Where and when Christopher Marlowe met Miguel Cervantes is not publicly known. A good guess is Lisbon, 1587, in early April, Marlowe scouting for Drake, (1) who wanted to hit the Armada before it got under sail, Cervantes in town working on spec for the Armada supply commisioner, Antonio Guevara. Cervantes hoped to win from the commissioner a contract requisitioning supplies out of Seville. (2)
Cervantes and Kit Marlowe both stammered; (3) that may have helped cement their friendship, for they became lifelong comrades. Very poor, Cervantes had joined Spanish secret service in his youth, (4) and had seen military service—at Lepanto he lost the use of his left hand, so his nickname became Manco, the name Marlowe uses for him in ciphers. (5)
Drake credited good intelligencers for his lucky strike on Spanish galleons at Cadiz that April, (6) and it looks as if Marlowe 'turned' Cervantes, who'd have been the only man in Lisbon who'd know where the warships were hiding.
Marlowe was granted his MA in absentia by means of a special letter of praise from the privy council. (7) He was absent because he was working in Madrid that summer as Arthur Dudley, (8) with Walsingham's agent Federigo Zuccaro, (9) (who made a rough sketch of Marlowe then, said to be of young Shakespeare.)
In May 1589 (governments take their time with payoffs) Cervantes, too, may have beeen rewarded by England, for early that June he suddenly possessed a lot of mysterious money. (10)
Cervantes yearned to be a successful playwright, and several plays of his were produced in the corrales, his first in Madrid probably in autumn, 1583. (11) These dramas were not exactly hits but had great passages in them. He also made memorable entremeses, (12) and his other writings, poetry and prose, contain scenes that seem like plays. (13) When Marlowe translated Don Quixote I, he put these hidden lines up front:
Hundreds of years later, this dream came true, in The Man From la Mancha.
Several stories in Cervantes' Don Quixote I & II were directly inspired by happenings in Marlowe's life: Kit's courtship of his first wife in "Candaya" (Crete), is described by the Afflicted Matron (the nurse) in Chapter 38 of Part II. She tells how a young poet came to Candia and seduced her, and the beautiful 14-year old maiden in her charge, by singing marvelous roundelays with a Gittern—and that this Don Clanixo was not the girl's Equall, hee being but a private Gentleman, and shee such an Inheritrix, and how the girl's mother, the queen, was so angry she died. (15)
Cervantes left out the sad end of this romance: Marlowe married Rita; (16) she died at Padua in childbirth at the end of October 1594, (17) and Kit, with a new baby to care for, sent home plays, packed up, and with a cow, the baby girl and the nurse, set off in spring 1595 to stay with Cervantes in Seville . Manco had invited him to come. (18) Going over a hot, dry Spanish mountain, Marlowe's party found an almost-dead youth named Cardenio lying unconscious on the trail. (19) They revived him and he told them he wanted to die for his lost love. They fed him and took him to his castle-home, and later both Marlowe and Cervantes wrote about the young man, using his name Cardenio: Kit made a play, performed at court but now lost, (20) while Manco put part of the story into several chapters of Don Quixote I.
Marlowe's little family lived with Cervantes in Seville for more than a year. Marlowe had to leave and return a couple of times, and Cervantes, caring for the child, grew very fond of her. Her first language was Spanish, and Manco's loyal affection for her in later years shows in his works.
In June 1596, Cervantes and Kit scouted for Essex's Cadiz raid; Cervantes, disguised as a new Spanish Ordnance Commissioner, Kit as his clerk, went to Cadiz and mixed up the cannonballs, moving them around to different stations so the big guns couldn't fire properly. (21) (Cervantes, a famous humanist, was forever Robin Hood — opposing his king's incineration of stray Moors and Jews and the cruelty of colonial government in America.)
After Essex's raid, Marlowe and little Isabella had to say goodbye to Manco; Kit took the child aboard the third admiral's flagship and they sailed for England, Kit under cover. He told the admiral he wanted his girl to be reared by some kind, rich English family, and the admiral said he'd take care of her. He was Good Tom Howard, Lord Howard de Walden, who became earl of Suffolk, and he had a big family at Audley End. Marlowe, still banished, was soon sent off to Italy by State Secret Service.
Cervantes and Marlowe were both in Valladolid in May 1605 during the Spanish-English peace-party: (22) I have no ciphers about this occasion. Kit, after suffering a series of awful experiences that year, came back to stay with Manco, who probably helped him to write in Spanish. Using the name Antonio de Eslava, Marlowe wrote Milon y Berta, and for his daughter an extant book of stories called Noches de Invierno, with a ciphered English dedication to her–she was still living at Audley End. (23) A copy of this anagram is here in the appendix. (One of the stories in Noches has been noticed as a source for The Tempest. (24))
Meanwhile in England, Kit's child, first known as the Orphan Isabel, had been adopted by wealthy friends of the Howard family–the Bassets, who'd lost an infant daughter: Orphan Isabel became Elizabeth Basset. Her adopted dad soon died, and suddenly the girl became a wealthy, marriageable ward of the crown. (25) Kit's dedicatory lines in Noches de Invierno are addressed to her as Eliza Basset.)
