Christopher Marlowe: Poet & Spy

by Park Honan

Christopher Marlowe's life was the most spectacular of any English dramatist. One of the great playwrights of his age, second only to Shakespeare, he was also a secret agent as well as the central figure in a murder mystery. Now, Park Honan offers the most thoroughly researched and detailed biography of Marlowe to appear in over fifty years.
Honan, the acclaimed biographer of Shakespeare, takes us from Marlowe's childhood in Canterbury to his mysterious death in Deptford, shedding much light on this shadowy individual. The book features new information on Marlowe's six-and-a-half years at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, his shocking blasphemy and his street fights, his methods of preparing himself for writing, and his alleged atheism. The book includes new facts about Marlowe's adventures on the continent, where he was caught with a counterfeit coin, a hanging offense, but talked his way out of the noose and was returned to England in irons. Honan describes his attraction to scientists such as Thomas Harriot and other hard-headed realists bent on innovation and free thought. In addition, there are new details on spies and business agents that Marlowe knew, a more exact account of the circumstances that led to his murder, and a fresh description of his evolving relationship with Shakespeare.
The author of Tamberlaine the Great and Doctor Faustus , Christopher Marlowe changed the nature of the English stage. Researched in archives in England, Europe, and the United States, this superb biography paints an unforgettable portrait of one of the most remarkable figures in English literature.

Genres: Biography, History, Nonfiction, Espionage, British Literature

421 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Leonard Hobart Park Honan (17 September 1928 – 27 September 2014) was an American academic and author who spent most of his career in the UK. He wrote widely on the lives of authors and poets and published important biographies of such writers as Robert Browning, Matthew Arnold, Jane Austen, William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe.

Honan began his career specializing in Victorian literature but later broadened his scope, becoming an expert in the Elizabethan period. From 1959, he taught at Connecticut College and then Brown University before relocating permanently to England in 1968, where he taught at the University of Birmingham until becoming Professor of English and American Literature at the University of Leeds in 1984. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Reviews

[Sean Gibson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kit Marlowe should be a compelling biographical subject. Epic plays? Bar fights? Rivalry with Bill Shakespeare? Alleged spying?! How can this NOT be amazing??

Sadly, there's not a whole lot of actual, you know, evidence about Marlowe's life, and so this is mostly conjecture on what he MIGHT have done or said or thought, and none of it is particularly engaging. It's by no means the author's fault that the historical record is lacking, but if speculation is the name of the game, I prefer mine wild and unfounded.

I'd take a pass unless you're truly desperate to know the few nuggets of Marlowian fact that are out there.

[izzie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not one to read scholarly journals/texts but I’m a sl*t for history and especially Kit Marlowe. Unfortunately there’s not a lot on him that can be taken as fact, so this journal was %99 guessing and a FEW recorded dates when he went to collage. But other than that, it was a really damn interesting appropriation. I’ve always been fascinated with Shakespeare so when I learnt about Marlowe who was also a poet in 16th century London who was a gay, spy and who’s death/murder, still to this day, remains a cool case? Heck you know I had to dig deep! Loved this academic text, but god I just wish we factually knew more about him :(

[Fran · Rating 2 out of 5]

EDIT 10.11.2022: I am farther into the semester and my research on Marlowe and hoo boy...this is worse than I initially believed. Tempted to give it one star but we'll see.

This is perfectly adequate and does a good job of painting a picture of Marlowe's life...but that's all it is, a painting, not photography. The author does far too much conjecture without a source for my taste, and there is a lot of talk of Marlowe's hypothetical inner thoughts and feelings that seemed more to come from the author, not Marlowe himself. A good portion of this book is dedicated to literary analysis of his plays, too, which I found unnecessary in its length.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Park Honan's reconstruction of Christopher Marlowe's biography is an exercise in oblique inference, where even the protagonist's name is uncertain and its orthography slippery. His recorded words, outside of those penned in works of poetry and drama, are few and far between, and often delivered by hostile witnesses. We see Marlowe (or more often, as per his own signature, 'Marley') rather through the networks of espionage agents, unscrupulous social climbers, and fellow artists in which he became enmeshed as he sought to forge his own path from cobbler's son to cosmopolitan intellectual. In the end, Honan suggests, it was the cutthroat self-interest of some of those acquaintances - to say nothing of their impatience with Marlowe's often dangerously satirical and willfully provocative attitude - that demanded the poet's death.

