Vulgar History - Shakespeare's Rival Was A Bisexual Spy

00:00:00.000 hello and welcome to vulgar history of feminist women's history comedy podcast

00:00:18.800 my name is ann foster and this is a super special episode i am so excited to bring you the first

00:00:25.500 ever vulgar history presents i don't know i don't have a cute name for it but it's an interview

00:00:30.860 with author alison epstein whose book a tip for the hangman is coming out real soon um february

00:00:37.980 9th i believe and it is a historical spy thriller the characters in it include queen elizabeth the

00:00:47.620 first mary queen of scots the main character is a man named christopher marlowe aka kit marlowe

00:00:54.900 And basically, as soon as I heard that this book was being published, I was just like, can I interview you for the podcast? Because thus far, we've been looking at women's history, women's life. Christopher Marlowe is, if a man can live with a tits out energy, he absolutely did.

00:01:14.200 this story has as they say everything we've got wizards we've got spies we've got murder we've got 0.91

00:01:22.220 a woman bashing herself to death with a cage we've got possible faked deaths it's truly got

00:01:31.300 everything you want in a vulgar history type story and so i hope you enjoy this interview

00:01:35.600 with allison epstein so i'm joined today by allison epstein welcome allison thank you very

00:01:42.960 excited to be here. So you have a book coming out, and we're going to talk about other stuff. But

00:01:47.380 first, I want to make sure we talk about your book so we don't forget to talk about it. So it is your

00:01:51.340 debut novel, and it's called A Tip for the Hangman. And can you explain what it's about for

00:01:56.840 everybody? Yes, I can. It is a historical thriller that I'm describing as Shakespeare in Love meets

00:02:03.420 James Bond. So if that appeals to you. It is a spy novel set in 16th century Elizabethan England

00:02:11.940 about a contemporary of Shakespeare named Kit Marlowe

00:02:16.140 who somehow gets tied into Queen Elizabeth's spy network

00:02:21.360 and has to stop an assassination

00:02:23.220 before the entire country goes to war.

00:02:26.360 Amazing.

00:02:27.320 This is like everything about that.

00:02:28.800 I'm just like, please.

00:02:30.440 Yes, thank you.

00:02:31.940 And you didn't even say-

00:02:33.300 It does not have-

00:02:33.860 I didn't even say what.

00:02:35.200 You didn't even mention that Mary Queen of Scots is in it,

00:02:37.340 which is like-

00:02:37.820 Oh, I didn't.

00:02:39.240 I'm already on board

00:02:40.240 and Mary Queen of Scots is there.

00:02:41.940 That's a bonus for the vulgar history crowd is there is a good long time with Mary Queen of Scots, who I love to death.

00:02:48.980 Oh, my God. Amazing. And so this time period, I on purpose didn't.

00:02:52.800 So we're talking today about Kit Marlowe, a.k.a. Christopher Marlowe. Yes.

00:02:57.100 Yes. Yes. And so I on purpose didn't read about him because I want you to tell me all these exciting facts.

00:03:02.500 And I can ask all the questions that other people who don't know who he is can ask as well.

00:03:07.040 um but i guess my first question like we're going to go through his whole biography and stuff but

00:03:13.560 like was he so he's i assume the james bond figure in this yes yes i would not say he's the

00:03:19.600 the suavest or the coolest james bond but he is the most spy-y of all of them if you will was he

00:03:27.840 a spy in real life the the general consensus is 98 sure yes it is one of those things where

00:03:36.900 it's impossible to say for sure because they don't keep lists of everybody who was a secret

00:03:41.340 agent because that makes it really hard to be a secret agent but yeah like most historians will

00:03:46.460 say yeah almost almost for sure wait and so he's also a playwright right yes was that a common thing

00:03:54.740 to multitask in that way to be a spy slash day job um it was common to be a playwright and had a day

00:04:02.520 job most of the time your day job was not international espionage I would not say that is

00:04:08.820 that is common it it's I think I would say pretty confidently he's the highest profile person that

00:04:15.560 we suspect was tied up in Queen Elizabeth's spy network it's kind of like if Quentin Tarantino

00:04:21.100 was a spy like it's a bad idea you would think if you're that famous yeah like the entertainment

00:04:27.980 industry to also be an undercover agent but he made it work for a while so set the scene

00:04:34.560 christopher marlowe is i don't know what sort of information you have to share with me are we

00:04:39.060 starting with like he was born like do you have do you know when he was born a lot of times i don't

00:04:43.260 know when people are born i do because um he is i believe the first man that we are featuring on

00:04:50.100 a feature-length episode of vulgar history and so therefore we have more information wacky how

00:04:55.980 that works thrilling oh my god that's what i should say yeah this is our first ever man special

00:05:00.160 so i wanted to explain to the listeners like it's not like it's 2021 and now this is a man

00:05:06.580 history podcast it's still not but what i love about this story or what i'm interested in learning

00:05:11.360 about in the story is like i've talked about women and all the like awful men who are awful to them

00:05:15.440 but christopher merlo i feel like is a cool guy so this is like a guy who's okay special episode

00:05:21.740 like non well I don't know I don't know maybe he wasn't you're going to teach me a lot of stuff I

00:05:26.360 guess but I feel like yeah the reason that and the reason I feel like he is an interesting person

00:05:32.880 to profile on this podcast which by the way I loved and am thrilled to be on here is I think 0.98

00:05:39.000 Kit Marlowe lived with tits out energy he did not have tits but he lived as if his tits were out at 0.94

00:05:44.260 all times this is the sense I get like the story fits okay no that's the thing so when I say I 0.97

00:05:49.920 didn't research him i did do some vague skimming just so i would kind of know like what time period

00:05:54.880 are we looking at and i did pass by um like you know words that popped out at me controversy

00:06:00.740 like scandal like espionage i'm like okay this is like this is a story i'm excited about because

00:06:06.460 usually the men in the stories that i look at are like and he was the earl of whatever and he married

00:06:11.200 this woman and like he got then he became the duke of whatever and i'm just like i don't care

00:06:15.680 this is like extraordinarily boring this guy okay so sorry set the scene again he is born

00:06:21.660 and he is born in february ish 1564 in canterbury in england which is like if you go to london and

00:06:30.560 then you travel for like 30 minutes on a train you're in canterbury canterbury famous for the

00:06:35.140 canterbury tales famous for the canterbury tales for the cathedral and i don't think very much

00:06:41.480 else who's to say I'm sure someone will tell me what else happened there so we know when he was

00:06:46.360 born because he was assigned male at birth but was he also like wealthy-ish like what was his family

00:06:52.180 situation he was not he was the oldest son of a shoemaker so he I think his parents had six

00:07:01.600 children total and so he was very much working class family um the only reason he ever really

00:07:08.500 got out of his father's house and kind of made it out into the world of Elizabethan injury because

00:07:14.480 he ended up getting a full ride scholarship to college when he was around about 18 or 19 and

00:07:22.980 that didn't happen very often to people who were not the earl of whatever shire right okay this is

00:07:29.200 interesting to me and so I think we should also explain like you clearly have information about

00:07:33.340 him which is great information is recorded about him unusual for this podcast but you also wrote

00:07:40.040 a historical fiction book about him so you're going to have some answers based on facts and

00:07:44.320 you're going to have some answers based on your story you wrote and what you assume and kind of

00:07:50.040 invented both these are all good answers for me i'm not being like i'm not fact checking this like

00:07:55.580 you can guess what you think but so how to get a florida scholarship like that just seems like

00:08:01.900 wildly interesting to me like how would that even happen did he have like a like an older person who

00:08:08.740 is like a mentor or like something i see like how did he come to the attention of them to even

00:08:14.240 i didn't even know they had scholarships frankly in the 16th century they had a very very few and

00:08:21.300 from what i can understand it seems like they had some paid spots that would be open up in

00:08:27.300 cambridge or oxford and most of the time they went to the second son of this duke and whatever