Cervantes' fourth story in his Novelas Ejemplares is about this daughter of Kit's. "The Spanish English Girl" contains true details that Marlowe must have supplied, about the remarkable meeting of Queen Elizabeth, Admiral Tom Howard the Admiral and this little girl at the Charterhouse on 17 January, 1603. (26) Crevantes includes dialogue for the queen and the child and describes the little girl's pearl-embroidered dress (probably made from the pearl-embroidered wedding gown Rita wore when she eloped with Kit).
The queen was not well; she was preparing to go to Richmond to die, and that meeting was her very last in town. (27) As Marlowe was her friend, she may have come to free his child from a threatening wardship, for there'd been wrangling over it; Master of Wards Robert Cecil wanted it for himself. (28) The girl seems to have been left with assets intact, and she wasn't forced to marry a man Cecil would have chosen for her.
Late in 1610 Cecil's son and young Henry Howard, Good Tom's third son, came together to the English embassy at Venice, (29) and it was Henry, not the Cecil youth, who asked Marlowe for Isabel-Elizabeth's hand in marriage. When Kit heard of hopes for a wedding he was floored, said yes, and started to work on The Tempest as a present for the young people. (30)
All of Cervantes' Chapter 5 in Don Quxote II is a dialogue between Sancho Panza and his new wife, about how Sancho's daughter is going to make a very "good" marriage. The wife objects, saying the girl's marrying out of her class. Sancho says (in Marlowe's 'Thomas Shelton' translation), "Why wilt thou ... hinder me from marrying my daughter where she may bring me grand-sonnes that may be styled Lordship? ... you shall see how you shall bee called Doña Teresa Panza, and sit in the Church with your carpet and your cushions and your hung-clothes, in spite of the Gentlewomen of the town." and on.
Then in Don Quixote II, Chapter 36, Cervantes prints a letter, fictional but correctly dated July 1614, in which Sancho Panza tells his wife he's going off to become a rich Governor.
Kit's friend Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, owned a large part of the Bermuda Company, (31) and he wanted someone to take the hard-up colonists supplies they wouldn't have to buy from the concessionaire. Also, Hen had recently been made commissioner in charge of catching English pirates hanging around Algiers. (32) To kill two birds with one stone–this could have been Kit's idea–Hen commissioned Marlowe to buy two new little ships (marciliane) at Venice, go catch some pirates (!) then lade the vessels with supplies, take them to Bermuda and give the new ships to the colonists.
Kit did, and yes, he was dreaming of a pardon that might allow him to be governor and take his new Spanish-actress wife there to live. (33) In Part Two, Chapters 42—53, Don Quixote gives Sancho advice on being a governor, and Sancho arrives at the Island, has an awful time, has to leave and give up his dream. Too true. (34) There are more allusions to Marlowe in other works of Cervantes—a touching one in Viaje del Parnaso.
In his ciphers Kit Marlowe often speaks of his friend Manco. If you read down the right side of these two-column pages his ciphers make stories. (Please note that my line-numbering measures only lines of dialogue, which is how Marlowe did it, anyway.) In 3 Henry VI, Marlowe says he's fine in Seville with this thin friend who stuttered an invitation to stay—and Kit tells how he took the nurse back to the Lido and returned to Manco's place to find baby Isabel speaking Spanish. In some ciphers for 1 Henry IV included here, he tells about the 1596 Cadiz raid, and how they said goodbye to Manco.
In the later cipher-story of As You Like It here in the Appendix, Marlowe in 1601 is reminiscing about old times and tells of the wild trip with the baby to Cervantes' place in Seville, years before. In Tymon ciphers he writes of Manco's last illness; in Bargrave's Polisie ciphers, of his death. Kit and Manco's relationship was not locked in spying; Marlowe was a real friend to Cervantes, visited, corresponded with him, translated Don Quixote I for him – and Don Quixote II, after Cervantes died.
In mid-1610, Cervantes was set to go to Naples with the cultural entourage of his long-time patron, the 7th Count of Lemos, but at the last minute he was left in Madrid without money. I think Francisco Quevedo told the viceroy Manco was declassé. (35)
Marlowe did go to Naples under cover as cultural aide Antonio de Laredo, (36) and when the elegant theater company of Fernan Sanchez de Vargas (37) came ashore and began work at court for the viceroy, Kit's life changed.
Beautiful Micaela Lujan (38) was primadona of the Sanchez company. She and Kit fell in love, right away considered themselves married and found a shack at a little cove on the beach, where they lived together. His ciphers in the The Winter's Tale tell about this and are included here.
Micaela had been Lope de Vega's lover for years—she'd helped
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She knew the undercover work Kit was doing for England was dangerous. Most days, as popular Antonio de Laredo, he worked as a secretary at the palace and for the poetry and drama clubs of the imported Spanish nobles, but sometimes he had to leave Naples to report political news to the English embassy over at Venice. He now had a little ship of his own, (41) and once in a while he sailed on errands for English ambassador Harry Wotton and his successor Dudley Carleton. Micaela kept acting in the theater productions and kept house at the beach. She was captivated by Kit's writing skill (she was no fool), became his loyal aide, and in 1611 and '13 she bore him babies.
