The Reckoning : The Murder of Christopher Marlowe

Rating:
Summary: The darker side of Marlowe and his times
Review: Dood, he's been dead for like a thousand years, who cares how he died? It's not like they can arrest his murderers or nething.

Rating:
Summary: No innocent victim
Review: Fascinating book. Charles Nicholl is excellent at detailing the machinations and dirty tricks of the Protestant police state that was Elizabethan England. Unfortunately he isn't quite as good at explaining why poet and spy Christopher Marlowe was executed by that state.

It's not Nicholl's fault of course - the problem is the lack of hard evidence. All we can conclude after wading through 500+ pages of Nicholl's labyrinthine research are some vague hunches - that chief minister Robert Cecil wanted to nail Sir Walter Ralegh, that young Marlowe was a member of Ralegh's circle, and that executioner Poley was Cecil's man. As with the Gunpowder Plot twelve years later, it seems Robert Cecil was probably the chief villain. But who knows?

Readers should be prepared to like Marlowe rather less after reading the book. Making his living as a government spy during very violent times, Marlowe was certainly no innocent victim of circumstances.

Rating:
Summary: No innocent victim
Review: Fascinating book. Charles Nicholl is excellent at detailing the machinations and dirty tricks of the Protestant police state that was Elizabethan England. Unfortunately he isn't quite as good at explaining why poet and spy Christopher Marlowe was executed by that state.

It's not Nicholl's fault of course - the problem is the lack of hard evidence. All we can conclude after wading through 500+ pages of Nicholl's labyrinthine research are some vague hunches - that chief minister Robert Cecil wanted to nail Sir Walter Ralegh, that young Marlowe was a member of Ralegh's circle, and that executioner Poley was Cecil's man. As with the Gunpowder Plot twelve years later, it seems Robert Cecil was probably the chief villain. But who knows?

Readers should be prepared to like Marlowe rather less after reading the book. Making his living as a government spy during very violent times, Marlowe was certainly no innocent victim of circumstances.

Rating:
Summary: Well-researched but sometimes tedious
Review: For assiduous research into Marlowe's life and times, THE RECKONING deserves five stars. For pure entertainment value, I would give it only three. So I've split the difference.

It's impossible to deny the hard work and exhaustive research that went into this densely argued book. Nicholl discovered previously unknown tidbits of fact about Marlowe and other Elizabethan figures (and he is not shy about announcing his role in these discoveries). Unfortunately, the sheer number of digressions into the minutiae of Elizabethan spycraft began to wear on me after a while. At one point Nicholl himself admits that a certain story he is recounting is "wearyingly familiar," as indeed it is - we've read it all before, again and again, in the lives of various minor poets and sometime spies reconstructed throughout the book. Some of these folks are directly connected with Marlowe, some have only the most tangential relationship, and others are dragged in just for atmosphere. An examination of the events in Deptford that left Marlowe dead occupies the first and last sections of THE RECKONING, but the long middle portion is devoted to establishing the background of the killing - a background that seemingly incorporates every single fact Nicholl was able to dig up during months or years of poring through archival documents. It can be "wearying" indeed, not to mention mind-numbing. Still, there is important information here for those interested in the period. Just don't expect a quick or easy read.

Rating:
Summary: nice little historical who dun it! utterly brilliant work
Review: I love history and all the details. I also love riddles and mysteries. So, when someone combines both into a tale, as Charles Nicholl did, it's bound to please me. This book is the Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography and the Crime Writers' Gold Dagger Awards for non-fiction thriller - both well earned!!

Marlowe was a very controversial poet and playwright. In 1593, he was stabbed to death in a lodging house in Deptford. To say the least, the manner and circumstances of death was up to question. There was a violent quarrel concerning Marlowe's bill and the official finding has been called dubious at best.

Nicholl brings to life this historical riddle with style and ingenuity weaving facts, supposition and fiction into one wonderful mix. He presents a very complex study of Marlowe's death, but it is also a marvellous study of the seedier side of Elizabethan society.

Nicholl walks the masterful tightrope between historical study on Marlowe's murder, a well-written 'who dun it' and portrays with rich detail the period that leaves one wondering if he is not reincarnated!!

So buy it for the history, writers need to read it if they write about the period for it is also a scholarly work, but most of all sit back and enjoy a real British Who do it.