00:08:33.240 and so there would be a waiting list for like exceptionally talented common students so if the

00:08:38.160 spot ever opened up your county schoolmaster could kind of put your name forward and say hey

00:08:43.180 this kid really knows what's going on his latin is amazing you should send this wild cambridge

00:08:47.920 wow yeah honestly i'm just like the thought of like a waiting list in the 16th century i'm like

00:08:52.940 a waiting list yeah it gives to show you that college applications have always been terrible

00:09:00.280 all the way through time and I have to say it sounds not too different from now okay yes okay

00:09:05.460 so he was this like shoemaker's son and not even the oldest son right he was the oldest son oh he

00:09:10.860 was the oldest son okay so that's probably why okay I'm just thinking about again just him getting

00:09:14.980 this attention so like getting to university that's his break like into like the world and

00:09:18.700 society because like now he gets to like a big part of the university is getting to talk with

00:09:23.860 these like rich people you wouldn't ordinarily hang out with right right yeah you can make all

00:09:28.940 kinds of connections when you're at Cambridge same as now you'll start you'll start meeting people

00:09:33.580 you'll learn all kinds of you know academic things and then also wacky social things and so he gets

00:09:40.560 to Cambridge and he starts writing plays we think at this point so like he's always been the artsy

00:09:45.760 theater kid which the artsy theater kid in me loves um but round about the end of his master's

00:09:52.320 degree we kind of get a sense from his academic records that things are starting to change for

00:09:59.680 him he is going on random unexplained absences from school he's starting to spend tons and tons

00:10:06.740 of money that a shoemaker's son does not hang out hang out is he a teen collegiate spy yes

00:10:13.840 oh my god he's 21 but he sure is grad student international spy this is like okay alias vibes

00:10:20.960 right yes okay so what we assume happened because this apparently happened a lot in these times

00:10:29.140 was that queen elizabeth's spymaster side note best job title of all time if you can be a spymaster

00:10:36.100 his name was sir francis walsingham and he was always on the lookout for like

00:10:43.200 unobtrusive people who are really smart who are really good at languages who like

00:10:48.420 had connections and could kind of like weasel their way into his spy network um and so he was

00:10:55.840 recruiting in cambridge and oxford a lot during this time which which like it's a good place to

00:11:03.140 be if you're looking for a spy and you want to find someone who has no money speaks seven

00:11:07.660 languages and has lots of free time like i feel like and i probably also have student debt like

00:11:12.040 16th century version of that and they were just like they just need work yeah i mean you're not

00:11:16.580 it's the same as now you get out of college you have a degree you have no job and a rich man says

00:11:21.180 would you like to be a secret agent i'd probably say yes that's the dream literally my dream okay

00:11:27.340 so he's so he's wait wait i have a question though too so he said he's probably started

00:11:31.460 writing plays when he was at university but wasn't like writing plays and being an actor like a super

00:11:36.820 trashy job that people didn't respect yes what I like to think of this as he basically went to

00:11:42.380 school because in these days if you went to school you were either going to be a doctor of divinity

00:11:47.560 or you were going to be you know a lawyer it was very lofty professions I think probably they

00:11:53.660 wanted him to be a priest based on his the classes that he took and so why I love him is he just went

00:12:00.580 to preschool and he says no i want to write plays about people murdering each other and then i will

00:12:05.140 be a spy instead and i respect that i totally respect that i love that he wasn't like assuming

00:12:11.540 like this is what his family wanted this is like he got this scholarship and he's like and i'm out

00:12:16.000 like thanks for the education i'm gonna go be a spy slash playwright which is like

00:12:21.300 trashy in this era yeah you have to imagine his mother is sitting back at home like oh my my son

00:12:27.100 what are you doing with your life okay did he get a degree did he finish university he did but just

00:12:34.300 just barely um this is one of the reasons that we know for sure well for for historical sure

00:12:40.920 that he was a spy is because he was mysteriously absent when he was supposed to like sit his

00:12:47.380 end of year examinations for his master's degree and so there was evidently this big scandal that

00:12:53.820 well we can't let him graduate he didn't take his exams he's not here and so um lord burley the head

00:13:01.320 of the privy council of queen elizabeth writes a note to his headmaster and says hey he was doing

00:13:08.040 some stuff can't tell you what but if you could let him graduate that would be a real swell

00:13:14.140 and that is one of my favorite historical facts of this entire story because it's essentially like

00:13:20.500 you're sitting at home and then the secretary of state of the united states writes your high

00:13:25.320 school teacher an excuse note and says just give him a day it's fine it's like you know i know

00:13:30.020 allison missed 50 of the classes this year but like i the spy master um please excuse allison's

00:13:38.420 absence she was doing something can't tell you what but the queen thinks it's important that's

00:13:44.820 the best way to graduate 100 yeah exactly i need to have to write exams amazing i know i

00:13:50.440 mean that's the dream yeah yeah exactly so he must have been a good spy i would think like if

00:13:58.560 they're gonna send him on like you know you'd probably try like one spy mission see how it

00:14:02.500 goes on another and if he was like going on all these different things and to the point they're

00:14:05.860 like please excuse him from his exams like he was like a valuable spy i would think his skills were

00:14:10.800 were probably top notch i certainly like to think so like i said this is me editorializing because

00:14:16.180 our records get spottier in this part but i mean being a spy in 1580s england is like that's not a

00:14:26.060 casual time to become an english spy like these are pretty turbulent times for queen elizabeth

00:14:33.340 kind of in the midpoint of her reign i know we've talked on multiple episodes of this podcast about

00:14:39.260 queen elizabeth's kind of militant protestantism that she got from her dad and so they're like

00:14:45.720 all kinds of secret catholic plots right now in this time period that are kind of popping up

00:14:51.760 everywhere and there's constant fear that one of these catholic plots is going to right so this is

00:14:58.540 like so you said this is 1580s is that what you said yes okay so she's been the queen for a while

00:15:05.680 like she's like dug her feet in she is you know but there's all these all the people yeah all the 0.94

00:15:11.580 people who they think should usurp her take over yeah so she's constantly under threat so it would 0.50

00:15:16.120 just be like and if he's a spy for her then he's just trying to find like hey fellow catholics

00:15:20.380 like don't you love the communion wine or whatever and then just like learn about other schemes okay

00:15:26.460 okay yeah okay yeah so and there are a couple of yeah absolutely go right ahead oh no so i'm just

00:15:32.280 gonna ask like where does your book does your book cover how many what time period in his life

00:15:37.380 um i pick up right before his first conversation with sir francis walsingham so right when he gets

00:15:45.280 embedded in the spy network and i go through till the end of his life okay which all fits in one

00:15:52.020 book i was gonna say spoiler that life not long no no indeed okay so so your book starts with this

00:15:58.820 like university era stuff yes okay i mean good i mean obviously i feel like that's a great starting

00:16:06.620 point I mean I feel like half of the pitch here is grad student dirtbag spy and I'm like I can't 0.64

00:16:12.360 skip that part it's my favorite part and I really want to get to the dirtbag stuff but I'm sure we

00:16:16.800 will so he finishes university and then what's what's next in his like life path yes next in his

00:16:23.200 life path is he shows up in London after he graduates and that's uh 1587 I can remember all

00:16:32.140 of these years because we're not working with very many years here this is a very condensed story

00:16:36.040 and he starts uh writing plays he kind of hits the ground running it seems like the first play

00:16:43.540 that he gets on the stage is the one that he started writing in college which respect um

00:16:48.800 so it's kind of like his thesis project absolutely yeah and what i love most about it is that his

00:16:53.640 thesis was at the time the most popular play in london ever it was sold out every day for like

00:17:02.120 five years what play was that it was called tamberlane tamberlane the great it is an incredibly

00:17:08.920 violent play about a man who is a shepherd and kills all of the kings in the region and then

00:17:15.240 becomes king and it's just lots of murder but that was what the audiences wanted no at the time i'm

