thoughts, and sometimes misbehaving.

Conclusion?

False History tells the William Shakespeare story:
An actor writing plays for cash, not glory,
And Christopher was murdered in a brawl
About a bill for food and alcohol,
And Ingram Frizer got a royal pardon,
And England got its own exiled bard,
And Marley’s name was totally obscured,
(So well, that it may never be restored)
His name bestain’d with lies and sland’rous mud
(They said, at death, he cursed the name of God!)
Aye! The ‘bad ink’ that our hero got
Inspired sheets of plays without a blot:
Tragedies and Comedies with plots
About exile and reconciliation,
And History plays about the English nation,
Renowned today for their supremacy
(Which Will Shakspere, obtained in secrecy)
Revealing Marley's re-invented self:
You'll find them on the 'William Shakespeare' shelf

Copyright © 2000, 2003 David A. More

COMING SOON—Part 2 of The Marliad featuring the accession of King James, the rise of Lord Burghley’s son, Robert Cecil, the Gunpowder Plot, The Burning of The Globe and more.