An exploration of the crash-and-burn bard whose wayward life-style and bad-boy reputation led to his death at 29, stabbed through the eye in a tavern brawl in Deptford in 1593. Born the son of a Canterbury shoemaker, Marlowe went on to write "Tamburlaine", "The Jew of Malta" and "Doctor Faustus". He was soon the leading literary light of his generation. But he was also mixed up with political intrigue, spying, witchcraft, alchemy and the School of the Night, and was awaiting trial for atheism when he was killed. The book investigates the conspiracy surrounding Marlowe's death, the subject of conjecture for over 400 years. It proposes that Marlowe was a victim of a contract killing, a desperate measure to prevent him from revealing the names of other atheists including members of the Government and, perhaps, even Lord Burghley himself. There were plenty of motives for Marlowe's death and, in the seething melting pot of Elizabethan England, plots, real and imagined, were everywhere.
- ISBN10 0750926899
- ISBN13 9780750926898
- Publish Date 21 June 2001
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 16 February 2017
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher The History Press Ltd
- Imprint Sutton Publishing Ltd
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 288
- Language English