Letter from Richard

On Jul 14, 2013, at 6:54, Richard  wrote:

Dear Michael,

Have you ever seen the wonderful film "Shakespeare in Love" (1998)? It may be too Hollywoodish filth for your taste, but I have to admit to really loving the movie.

Kit Marlowe is killed in a knife fight in the film, which does not seem plausible, your explanation sounds more likely!

Why do you think the secret police killed him? His exposing of usury?

All the best,

Richard

Tokyo, Japan

Dear Richard

Christopher Marlowe was killed by a knife, but it wasn't a fight. British secret agent Ingram Frazer stabbed him through the eye as a symbol of Marlowe having "seen too much."

In Marlowe's scathing play Tamerlane the protagonist is a thinly disguised stand-in for Queen Elizabeth I, who Marlowe was exposing as an Oriental type of despot. He also forced her hand in the Dr. Lopez affair, wherein she had been harboring a cabal of Sephardic Judaics in London as a beachhead for an influx of Judaic occultists. Marlowe had the courage to call her out on it and she had no way to extricate herself but to have Lopez executed on phony charges of having tried to poison her.

In the usual pattern, after Marlowe was assassinated his reputation was blackened ("atheist homo") and the trail of his assassins almost hopelessly muddled. Almost.

I have tons of arcana on Bad Queen Bess and her regime (which wasn't quite hers, as I alluded to yesterday in the note to Bernard). But I despair at ever finding the time to do the Elizabethan book I have been planning for 20 years...  Ce'est la vie, mon ami.

Michael Hoffman

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