00:17:21.800 into that i feel like i've already told you before my favorite shakespeare play is titus

00:17:25.020 andronicus so i'm like very drawn to the like 16th century plays that are just entirely murder

00:17:32.280 and part of that is because i like imagining how they did that with props and sets in old

00:17:37.580 absolutely and let me tell you if you like titus andronicus you're gonna love marlo because the

00:17:43.040 one thing that marlo knew how to do really well was murder somebody on stage it is just

00:17:48.160 non-stop violence all the way through i love it i did um i don't know i was trying to remember

00:17:54.600 this when i was getting rid of this interview but um one of the courses i did in university i did

00:17:59.000 some like drama classes and some english classes among all the history and we looked at some other

00:18:06.360 plays by like shakespeare's contemporaries and just the way that they were like whatever it's

00:18:10.240 like and then this happens and it's like and then he cut off both feet and the head and i'm like

00:18:13.900 that's your stage direction like that's your stage direction like and as like a theater

00:18:19.280 university student i was just like i want to mount this show i don't know how i'll do it like

00:18:23.280 but this reminds me of so marlo appears in the film shakespeare in love yes he does so this is

00:18:29.200 most of what i know about him so he's played in that film by rupert everett and he's just kind

00:18:33.720 of this like cool seemingly older playwright who's like more successful than shakespeare

00:18:39.240 who just seems kind of like he knows he knows what's going on meanwhile there's this other

00:18:43.880 little kid in that same movie who's this little kid who's like i want to write plays with murder

00:18:47.800 and he's like killing rats and stuff who is that that's john webster another another favorite of

00:18:52.500 mine okay he's he is definitely younger than marlo and shakespeare he's writing in the 1600s

00:18:58.840 marlo is actually two months older than shakespeare they're almost exactly the same age so

00:19:04.020 i won't get into my rants about shakespeare and love that's not what this podcast is for

00:19:09.060 for sure for sure but again that's what most of what i know about marlo so like just studying

00:19:15.300 some plays in university it's like here's the shakespeare plays like let's all read the

00:19:18.400 shakespeare plays every english class is like this is the shakespeare play we're gonna read

00:19:21.060 and then in some of the theater ones it's like and here's some other people I'm like oh other

00:19:24.560 people there was other people and so I just kind of felt like I had this instinctual feeling that

00:19:30.080 like Shakespeare was kind of like like the sort of trashy one whoever like the soap operas of plays

00:19:35.280 and Marlowe was kind of more like classy but that's entirely based on in Shakespeare in Love

00:19:39.940 how he comes across in that one scene he's in where it seems like Shakespeare's trying to write

00:19:43.760 these like not great plays and he's like oh my god Marlowe and it felt like a Mozart Salieri thing

00:19:48.700 where Marlowe was just as like way more successful.

00:19:51.020 So I guess my question is, to turn that into a question,

00:19:53.580 was Marlowe successful first as a playwright

00:19:56.140 before Shakespeare?

00:19:57.220 Yes.

00:19:57.920 I think Marlowe was incredibly successful

00:20:00.380 while he was writing.

00:20:02.440 And Shakespeare was kind of like doing the,

00:20:04.760 what I like to call the iffier plays during that time.

00:20:07.920 He was doing like the taming of the shrews

00:20:11.160 and the comedies of errors.

00:20:12.520 And I mean, I love Shakespeare.

00:20:14.700 I can't get through those.

00:20:15.840 I find them exhausting.

00:20:16.700 and the audiences were like they just want the murder like marla's giving them what absolutely 0.92

00:20:20.760 yeah i i want you to show me tamberlaine again so i can watch that woman beat herself to death

00:20:25.360 with a cage like please show me that wait is that that's the thing that happens yeah um he 1.00

00:20:31.400 murders her husband so she gets so upset that she beats her own brains out against the bars of her

00:20:35.880 prison cell wow okay okay i love that's what we're talking about do you think his play had

00:20:43.240 any secret spy messages in it um i personally don't think so what i i read all kinds of

00:20:51.620 social religious commentary into it for a variety of reasons but i don't think the

00:20:59.240 i get the feeling that he was doing the spy work to kind of pay the bills to write the plays and

00:21:05.560 the plays were kind of the thing that he was caring about i don't get the impression that

00:21:10.140 He was mixing business and pleasure very much.

00:21:12.200 That's super interesting.

00:21:13.140 Okay, so because there's a spy and there's a play.

00:21:15.380 And I was assuming he was doing the plays to just like buy the time and the spying was his passion.

00:21:20.600 But you're right.

00:21:21.880 It could easily be the other way around.

00:21:23.660 So if he's just like, all I want to do is write my plays, but they keep sending me on spy missions.

00:21:26.580 That's a fun tension.

00:21:27.960 That's my interpretation because I feel like he was so, so, so successful.

00:21:33.140 He was like the J.K. Rowling controversy aside of Elizabethan England.

00:21:38.460 And it was if you were going to see a play, is it a Marlowe play or is it somebody who's not as good?

00:21:43.100 Yeah. So I feel like he was putting a lot of his energy into that for sure.

00:21:48.640 The trajectory of his life. And I mean, I know there's not a lot known, but just to go from like Shoemaker's son to be like, guess what?

00:21:54.500 You got a scholarship. Guess what? You're a spy. And now you're the greatest playwright and everyone loves you.

00:21:59.220 I'm just like, where's where's the downside to his life? Like, it's just up and up and up.

00:22:02.980 You would think that. It sure started going well at first.

00:22:07.360 But the wonderful thing about Kit Marlowe is that he does not know how to keep a low profile and he does not know how to leave well enough alone.

00:22:16.820 Because he's still in his 20s, right?

00:22:18.100 He is. Yes. I think at this point, 20, 25, 26, incredibly famous, getting richer by the minute, connected to all of these people across Europe.

00:22:27.980 He is basically holding the Queen's life in his hands.

00:22:30.600 right and you would think that would be enough yeah well i'm just thinking but you know some

00:22:34.920 celebrities these days who become famous at a really young age and they just don't know what

00:22:38.500 to do with all the money and then they just like spin out of control so i feel like he doesn't have

00:22:42.080 that um guiding hand oh right this is something else i vaguely saw when i was skimming was was

00:22:47.020 he an atheist that is one of the many entries under scandal under his wikipedia page yeah um

00:22:54.320 I, there is a lot of rumor about his religious beliefs, which I love given his job. His job is to root out Catholic heretics. Meanwhile, he over here is a militant atheist who doesn't care about anything. 0.98

00:23:11.580 um one of the uh nefarious activities that they usually point to to say yes marlo was definitely

00:23:20.440 an atheist was his friendship with someone who was named the wizard earl which i think is an

00:23:26.260 incredible name i know the wizard earl that was that was the father of somebody who i did on the

00:23:32.000 podcast yeah it all comes together so anyway he went to the wizard earl's black magic parties

00:23:39.780 yeah um they had their free-thinking atheist uh dude bro party which they called the school of

00:23:46.700 night which is wonderful wait wait wait repeat everything you just said so he and the wizard

00:23:52.120 earl would hang out and have like atheist parties they refer to as the school of night yes and your

00:23:57.860 book's not about that but is that in your it actually does not cover that because there is

00:24:02.200 so much else that i did not have room for that but i feel like to make sure people know like

00:24:07.160 that's on the cutting room floor the wizard earl in the school of night sorry i'm just like if the

00:24:11.340 wizard earl because i am 100 sure that i read about him and his daughter is somebody who i did

00:24:17.040 on the podcast the wizard earl henry percy the earl of northumberland let me just see so i'm just

00:24:22.940 like skimming here um oh no his daughters were oh lucy lucy percy the lady spy what that's when

00:24:33.860 season went she was the one and then she went to jail and then she met francis howard in jail

00:24:37.620 and francis howard was like here's how you can be like a titsert lady in jail and became like

