The twentieth century was a good time to be a Marlovian. When John Ingram, in 1904, published the first full-length biography of Christopher Marlowe (aka Morley, Marley, or Marlin), he did not even know the name of the man’s killer. Not until twenty years later did Leslie Hotson’s Death of Christopher Marlowe make public the actual coroner’s inquest describing the death of the poet at Deptford Strand on May 30, 1593. Hotson thought he had provided “the authoritative answer to the riddle of Marlowe’s death,” putting to rest rumors of a romantic intrigue over a bawdy woman, which had spawned centuries of pontification about God’s judgment on the wicked. But in the same book Hotson brought to light evidence of Marlowe’s possible involvement in Francis Walsingham’s intelligence service, giving rise to even more speculation about murder, feigned murder, and, inevitably, how you-know-who wrote you-know-what.

Charles Nicholl’s The Reckoning (1992) pried from the archives additional evidence of continental intrigue. But only recently has a crop of Marlowe biographies attempted to incorporate the new facts about Marlowe’s life into our total vision of the poet. The latest, Park Honan’s Christopher Marlowe: Poet & Spy gives equal billing to both professions of the cobbler’s son from Cambridge, though it does not quite weave them together convincingly. Honan has accomplished a difficult task, synthesizing the spotty historical record into something approaching a believable biography. His book can only be wholeheartedly recommended, however, if read in conjunction with David Riggs’s recent World of