Even Marlowe's literary output is not entirely without ambiguities, particularly in the chronology of his works' composition and revision, but a convincing case is made for his definitive impact on the art of the Elizabethan stage, and no less upon the dramaturgy of Shakespeare. While Honan's expository style is sometimes impressionistically fragmented, piling up allusions and characterizations that are left undeveloped and unpursued, the very obfuscation and complication of his subject tend to draw the reader along like the promising threads of a good mystery.

[Brian Willis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honan's biography of Shakespeare was good, solid, no-nonsense stuff so I was looking forward to this book on a life for which we have more primary sources, although not nearly enough to know everything. And while this is an excellent overview of the life and times, including interesting new information on the portrait believed to be of Marlowe (featured on the cover), his time at Cambridge, and forensic evidence on the fatal wound, there is still paradoxically less to be known about Marlowe than Shakespeare. Why? Because Marlowe's short career leaves us less theatrical evidence to surmise his business dealings, his collaborations, and his reputation than Shakespeare's does. So we can actually make more solid speculation based on evidence for Shakespeare than Marlowe, because Marlowe's career lasted half a decade, and Shakespeare's reputation never waned.

Ultimately, I enjoyed reading this book primarily for the information on his Canterbury youth as well as strong readings of his plays and their unusual voice. But I still walk away from the book not feeling like I know the subject as a human being, which is usually the feeling I get from the very best biographies. Part of this is because of the subject himself and the dearth of evidence, but also part of this is the book as well. While I admire Marlowe for his courageous lifestyle and his innovations in drama, I still feel after this book that I am looking at a distant subject rather than having spent a few minutes chatting. The account of his murder is a bit muddled in my opinion (nothing will top Charles Nicholl's superb book The Reckoning), and I'm not fully sure we'll ever know the real reason he was bumped off, though Honan certainly gives it a good go. It is very clear however that Marlowe had a temper that got him into trouble, that he made many enemies, and that his outspoken nature also made him a target for the establishment. All in all, the plays are the best record of the man, but this book is a good, and pleasant, read that looks over his life story.

[Brackman1066 · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a little frustrating--Honan did quite a bit of psychological analysis on little (or sometimes no) evidence. That's OK in moderation, but to my taste, he overindulged and it felt a little like padding. Others may disagree, though, and if you're new to the whole debate over Marlowe's life, death, and career as a spy, this is probably a good general introduction.

[Edwin Wong · Rating 2 out of 5]

Doctor Faustus and Tamburlaine fascinated me sufficiently that I went looking for a book about the life of Christopher Marlowe. There.s always good introductions in Penguin editions, and The Complete Plays with an introduction by J.B. Steane is no exception. It turns out Marlowe was an exact contemporary with Shakespeare (born 1564) and:

…the son of a reasonably wealthy shoemaker. He was educated at King’s School, Canterbury, and received a scholarship to Corpus Christi, Cambridge, where he obtained his B.A. in 1584. He appears to have been involved in a secret political mission, travelling abroad as a foreign agent. The university authorities suspected him of wishing to enter the English seminary in Rheims as a Catholic convert and it was only through the intervention of the Privy Council that he was awarded his M.A. in 1587.

A spy? A Catholic in Protestant England? Cool. Penguin introductions are more an appetizer than a main course though. They didn.t have From Mankind to Marlowe at the public library (which was the first choice due to the captivating title). In fact they didn.t have very much at all. But there was a newer smart looking title on the shelves Christopher Marlowe: Poet & Spy by Park Honan.

