Roaring Boys by Judith Cook Read Free Book Online Page A

Sir Francis Walsingham, the Queen’s spymaster. Sir Francis was on the lookout for bright young professionals to act as secret agents, rather than the ragtag of informers and intelligencers who made up most of the secret service of the day, and it is assumed that Thomas introduced his friend to his uncle. It is easy to see why espionage would appeal to Marlowe, who had supreme confidence in his own intellect and ability to outmatch anyone that might be set against him. Thus he was drawn into Walsingham’s net and into that shadowy world, both exciting and enticing, from which those who enter can never properly escape.
    From then on his story has overtones of a thriller, for twice while he was up at university he disappeared completely without any explanation, on the first occasion for seven weeks during his second year 1582/3, then again for over half a term during his final year when he was taking his MA. He went down from Cambridge for good at the end of the Lent Term of 1584 and duly applied for his MA to be granted to him, but it was withheld by the university authorities on the grounds that he had spent insufficient time at his studies. What happened next is unprecedented.
    In a letter to the college authorities from Walsingham on behalf of the Privy Council, he informs them that ‘whereas it was reported that Christopher Marlowe was determined to have gone beyond the seas to Rheims and there remain, their Lordships thought it good to certify that he had no such intent; but that in all his actions he had behaved himself orderly and discreetly, whereby he had done her Majesty good service and deserved to be rewarded for his faithful dealing’. Therefore Marlowe should be granted his MA and any rumours that he was frittering away his time on the continent quashed ‘by all possible means. . . . Because it was not her Majesty’s pleasure that anyone employed, as he had been, in matters touching the benefit of his country should be defamed by those that are ignorant of the affairs he went about.’ 5
    In other words, Marlowe had been spying for England. The reference to Rheims suggests that he had been attending the Catholic Seminary there, founded by the Englishman, Dr Allen, and originally situated in Douai but more recently moved to Rheims. The seminary was a centre for disaffected English students drawn to the old Faith and was notorious as a hotbed of intrigue and a powerhouse for plots. Allen and his colleagues did not only support Philip II in his proposed invasion of England, but actively assisted those plotting to put Mary Stuart on the English throne. What better way was there of discovering what was going on there than by infiltrating an agent into the seminary in the guise of a dissident Catholic student? Another reason for thinking that this is what he was doing was that in
The Jew of Malta
he has his villain, Barabas the Jew, discuss the merits of poisoning the public wells in order to cause the maximum public panic, the possibility of which was under serious discussion in Rheims at the time.
    Becoming a secret agent was not the only major difference between Marlowe and the rest of the new theatrical professionals. He was almost certainly gay and, unlike his contemporaries, he had already made waves as a dramatist and poet before he had even come down from Cambridge. His physical and mental energy must have been prodigious for as well as studying, taking his two degrees and spying for Walsingham, he found time to translate Ovid’s erotic verse, adapt Virgil’s
Tragedy of Dido
for the stage and write the first part of
Tamburlaine
. The play, which introduced theatre-goers to Marlowe’s ‘mighty line’, was first performed in 1587 and became an immediate smash hit rocketing him into celebrity status, a position of which he took every advantage.
    Compared to Marlowe, William Shakespeare’s journey to the London playhouses was slow and is largely unknown, as is how he was drawn to the theatre in the first