6. The School of Night Proof thatthe world was round supplied by Magellan and Drake, was only part of the new information available to Marlowe's contemporaries in the r58os. The comfortable ideq derived from fuistotle, that the rrniverse was a complex unity in which everything, human and environ- mental, formed a poetic whole was shaken by scientific discovery. Medieval belief had been that matter was composed of four interacting elements and the heavens of a fifth immutable one; that the human body comprised four humours, which interacted for good or bad health; that there had been four ages of the world and the fifth, like the heavens, would be perfect and millennial; that the truth of these sets of four was underwritten by the four seasons, the four points of the compass, the four letters in the Hebrew name for God, and so on, Seven was also an operative number - there were seven deadly sins, seven cardinal virtues, seven sacraments of the Churchr seven days of creation, seven ages of the life of man. The universe was seven concentric spheres of pure crystal which carried the planets in their orbits round the earth; and the state was pant of this inter-related pattern - as the sun ruled the planets, so the king (or queen) ruled the state. Kit Marlowe described part of such belief in Act u, Scene ii, of Doctor Faustus, adding Faustus's own doubts. Faustus: Spe*, are there many spheres above the moont Are all celestial bodies but one globe, As is the substance of this centric earth? 55 WHO WAS KIT MARLOWE? THE SCHOOL OF NIGHT Mephistophilis: As are the elements, such are the heavens, Hariot, who with Johannes Kepler demonstrated that the primum Even from the moon unto the empyrial orb, mobile (first mover), as it was then envisaged could not exist. Mutually folded in each other's spheres, Hariot was one of Raleigh's circle for a long period. It had been And ioindy move upon one axel-tree, believed that as the sun ruled the planets and the king the state, $flhose terminus is termed the world's wide so God in the guise of the primum tnobile, ruled the empyrean pole. realm of fire. His 'wheel' gave motion to the first sphere, which Nor are the names of Saturr5 Mars or Jupiter passed this to the second, and so the movement continued through Feigned but are erring stars . the integrated universe. Hariot, roughly calculating the speed of Faustus: How many heavens or spheres are there? the sun and moon, found that this prime mover would have to Mephistophilis: Nine, the seven planets, the firmament and turn at incredible speed; Kepler estimated that it would travel the empyrial heaven. at 7r5oo,ooo miles in a twin pulse-beat, and simply could not Faustus: But is there not coelum igneum et cristal. exist. IJltimately Raleigh in his History denied that the prime mnu*) mover, the crystalline heaven and the element of fire, existed at Mephistophitis: No, Faustus, they be but fables. all. In 1593 Kit Marlowe was reported as saying that Moses was a mere juggler'and that one Harior, being Sir W. Raleigh's man, Mephistophilis may not have been accurate in his information, can do more than he'. but his ideas were not part of Aristotle's comfortable whole. Marlowe described the heavens in Act rrr, Scene i, of. Doctor Queen Elizabeth did not frown on scientific experiment, and F austus, with classical overtones. STalter Raleigh, one of the leaders of this movement, was among Chorus: LearnedFaustus, her favourites. A light-hearted example of his approach to experi- To find the secrets of astronomS ment and the Queen's cooperation was when he wagered her that Graven in the book of high firmament, he could weigh smoke. He weighed tobacco before he smoked it Jove's Didmounthimup to scale Olympus rop... in his pipe, and then weighed the ashes. The difference, he said He views the clouds, the planets and the stars, was the weight of smoke. The Queen paid up, remarking that The tropic, zones, and quarters of the sky, she had known alchemists who could turn gold into smoke and From the bright circle of the horned moon, Raleigh was the first to reverse the process. Even to the height of Primum Mobile. Improved methods of measuring natural phenomena, followed by testing of observations, were uncovering new facts which ap- Thomas Hariot did useful work on symbols in algebra, and peared to shake the foundations of knowledge. Kit Marlowe, one his most controversial contribution was calculating the chronology of Raleigh's circle at the end of the r58os, was reported as of the Old Testament. Having studied the time necessary for shocking rigid-minded people by frank logic. (This habit prob- civilizations to rise and decay, he concluded that the Old Testa- ably began in arguments with his outspoken family in Canter- ment did not allow enough. Consequently he was accused of bury.) denying the word of God. The most subversive work in undermining the status quo of It was Raleigh and Hariot who endeavoured - with insufficient belief was done by the mathematician and astronomer Thomas time to see the fruits of their labours - to found a civilization in 56 57 WHO WAS KIT MARLOWE? Virginia. Kit Marlowe has not commented on this experiment, Hide now JH:"':.'