It came out in 2005 published by none other than the mighty Oxford University Press. I was looking forward to the read. Since there were chapters on The Tamburlaine Phenomenon and Doctor Faustus, there.s where I started. In the chapter on Tamburlaine, Honan speculates that the geographical discrepancies in the campaigns of Tamburlaine and his associates were due to outdated maps at Cambridge. He even identifies a possible map Marlowe may have used. Very impressive. To be honest, it was difficult following the campaign trail in the play. Persia, Fez, Morocco, Argier, Turkey, Damascus, Arabia, Egypt, Natolia, Jerusalem, Trebizon, Soria, Babylon, Africa, and so on. It seemed like he conquered some places twice. And what is the difference exactly between Persian and Natolia and Turkey? It.s good to know the map.s there if I ever look into this some more. The parts on the ranging of powers between Catholics, Protestants, and Ottomans is illuminating as well. It turns out the Protestants and Ottomans had a common enemy in Catholicism at this time.

Now, when I was going to school, what they taught was that it was one of the seven deadly sins of academia to extract biographical details on the author from his works. It was a no-no. My own view of this?–well it always struck me that one should be able to tell something about the author from what he writes; what one writes is part of what he does and the author is, in a way, what he writes. Of course there are limits to how far this can go, but it.s always possible to read a book and at least extrapolate enough biographical details that you could determine whether, if you met the author, he.d be an interesting person to share a beer with.

So, speaking of the seven deadly sins, here.s Honan.s analysis of Faust.s encounter with the seven deadly sins in the play:

After so much insemination, the minx Lechery pictures copulation itself: ‘I am one that loves an inch of raw mutton better than an ell of fried stockfish.’ At that time, ‘raw mutton’ was a term for lust of prostitutes, and ‘stockfish’ (or a dried-up piece of cod) was a slang word of abuse implying sexual deficiency. A modern, rather fastidious editor advises that Lechery says, in effect, that she ‘prefers a small quantity of virility to a large extent of impotence’. There is, however, and explicit allusion to a small, active and sucking penis in Lechery’s fondness for ‘an inch of raw mutton’, and to absolute sexual failure in ‘an ell’ (45 inches) of inadequate copulating. As in his version of Ovid’s Amores, Marlowe comically heightens in this play not virility, but impotence, since this is what is most striking in Lechery’s entire speech. Was Marlowe impotent? The truth of the matter is that he was extremely interested in desire…

‘Was Marlowe impotent?’–are you kidding?!? That.s one question that would not occur to me to think of after reading that episode. Covetousness also talks about gold in that episode. Are we also to infer that Marlowe had a stash of gold hidden away? The encounter with the seven deadly sins seemed to me rather part of the spectacle of the play where Mephistophilis helps Faust kill time before the twenty-four years expires. It is beyond me how Honan extracts the question of Marlowe.s virility from Faustus’ encounter with Lechery.

There.s a bit too much of this type of conjecture in the book for me. While the two chapters on Tamburlaine and Doctor Faustus were interesting, I.m returning this volume to the library and still on the lookout for a book on the life of this most extraordinary poet and playwright.

[Teddy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I mostly skimmed this book since I wasn't interested in reading the whole thing, but I really enjoyed it. It's an in-depth, detailed biography and does a good job of discussing how the world and environment around him shaped his life and his writing. Definitely one of the better books about Marlowe that I've picked up. Great footnotes and bibliography, & strikes me as a useful springboard for further research after reading.

[Henry L. Racicot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite the dryness of the text, I appreciate Christopher Marlowe: Poet & Spy for taking me away for a few hours from our vulgar, stupid, dull-of-wit age, and placing me back in an era where one produced one’s own amusements by one’s own wit. Marlowe was caustic, sarcastic, edgy and above all, clever. He had a classically educated, sophisticated cleverness which is sorely lacking in our dumbed-down day.

[Pat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like so many books about specific figures in the 16th century, Honan has to make a bunch of stuff up. Your tolerance for that will strongly condition your enjoyment.
The book is definitely worth it for the details and minutiae Honan has found in the archive.

And this: guys in places where you can buy alcohol get drunk, get into arguments, and do stupid, violent things. Sometimes people die as a result. I don't think Marlowe died of conspiracy. I think he died of culture.

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Detailed and very readable biography of an incredibly fascinating historical figure, though it does contain a good bit of speculation at times. I very much enjoyed the in-depth discussion of all of Marlowe's plays.

