bred general suspicion and unease, was the death of Sir Francis Walsingham. His demise resulted in a major political vacancy, that of Secretary of State to the Privy Council, bringing with it the role of spymaster. It was a position which had been coveted by Lord Burleigh’s son, Sir Robert Cecil, for many years, and his father, as Elizabeth’s oldest and most trusted minister, did all he could to ensure his son achieved it, which he did in all but name. However, for whatever reason Elizabeth showed little enthusiasm for making his position official with the result that Cecil was the ‘acting’ Secretary of State (unpaid) for the next seven years. No doubt the Queen saw this as a useful economy.
It was during the winter of 1591/2 that the first signs of plague began to appear. There was scarcely a year without a handful of cases, but this was to prove an epidemic of appalling proportions, killing 10,675 people before it finally ran its course. Almost at once the government ordered the closure of theatres and other public places where people gathered, as a result of which the Rose Theatre was shut from February until the following Christmas; this forced the players, faced with the prospect of having no income at all, to go on the road. Alleyn headed a company made up of actors from several London companies which toured under the name of Lord Strange’s Men. In spite of it being such a gloomy spring, Alleyn had married Henslowe’s stepdaughter, Joan Woodward, thus bringing about, as one commentator has it, ‘Henslow-Alleyn theatrical enterprises’. While it might have been very useful for Alleyn to stitch himself into the Henslowe family, his letters to Joan when out on tour also show a true and genuine affection for her.
However neither the onset of the plague nor his monarch’s obvious lack of enthusiasm in any way diminished Sir Robert Cecil’s zeal for the job in hand, whether or not his position had been officially confirmed. While Walsingham was a clever politician who could when necessary be quite ruthless, Cecil was an even less sympathetic character. Clever, cold, calculating and in both senses of the word truly Machiavellian, he saw the internal security of the country as his top priority. His intelligencers were everywhere. Jesuit priests were hunted down with ruthless efficiency and when found were tortured before being hanged, drawn and quartered. Those whose loyalty was only mildly questionable, or who were thought to be making overtures to King James in Edinburgh as they looked to their future, were put under the sixteenth-century equivalent of surveillance. The atmosphere became increasingly one of unease and suspicion bordering on paranoia.
It is therefore not surprising that Marlowe’s increasingly reckless behaviour was beginning to draw the attention of the authorities. His first real clash with the law had occurred as far back as 1589 and it was by no means all his fault. The report of the subsequent inquest held in September 1589 on one William Bradley, ‘lying dead and slain of a wound, six inches in depth and one inch in breadth, in the right side of his chest’, records the results of a fatal sword fight. 5 Bradley, a quarrelsome young man prone to easy violence, was the son of an innkeeper in Gray’s Inn Lane and had been in a long-running quarrel with Marlowe’s friend and fellow university wit, Thomas Watson. Marlowe had probably first met Watson through Thomas Walsingham, for Watson had been in Paris in 1581 when Walsingham’s uncle, Sir Francis, was spending some time there. Apparently Sir Francis admired Watson’s poetry and his ‘tunes’, or madrigals, and encouraged him to have his work published, which he did to considerable acclaim. Music remained a great love and as well as the poets and dramatists, he numbered composers like William Byrd among his friends. His background was, however, an odd one for while he appears to have studied Law in Italy, he is also said to have
It was during the winter of 1591/2 that the first signs of plague began to appear. There was scarcely a year without a handful of cases, but this was to prove an epidemic of appalling proportions, killing 10,675 people before it finally ran its course. Almost at once the government ordered the closure of theatres and other public places where people gathered, as a result of which the Rose Theatre was shut from February until the following Christmas; this forced the players, faced with the prospect of having no income at all, to go on the road. Alleyn headed a company made up of actors from several London companies which toured under the name of Lord Strange’s Men. In spite of it being such a gloomy spring, Alleyn had married Henslowe’s stepdaughter, Joan Woodward, thus bringing about, as one commentator has it, ‘Henslow-Alleyn theatrical enterprises’. While it might have been very useful for Alleyn to stitch himself into the Henslowe family, his letters to Joan when out on tour also show a true and genuine affection for her.
However neither the onset of the plague nor his monarch’s obvious lack of enthusiasm in any way diminished Sir Robert Cecil’s zeal for the job in hand, whether or not his position had been officially confirmed. While Walsingham was a clever politician who could when necessary be quite ruthless, Cecil was an even less sympathetic character. Clever, cold, calculating and in both senses of the word truly Machiavellian, he saw the internal security of the country as his top priority. His intelligencers were everywhere. Jesuit priests were hunted down with ruthless efficiency and when found were tortured before being hanged, drawn and quartered. Those whose loyalty was only mildly questionable, or who were thought to be making overtures to King James in Edinburgh as they looked to their future, were put under the sixteenth-century equivalent of surveillance. The atmosphere became increasingly one of unease and suspicion bordering on paranoia.
It is therefore not surprising that Marlowe’s increasingly reckless behaviour was beginning to draw the attention of the authorities. His first real clash with the law had occurred as far back as 1589 and it was by no means all his fault. The report of the subsequent inquest held in September 1589 on one William Bradley, ‘lying dead and slain of a wound, six inches in depth and one inch in breadth, in the right side of his chest’, records the results of a fatal sword fight. 5 Bradley, a quarrelsome young man prone to easy violence, was the son of an innkeeper in Gray’s Inn Lane and had been in a long-running quarrel with Marlowe’s friend and fellow university wit, Thomas Watson. Marlowe had probably first met Watson through Thomas Walsingham, for Watson had been in Paris in 1581 when Walsingham’s uncle, Sir Francis, was spending some time there. Apparently Sir Francis admired Watson’s poetry and his ‘tunes’, or madrigals, and encouraged him to have his work published, which he did to considerable acclaim. Music remained a great love and as well as the poets and dramatists, he numbered composers like William Byrd among his friends. His background was, however, an odd one for while he appears to have studied Law in Italy, he is also said to have
Similar Books
