Christopher Marlowe: Poet & Spy, written by Park Honan, published by Oxford University Press, 2005.

Scholars have speculated for centuries over the fate of Christopher Marlowe, the Elizabethan era poet and playwright perhaps best known for his adaption of Doctor Faustus in which Faustus negotiates a deal with the Devil and loses his soul in the bargain. Long before Shakespeare began "borrowing" from his works—which Marlowe viewed as a compliment—Marlowe was a student at Corpus Christi College where he was recruited as a "secret agent" working on behalf of the Sir Francis Walsingham network. His mission was to identify students and members of the clergy susceptible to papist influence. But as Marlowe trifled with espionage over the years, he eventually became a target for his own blasphemous slurs and "seditious atheism" which were viewed not only as heresy, but as a treasonous threat to the Queen.

As Park Honan, the author of Christopher Marlowe—Poet & Spy—expertly tells the story, the Privy Council issued a warrant on May 18, 1593 for Marlowe's arrest and he was apprehended in the home of his patron, Thomas Walsingham, but not imprisoned. Then, on May 30, 1593, Marlowe was invited to attend a feast at Eleanor Bull's tavern by Ingram Frizer, a patron, like Marlowe, of Thomas Walsingham. Also in attendance were Nicholas Skeres and Robert Poley who, along with Frizer were "manipulators skilled in dodgy business." After the luncheon, all four men walked and talked in the garden until 'the sixth hour after noon." They had dinner and then Marlowe "lay down because he was disconcerted by events and perhaps hazy with drink." Soon after, according to the coroner, malicious words were exchanged over the reckoning of the bill. Violence erupted as Marlowe grabbed Frizer's dagger and with the hilt, "gave him two wounds on the scalp." Frizer then recovered his dagger and stabbed Marlowe above the right eye. Marlowe died shortly thereafter. He was twenty-nine years of age at the time of his death. The coroner's inquest of June 1, 1593, which the author includes in the Appendices, ruled that Frizer acted in self-defense. But did Frizer act in self-defense? This is the key question addressed by the author who concluded that a more likely probability was that Frizer, and his entourage, knowing Marlowe's rash nature, provoked him into a confrontation that resulted in his deliberate death. A more likely verdict is thus murder.