00:24:41.820 her jail mentor yes runs in the family it all comes together okay so this is great so that i

00:24:47.560 feel like that's sort of like i don't know so spying spying in general and i know we don't

00:24:53.100 know because records wouldn't be kept or saved but like was everybody a spy how how many people

00:24:59.760 were spies per capita that's a wonderful ratio um i don't think it was incredibly common but i would

00:25:10.540 say probably more common than now just given that as far as i can tell espionage is kind of the one

00:25:18.480 way you get information in those days like there's no hacking there's no interfering with voting

00:25:24.480 machines like this is how you interfere with the government yeah so it seems like we have a lot of

00:25:30.840 names recorded of spies in this period but i'm not i'm not sure what the ratio per capita is

00:25:37.300 i wonder if it's like people could do because i think then the way that he was a spy but then

00:25:43.040 also playwright like people didn't just have like one thing they did people were like multi

00:25:47.840 multi-hyphenates so i feel like people could do some casual spying on the side and you also run

00:25:52.760 and in and whatever i don't know and you also are a shoemaker like i feel like there's just like

00:25:57.600 spying was like a casual thing a lot of people could throw on top of their other tasks maybe

00:26:01.140 for money i don't know i'm definitely not saying no and i think part of it is just when the queen

00:26:06.720 asks hey can you spy on this person like you can't really say no to that to say no to that

00:26:12.740 you're immediately suspicious right i think if you're in a position to be useful the queen and

00:26:18.160 her counselor pretty much going to make use of you yeah do you know about afra ben the lake not

00:26:24.780 she's a lady writer is also a lady spy um and it's like was that really even her name um where 0.95

00:26:32.460 was she from but she it reminds me of what you're talking about because she was also like a playwright

00:26:36.520 slash spy and that was the first thing i was like how is why is she both um yeah anyway so she was

00:26:43.880 sent on various spy missions she's also a very bad spy apparently but that just makes me like

00:26:48.860 her more okay so he's a spy hanging out with like atheist wizards at the school of night

00:26:55.500 um and quick aside for previous listeners to this podcast his theatrical patron the one who was

00:27:03.380 paying his bills and getting the right place was ferdinando stanley of previous podcast fame yes

00:27:10.440 oh my god everything this is part of why before we i talked to you i was like what year are we

00:27:15.520 looking at because i was like which of my friends are going to pop up in this story and i'm so

00:27:18.720 excited oh my god ferdinando oh he was lord strange so marla was lord strangest men yes he

00:27:26.840 was he was their star playwright wait and then ferdinando stanley was killed by jesuits because

00:27:32.440 they wanted him to take over from the queen but he didn't want to was that a coincidence who's to

00:27:37.880 say but like that's all I'm saying is that's a really good playwright company to put a spy in

00:27:44.140 like that man was suspicious and so I have my beliefs about why he was there but again I am

00:27:50.940 doing my conspiracy theory work over here no this is great and this is like honestly okay this is

00:27:56.740 another question I had for you which was like so much of the history stuff that I look at where

00:28:00.780 it's like for a long time it was accepted as like this is the narrative of like Anne Boleyn or

00:28:04.360 whatever and then you're like oh but this is all based on the writings of someone who hated her

00:28:07.640 so you're like how truthful is this so like how truthful is anything so what records do you have

00:28:13.040 about his life did he i'm assuming there's no memoirs you're looking at so is it like letters

00:28:17.440 or like where what what are the sources that we know yes um i mentioned a few of the sources

00:28:23.680 earlier that are like notes that the privy council sent about you know he's over here he's over there

00:28:29.500 please excuse him from his exam please excuse him from exams yeah um they there are some other

00:28:36.260 records of we had an agent in the field doing this and the name as they wrote it down was a

00:28:44.200 variant on the spelling of marlo and so we kind of suspect that might have been him right because

00:28:49.640 everybody spelled things like differently every time they wrote it so that's not even a spy thing

00:28:53.940 that's just like no that's just that's just no one knows how to spell in the cities in england

00:28:58.600 yeah okay it's a little bit sketchy but there is one source that's kind of like

00:29:04.140 the source of all of the marlow mythos and it was kind of and it's getting us right into the

00:29:12.440 good juicy bit of the story so i might run us into that as please please do please do um so

00:29:18.120 we're fast forwarding a little bit it's about it's 1593 at this point which is a big year in

00:29:24.020 marlow times because it's when everything hits the fan essentially everything starts going bad

00:29:30.960 wait what's the thing what's that show about um behind the music the show you know where they're

00:29:37.440 talking about like bands and then it's all like the band is doing so well the band is doing so

00:29:40.680 well and they're like and then everything changed commercial break come back i feel like that's

00:29:45.640 where we are okay and then 1593 okay he kit has just come back to england he was randomly in the

00:29:52.740 netherlands for a little while that's right after ben that's what after ben was sent unsuccessfully

00:29:57.680 to be a spy apparently it is a good place to be an unsuccessful spy because this was his last

00:30:02.660 international mission just before this time and then he got super arrested for counterfeiting

00:30:09.480 money no one's really quite sure why he was counterfeiting money in the netherlands but

00:30:13.800 anyway it drew a lot of attention to him because that's a weird thing to get arrested to be doing

00:30:20.780 when you are a playwright and then you're just like i'm i'm in flushing and i'm making fake money

00:30:26.060 yeah so he comes back um and the privy council at this point is kind of like we're not sure we

00:30:31.920 trust this guy anymore we're gonna keep an eye on him he's kind of going rogue he's hanging out

00:30:37.500 with the wizard earl he's running off to the netherlands we're gonna put him on probation

00:30:42.460 and so he has to report to the privy council like it's either every morning or once a week

00:30:48.480 or something like that so he can't leave town they want to know where he is and this part is

00:30:52.180 in your book does your book have counterfeiting money in the netherlands is involved it sure does

00:30:56.160 okay it sure does i read so many wikipedia pages about how to counterfeit money and i'm sure it's

00:31:01.460 incredibly suspicious yeah so he's back in london now on probation and then this kind of i'm trying

00:31:13.080 to describe what this artifact is when it's released because it's kind of like the the best

00:31:19.660 analog i have for it is it's a 1590s diss track essentially it's like one of his enemies in the

00:31:28.720 spy service releases what they call the baines note his name was richard baines he releases a

00:31:35.140 note and it's basically like 600 words of reasons why would richard baines hates kit marlowe so this

00:31:42.740 is like this is like a pamphlet level thing yes okay and it's and it is just one wacky accusation

00:31:51.240 after another it's like i think it begins concerning the damnable beliefs of kid marlowe 0.90

00:31:57.140 who once said that christ was a bastard and his mother slept with the angel gabriel and it's like 0.96

00:32:02.860 that level of wacky okay but also christopher marlowe is super famous so everyone like wants 0.90

00:32:07.660 to read this i would assume yes like there this is of interest to the people and also incredibly

00:32:14.040 salacious and also incredibly dangerous so it's not like if someone just like wrote a letter like

00:32:19.160 here's why i hate this guy who lives down the street because he kicked my dog or whatever it's

00:32:23.660 like hey this the most famous like james patterson like here's why i hate james patterson he took the 0.51

00:32:31.020 lord's name in vain or whatever i'm excited to hear what he's accused of all kinds of fun things

00:32:36.260 honestly this is the one historical document that i say google it and read it because it is

00:32:40.880 amazing and it's called about the baines note the baines note if you search for the text of

00:32:45.740 the baines note i think the british library has it for free and it is a good read um so this comes

00:32:52.340 out and to make matters worse around about the same time another pamphlet comes out this is the

00:32:59.000 year of treasonous pamphlets apparently pamphlets are like honestly since i started doing the

00:33:03.900 podcast i'm just like i had no idea the history of pamphlets like that's what there was there

00:33:08.820 that's what you did like you couldn't that's where all the scandals lived in pamphlets i was