There they were, two middle-aged people starting a life together in spite of incredible difficulties. He wrote a play for her in Italian about a woman who was a good angel appearing in disguise to extricate a rash young man from trouble. It was published in Venice with byline Gregorio de' Monti (his out-front name for the second part of his life), and the Folger Library owns a copy of the third edition. (42)
In 1613 Marlowe distanced himself from a corrupt State Secret Service. He continued to work for Lemos in order to keep undercover watch for Spanish political and military moves against England or Venice; he checked in with Wotton and Carleton as a friendly secretary, but could not bring himself to work for Bacon. This was an impossible situation—with no secret service pay he was dependent on a small stipend from Lemos and the kindness of his friends in Venice. When Marlowe suffered financially in Italy, so did Cervantes in Madrid. (43) Times got rough.
And there was a real worry about Spanish aggression. The poet-politician Francisco Quevedo had put forth a plan to capture Venice(44) and use the city as a base for troops which would move north through friendly Hapsburg territory to Holland, where Spain had a ten-year truce, and from there the plan was to—what else?—cross the Channel and take England.
Marlowe's difficult Bermuda voyage was over; he'd returned to Miceala and his family in November 1614. Cervantes said in Don Quixote II that all Sancho could bring home was a coral necklace for his wife and some bladder water-wings for the children. A tiny new (third) brother was ill and died.
Harry Wotton had been replaced as ambassador in Venice by Dudley Carleton, and now Carleton had to leave and asked Marlowe to serve as chargé d'affaires till Carleton's return. (45) Micaela retired from the stage in November 1614, and with Kit and the children, traveled to Venice.
But Carleton's leave-taking was delayed, so Marlowe took a job as reader in medicine at Padua University, (46) and since he couldn't afford an apartment, the family lived in a tent till it got cold, then moved to a boat tied at the riverside–where something awful happened.
The children (did they decide to go swimming? At the beach the water had been gentle and shallow )—the children jumped overboard, were carried off by the cold swift current and drowned. Kit returns to that moment in ciphers, over and over. (47) Micaela stayed and comforted him.
She and Marlowe did go to Venice to keep track of things at the embassy when Carleton left, and just before Harry returned to take up the reins in spring 1616, the "modern" steam-heat system at the embassy house (it had no safety valve) blew up, ruining every room and killing their dog, Signora Scala, who was sleeping on top of the furnace. Kit felt responsible, but Harry—no recriminations—just rented a new place. (48)
Lemos and his train, including the Sanchez Players, were scheduled to leave Naples late in June 1616 to return to Spain. Micaela wasn't going with them, but Kit suggested (did Harry suggest it to him?) that it would be a good idea for her to go back to Madrid, keeping her distance from Lope, and collect news to bring to Venice.
She was incensed. They quarreled. She said Kit was using her—he didn't even love her enough to make their marriage correct in the eyes of the Church—they weren't really married! She was tired of being a tool. Yes, she'd go to Spain, and she wouldn't come back! She shot off to Naples. (49)
Marlowe followed her; she evaded him. He went to work with the dramatic Oziosos club at the Naples court and directed a farcical playlet about Persephone going to the underworld. He was at the top of the stage playing Pluto and getting laughs, when suddenly he twisted his bad foot, broke his ankle and fell down on the other actors, stopping the show. (50) Micaela, still in town, couldn't be reached. He didn't have a good doctor.
Lemos and his court, Micaela and the Sanchez company sailed away, leaving Kit hurt, unloved and feeling sorry for himself. In pain he rode to Venice, to his dead spymaster Battista Guarini's old apartment in San Moise, where he sat down and edited a little book of encomia for Battista, gathered from many friends. Kit added sonnets he'd written himself, signed Gregorio de' Monti and gave the compilation to the Ciotti Press. (51)
Then he made a bitter rewrite of a play he'd made in college days, Timon of Athens. Bitter outside and in. Inside, he put a tiny loving epitaph for Cervantes, who'd died four months before in Madrid in a diabetic coma. Then he thought of Micaela: They were too married! (52) She was a bitch. He thought she'd gone back to Spain to sell the information she'd gathered about England in her years with him! Damn! But he wrote to her at her theater in Madrid, told her if she'd come home over the Brenner Pass he'd meet her up there—and yes, he'd marry her in the Church. (53)
Details of Micaela's adventures in summer and fall 1616 have been preserved in two accounts which fit together to make a clear story. Both her lovers were writers, and each tells his view of what happened, Kit in his ciphers, Lope in eleven letters he wrote to his patron, the duke of Sessa. Here's a paraphrase of these letters. A copy of selections from them, in Lope's own words, can be found in the Appendix. (54)
On 6 August, Lope wrote from Valencia that he met la loca [Micaela] as she got off the ship. He'd been waiting for her for weeks—had a horrible cold from waiting for her—he felt awful—he was a wreck. The Sanchez Company had been playing comedies on shipboard and in Barcelona for the last month.
She came to see Lope in Valencia, said he should write to Sessa that in her the duke had a slave. From Valencia she went up to Madrid with the company, and near the end of August Lope went to see her perform there. la loca looked neat, he wrote, and was good when the guitars came in. (He called her la loca because she was so standoffish.) He took her and their children to the bullfight, and later he couldn't help wishing she was the bull.
