Walsingham’s “good service”

“Come with me and be my love” we may hear Marlowe wooing his young Henry while at Cambridge circa 1586, and still burning with passion for Henry with Marlowe’s Jupiter smitten with Ganymede in “Dido Queen of Carthage”. And Lord Burleigh manages the situation regarding his young charge Henry with a letter from the Privy Council to explain that Marlowe had become a secret spy doing his Queen good service in 1587 so that Marlowe graduates with a Master in Arts degree from Corpus Christi without having written a Master of Divinity Thesis in 1587. However, in May of 1593, Marlowe’s tragedy of Ganymede to a Leander turned includes a denouement that so provoked the Queen that she commanded Marlowe’s death sentence: “prosecute it to the full”. 

Shakespeare’s Phebe says “omittance is no quittance” and asks Shakespeare’s Ganymede “Art thou a god to shepherd turned, That a maiden’s heart hath burned? Why thy godhead laid apart Warst thou with a woman’s heart? Whiles the eye of man did woo her that could do no vengeance to her”, meaning Ganymede’s scorn of her was so beastly that she too will have to “study how to die” whether he takes her to the bed or not. 

But in the process of time clearly Shakespeare’s Ganymede is not like Marlowe’s Ganymede to a Leander turned with “a force” in his eyes that can “do hurt” like Marlowe’s Leander does when he scorns Hero in Marlowe’s denouement that is something omitted “to the gentle aire” of Walsingham’s “liking” when Marlowe’s “Hero and Leander” is published in 1598 “Desunt nonnulla”, post line 818,  as if Marlowe’s “Hero and Leander” is an “unfinished Tragedy”, in May of 1593,  Marlowe was “beloved” when killed in May of 1593, Walsingham is his “friend” in May of 1593 who now in 1598 along with his wife Lady Audrey make Marlowe’s “Hero and Leander” breathe abroad more agreeable and thriving in 1598 without Leander’s scorn of Hero and it replaced in “Hero and Leander, An Amorous Poem”, The Six Sestiads by Marlowe and Chapman dedicated to Lady Audrey.  

In Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” breathed abroad offers compared to “it” made “more agreeable” in compared to the treatment of “it” in the name of Sir Thomas Walsingham, knighted 1597, and his wife Lady Audrey. Shakespeare’s Phebe in aside tells Marlowe: “Dead shepherd now I find thy saw of might, Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?” and Touchstone tells Audrey: “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.”  

Evidently “it” is the cause that so provoked Elizabeth I that she commanded Marlowe’s death sentence in May of 1593: “prosecute it to the full”. On the 18th of May Marlowe is fetched from Walsingham’s Scadbury Estate by warrant instructing the Queen’s Household Messenger Maunder to look for Marlowe at the estate of Thomas Walsingham. Marlowe at this point in time appears to be living there to escape the plague on in London. On the 20th of May 1593, Marlowe appears at court to answer a claim made by Thomas Kyde. Marlowe is indemnified against Kyde’s claim and he is instructed to appear daily before his Lordships until licensed to the contrary. Ten days later Walsingham’s Frizer kills Marlowe at Widow Eleanor Bull’s Tavern House in Deptfordes on the Stronde. And on inquest the Queen’s Household Coroner William Danby finds no element of malice aforethought present whe Frizer’s dagger penetrates Marlowe’s right eyeball socket thence several inches into his brain pan. 

A search in Kyde’s apartment finds a Greek Text on the Arian heresy of Homoousian blasphemy that suggests the nature of Jesus Christ was only human and not divinely consubstantial with the divine Nature of the Father. In other words when Marlowe said Jesus was an homosexual, as per Kyde’s claim, made on the 20th of May, he was speaking blasphemy by making the divine nature of Jesus as if merely that of a mortal man. After a jury pardons Frizer, Walsingham charges Marlowe with “Atheism” and “Treason in his report submitted June 1st, 1593, and Marlowe’s body is burned as an heretic. Walsingham performs good service for his Queen having prosecuted Marlowe to the full.     

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