00:33:13.480 just like making pamphlets okay yeah so there's this pamphlet that gets stuck up next to a church

00:33:18.040 somewhere in london and it basically says all of the nobles in england are draining the peasants 0.97

00:33:25.980 and the working class for nothing and we should rise up and kill them all which like bold words 0.96

00:33:31.100 to put on a pamphlet um and it's technically anonymous but whoever wrote this pamphlet signed 0.99

00:33:36.860 it tamberlane which is the name of the the lead of kit marlowe's most famous play okay can i just

00:33:44.400 ask i'm just gonna predict what i think you're gonna say which is like why would if it was him

00:33:49.900 why would he sign it off as the famous character from his play like come on like that is point one

00:33:56.200 point two i've read this thing it's written like a fourth grader wrote it it's like truly embarrassing

00:34:03.620 yeah so almost nobody believes that it was him who actually tamper lane was like such a famous

00:34:09.620 play everybody's seen it and if what was it about it was like a shepherd who kills all the kings or

00:34:14.920 what did you say so it's it's a good like peasant revolt play yeah yeah it's like signing this thing

00:34:20.000 and then putting a name like angel ra or whatever just being like exactly yeah yeah yeah but then

00:34:25.120 Everyone's looking at Victor Hugo a little bit weird

00:34:27.080 after they signed the pamphlet like that.

00:34:29.340 Yeah.

00:34:29.760 Okay, so somebody, so like two pamphlets in a row,

00:34:33.040 like one being like, this is why he's awful.

00:34:34.780 The second pamphlet being like, proletariat, let's revolt.

00:34:37.100 Like signed, totally not Christopher Marlowe.

00:34:40.200 And then, okay.

00:34:41.420 Exactly.

00:34:41.640 And then because all bad things come in threes,

00:34:43.880 there's one more bad thing that happens.

00:34:46.300 And it's that Kit's old roommate gets arrested.

00:34:52.020 Like his roommate from college days?

00:34:53.480 his roommate from like when he first moved to london because like no one can afford an apartment

00:34:58.200 in london so like he shared a room with a guy this is where um i sympathize with you and your

00:35:05.180 difficulty of elizabethan names because this man's name is thomas yeah because of course it is and

00:35:11.140 his name is thomas kid he was also a playwright i've heard of him as a kid kyd kyd yes he lived

00:35:18.560 with marlo for like a couple of years and so he gets arrested interrogated tortured in the tower

00:35:25.860 of london because some like suspicious heretical atheistic papers were found in like among his

00:35:35.260 items and so he was arrested because of that and he under torture blames marlo for those papers

00:35:42.180 but i think we all know and i'll just say this because we need to say it it's like you can make

00:35:46.380 anyone say anything under torture so like if they wanted to blame kid marley they could just like

00:35:49.820 torture him until he blamed him like that doesn't absolutely mean there's i mean he also was hanging

00:35:55.420 out in like atheist club central so it's not impossible that they were his but any confession

00:36:01.500 under torture is pretty much a useless confession yeah all that to say all of this evidence is kind

00:36:07.560 of starting to stack up making him look like he's perhaps more of a liability than he's worth

00:36:13.980 to the queen's intelligence i'm just thinking of like in modern days you know it's like when so

00:36:18.720 many celebrity scandals this is where someone's like i'm going to take some time away to be with

00:36:22.320 my family and they like go off instagram for a couple months like this is where he needs to do

00:36:26.880 that but i don't know what the version of that in renaissance times is yeah yeah he definitely

00:36:31.000 needs to take a hiatus and just like think about his business i'm just gonna have to rehab for

00:36:37.660 unspecified issues just like yes yeah would have been a good time for that however what he does

00:36:43.560 instead is he ends up going to a tavern just outside of london in may of 1593 and he meets

00:36:52.220 with three other people who are involved in the intelligence service some of them are spies some

00:36:58.800 of them have been spies in the past and they spend the morning together at this tavern talking about

00:37:04.500 who knows what in private and by the afternoon kit marlowe has been murdered he's been murdered

00:37:12.540 he's been murdered okay so he was day drinking yes and then with some other spy affiliated

00:37:20.380 people and then suddenly he's just dead that is the great mystery of marlo's life is his mysterious

00:37:28.400 death okay how what was he murdered from by he was uh trigger warning for anyone who like me is

00:37:36.100 upset by certain ways of stabbing he was stabbed through the eye yeah he died instantly it's not

00:37:42.640 good it's not good but also i feel like spies would know that that's how you kill someone

00:37:46.340 effectively yes i get the impression that he was not the first person stabbed by whoever did this

00:37:53.140 yeah i don't think that that's not your like entry level no so he's hanging with some spy guys in the

00:37:58.920 were there witnesses did people see this happen did it happen in the bar or was he just last seen

00:38:03.320 in the bar then suddenly his body is found he was stabbed in like the taverns in the day were like

00:38:10.040 half tavern half hotel so you drink in the bar and you go back in the private room and you're

00:38:14.660 half your meeting and so he was with these other spies in a private room at this tavern and so we

00:38:20.880 know he went into the room and we know he was stabbed and then but we don't know exactly what

00:38:26.380 happened in the altercation to lead up to that the excuse that history books get is that these

00:38:33.460 four guys got into an argument over who was going to pay the bill at the tavern and then they stabbed

00:38:39.340 him in the fight over the bill which sure is a story yeah i don't buy that that's not no you

00:38:46.980 don't stab somebody in the eye over like who's going to pay the bill i don't know i feel like

00:38:52.640 he'd stab them some up somewhere else but the eye seems like very targeted assassination that

00:38:56.680 seems like you you break a man's nose for like stepping the bill you don't stab him in the eye 0.70

00:39:02.180 yeah okay so this happens and what's like there'd been this marlo like controversy

00:39:07.840 he's suddenly found dead like what what do people think he's like the super celebrity like

00:39:12.900 and suddenly he's dead like what's what did the public think i think the public was

00:39:18.640 primarily mad that we're not going to be more plays tamberlane part of two colon okay here's

00:39:26.900 the thing yeah this is not the point of the story there already was a tamberlane part two

00:39:31.020 he already wrote too fast to tamberlane for no particular reason he knew his audience okay yeah

00:39:37.580 he sure did he knew how to make the money but yeah i mean there's definitely you see in like

00:39:42.600 plays that come shortly after his death a lot more people start quoting marlo so like the arts

00:39:47.740 community is in mourning right but like the church pretty excited that he's gone the crown

00:39:54.360 and the intelligence network just quietly stop talking about we don't know her yeah it's exactly

00:39:59.960 mariah carey if that's what happens it's it gets surprisingly little attention in the press given

00:40:07.140 how famous he was at the same time i feel like people being stabbed in taverns wasn't

00:40:12.540 super rare so it's like oh we used to have oh no well you know that happens people just get

00:40:17.980 to the taverns yeah what you're gonna do yeah yeah and so what is his so you said that the

00:40:24.820 artistic community like they started quoting from him and stuff so how did he like i've heard of him

00:40:29.600 if vaguely like how did his legacy like sort of move on from there because there was so many

00:40:35.760 playwrights like so many people writing plays and no one remembers a lot of them but he somehow was

00:40:39.920 remembered famously yes uh i would say he has one play that kind of got held up like it it

00:40:47.660 carries through when i say the name you'll be like oh he wrote that uh dr faustus oh which

00:40:52.380 was like the original version of of okay so like sold your soul to the devil type thing okay yeah

00:41:00.280 so like in all the cartoons you see with like the angel on your shoulder and the devil on the other

00:41:05.580 like if it's Bugs Bunny or Cronk from the Emperor's New Group or whatever like that was him

00:41:09.340 okay okay so that left his mark so Timberlaine was a big hit at the time but Faustus became

00:41:16.100 sort of like more famous in his legacy wait that's the one that how old was he when he died

00:41:22.560 like he was 29 oh my god oh so young I know makes me feel incredibly unaccomplished live fast die