Rating:
Summary: nice little historical who dun it! utterly brilliant work
Review: I love history and all the details. I also love riddles and mysteries. So, when someone combines both into a tale, as Charles Nicholl did, it's bound to please me. This book is the Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography and the Crime Writers' Gold Dagger Awards for non-fiction thriller - both well earned!!

Marlowe was a very controversial poet and playwright. In 1593, he was stabbed to death in a lodging house in Deptford. To say the least, the manner and circumstances of death was up to question. There was a violent quarrel concerning Marlowe's bill and the official finding has been called dubious at best.

Nicholl brings to life this historical riddle with style and ingenuity weaving facts, supposition and fiction into one wonderful mix. He presents a very complex study of Marlowe's death, but it is also a marvellous study of the seedier side of Elizabethan society.

Nicholl walks the masterful tightrope between historical study on Marlowe's murder, a well-written 'who dun it' and portrays with rich detail the period that leaves one wondering if he is not reincarnated!!

So buy it for the history, writers need to read it if they write about the period for it is also a scholarly work, but most of all sit back and enjoy a real British Who do it.

Rating:
Summary: Well-done, but a bit much after a while
Review: Let's be honest here, the essental appeal of this book is the same as that of those who watch Brother Cadfael mysteries on PBS (or BBC), to lose yourself in a suspenseful tale of another, mysterious world (albeit, in this case, an Underworld). Of course, this in not to do justice to Mr. Nicholl, whose meticulous research deserves high praise.-I personally am not enirely on the "shallow" Cadfael side or the meticulous research side.-I was hoping in this book to find a pleasant mixture of the two.-But when the author himself says "But there is also a draining sense of the meaninglessness of it all. This is the reductio ad absurdum of the intelligence world: self perpetuating, self referring. They live in and by the confusion they create,"p.255 I knew I'd bitten off more than I really wanted to chew. But, out of a sense of justice or masochism or something, I went ahead and read the whole book. If you want to know everything there is to know (or speculate about) Kit Marlowe

and his world, this is the book for you. Much of this opus verges close to pure biography rather than mystery. I guess what it comes down to is that I think Nicholl wanted to write a biography, but switched things around a bit so that it could come out under "Mystery" at the bookstores, thus increasing sales. Well, yes, Marlowe's life is a "mystery" but so is yours and mine. After all, on the first page of the introduction, Nicholl avers "...Yet these true things are only part of the story, pieces of a jigsaw."-And who could not say the same of their own lives as seen by others, or even by themselves?-Doesn't anyone read Proust anymore?!?-Alright. Enough. I just think that Nicholl has bitten a bit more than he can chew himself-As a delightful alternative to this genre of writing, I recommend "Footsteps" and "Dr. Johnson and Mr. Savage" by Richard Holmes: The best books I've ever read in conjuring up writers lost in the mysterious past!-Despite all this, Nicholl has earned his four stars with his excellent writing and meticulous research. I'm sure there are readers who appreciate it fully (professors and dons I betcha!)-Anyway, I think I'm coming close to being hypocritical in this long-winded review!-Cheerio!

Rating:
Summary: Poetry, Espionage and Murder
Review: The death (possible murder) of Christopher Marlowe is one of the most fascinating of all true crimes. Set in Elizabethan London with a cast of characters that include William Shakespeare, "The Reckoning" provides a intriguing explantion for the events of that strange day when after hours of drink and talk, Kit Marlowe ended up dead, stabbed through the eye. The official story: a quarrel over the bill or reckoning. But mix in politics, espionage (Marlowe was a spy), homosexuality and literary genuis and the official story gets shaken to its tidy core. This is a very fine work, thoughtful, well-researched and crisp, capturing the time and place effectively and believably, and providing a rational context for the known events. Apart from the loss of Marlowe's death at the height of his genius, the story provides a compelling view of the murkier side of life among the young bloods of the aging Elizabeth's world. Not only a class A unsolved mystery, "The Reckoning" is also important resource for serious readers of late 16th c. poetry and drama. NB: Marlowe is the only playwrite Shakespeare quoted in one of his own works -- a sign of respectful rivalry.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating..though slightly lengthy...
Review: This was one of the hardest books to put down that i have ever come across. Not only does it offer a credible theory of Marlowe's death, but also an insight into the duplicity and danger of life in sixteenth century London. Of course as a Brit who has been to and experienced the ever present feeling of history and precariousness of the city many many times, it may not have the same effect on a stranger to the city.
Intriguing, fascinating, necessary.