It Was Marlowe: A Story of the Secret of Three Centuries

by Wilbur Gleason Zeigler

“Bah! one in love can write of murder and madness.”

“True, as it may fit the story that he writes; but this is a drama in which the light and dark could well mingle to the interest of the auditors; but no, ’tis heavy with the fruit of gloomy philosophical meditations provoked in a sensitive mind from brooding over some crime more dark than that of blasphemy.”

“So! and possibly what?” asked Nash.

“The slaying of a human being,” answered Jonson.

“Murder by Marlowe?” ejaculated Nash.

A feminine cry arose in the box. It was stifled instantly, but it stopped the conversation. The man at the front of the box shuddered, and covered his face with his hands. He had almost turned his head at this outcry, but he restrained himself for the moment. This inclination to turn had been induced solely by the effect upon his ears, but following it came a force to turn him that was irresistible. The cry had shaken a chord that had been vibrated before, it seemed by the same voice in similar outcry. It did not immediately flash upon him where or under what circumstances he had heard it. No words had risen from the lips of this woman, as yet to him unseen, to give character to the cry she had just uttered, or to explain its occasion. But the one chord that it vibrated within him trembled until the surrounding network of memory became animated, and the tavern duel scene at the point where Anne had thrown herself at the feet of her combative husband arose in the mind of the man at the box’s edge. The woman behind him was Anne! His head turned involuntarily with the thought. He saw her; and she, with gaze centered upon his face, recognized him as Marlowe despite the change he had effected in his natural appearance. He also saw the eyes of Nash and Jonson fastened upon him, and in self preservation he resumed the position which he had been faithfully maintaining until this late moment.

The outcry had been induced by two causes, one was the climax reached in the conversation of the two men which had been running on disjointedly during the progress of the play, and the other was the wounding of Laertes by Hamlet in the duel scene. They had occurred simultaneously. She had caught the name of Marlowe in the conversation near her and knew that the talk was of him; the contest with foils between the two actors on the stage had absorbed her so that again she seemed the helpless spectator of a duel to death. It was the old scene over again in all its vivid reality. Laertes, of kindlier aspect than Burbage, as Hamlet, had awakened her sympathies, and she saw him as an embodied Marlowe. Then came the struggle, the exchange of rapiers and the thrust through the doublet of Laertes that staggered him. At the same time she heard the final words of Nash, and the cry had passed her lips.

It is a wonder that a second cry had not escaped her when, closely following this exhibition, the man in front had fastened his eyes upon her, and she recognized the person whom for five years she had sought, until, with heart fairly eaten out with the changeless subject of her thoughts and the dejection of an apparently fruitless quest, she had numbered him among the voiceless unreturning. But the vision of his face seemed but the natural concomitant of what had just transpired. Why should the Fates drag any other visage within the field either of reality or illusion? If God worketh for a purpose, what else could all the events transpiring within the Curtain on that day lead up to, except the meeting of the lovers?

Controlled by an irresistible impulse, Anne left her chair, and coming forward to where Marlowe was seated, fell on her knees beside him. The closing peal of ordnance had sounded, and amid the prolonged applause of the great house, the play had ended. The enthusiasm continued, despite the recognition of it by the leading actors, who bowed again and again from the stage’s front. It was more than this acknowledgment of its demonstrative praise that the audience wanted. Only a portion of the applause was for the actors, the rest was for the genius who had raised the tremendous tragedy.

“Where is the author?”