00:41:31.420 young situation the kit marlowe story absolutely did you consider that for

00:41:35.600 i won't tell you how many titles we went through but wait up there but actually can i ask you too

00:41:41.680 so your book is called a tip for the hangman yes what does that mean in the context of the book

00:41:47.460 in the context of the book it has two meanings and one of them is kind of the the international

00:41:54.200 spy connection where you are getting a tip of information that's going to allow the hangman

00:41:59.300 to kill the person who you've tipped and the other thing is a fun historical fact that i love

00:42:05.060 which is when you yourself are murdered not murdered i'm sorry when you are executed publicly 0.86

00:42:11.640 thank you i forgot the word executed you are expected to give an actual monetary tip to the

00:42:17.600 hangman for him doing the service of having killed you so it kind of nods to both i am turning other

00:42:25.360 other people over to be killed and also things are not looking so great for me see I didn't I

00:42:30.700 only thought about the giving money to the hangman I didn't think about the like tip isn't but now

00:42:34.880 learning all this spy stuff it's like I see I see the double meaning what made you realize I could

00:42:41.540 write a book about this like what interested you about his story like was there one part where

00:42:45.100 you're like wait this would be a fun story like what part was that yeah um I think what what caught

00:42:51.460 me the first time i heard about him was in a college class that i took which is very much the

00:42:56.000 kind of class you were describing which is playwrights who are not shakespeare and i think

00:43:00.280 we did like a quick biographical lecture on each of the playwrights before we started reading their

00:43:05.180 work in that class and most of them were this person was a bricklayer and wrote some plays

00:43:10.620 and then died at some point and then we got to marlo's biography and my professor was just like

00:43:16.900 so this guy that was a secret secret agent um maybe a wizard and i was like okay so i would

00:43:24.920 like to know more about the secret agent wizard who showed up in the middle of my syllabus and

00:43:28.780 kind of from there the research hole just gets deeper and deeper yeah and so without getting

00:43:34.860 into like spoiler territory although you just tell us the story of his life which is also

00:43:40.620 part of what your book is that's the historical fiction trap that you fall into right right but

00:43:46.000 can you what is the Mary Queen of Scots of it all how does she come into your book yes this is where

00:43:51.580 I start using my artistic license so please do pretty much yes great because I love Mary Queen

00:43:59.320 of Scots and her whole business where and I know you have not done a Mary Queen of Scots episode

00:44:05.880 yet but I know you will it will be like a 25 part episode it's fantastic it'll be my life's work but

00:44:12.360 Yes. Okay. So toward the end of her life, Mary Queen of Scots is living in England under house

00:44:18.160 arrest. And she is scheming up a storm, sending coded letters back and forth, trying to scare up

00:44:26.220 an army through the King of Spain to come and stage an invasion and overthrow Elizabeth. And

00:44:33.080 that's happening at exactly the same time that sources show that Kit Marlowe got into the spy

00:44:40.020 trade and so me being a mary queen of scots fan i'm thinking this is too good of an excuse

00:44:45.700 to like put them together i kind of have to yeah i feel morally obligated to so in my book um this

00:44:53.740 probably not what happened in real life but kit's first spy assignment is to infiltrate the household

00:45:00.380 of mary queen of scots and figure out what exactly she is plotting is this the household of best of

00:45:06.400 hardwick or is it a different house she's living in at this point i think it is a different one 0.88

00:45:11.400 i also have her in a few houses because elizabeth kept moving her around because she was acting

00:45:16.660 suspiciously yeah so there's one the one where she lived with best of hardwick i feel like hardwick

00:45:22.420 hall is probably the name of the house anyway there's tapestries there that like she stitched

00:45:28.180 mary queen of scots and there's like things in that and people like other secret cipher codes

00:45:32.840 spy messages like in these tapestries where it's or even just like there's like a cat and a mouse

00:45:36.940 and they're like this is her saying like she feels trapped so just like these like even in

00:45:41.560 her embroidery mary cream scott's just like not letting up i love it oh she was she was scheming

00:45:46.000 she had her scheming dial turned to 11 and yeah love her deeply for that so kit meets her or he's

00:45:52.640 just in the household he uh he does meet her yes that's exciting for me yeah it's exciting for me

00:45:59.660 you but she shows up so in terms of making it a thriller so you're like this is an interesting

00:46:06.600 like thriller this is another thing like group book is like catnip for me personally because

00:46:10.580 it's like thriller is my favorite genre of book um and then all the subject matter is also

00:46:15.620 interesting but so looking at the pantheon of historical fiction like especially about this

00:46:21.060 elizabethan era there's a lot of like i don't know what one would call it because i'm not going

00:46:26.560 to say philipa gregory's books are not action-packed but it's very like traditional historical fiction

00:46:32.060 like here's the story of a person's life and yours is like a spy thriller so is that what you always

00:46:38.060 kind of wanted it to be from the beginning or did you what do you at first think like let's do like

00:46:42.140 a biopic novel just fact-based um the first draft of it started out a little bit more uh traditional

00:46:51.120 fact base but i think the more i learned about marlo the less i wanted to write him a very

00:46:57.040 traditional historical fiction book because just spending so much time with his wacky violent

00:47:04.620 terrifying fast-paced plays i would kept thinking what kind of what kind of book would he write if

00:47:10.120 he was writing a novel yeah and i was thinking you he would write a super high stakes thriller

00:47:15.260 full of murder i think that's what he would want yeah so it just felt like this is this is subject

00:47:20.420 meeting form after a while yeah no and then even like the cover of your book like it doesn't look

00:47:25.020 like the traditional historical fiction everybody needs to like google the cover of her book right

00:47:29.580 now i'll put it a link in the show it's obviously to buy it but like it's such a cute cover it's

00:47:33.860 like very distinctive looking very different looking i love it so much i describe it to

00:47:37.700 people as the uh historical fiction version of the first panic at the disco album cover

00:47:43.460 and it fills my heart with joy they did an incredible job well i think it really sets

00:47:49.080 people up for what the book is going to be like you know someone's not going to pick that up and

00:47:52.580 be like well I want sort of like a fact-based biographical it's like no like this is going to

00:47:56.900 be like a fun ride like you can tell from looking at the cover yes it is definitely based in fact

00:48:01.320 but I do not let facts get in my way if they are inconvenient that's another question I had so

00:48:07.360 yeah so in terms of like writing this like there's a lot of you know you just he had absences from

00:48:12.780 school like what was he doing no one knows so you could just like fill in those blanks pretty easily

00:48:16.380 but were there some like other facts that you were just like this doesn't fit in my story so

00:48:20.720 I'm just gonna like not include this like I don't even know did he have a wife and children like I

00:48:25.400 don't know he did not uh we didn't even get into the scandalous homosexuality of it all yeah yeah 0.95

00:48:32.160 why do I he was like that's another thing that I feel like I know about him which is that he was

00:48:38.360 maybe gay but I don't know why I think that and it might just be because Rupert Everett played

00:48:41.440 him in the movie no that is very much part of the marlow mythos um it's part of the baines note

00:48:47.280 many of the accusations were connected to homosexuality um which was i think about on

00:48:53.700 par scandalous with heresy back in those days so it kind of just adds extra strength to it

00:48:58.880 also um if you read through some of his plays that i i mean i i see it pretty clearly so that's

00:49:09.380 another thing that like historians pretty much are like yeah we assume okay as far as facts that

00:49:14.700 did not fit what i was trying to do um there is there's some evidence of actual espionage plots

00:49:21.580 that marlow might have really been involved with instead of the mary queen of scots one

00:49:25.720 like there's there's some evidence that he might have been in the north of france creeping around

00:49:31.300 a seminary for a while like looking for catholic priests and i just i could not make the the kit

00:49:38.200 marlo that i was writing a convincing secret priest i mean he did study to be a priest until

00:49:44.180 he like skipped all his classes that's true i got the feeling he'd have been very good at it or very

