Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An outstanding piece of historical detective work., 18 May 2001
This is one of the best books about Elizabethan England I have ever read, but it is much more than that. Charles Nicholls has reached back four hundred years to tear aside the web of subterfuge which has obscured the crime that struck down a genius in his prime. Marlowe was a meteoric, if controversial talent, outstripping all his rivals, including the young Shakespeare. But his dealings with the vicious underworld of Elizabeth's police state brought him within the orbit of utterly ruthless men. For a time he was able to keep one step ahead of retribution, but in the end he had strayed too far beyond the acceptable limits of official tolerance. This book is a fascinating testament to the persistence and insight of an outstanding detective, as Charles Nicholls manages, in spite of elapsed time and concerted attempts at concealment, to piece together a story more fascinating than any fictional murder investigation. His insight into the period, his grasp of significant detail, his ability to see beyond the obvious, and above all the sheer depth of his knowledge make this book a work of considerable scholarship, but it doesn't read like a scholarly work. It reads like one of the most gripping thrillers you could ever find. The best book I read all year.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Keeping an eye on Marly, 24 Jul 2004
Part of the reason this story is so captivating is the unknown element; there are things that we don't know about and questions we will never know the answer to. Marlowe's life between his time at Corpus Christi and his death was intertwined with that of the Elizabethan secret service, distancing it even further from the truth. But that's what makes you want to read this book - you want to know what happened, where he went and with who. You want to be able to solve the mystery of why he was murdered. Short of some significant new evidence coming forward we will never really know what happened in Deptford on 30th May 1593, but this book proves that all is not as it seems with the official story. It walks down the back streets and alleyways of Elizabethan England and reports to you what it sees.I'm in the process of reading this book for the fourth time, and I know it won't be the last. The story is fascinating, and I guarantee that once you start it you will want to follow it through every twist and turn it takes.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Incredible research but leaves too much unanswered, 15 Mar 2007
In 1593, the brilliant playwright Christopher Marlowe was stabbed to death in a tavern brawl in Deptford, London. The official record stated that this row was over the bill, or "recknynge". The truth, believes Nicholl, is much darker: a murder, by the shadowy agents of the Elizabethan secret service.
Nicholl's investigation rarely concerns itself with the playwright or his texts, instead beginning with the three men present at Marlowe's death. Ingram Frizer was a swindler and a loan-shark, who admitted the stabbing but claimed self-defense, and was acquitted with unusual, probably suspicious, speed just weeks later. Nicholas Skeeres was a government intelligence agent, probably paid by the Earl of Essex or his faction. And Robert Poley seems to have been the very epitome of a contemporary spy, double-dealing, double-crossing, trusted by nobody, listened to by all. Nicholl takes these three men, questioning why Marlowe should have been dining with them, and builds an incredibly detailed picture of the lower eschelons of society, those circles seldom seen beneath the glamour of the Court.
Following the meagre clues left in government, judicial and prison records, and Cambridge kitchen bills, Nicholl painstakingly builds up a picture of what life was like for these men, collecting information for their superiors for which they might be thanked or might be imprisoned, creating treasonous plots to see who joined up, passing on scandalous libel. Though records relating to Marlowe himself are frustratingly infrequent, he plausibly supplements them with evidence about the other young and talented writers also taken into government service.
The resulting picture, of a police state where everyone watched their back and their mouth, will be a shock to those brought up on the idea of an Elizabethan golden age. What Nicholl does demonstrate very well is that the pro-Catholic, anti-Elizabeth plots we know so well were just the tip of the iceberg, and were promulgated, if not instigated, by government agents just like Poley.
Though Nicholl never promised a biography, I would have liked more about Marlowe himself. One thing I did think I knew about Marlowe before I began this, was that he was gay. Nicholl dismisses this as another meaningless slur on Marlowe's character by the informer Baines: "We do not quite know what it meant to be gay in Elizabethan England" [p. 432]. Well, no, we probably don't, but passing up the chance to try to find out isn't going to change that. Considering the quantity of dead trees expended on Shakespeare's lovely boy, I think there is at least a question to be asked about Marlowe's "Come live with me and be my love", and (the much older) Sir Walter Raleigh's response, "If all the world and love were young". As Nicholl ultimately attributes Marlowe's death to those aiming to discredit Raleigh, the relationship between the two men needs proper consideration.
Similarly, as so many of his contemporaries met their end in prison and torture, I would like to have known, or at least speculated, just what it was about Marlowe that, after eight hours' discussion, necessitated his murder. There was enough evidence on file, be it fabricated or not, to have arrested him ten times over: so why the knife? Nicholl has done an incredible job of research here, uncovering the details and the personae of the shady world in which Marlowe moved; yet central to the mystery must be the man himself, and he seems to remain in shadow. I cannot help thinking that the central question has not yet quite been answered.
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