Author’s Note
In writing All Night Awake, I took certain liberties with history, sins of omission and commission which I should confess.
The fire in Stratford-upon-Avon took place three years earlier and not at the time at which I had it happen. It is true, though, that many houses were destroyed and the houses on Henley street were saved.
And while it is true that the plague tormented London through the summer of 1593, it is not true that it only started then. Rather, it was a continuation of the plague that had—unnaturally—persisted over the winter. And I’m afraid it did not stop, conveniently, when Kit Marlowe died. His death, in fact, was often ascribed to the plague. A fit end—so the Puritans thought—to his riotous living.
Also, although several of Queen Elizabeth’s biographers portray her as a borderline paranoid who trusted neither advisors, nor spies, nor even her ladies-in-waiting, yet it is unlikely she ever roamed the streets disguised as a commoner. But the legend of it persists and it was too charming to resist.
I committed what any student of Shakespeare will consider a more serious offense when I postponed to 1593 the poet’s arrival in London. This so called “late arrival” theory was extant through the beginning of the twentieth century. However, now we have too much evidence—albeit circumstantial—of his presence in London earlier. And we believe that by 1593 many of his historical plays, The Merchant of Venice, and Titus Andronicus (the greatest play Marlowe never wrote) were already in existence. I have no excuse for choosing the outmoded theory, save that it served my own work best.
Perhaps my greatest offenses against history pertain to Christopher Marlowe. The worst of these might seem to be that I gave him an entirely spurious son. Imp is my creation and there is no evidence for him. In fact, it might be considered that there is negative evidence. Such an egregious offense as Marlowe’s siring of a bastard son would surely have been written about.
Also, what we think we know of Marlowe’s sexuality would make the siring of a son highly unlikely. But renaissance sexuality doesn’t easily fit into our twenty-first-century mold. From Marlowe’s plays alone, it seems hard to deny that he had an interest in “boys” (which in this context doubtless means men). However, what one is interested in and even what one writes about sometimes has precious little to do with one’s private life, as any writer can tell you.
On that, as on other issues surrounding Marlowe’s life and death—his character, his supposed atheism, his supposed involvement in the secret service—for lack of space to address them all, I refer those interested to Charles Nicholl’s excellent (and deserving of more recognition than it has had) The Reckoning, the murder of Christopher Marlowe (Harcourt Brace, 1992).
I’m sure I’ve done Marlowe as much disservice as most of his other biographers.
Whatever he was as a human being, as a poet he was great and his death at twenty-nine was an injury done to the English language, a loss of what might have been its greatest riches. So, go forth and read because, to quote Shakespeare, “When a man’s verses cannot be understood, nor a man’s good wit seconded with the forward child understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room.”
On another note—to those who will resent my implication that Will Shakespeare inherited Marlowe’s words—fear not. This is not—yet—the last explanation I’ll advance. As unable to explain Shakespeare’s genius as all others before me, I can do no more than advance all the same theories others have advanced and, by advancing them all preempt them all.
The truth is William Shakespeare’s genius is beyond our ken and far beyond our attempts at explanation. On that, I’ll let Kit Marlowe have the last word: “The reason for it all, no man knows. Let it suffice that what we behold is censured by our eyes” and by our insufficient imagination . . .
Sarah A. Hoyt
March, 2002
Colorado Springs, Colorado