00:49:49.180 convincing so i was like no we're gonna we're gonna go over here instead yeah no because yeah

00:49:54.840 because i'm always reading so much history stuff and then i'm like oh this would be a good story

00:49:58.040 but then there's a thing i'm working on right now where i'm just like i need to i don't know like

00:50:02.600 when i read historical fiction i'm like oh sometimes like why do they change that but now

00:50:05.960 I'm like thinking of writing historical fiction I'm like oh no like I to make this be a story

00:50:10.300 like you need to change that otherwise I would write a biography like right but you've got sort

00:50:15.740 of the I don't know just the timeline of it it's like he goes to university becomes a spy and what

00:50:20.620 like eight years later is stabbed to death like you've got like a nice tidy it's not like this

00:50:27.000 person lived for 50 years and how can I make this a book it's like yeah you can do a pretty tidy

00:50:33.140 start to finish timeline in the average length of a novel and you know where the finish is going to

00:50:38.120 be too because he's dead to death um yes what about the rumors and i will say just as a quick

00:50:42.860 aside to any marlowe listeners you may have there are loads and loads and loads of rumors that kit

00:50:48.760 marlowe did not in fact die in that bar fight that he in fact escaped and went undercover and

00:50:55.660 started writing more plays under the pen name william shakespeare okay wait which i think is

00:51:04.940 a load of garbage but that's my own personal bias wait so well there's that whole weird like

00:51:09.740 who wrote the shakespeare plays and to me it's just like probably this dude called william 0.97

00:51:13.700 shakespeare like why are we probably with this but wait wait so him escaping was his body found

00:51:19.900 a body was buried oh man he's a spy i mean there are all kinds of alternative history books where

00:51:29.520 he runs off and goes to italy and fascinates the pope or whatever and i mean you could you

00:51:36.620 could follow that conspiracy as far as you like but who's to say wow this is okay i love the like

00:51:44.660 i wasn't expecting that final twist of his very wildly interesting life it's like and

00:51:49.420 and he was murdered or was or was he and this is where you can write a series

00:51:53.840 his continued adventures under fake names absolutely just doing all these secret other

00:52:00.660 spy missions seeing lots of people oh we should score him just a sec um because i always forget

00:52:05.420 this i have it saved what the categories are so it's always on a score of like zero to ten

00:52:10.260 um the first one is the scandalousness so that's like deliciousness of the scandals with which he

00:52:20.680 was associated so like I know you've listened to the podcast but it's like you know did somebody

00:52:26.340 like conspire with 12 people to break into a prison and murder somebody like that's very

00:52:30.360 scandalous but it's like did she run off with a guy it's like well that's scandalous but not

00:52:33.940 as scandalicious so what do we have for scandal with him well we have several secret spy antics

00:52:43.620 we're not sure exactly what but we know definitely undercover international espionage

00:52:49.380 definitely there we have and then going rogue counterfeiting money in the netherlands

00:52:54.300 like the counterfeiting money is wild and then in the netherlands like that ratchets it up a bit to

00:52:59.220 like real weird in a way it's weird scandal for sure yeah yeah yeah well and then just the

00:53:07.100 mysteriousness of like being stabbed to death in a bar fight I feel is this is tricky you know

00:53:13.120 because well we're just weighing him on his own merits I'm not going to think about him opposite

00:53:16.540 somebody else like scandalousness a 10 for him I feel would be like he I don't know murdered

00:53:24.160 queen elizabeth would be like yeah and i think we also have to score him with a grain of salt

00:53:29.660 given that men have more potential in history to kind of like to do stuff and to get away with it

00:53:36.540 true like i'm giving him a little bit of a handicap here and i'm thinking 7.5 or 8

00:53:43.220 i'm gonna say i'm also biased yeah as an unbiased person who all i know about him is what you just

00:53:50.060 told me i'm gonna go i'm gonna give him a seven i think just sort of rounding it like close to

00:53:55.100 what you're saying but i'm bringing him down a bit because like you said like he i don't know

00:53:59.800 because with the women sometimes it's like look at what they were doing and compared to what other

00:54:03.140 women were doing you know it's a lot but for him it's like look what he was doing and it's like

00:54:06.280 yeah but like okay compared to what other men could do like the world is wide walsingham it's

00:54:12.580 like yeah he was kind of like more scantilious than some less than others but seven i think is

00:54:16.780 very solid score the next one is scheminess so and this is where i would ask you how much do you

00:54:24.540 think like he was doing okay like let's assume the counterfeiting money in the netherlands that

00:54:29.340 was all him but that was just he had a side game he was doing what he's doing writing the plays

00:54:33.520 that's all him the spy stuff i guess like it's hard for you to separate from your book from like

00:54:39.400 real life but like how much of that do you think he instigated and how much was he just kind of

00:54:42.680 dragged along to do it like how much was he scheming in his spy work versus was he just like

00:54:49.120 oh i have to do this spy work now yeah um i think the the meta schemes like the overall what the

00:54:56.920 spy network is trying to do that is not his schemes but i do think to be a good enough spy

00:55:02.640 to get sent out more than once and to get relied on for that long you've got to have some quick

00:55:08.240 on your feet individual scheminess going on so I think I think so yeah he's playing the hand he

00:55:13.800 was given but he's he's playing it pretty well I think so and it's tricky because like and with

00:55:18.580 some other people in the podcast as well it's like I'm sure he had some amazing schemes and

00:55:22.980 they were so good we don't know what they are because he didn't leave a paper trail because

00:55:26.580 he was schemey and he knew not to leave a paper trail right what do you think for a number there

00:55:32.060 then i would score him higher maybe in scheminess than scandalousness i think because well and also

00:55:40.000 just like writing a play so you know what the people like then writing that's true that is a

00:55:44.920 commercial scheme part two i'm thinking like a 7.5 for scheminess i support that okay the next one

00:55:54.180 this is tricky so but did you you did an english degree i did okay because i didn't actually do an

00:56:01.440 english degree that was just like i did some english courses so his significance is not

00:56:05.420 something with which i am familiar what is if he invented the angel of the devil on the shoulder

00:56:10.360 though that's what i'm saying i think even if for nothing else being the person who told the story

00:56:17.720 of faust in the way that we like intrinsically remember it that's pretty significant yeah i think

00:56:23.600 he also is like the inspiration for so much of what shakespeare did that like i hate comparing

00:56:29.760 him to shakespeare i think it's a cop-out but like you can definitely see shakespeare was like

00:56:34.440 oh this is what marlo did let me try that too oh so it's interesting oh and that's interesting too

00:56:39.340 because he was saying that shakespeare's doing his sort of like not so popular plays when marlo

00:56:43.200 was like super sensation marlo dies and shakespeare's like what if my plays are more like

00:56:47.420 marlo and then he precisely okay so that's like a stealth significance yeah i think he's more

00:56:55.180 significant than he appears i think people tend to he affects your literary life more than you

00:57:02.500 think he does yeah well that's yeah because like shakespeare and i don't know that would be a

00:57:08.160 whole other conversation like why is shakespeare so famous um still like what happened but um

00:57:14.100 yeah it's it's still sort of like it's just like his his like the little tentacles of his influence

00:57:19.800 are all over the place so i like him for significance i think we're just ratcheting

00:57:25.200 up everything but i feel like an eight 8.5 significance what do you think with an eight

00:57:32.120 that sounds fair okay the next one i'm not sure how we can score him on this it's the sexism bonus

00:57:38.120 so when when i do it for the yeah and i don't think nothing you've said made me think that

00:57:44.920 he was dueling it out either like there's some men who i've profiled who are just like i give

00:57:49.380 them the anti-sexism bonus when i'm profiling them for being awful um and it's just like how

00:57:54.220 shitty did they treat women but you haven't mentioned anything about that actually 0.64

00:57:57.340 because he wasn't married and we don't know anything about his interaction with women

00:58:03.240 frankly i don't think i think pretty much the way that i read him is he tried not to interact with

00:58:09.260 women pretty much at all ever and you know maybe a grand total of three women in all of his plays

00:58:14.860 and they don't do very much so he just kind of minds his business i like that that's like me but

00:58:19.880 the reverse so and i give him credit for that frankly because if he was i don't know like he

00:58:28.800 could have put like awful you know shrewish women characters in his plays and he said that he wrote

00:58:33.160 that scene where the woman character bashes herself to death with her own cage she does she's my

00:58:38.200 favorite of the women that he writes i think she's pretty great yeah i feel like that's like not a lot

00:58:43.200 of competition i don't know the sexism but this is tricky so i think i'm just gonna say not

00:58:47.520 applicable i think that's fair sexism bonus which means his score is weird i'll have to like

00:58:52.300 multiply it by something but it's also a man score so i don't know honestly he's on his own

00:58:57.440 scale and i think that's about right why do we know that his nickname was kit um that is how a

00:59:04.840 lot of other playwrights and poets talked about him like there's the i forget his name the guy

00:59:12.760 who wrote those nasty things about Shakespeare and called him an upstart crow or whatever he

00:59:18.540 called Marlowe Kit Marlowe and so we're assuming that that's like that's what his friends called

00:59:23.300 him okay I like that as a nickname for Christopher but also it's like if everyone was just spelling

00:59:28.080 everything randomly you could just kind of make up your name I guess that's true very true

00:59:33.960 whatever you like when does your book come out what's the date it's February

00:59:38.280 February 9th 2021 um it is available for pre-order now if that's a thing you're interested in doing

00:59:46.780 um you can find pre-order links on my website which is just alexonepstein.com

00:59:53.620 or on my social media profiles where I waste my entire life I am rapscallison like rapscallion

01:00:01.920 with an s on both twitter and instagram and is there an audiobook of your book going to be coming

01:00:07.920 out there is and it sounds amazing yeah well i was just thinking because this is like podcast

01:00:14.500 people are listening there might be people who like to enjoy books by by listening to them

01:00:18.500 is the narrator a man or a woman they found um a man from britain who has the most perfect voice

01:00:25.540 i've ever heard so i highly recommend the audio version for podcast listeners oh that's wonderful

01:00:31.140 actually i want to ask you about that too because you're american and you were writing about oldie

01:00:35.440 times england so in terms of like i don't know slang or just like how people talk like how did

01:00:41.720 you get a handle on that um i kind of split the difference and um made the artistic choice that

01:00:49.080 i wanted the book to feel a little bit more modern in language and style than super historically

01:00:54.880 accurate so i was kind of able to fudge things a little bit i did spend a lot of time with things

01:01:01.660 like historical thesauruses which tell you what the first time a word was used in the English

01:01:07.060 language and lots of synonyms and my copy editor had many opinions but it was a whole process that's

01:01:13.000 like a nightmare I'm just thinking about that like or even just a metaphor it's like what was 0.97

01:01:17.180 the first time somebody ever said I don't know skin as white as snow you're like oh shit it was 0.94

01:01:21.200 1925 you know and you're like damn it I tell you I had several things in the in the draft right 0.96

01:01:27.340 before it went to print my copy editor circled the metaphor and she's like this is a reference 0.52

01:01:31.240 to an Edgar Allan Poe story and it's like oh no it's 1580 he hasn't been born yet I can't use

01:01:37.600 that metaphor that's crazy yeah to walk that line because you've got to like I don't know I can see

01:01:42.600 the different directions and you're like right in the middle of it because it's like super

01:01:45.560 historically accurate where I'm like I don't tend to like reading books like that where everyone is

01:01:49.560 just like my lord all the time and I'm just like oh kill me and then there's ones if you go into

01:01:54.300 the like oh what's the I don't know completely like um Bridgerton where it's just like are they

01:01:59.460 playing ariana grande on a string quartet where you're like okay and so like you could just be

01:02:04.940 like don't care or you could be like care so much and you're like in the middle and making that line

01:02:09.420 that would be intense it's a it's a tricky line but i i really like the line that we ended up

01:02:15.760 drawing and if we can get a string quartet to play ariana grande like in the audiobook that

01:02:21.060 would be great i would love that well and having a british an actual british person reading it

01:02:24.760 that's interesting too to see like how does it sound British person saying it yeah it's definitely

01:02:30.400 a good um stress test how does it work yeah so Christopher Marlow if you had one thing that

01:02:38.240 you know if someone didn't know about him or had only vaguely heard about him like what's one thing

01:02:43.380 that you think they should know about him um I think I would split it into two things and the

01:02:49.100 one thing you should know is that he played an absolutely enormous role in the way that we tell

01:02:55.260 stories. He is a huge force in English literature based on the influence he had on other people.

01:03:03.440 And second fact, his life was absolutely like batshit insane. And he got himself murdered for

01:03:11.520 making terrible frickin choices. So you can be both incredibly important and also an absolute

01:03:18.000 dumbass at the same time I think that's a wonderful point to lead to end this conversation 0.97

01:03:23.980 and I feel like I got both those points from this conversation with you as well 0.68

01:03:28.160 I honestly didn't realize he died so young I just assumed I don't know I don't know like that's just

01:03:34.140 like a whirlwind he's just like I'm a shoemaker's son now I'm a spy and now I'm dead like yeah that

01:03:40.000 was your whole life live fast exactly well thank you so much for joining us today

01:03:47.760 thank you so much for having me this was a lot of fun

01:03:50.000 I truly hope that this recording works

01:03:52.280 and I'm able to post this

01:03:53.680 I hope that too

01:03:55.460 so all the information

01:03:58.140 about Allison and her book are in the show

01:04:00.180 notes for this episode

01:04:01.820 and I truly encourage you to look up

01:04:04.200 the cover of A Tip for the Hangman

01:04:05.960 which is a gorgeous cover and I would

01:04:07.780 also suggest you look up just google image

01:04:10.180 search Christopher Marlowe

01:04:11.920 because the one portrait that seems to exist

01:04:14.240 of him he's got the most

01:04:15.600 spectacular hair

01:04:17.220 truly gorgeous i feel like he may have invented the pompadour hairstyle as well as the angel

01:04:22.700 and devil on the shoulder so this has been the vulgar history podcast you can find me on social

01:04:28.240 media at vulgar history on twitter vulgar history pod on instagram um my patreon is a patreon.com

01:04:37.700 slash ann foster writer where i have some other episodes if you like hearing stories about men's

01:04:44.660 history um i have this so this asshole spinoff podcast is on my patreon there all the other

01:04:50.940 links are in the show notes etc i strongly encourage you to try and get your hands on a

01:04:55.640 copy of allison's book which you know hopefully your public library will have it lots of different

01:05:00.460 ways to access it it sounds like such a great wonderful book i look forward to reading it

01:05:04.920 myself i'll talk to you all next time i promise there's a new season of this podcast coming out

01:05:10.420 soon-ish

01:05:11.820 soon-ish

01:05:13.220 that's vague enough I think

01:05:15.260 but just remember to keep your masks on 1.00

01:05:18.640 and your tits out 0.99

01:05:20.140 the war is over 0.99

01:05:38.260 and both sides lost

01:05:40.220 Kingdoms were reduced to cinders, and armies scattered like bones in the dust.

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01:05:53.340 But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins.

01:05:57.620 This is old school adventuring at its most cruel.

01:06:01.100 Your torch ticks down in real time, and when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job.

01:06:06.920 This is a brutal rules-light nightmare with a story that emerges organically

01:06:11.920 based on the decisions that the characters make.

01:06:14.600 This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s, and man, it is so good to be back.

01:06:19.340 Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the shadow dark

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01:06:36.920 Goodbye, Kyle!

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01:07:09.160 Could we get something a little bit lighter,

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Vulgar History - January 06, 2021

Shakespeare's Rival Was A Bisexual Spy

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