Volume 53, Number 6 · April 6, 2006

Who Killed Christopher Marlowe?

By Stephen Greenblatt
The World of Christopher Marlowe
by David Riggs

Owl Books, 411 pp., $17.00 (paper)

Christopher Marlowe: Poet and Spy
by Park Honan

Oxford University Press, 421 pp., $32.50

On the morning of May 30, 1593, twenty-nine-year-old Christopher Marlowe made his way to an appointment he had in Deptford, a small town on the Thames, a few miles downriver from London Bridge. The appointment was for 10 AM at a house that belonged to a widow named Eleanor Bull. There Marlowe met three men with whom he was already well acquainted, Ingram Frizer, Nicholas Skeres, and Robert Poley. The four sat all morning in quiet conversation, had lunch together, and afterward walked for some time in widow Bull's garden. At about 6 PM they returned inside for supper. Along with the table at which they ate, the room contained a bed, on which Marlowe lay down after dining; the other three continued to sit next to each other on a single bench, their backs to their reclining companion.



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