Every night for twenty nights he stood and argued with her in the shadow of her door. (The great doorway of the crumbling Lujan Tower?). She must have told him that Gregorio was the best playwright in the world, for Lope wrote: "I'd very much like to see some writing made by that angel of the Palace, for after I saw the ignorance of Don Gregorio, any entanglement seems possible to me." (A mystery–Lope knew Kit's out-front Italian name!)
About 20 of September Micaela disappeared, and Lope found a new girl, "intelligent, clean, amorous, grateful and compliant." Lope wrote that la loca told Lemos's nephew that he, Lope, "made love like a nun, and spoke more impossibilities than prayers in a parlor," and the nephew circulated these statements in a paper, "but already the caballero is repentant and knows that he was not well informed."
Meanwhile, disguised as men, Micaela and her maid set off with their page, riding toward the Pyrenees and France on the way to the Brenner Pass, as Marlowe had suggested. A punishing trip; Micaela was very pregnant with a baby she and Marlowe had started early in February, before they split. (He didn't know.) From Madrid the riders would have gone through Siguenza, Zaragoza, over the Pyrenees at Bagnares de Luchon; to Toulouse, Lyon, on to Basel, Zurich—ever onward to the Brenner pass. When they arrived, Kit wasn't there. Micaela and her aides started down and got as far as the inn at Bolzano, where they had to stop: the baby came.
The rest of the story, except for two notes in Lope's letters to Sessa, is told in Marlowe's ciphers. (55) Still thinking Micaela had abandoned and probably betrayed him, Marlowe started for the pass but was met on the track by her page, who informed him that Gregorio's wife, with their newborn baby, was waiting up at the inn. (Dumbstruck, he counted the weeks.)
His ciphers describe the awful climb to the inn, how later he found a priest and actually married Micaela, how the party got down through snow to Venice and his cold old bachelor quarters — no food.
On 7 October he sent a famous letter crosstown to Harry, confessing he and Micaela had been joined in wedlock and begging not to be abandoned. "I have married a wife who is poor and homely, so she will never be proud, and I'll never be jealous." (56)
If Micaela had looked worn at that moment, it would be understandable. Harry answered (he'd promised this) by giving Kit's family a handsome apartment in the embassy house.
Soon Lope wrote Sessa, "there came a maidservant of that person and told me her life and miracles since she left here, and they are such that till today I have not returned to my senses." And in one more letter, "Neither when I'm alone or with someone do I remember that base woman, especially since I learned her low tricks. They write to me that they regret." (57)
I616 — a very rough year. Marlowe didn't learn till May that Cervantes was dead of diabetes in Madrid. Shakespeare died at Stratford from a fever said to have been contracted after a meal with Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton. Marlowe's almost-promised pardon was shelved, and though his most powerful friends asked James to send Gregorio something to make up for his lack of pay while he'd been in charge of the embassy, the king figured it was cheaper just to send a nice letter, which he did, on the next-to-last day of the year. (58)
Kit and Micaela lived together in their separate apartment in the English embassy house in Venice, and besides the baby born in the mountains they had three more children. (59)
One afternoon in late spring, 1618, at a play-party in Harry Wotton's big living room, Micaela sang and danced as the Jailer's Daughter (Kit played the Jailer) in the very first performance of The Two Noble Kinsmen, which had been sketched out as a farce by Kit and John Fletcher. (60) Fletcher was in town with lots of English actors—and probably with his brother Nathaniel, who'd been Harry's first chaplain at the embassy. (61)
Many of Kit and Harry's friends had come to Venice to help defuse the Quevedo-Osuna plot, and the play-party was a kind of victory celebration. The secret half-brothers Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, and Henry Vere, 18th Earl of Oxford, were there, playing the title roles. Harry Wotton played sound-effects on the cello, and Micaela Lujan's appearance in the show that day may have been her farewell theatrical performance. (62)
1. Christopher Marlowe was doing jobs overseas for State Secret Sevice before and after his BA. His absences from Cambridge are carefully tabulated. Wraight, A. D., and Virginia Stern. In Search of Christopher Marlowe. NY: Vanguard Press, 1965, p.69. In 1587 he was absent February on through every term. That he was scouting for Drake is suggested by Drake's intention, that April, to find and damage Spanish galleons which had just been laded for the Armada. Thomson, George Malcolm. Sir Francis Drake. NY: Wm. Morrow, 1972, chap. 14. Back
