Christopher Marlowe: 007 On May 30th, 1593, in South-East London, Christopher Marlowe, a 29 year-old, well-known playwright (and sometimes spy) was viciously stabbed to death. The details surrounding this murder are shrouded with talk of espionage, heresy, and power (picture: James Bond, Elizabethan Theatre style). It is well-known that Christopher Marlowe was a government spy under Sir Francis Walsingham and that two witnesses to his death were also spies under the same man (with the murderer himself being Walsingham’s business consultant, hmm), but most information surrounding Marlowe’s death is completely unknown. In fact, all that’s actually known are these specific details: 1) Christopher Marlowe received a fatal dagger wound just above …show more content…
The hollow theories are the theories that have little or no evidence behind them. They are not to be taken too seriously, although still interesting to think about. 1) The head of Queen Elizabeth’s spies only appreciated the practice of clean orthodox Protestant theatre, so he himself had Marlowe eliminated. 2) Queen Elizabeth herself ordered Marlowe’s death for reasons unknown. 3) Marlowe’s patron’s, Sir Francis Walsingham, wife planned Marlowe’s death (this one is obviously flawed—Walsingham was unmarried at the time of Marlowe’s death). Now, on to the real theories—the ones with actual reasoning behind them. The first of these is based on Marlowe’s employer. Marlowe was first brought into the Queen’s ring of spies by Sir Francis Walsingham, who acted as a patron for Marlowe. So, when news of Marlowe’s heresy was being spread, Walsingham retracted any connection he had to Marlowe and went so far as to eliminate Marlowe as a threat to his own name. After all, he couldn’t publicly support a famous heretic. While this theory seems a little far-fetched, it is rather suspicious that the two witnesses worked for Walsingham and that the murderer himself did as well—concocting a story to cover the murder would’ve been all too