.T ::T:, nieht, though his enthusiasm for exploration and geographic expansion And shut the windows of the lightsome heavens . was demonstrated in T ambwlaine. Then let the stony dart of senseless cold John Donne, yet to emerge as a leading literary figure, was Pierce through the cenffe of my wither'd heart . soon to say that'the new philosophy calls all in doubt' and to (T amburlaine, Part One) write different verse from Edmund Spenser, who was influenced by medieval concepts of idealized behaviour. Yet it was Spenser, Like to an almond tree y-mounted high both by chronology and friendship, who belonged to Raleigh's Upon the lofty and celestial mount and Marlowe's circle at the end of the r58os. This partially ex- Of ever-green Selinus, quaintly deck'd plains how Raleigh, with Marlowe, Hariot, poet George Chapman !7ith blossoms more white than Herycina's brows. (renowned for translating Homer), and Walter Warner, could (T amb url aine, Part Two) be interested in mysticism as well as scientific experiment. These Renaissance thinkers were prepared to accept the experience of It is not clear who influenced whom between Marlowe and mysticism while they discounted crystal spheres and empyrean Spenser. Spenser brought The Fairie Queene to London in r589, fire. They were not atheists, though it was of this that they and though the Tambwlaines werc published in r59o they had were accused. Donne, who was not a mystic, evenfually under- been acted since 1587. As Marlowe supervised the printing of went a conversion and died as Dean of St Paul's; both rationalism the Tamburlaines, he must have read The Fairie Queene, or and less mystically idealized religion had developed quicHy. Dr alternatively Spenser must have shown his poem to Marlowe or Dee, living a generation earlier, was feared by the superstitious as seen the Tamburlaines before the plays were printed. Presumably a sorcerer, though he made some scienfific experiments; while the Walter Raleigh introduced the two poets to each other, or they middle-men, Raleigh's School of Night (as later described by a met as mutual friends of Raleigh's. phrase frorn Shakespeare's Love's Labours Lost), who were Spenser's background compares interestingly with Kit Mar- approaching gently to rationalist ideas, had the worst of both lowe's. Edmund Spenser had entered Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, worlds, being accused of atheism while not attaining to un- as a sizar - a poo! student required to perform menial duties - in tramelled thinking. 1569. This was a decade ahead of Kit Marlowe who, due to his scholarship means (money duties, Spenser was esteemed more highly by fellow poets, despite his and unspecified from spy patronage from Thomas Walsingham, help from his uncle?), had medievalism, than Donne was to be. Kit Marlowe included some been more affiuent, if not as wealthy as some. Kit Marlowe was lines of Spenser's The Fairie Queene in tns Tambwlaine plays, also of 'humble birth', i.e. not from a noble familp and neither and it was Raleigh who brought Spenser back from Ireland to was Gabriel Harvey who became Spenser's friend but not publish The Fairie Queene in London. Marlowe's. Nashe, another of humble birth and educated as a Several groups of lines appear both in Spenser's Foirie Queene sizar, was to satirize Harvey in his pamphlets. Harvey, proud, and in Kit Marlowe's Tambrnlaine plays. These include: quarrelsome, pedantic and of considerable intellect, was a critic Oh highest lamp of ever-living Jove, of Raleigh's circle though he sometimes attended its discussions, Accursed day, infected with my griefs, and he approved of Spenser, whose friends apparendy did not 58 59 WHO WAS KIT MARLOWE? THE SCHOOL OF NIGHT hold this against him. Spenser's father had been a journeyman Boyle, whom he was to marry. He was to return to London in in the cloth trade, by contrast with Marlowe's shoemaker father, 1595 with three more books of The Fairie Queene and this time who was his own master. Spenser received a good education at went to the Earl of Essex, another nephew of the now deceased Merchant Taylor's School, which had been recendy established Earl of Leicester, rather than to Raleigh, who was out of favour.