2. A contract requisitioning supplies for the Armada out of Seville, where Guevara was headquartered. Cervantes did get this job. In April, after five great galleons laded at Lisbon had moved around to harbor out of sight at Cadiz, Cervantes rode, fast, Lisbon?–one day in Toledo—and on to Seville. He didn't go home—he hung out in Seville all summer, though his pay didn't start till September. Byron, William. Cervantes, A Biography. Garden City NY: Doubleday 1978, pp. 311, 312. Byron writes, p. 312: "Cervantes was on the run. Everything known about his subsequent actions tends to confirm the notion." Back
3. Cervantes stammered. ibid., p.42: "his tongue in knots." In Don Quixote I, chapter 4, Quixote, carried away, speaks "without stammering." In chapter 20, he speaks "with a faltering tongue." Kit stammers in the exciting places throughout his ciphers. He refers to his own intermittant impediment in an anagram in Bargrave's Polisie. Back
4. His first secret job was in summer 1568 (for Mateo Vasquez), when Cervantes partnered with Pedro Lainez, chamberlain to don Carlos when Carlos died that July, locked in a tower. Byron mentions the sad occasion. op. cit. pp. 74-75. Back
5. "Manco" ciphers in 3 Henry VI, 1 Henry IV, Timon of Athens, and more. Back
6. Drake. Encyclopedia Britannica, 1955. Thomson, George Malcolm. op. cit. Chap. 14. An intelligencer who sailed — Kit was a sailor — Lisbon to Ságres also informed Drake of the whereabouts of the great galleon San Felipe, the biggest haul ever for England. Drake must have been grateful. Back
7. A letter of praise. Wraight and Stern. op. cit., pp. 87, 88. Back
8. Arthur Dudley. I think Marlowe left Drake's hospital ship as it passed Áviles on its way home — that he was wearing a fancy suit of Drake's clothes (both men were short and stocky), probably with monogram D, which helped Kit's undercover name Dudley. He told the authorities he'd been shipwrecked, had swum ashore and wanted to go to Madrid to talk to don Felipe. His whole statement (the original kept with Simancas documents) is printed in Ogburn, Dorothy and Charlton. This Star of England. Westport CN: Greenwood Press, 1952, pp. 1252-'56. Back
9. The painter Federico Zuccaro, a
friend of Francis Walsingham, had stayed several 
years in England in
the '70's — made a beautiful portrait of Elizabeth. In summer 1587 he
was working undercover for Walsingham and the Resistance at the
Escorial and in don Felipe's big artist's studio next to the palace in
Madrid. Mary Cable. El Escorial. NY: Newsweek Book
Division.1971. Encyclopedia Britannica, 1955 edition. Spanish
Cities of the Golden Age, the Views of Anton van den Wyngaerde.
edited by Richard Kagen. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1989. In Chapter 1., by Jonathan Brown, "Philip II as Art Collector and
Patron," Zuccaro is the subject of pp. 33-35. He was still in town when
"Arthur Dudley" arrived. Experts say Zuccaro couldn't have made a
sketch of Shakespeare, as Shakespeare would have
been too young when the painter was in England — but of Kit, in Madrid,
1587? Back
10. Cervantes received a payoff? Byron. op cit., p. 342. Back
11. Byron. op. cit., pp. 278-292. Back
12. The Interludes of Cervantes. Transl. by S. Griswold Morley. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1948. Back
13. Among them, his Novelas Ejemplares, with a little drama about Marlowe's daughter. Av. Republica Argentina, Mexico: Editorial Porrua, S.A., 1981. Back
14. Sancho was Marlowe. Kit speaks of this identification in ciphers, and it's made clear by many biographic allusions in Don Quixote, and one in Viaje del Parnaso. Back
15. Did she? Marlowe speaks of the mother's death in Noches de Invierno, a story book he wrote for Isabel-Elizabeth.
Dr. Maria Tiepolo, Director of the Archivio di Stato, Venezia, sent me (23 Dec., 1982) a list of all the civil servants in Crete in 1594. The duke was Giovanni (Zan) Domenico Cicogna q. Gerolamo, who served from 1593 to1595. Marlowe tells us the man's daughter was Marina — Kit called her Rita (in ciphers for Romeo and Juliet Prologue and other works.) Back
16. Marlowe married Marina. He eloped with her – her nurse went with her – in the little ship he captained; ciphers in 3 Henry VI tell they were married at the Church of Santa Maria just before they crossed the lagoon to dock at Venice. Back
17. Marlowe tells about it in different ciphers, over and over, and that November sent off to England, among other things, the finished Romeo and Juliet and a rewritten Midsummer Nights Dream containing 30-odd allusions to lovers or husbands indirectly responsible for the death of their ladies. If this sounds far from Spanish theater people, not really; Cervantes knew and loved Kit-and-Marina's baby girl, who survived and had an interesting life. Cervantes wrote about her. Back
18. Ciphers in the last part of 3 Henry VI tell of Cervantes' invitation. Back
19. In As You Like It ciphers, Marlowe remembers the trip to Seville and gives a day-by-day rundown of the journey—horseback to Genoa with the cow, and by sea Genoa to Valencia, and south with a different cow and horses over rough Spanish roads and trails. . Back
.
