That’s right: Jonson, England’s first poet laureate, got his start by murdering a man in a swordfight. Take Marlowe’s contemporary, Ben Jonson, who stabbed an actor in a street brawl.
More literary icons have been criminals than your high school English teacher might have led you to believe. The other result? Tell me that a canonized author committed a weird crime, and you have my complete and undivided attention. I hope it’s as much fun for others to read as it was for me to write, because I had a blast. The book takes the covert and criminal activities in Marlowe’s life and reshapes them as a spy thriller, complete with secret codes and international missions. One result of this research is my first novel, A Tip for the Hangman. I went deep down the research rabbit hole and never looked back. The threatened 1593 arrest for sedition, which only didn’t happen because Marlowe was stabbed first.Īs a longtime fan of crime fiction and historical crime fiction in particular, Kit’s biography was like catnip for me. The other 1592 arrest, that one for brawling. The 1592 arrest for counterfeiting money. The dramatic seven-year career in international espionage.
Now, to be fair, all of these facts are also true for Marlowe. Usually, the bios of classic British authors are pretty easy to skim: went to Oxford and/or Cambridge, moved to London, published some writing, racked up debts, died eventually. This niche interest started when I began reading about the sixteenth-century English poet Christopher “Kit” Marlowe for a college literature class.
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