No-one has shown us so vigorously how inescapable were the daily crowds of flat-capped, blue-clad apprentices on the London streets, or the difference between the common alehouses and the taverns "where men were drunk with more credit and apology". His thumbnail portraits leap into life: Thomas Nashe was "a thin boyish satirist with a tooth or two that poked out at angles" when Marlowe first met him. Based in new research, and especially effective, is Honan's evocation of Marlowe's childhood Canterbury, a claustrophobia of slaughterhouses, piety, paranoia and the smell of curing leather.The glovemaker's son and the shoemaker's son turned the late 16th-century theatre into a remarkable place. Marlowe's introduction of blank verse to the popular stage was electrifying, and Patrick Cheney's reminder of his "absolute inaugural power" is fully underwritten here. Honan's account of the interplay between Marlowe and Shakespeare is not new, but it helpfully stresses the way in which theirs was a "nearly collusive relationship" - this without inventing addled trysts in Mrs Miggins' alehouse.
Switching the roles of teacher and pupil, each surpassed the other in theatrical innovation. Honan's work on the plays and poetry is never less than sharp, and he has a good eye for the continuing relevance of Marlowe's preoccupations with "the roots of modern bestiality" - the brutal powers of prejudice and greed.Marlowe's is the most famous of literary deaths, and Honan has his own suggestion as to its motive. Like Charles Nicholls, whose important work he acknowledges, he links Marlowe's murder to the unsubstantiated but riveting documents which accused him of atheism. One of these has Marlowe indulging in some outrageous claims: that "Moses was but a jugler," that "St John the Evangelist was bedfellow to Christ," and that "all they that love not Boyes and Tobacco are fooles." Like Nicholls too, Honan sees Frizer as acting on his own account, yet with a wink from a high place. Nicholls saw a "more complex kind of meaninglessness" than a tavern bill brawl behind the murder: he suggested that the Earl of Essex was behind it. To Honan, though, Thomas Walsingham was the more likely candidate. We do not yet know: Honan reminds us that "history holds its doors open".Amid the complexities of the Elizabethan secret service, though, and the excesses and successes of the drama, Honan keeps his focus on Marlowe as a writer.
He "understood desire" with bitter clarity: "Love is not full of pity, as men say / But deaf and cruel where he means to prey." Park Honan writes with a restrained power that in itself reflects the vividness and the controlled violence of Marlowe's mighty daring.. 'Oh Mr Lees-Milne, please take me to Chatsworth with you. I do so much want to meet Andrew and Debo, as you call them." "Well, it really is most frightfully difficult if you don't know them." "But how do you know all these aristos? How did you get there?" "Well, it did happen long ago. And to tell the truth I really don't know how." Mr Lees-Milne clears his throat, "I mean it was Eton, I suppose." Yes, Eton has a lot to answer for Both good and maybe bad.