20. A play of Cardenno was presented by the King's Men at court in the winter of 1612-13 and again on 8 June 1613 Chambers, E. K. William Shakespeare, Facts and Problems. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930, vol. 1. p 519. Cervantes writes about Cardeño in Don Quixote I, the 3rd Book, Chapters 9, 13; and in the 4th Book , Ch. 8. I think that when Cervantes' work became popular, Marlowe's play had to disappear; it came too close: if people zeroed in they might see these two authors were friends, and next they'd be revealed as friendly spies. That's just a guess. Back
21. Marlowe tells about the charade in ciphers for 1 Henry IV. Inability of the Spanish guns to fire properly is mentioned in Harrison, G. B. The Life and Death of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. NY: Henry Holt, 1937. pp. 114,115: "The two guns in the Puntal Fort were fired off, but the effort was too much for them; one burst, the other collapsed ... There was no opposition from the land." Byron, op. cit., also mentions this odd happening. Back
22. Intelligencers, spring of 1605. Cervantes rented a big house, used family as agents. Byron, op. cit. pp.443-453. Cervantes went up the autumn before the Peace Party; so did Francisco Quevedo. At this time the two seemed to be good friends — "gran amistad." Marin, Luis Astrana. La Vida Turbulente de Quevedo. Madrid: Gran Capitán, 1945. p.89. (But really Quevedo was researching El Buscon.) Back
23. A series of theatrical stories. The Hispanic Society of America, on 155th St. NY, supplied my microfilm copy of Noches, a rare work discussed by Thomas Frederick Crane. Italian Social Customs of the 16th Century. NY: Russell & Russell 1971, pp. 629, 631. Though Noches is written in rather crude Spanish it's set in Venice, and Italian customs are described. Marlowe's hidden English dedication to his daughter is enclosed here in the appendix. Back
24. Crane, Thomas Frederick, ibid. footnote, pp. 630, 631 The earliest reference to Chapter 4 in Noches de Invierno as a source for The Tempest was made by a German scholar, Edmund Dorer, in an article, "Die quelle zu Shakespeares Sturm," in Das Magazin fur die Literatur des in- und Auslandes, vol. 107 (Jan 31, 1885) , p. 77. Back
25. William and Judith Basset and the Howards and Hen Wriothesley's (foster) mother, Mary Browne, were all Catholic friends. The Bassets' own baby Elizabeth was born in 1599 and must have died in infancy, and Orphan Isabel, 4 years too old, was made a ringer. She seems to have been very tiny; there's a full length portrait of her, made about 1618, showing her — dark, looking like Kit — standing by a chair. Either the chair is enormous, or she's about 4 feet 10. (In 1982 the painting belonged to Anne Bentinck, daughter of the 7th Duke of Portland, who lived at Welbeck, home of Isabel-Elizabeth Basset's second husband, William Cavendish.) William Basset died intestate and wealthy in 1601. Back
26. Chambers, E. K. The Elizabethan Stage. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923. Appendix A: "A Court Calendar," p. 116. And in The Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. Norman Egbert McClure, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979 , vol 1, p.182, Chamberlain writes to Dudley Carleton: "The Monday before her going the Quene was entertained and feasted by the Lord Thomas at the Charterhouse." Back
27. Chambers "A Court Calendar," op. cit. p.116.The queen went to Richmond on 21 January, 1603. Back
28. Hurstfield, Joel. The Queen's Wards. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1958, pp. 301-304. A curious agreement which fascinated the author. Cecil wanted the lucrative wardship. Lord Cobham bought it first, then Ralegh, who passed it to Cecil under the table. Back
29. Smith, Logan Pearsall. The Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907, vol. I footnote p. 498. Back
30. In the appendix here are the first four lines of Marlowe's ciphers in The Tempest, re the young people. Back
31. Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, was recorded a principal investor in Bermuda in 1612 (as he'd been since the start of colonisation). Lefroy, J. H. Discovery and Early Settlement of the Bermudas or Somers Islands. London: Longmans, Green, 1877. Chapter II. Back
32. In C. M. Senior, David & Charles Newton Abbot. A Nation of Pirates. London, Vancouver, NYC: Crane, Russak, 1976, pp. 140, 141, we read of English efforts to suppress English piracy: Between 1610 and 1614, commissions to capture pirates were granted to several port cities, "besides a joint commission for the Earl of Southampton and the Mayor of Portsmouth." Back
33. Kit did: On 23 July, 1985, the Director of the Archivio di Stato, Venezia, Dr. Maria Tiepolo, wrote to me enclosing microfilm copy of a letter sent from Domenico Domenici: Senato, Dispacci Firenze, filza xxix, cc. 132r.—134v. Venezia. Domenici wrote that Monsu de' Montis marsigliane have captured at Tunis an English [pirate] ship which was coming from Algiers with a great quantity of reales. He has also taken another good ship [a "buonavia"] and a petache. [Captured cargo was to go to the Bermuda Company.] He is at Malta, and "is said to be arming all the vessels which he takes, and he thinks it to be to his advantage, as in the case of the English ship, that they should have 22 pieces of artillery; and that he intends to procure the abandonment of the affairs of Barbary." A poorly translated copy is held in English State Papers, calendared CSP Venetian 1614. A footnote to that item is part of a letter, Carleton to Chamberlain, 15 July, O. S. 1614: "We hear of an English ship, the Tiger, taken at Tunis by two marciliane sent out against pirates." A copy of the complete letter in my file. Back
34. Marlowe's experience at Bermuda is relevant only because it's the subject of eleven chapters of Cervantes' Don Quixote II! Years before, Cervantes had put a touch at the end of Part One, suggesting that Sancho might become governor of an island. That was because Hen Wriothesley, freed from prison by the new King James, was given charge of the Isle of Wight, and it seemed Kit might be pardoned to be on-the-spot administrator. It was not to be.