[John]

I've read about half of Honan's biography of Marlowe. Because I don't know the state of documentary sources that relate to Marlowe, I can't really judge the book too harshly. It may well be that Honan has wrung all the information and informed, reasonable conjecture that can possibly extract from the bits and snippets that survive. I do wish that he had spent fewer words on context and more on developing his sense of the human being, however. Apparently with subjects such as Marlowe, it appears one has a choice: to commit to paper's onse sense of the person (together with one's reasons and as much evidence that exists) or to forego writing a biography altogether.

Having written a biography of an entirely obscure individual, I certainly understand the difficulties of such an undertaking, but in the end one chooses to write what one can or not to write at all.

Having finished the book...
I really wish Honan had spent more words on his sense of the person acting in the situations he presents. I found the piling up of detail regarding context and secondary persons a bit tedious. I had the impression that Honan was filling pages with as much information, no matter how remotely related or tangential, as he could collect.

Perhaps the surviving material doesn't justify a book. Certainly Honan doesn't make the case.

[Pete daPixie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Any regular reader of historical non-fiction will be well aware of an author's ability to extract telling detail from seeming innocuous scraps of information long hidden in dusty archives. Park Honan's 'Christopher Marlowe-Poet & Spy' (2005) appears to stitch together a biography of the enigmatic Elizabethan from the barest of threads. The author is Emeritus Professor at the School of English, University of Leeds. Having previously published a biography of Shakespeare, he walks on familiar ground here.
However, I found it hard to put real flesh on the bones of this poet and spy. Marlowe (Marley) remains something of a historical iceberg, where only a small part of this person is revealed above the surface. Much of this book benefits from the expert analysis of the man through his written works, namely 'Dido', 'Tamburlaine', 'Dr. Faustus', 'The Jew of Malta', 'Edward II' and 'Hero and Leander'. I'm not sure how much analysis of the poet's canon lifts the fog of time, or gets us any closer to unveil the mysteries of Marlowe.
Was he recruited as a government agent at Cambridge? Was he employed as a tutor to Arbella Stuart as proposed by Sarah Gristwood in her biography of 'Arbella', published 2003? Whatever circumstances were behind the murder at Deptford in 1593 remains unknown and perhaps unknowable.

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

As you would expect, this book is mostly sheer speculation. While a good bit is known about Christopher Marlowe (and Shakespeare) despite him not being a history-moving lord or baron, there isn’t enough fact to fill a biography. And thus we end up with a kind of sociological biography of the subject's time and place.

Honan keeps it moderately interesting, but there are long stretches of minutia and people that are hard to follow and the desire to skip forward is irresistible. And frankly, amid all the speculation, I think I missed some of the key facts of Marlowe’s life. These should be called out somehow. Hidden in these mounds of speculation is a grain of truth, but that truth is easily overlooked or lost in the immense granary.

If you are an avid Marlowe reader, this is interesting and I’d recommend it. Honan provides a close reading of Marlowe’s wonderful plays (but you have to wonder about some of his biographical readings).

If you don’t have much interest in Tudor England, this is probably a book you can skip.

[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good book to evoke the times and life of the poet, but there seem to be a lot of educated guesses and leaps-of-faith here. Perhaps there is more documentary proof of some of the relationships therein, but perhaps, in trying to make it more like a biography(and less a research thesis), some things got lost along the way.

[Evalyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the great poets and playwrights during the Renaissance, Christopher Marlowe might have been more of a challenge to Shakespeare's legacy if he had lived longer. This book explores his writing and his assistance to the Queen as a spy. Of all the playwrights in their time (and since), Shakespeare excelled, and was definitely the best, but Marlowe certainly deserves runner-up status.

[Melisende · Rating 5 out of 5]

A serious look at the life and career of one of England's greatest writers (sorry Will). Marlowe was an enigmatic and mysterious man whose work often goes without due credit. I am slightly biased as I personally love Marlowe.

[David Serxner]

Very well written so far. It always amazes me the amount of work that go into a biography like this.

[Vicki Mullen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was all over the place and hard to read. I learned more about the people around Marlow then I did about him.

[Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

Workmanly biography of Christopher Marlowe, well explained but never catches fire. Nicely chosen illustrations.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars