God's Spies - Spenser and Marlowe

Prologue - Too Many Bloody Marys

God’s Spies – Spenser and Marlowe

“Come, let's away to prison:
We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage:
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too,
Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out;
And take upon's the mystery of things,
As if we were God's spies …” [from King Lear, Act V, scene iii]

This is a story about ‘William Shakespeare’. While some scholars assert that a different writer was the actual author of Shakespeare’s plays, like Francis Bacon or the Earl of Oxford, there’s not much evidence for these two. However, one other theory that gathers much evidence is that Christopher Marlowe was the actual playwright. Much has been written about Marlowe and much has been written about Shakespeare, and while some of it is very interesting, some of it is merely hearsay or gossip or imagined. Trying to unravel what is myth and what is possible, and what we should believe about their lives, is often a painstaking and thought-provoking exercise, but one that however might bring us a little closer to seeing the real ‘William Shakespeare’ and the real Christopher Marlowe, and to glimpse a story of what might have been.

Prologue – Too Many Bloody Marys 

Queen Elizabeth, the last of the English Tudors                        

To be able to look at the life of Christopher Marlowe, and to wonder if Marlowe became ‘William Shakespeare’, we will have to look at Queen Elizabeth and to look at what was going on in the world when she became queen. First, we shall try to add a short overview of the overall political situation in England and in Europe at that time. [it is somewhat hard to follow, because there are just so many bloody marys in the tale.]

The biggest problem for England at that time was Charles Hapsburg, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, the Netherlands and parts of Italy. The only thing that stood in the way of total Hapsburg (and Venetian) domination of Europe was France. So, what side would England be on?

When Henry VIII died in 1547, his 9-year-old son Edward (son of Henry VIII and his 3^rd wife, Jane Seymour) became king but he died 5 years later, in 1553. But in his last will, Edward named Lady Jane Grey as his heir – not his stepsisters, Mary or Elizabeth. Jane Grey was grand-daughter of Mary Tudor, the daughter of Henry VII – not to be confused with Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VIII.

A fight broke out over the succession, with the Duke of Northumberland wanting Jane Grey to remain as queen, and others wanting Mary Tudor (daughter of Henry VIII and his 1^st wife, Catherine of Aragon) to become queen.  Mary’s supporters militarily prevailed, and the Privy Council which had at first made Jane queen, reversed its decision, and installed Mary I as queen. Northumberland and Lady Grey were afterwards arrested and executed.

When Mary I was two years old, she was promised in marriage to Francis Valois of France, but that promise was broken, and later she was promised to Charles Hapsburg, but that promise was also broken. Then a marriage was arranged between Mary I and Philip Hapsburg. England was now part of the Hapsburg orbit.

[note the political in-fighting going on in England over the succession and marriage alliances]

In September 1558, Charles V died, leaving the Holy Roman Empire to his brother Ferdinand, and leaving the kingdom and the empire of Spain (including the Americas and the Netherlands) to Philip (the husband of Mary I).

But when Mary I died in November 1558, Elizabeth (daughter of Henry VIII and his 2^nd wife, Anne Boleyn) became queen, and it was then proposed that she marry Philip of Spain, but this was delayed and then was rejected. Then, a proposal came from Emperor Ferdinand for Elizabeth to marry his son, Charles, but that was also rejected. Soon, a marriage proposal was also attempted between Elizabeth and Robert Dudley, the son of Northumberland (after Dudley’s first wife died in September 1560).

This was the world that Elizabeth entered as Queen of England. Which side would Elizabeth ally with – France or Spain? Elizabeth’s policy initially was simply defensive, trying to stall any ‘Catholic’ uprisings in Scotland, from Spain or from France, which could be used by those wishing to replace Elizabeth with Mary Stuart – even though Henry VIII’s will had excluded the Stuarts as heirs to the throne.

[Mary Stuart was a grand-daughter of Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII]

Henry II of France had declared war, over Italy, against the Holy Roman Empire in 1551, and made strategic alliances with Suleiman, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and with protestant German princes, against Charles.

[Note: one of the admirals of Suleiman was Admiral (Reis) Piri, known for his famous world maps!!! How much of the nautical knowledge, to be found in Arabic, Persian and Turkish writings, was shared with the French ?!?]

*This should show that it was not a religious war – certain protestant movements as well as the Jesuit movement were created and used to weaken the targeted nation states, making them less able to resist the new world order.*

In 1557, under Mary I, England declared war on France and had sent troops to assist Philip in the Italian war, that would temporarily end in 1559. In 1559, Philip of Spain married Elizabeth, daughter of France’s Henry II! But in July, Henry II died, and his brother, Francis II became king. When Francis was 4-years-old, he had been betrothed to 6-year-old Mary Stuart, daughter of James V of Scotland and Mary of Guise – (the Guise faction in France was backed/bankrolled by the Hapsburgs, and advised by the Jesuits), and so Mary moved to France where she was raised, and they were married in 1558.

A treaty between England (Elizabeth) and France (Francis and Mary) for the withdrawal of troops, both English and French, from Scotland was drawn up in July 1560. But Mary of Guise (regent of Scotland on behalf of her daughter Mary Stuart) died in June 1560, and Francis died in December 1560, and his 10-year-old younger brother Charles IX became king of France. Mary Stuart, who now became Queen of Scotland, was advised not to ratify the treaty because it declared Elizabeth to be Queen of England, as Mary had her own claim to be the queen of England – Henry II had proclaimed Francis and Mary to be king and queen of England.

In 1562, the massacre of hundreds of Huguenots at Vassy, France by troops of the Duke of Guise started the ‘war of religion’ in France. Elizabeth sent troops to aid the protestants at Le Havre but they had to retreat, and a peace treaty was signed with France in April 1564 (after Elizabeth had recovered of nearly dying of smallpox).

[Elizabeth was to say that she had no complaint against ‘the French nation’, but ‘only against the house of Guise’; and that Francis and Mary were manipulated by ‘the principals of the house of Guise’.]

Elizabeth would not accept a marriage of Mary to another son of France, or to a Hapsburg, Spanish or Austrian, but wanted instead to see her marry an English nobleman, and proposed that she marry Robert Dudley, now the Earl of Leicester. When Mary insisted in turn, on a recognition of her right in the English succession, Elizabeth refused, and the proposal was ended. Instead in 1565, Mary would marry Henry Stuart, grandson of Margaret Tudor, the daughter of Henry VII, which put him also in the succession picture. To oppose this claim of succession to the throne of England, it was proposed, again, that Elizabeth marry Charles Hapsburg of Austria, or to marry Henry Valois, the Duke of Anjou, son of Henry II.

[For herself privately, Elizabeth decided not to marry, as a marriage would force her to share half of her ruling power and would also force her into alliances based on a marriage contract and not on sound policy. And, in not naming a successor, she would remember when Mary I was queen, and she was ‘second’ in line to be successor – “I am sure not one of them, was ever a second person, as I have been, and tasted of the practices against my sister. I stood in danger of my life; my sister was so incensed against me: I did differ from her in religion, and I was sought for divers ways. And so shall never be my successor.”]

When Henry Stuart was murdered in February 1567, less than 6 months later, Mary married James Hepburn, the Earl of Bothwell, who many of the Scottish lords had suspected of being behind the murder of Henry Stuart. The armies of these opposing lords forced Bothwell to flee to Norway. The Scottish lords forced Mary to surrender and to abdicate the throne, in favor of her infant son, James. Elizabeth, although condemning Mary’s actions, tried unsuccessfully to have Mary restored on the throne. Mary later escaped her imprisonment and sought safety in England, with Elizabeth. Would Mary be kept a semi-prisoner in England (where intrigue would attempt to place her on the English throne) or be returned to Scotland (where intrigue would throw Scotland into renewed turmoil), or be sent to France (where French intrigue would stir up her claim to the English throne)?

After a failed attempt at marrying the Duke of Norfolk to Mary, and a failed northern rebellion against Elizabeth that followed, a bull was issued in March 1570 by Pope Pius V (the former inquisitor general) that declared Elizabeth to be a heretic, and excommunicated her and all her adherents, and absolved the English Catholics of any obedience to her or they would also be excommunicated. Papal funds would be promised for Spanish troops to invade England and join with Mary and her supporters. When the plot was uncovered, Norfolk was arrested for treason, tried and executed. A bill was debated but did not pass that would have tried Mary for treason, but when a bill was passed by Parliament that denied Mary’s right to succession, it was vetoed by Elizabeth.

[Elizabeth would punish or disapprove any rebellion but also defend the established order, as a means for stability.]

In France, an attempt to stop the French civil war was made through two arranged marriages to form alliances – in 1570, Charles IX married Elizabeth Hapsburg, daughter of Maximilian, Holy Roman Emperor; and in 1572 Charles’s sister, Margaret, was married to Henry Navarre, a leading French Huguenot. But as people, including dignitaries and nobles – Catholics and Huguenots, thronged into Paris for the wedding of Henry and Margaret, the Duke of Guise had Gaspard de Coligny, the leader of the Huguenots, murdered, and in the aftermath, the Paris mob erupted into the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, and religious war broke out in France.

Charles’s health deteriorated rapidly after this, and he died in 1574. His brother, Henry III now became king of France. His youngest brother, Hercule, who changed his name to Francis, ‘supposedly’ differed with his brother Henry III, and so he fled the court to join with Henry of Navarre, who had also fled the court, and their combined forces would force the king to grant the freedom of worship to the protestants of France.

In 1579, a marriage was proposed between 24-year-old Francis Hercule and 46-year-old Elizabeth, forming an alliance between England and France – promising to end the religious war by toleration of Protestants in France, promising to end Catholic conspiracies against Elizabeth in England, and proposing the support of both England and France (plus the Ottoman ally of France) for the Dutch revolt in the Spanish Netherlands. Henry III and Elizabeth did agree to jointly finance Francis Hercule, who was invited by William of Orange to become the Protector of the Liberty of the Netherlands. When his mission failed, and his engagement to Elizabeth was ended, he returned to France. But in 1584, Francis died of ‘malaria’ in June, William of Orange was assassinated in July, and in December a treaty was signed between Philip of Spain and the Guise’s Catholic League to recognize Cardinal Charles Bourbon as heir to the throne of France, and to oppose the next-in-line to the throne, his nephew, Henry Bourbon, King of Navarre, who had been an ally of Francis Hercule.

In response, Elizabeth signed the treaty of Nonsuch in August 1585, pledging to assist the Dutch in their fight against the Spanish army. Philip II (now the king of Spain and Portugal) considered this an act of war by England against Spain – the war that Elizabeth had done everything to avoid, by delaying and evading and non-committing. Elizabeth also made an alliance with Ahmad al-Mansur, the Sultan of Morocco.

It is at this crisis point, this most important of crossroads in the history of England, that we see the entry onto the world stage of Christopher Marlowe.

[ next week - act 1 - Ralegh, Spenser and Marlowe ]