But in 1614 Marlowe was sailing to a far-away English Island, and Hen may have worked to have Kit appointed as its next governor. But when Kit's fleet arrived at Bermuda, Governor Richard Moore, a simple, irascible man, feared the raunchy, bristling armada and suspected the gift of the little ships. Marlowe came with instructions from Southampton directing changes in administration to aid the starving colonists, but these "new things " the governor violently refused to consider. The Tiger shot off to Virginia, and Marlowe went home in the other captured pirate ship, the "buonavia," leaving the scorned marciliane for the colonists. Smith, John. The General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles [Bermuda]. 1624. Reprint Birmingham: Edward Arber, 1884. Smith's honest early pages shadow forth the only sensible published account of the two little ships Hen Wriothesley sent by Kit. Marlowe himself makes it all clear in the ciphers of Bargrave's Policie. Back
35. Francisco Quevedo cultivated Cervantes as a friend, learned the man's private life story, and cruelly, with nasty distortion, used Manco's confidences to create a famous sordid novel, El Buscon. Marlowe quietly worked revenge years later, foiling Quevedo's plot to burn Venice and publicly shaming him and Osuna. Back
36. Antonio de Laredo. I first used this name tentatively, identifiying him only by eliminating other poets and writers who served this Count of Lemos at Naples. I knew Kit was there, and reading an article in Hispanic Review, Oct. 1933, "The Literary Court of the Conde de Lemos at Naples, 1610-1616," by Otis H. Green, I came on a story that made it almost a sure thing: on p. 306 is an extract from the Comentarios of don Diego Duque de Estrada, in which he tells about an impromptu farce (summer 1616); "el Rector de Villahermosa ... sin dientes, a Proserpina, el Scretario Antonio de Laredo, a Plutón, y yo, el ambajador de Orfeo." Sounded like something Kit might do. But I wasn't sure till I studied Kit's second wife's departure for Spain, 1616. Back
37. The Sanchez Company — one of the best. Rennert, Hugo Albert. The Life of Lope de Vega. NY: Benjamin Blom, 1968. Many indexed references to its manager. Back
38. Micaela Lujan. A famous actress, singer and dancer. Her bios are in encyclopedias of music, theater and celebrities; none of those books can tell when she retired or died. In Rennert, ibid., she's indexed as Luxan, Micaela. Rennert makes some wrong guesses about her, pp. 113-115. Back
39. Marcela Carpio, b. 1605, and Lopito Carpio, b. 1607. Rennert. ibid. p.113 . Back
40. Lope's second wife was Doña Juana de Guardo. Rennert. ibid. many index entries. She died in 1613. Back
41. Marlowe writes of it in ciphers for The Winter's Tale. In "Elegy for William Peter" he calls it his "p-p boat." (piss-poor?) Back
42. Kit's play for Micaela, L'Ippolito, signed Gregorio de' Monti. A bibliographic history of this play is offered by Clubb, Louise George. Italian Plays in the Folger Library. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1968, #363. The first edition appeared in 1611, a year after Kit met Micaela. Back
43. In 1610 Cervantes was stranded in Madrid by ex-patron Lemos, and scholars find it mysterious that the count so coldly left Manco. Poverty moved in. Manco took some old plays out for revival; The Dungeons of Algiers, The Spanish Gallant, The Great Sultana. Byron discusses all this, op. cit., pp. 475-478. But Cervantes was working on Don Quixote II, which appeared In 1615. (Marlowe, who'd had translated Don Quixote I as Thomas Shelton, translated the sequel, but not till after Cervantes died.) Back
44. Quevedo's idea was not new. I believe Marlowe was able to keep Lemos from taking it seriously — but when the duke of Osuna came to Naples as viceroy in 1616, Quevedo, the duke's confidant, moved quickly to implement it. Luis Astrana Marin. op. cit., p. 241: "It was necessary to make Spain ascendant in the politics of Italy, and for the Duke to show his desire to defeat the pretensions of Venice, ruin her power and knock her from her supremacy in the Adriatic and in the Oriente." Back
45. Carleton had received an appointment to the Hague. Dudley Carleton to John Chamberlain. ed. Maurice Lee, Jr.. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1972. p. 169. Back
46. Carleton's leave-taking was delayed because of conflict between Spain and Savoy. He was to wait for orders to go to mediate at Savoy, so it was he who got Marlowe the job at Padua University, through an agreement with the Venice Collegio. CSP Ven. vol 13. 28 Nov.1614. Kit tells about it in Bargrave's Polisie ciphers. Back
47. Bargrave's Polisie ciphers, included here in the Appendix. Back
48. Kit wrote to Carleton about this explosion and Carleton paraphased it in a letter, 24 May, 1616, so it must have happened early in the month. Dudley Carleton to Chamberlain, op. cit., p.201. The accident is also described in Bargrave's Polisie ciphers, but there Kit alters the time. Back
49. She must have left for Naples, and the theater, about the end of May. Back
50. Marlowe describes his fall in detail in Bargrave's Policie ciphers, but there's also a touching quotation in Rafal, Marqués de (Alfonso Pardo Manuel de Villena). Un Maecenas Español del Siglo XVII. Madrid: Imprenta de Jaime Rates Martin, 1911, pp.168-171: the Duke of Estrada reviews the playlet Kit produced in June (at the time he was hunting for Micaela at Naples). Estrada says: the Secretary Antonio de Laredo was a very well-made man, in face and figure very quick and daring to speak extemporé — so much so that in other comedies he had leading roles — performing in different voices and passing himself in different places where they spoke very much — and so graceful was he in all the very different parts that spoke, that he was the fiesta of the comedy — but beyond this natural grace, a very good subject in all media. [I believe he helped Lemos make some good laws. R. B.] Estrada goes on through the play and tells how this Laredo turned his foot wrong on getting down from his pedestal at the end of the scene, falling on those below and almost hurting them. So now we know: Kit's cover name in Naples was Laredo. Back
51. Varie poesie di molti excellenti autori in morte del M.Illustre Sig. Cavalier Battista Guarini. Venice: Ciotti, ed. Gregorio de' Monti, 1616. Back
52. Kit writes," to catch and kill my married wife." He had terrible memories of an early love affair with a woman named Emilia Bassano. She, too, he'd regarded as his "married wife." She betrayed and abandoned him and never let him see their son. Back
53. He wrote to Micaela. Bargrave's Polisie ciphers. Back
54. Lope's letters to Sessa about la loca — eleven of them — are printed in Barrera, D. Cayetano Albert. Nueva Biografia de Lope de Vega. The Spanish Academy, 1890. pp. 173-177. (completed in MS in 1864.) Back
55. Bargrave's Policie ciphers. Back
56. Copy in Public Record Office, (State Papers) reference SP99-21-X/L09704. (Harry kept the original.) Back
57. Barrera, op.cit, p. 175. Lope writes, sarcastic: "escribenme, sienten." Back
58. Copy in Public Record Office, (State Papers) same reference as note 56 here: SP99-21-X/L09704. (Wm. Davenant once said he kept a letter written to his father by the king.) Back
59. Three more children. Kit writes a lot about them in Bargrave's Polisie. He died late in 1621, when they were still little. On 17 February, 1983, Dr. Maria Tiepolo, Director of the Archivio di Stato in Venice, sent me a kind letter saying no will of Gregorio could be found — they'd looked everywhere — but she had found a tax notice for one of Gregorio's sons, Iseppo Monte q. Gregorio, who lived 26 April 1661 in his own house at S. Luca, and about assessment of his several properties. She sent a Xerox of the original document. Back
60. In Bargrave's Polisie ciphers, Kit says he asked for John Fletcher's help in writing the work. Back
61. Nathaniel Fletcher was Harry Wotton's chaplain from 1604 to 1608, and is identified as brother of John the dramatist. Smith, Logan Pearsall. The Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton. op. cit, vol 1, p.48. Back
62. Bargrave's Polisie ciphers. How I came to find John Bargrave's Polisie may be of some interest: When I began to look for traces of Marlowe's life, I bought a paper: "Supplement to The Shakespeare Controversy 1962-1972", published by the Shakespeare Authorship Information Centre, 20 Park St., Brighton, England. 0273- 696316. There are 19 pp. of "comments on Shakespeare and the authorship controvery in recently published books." The second item is a quotation from Vita Sackville-West's memoir, Knole and the Sackvilles. Benn. 1922/1973. She writes: " I used to tell myself stories of finding Shakespeare's manuscripts in the Muniment Room ... There really are some connections between Shakespeare and Knole. Everything to do with Shakespeare, however slight, is of the deepest interest."
Soon, looking at my microfilm of Harry Wotton's letters kept at Eton, I came across one written by his steward Will Leete, 9 August, 1618. It had been crumpled but saved and put with the rest. Addressed to a "Mr. Bargrave," it says, "Gregorio is very thankfull to you for your good newes, hee hath delivered his patent unto my Lord to send, hee is ready to serve you in all occasions..." The editors of a published version of this collection of letters thought Will was writing to Isaac Bargrave, who'd worked at the embassy — but Isaac had a brother, Captain John.
Years later, studying Bermuda and Virginia, I found Kingsbury, Susan Myra. Records of the Virginia Co. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1906-1935. In vol. iii, p. 607, John Bargrave says a gent. named Ignotus wrote a treatise on government in Virginia. In vol. iv, starting on p. 408, the treatise itself is printed, with title: Captain John Bargrave. A Forme of Polisie To Plante and Governe Many Families In Virginea, Soe It Shall Naturally Depend One The Soveraignetye Of England (An anagram if ever there was one). Papers of Lord Sackville. Document at Knole Park, Sevenoaks, Kent. The steward at Knole doesn't lend documents from its Muniment Room, but the USA Government Print Office copy is honest, decipherable, and worth hard work, for it contains what is probably Kit's last memoir. Back
The APPENDIX consists of selections from Lope de Vega's letters about la loca, as printed in Barrera's Nueva Biografia de Lope de Vega, and Marlowe's ciphers in:
— his translation of Don Quixote, part I;
— Romeo and Juliet Prolog;
— pp.15-16 in I Henry IV;
— p. 24 in 3 Henry VI;
— pp. 10-19 in As You Like It,
— and in The Tempest, lines 1 & 2, 3 & 4.
The Home page of Roberta Ballantine's site dedicated to Christopher Marlowe
Contents of Roberta Ballantine's site dedicated to Christopher Marlowe