Part V

What do we know about Marlowe’s maternal family? His first name "Christopher" could possibly be a link to Spanish Jews who converted to Christianity. "Marranos" was the name given to them in Spain, which means "pigs," because they hated by both Christians and Jews. Other scholars believe that this name was given to them because they refused to eat "pork." The Jews hated them because they had become Christians, and the Christians suspected them of still holding on to the Jewish religion. They did not like to be called "Marranos" and referred to themselves as "Retaliados" or "Convertites." Professor Yeruchalmi reports that "The New Christian" was called "Jew" by his Iberian adversaries. Thus a "Jew" was really a covert in contrast to a "Hebrew Jew," one who had never converted.

The same distinction is made by Shakespeare. Shylock, like Barabas, has actually nothing to do with other Jews. Both stand alone between the Jews and the persecutors, alone as the Marrano group stood.

Falstaff makes this distinction (between a "Jew" and a "Hebrew") when he says that one should regard him as a Jew if he lies: "Or I am a Jew, else an Ebrew Jew." (I Henry IV, II iv, 175).

These converts of Spain took Saint Christopher as their special saint and accepted the name "Christopher" for themselves and their children. Cecil Roth, in his book The History of the Marranos, describes a report by a German traveler, Jerome Munzer, who visited Spain in 1494 - 495. He recounts "how there had existed, up to a few years previous at Valencia, on the site subsequently occupied by the Convent of St. Catherine of Sienna, a church dedicated to St. Christopher. Here the Marranos had their sepulchers. When one of them died, they feigned conformity to the rites of the Christian religion, going in procession, with the coffin covered with cloth of gold and bearing an image of St. Christopher in front of them. However, in secret they washed the bodies of the dead and buried them in accordance with their rites." Though they lived as Christians, the Marranos wanted to be buried as Jews.

We know that the maiden name of Marlowe's mother was "Katherine Arthur," and that her grandfather's name was "Christopher Arthur," thus Marlowe was named "Christopher" after his maternal grandfather "Christopher Arthur," not "John" after his father. His brother, who was born five years later (August 20, 1569), was named John Marlowe.

Urry reports that Katherine came from the Arthur family of Dover, "close to the harbour front under the castle cliffs." This adds to my suspicion that the family had migrated (possiblly from Spain or Portugal), since Dover was a coastal city, and someone coming from Europe would have to come to Dover first.

Now, where was Katherine (Arthur) Marlowe buried? Urry reports: "... she asked to be buried in the churchyard of St. George's 'neare where as [is] my husbande John's Marlowe was buryed … it was in the register of All Saints' and not that of St. George that [she] was buryed the XVII daye of Marche.' "Why the change in the cemetery? Could it be that her father was buried there, or that this was a cemetery for baptized Jews?

Marlowe's father was an Englishman, the "Master Cobbler" (shoemaker) of Canterbury.

I am almost tempted to assign. Slipper's (the son of a shoemaker, description of his family in the anonymous play James the Fourth --- later ascribed to Greene --- to Marlowe's family:

"but my mother, good woman, alas, she was a Spaniard and being well tanned and dressed by a good fellow and English man…"

(James IV, lll, 131)

The Marprelate tracts revealed the sins of the bishops in the same way ? Machiavelli laid bare the motives of princes, and we know that Marlowe identified with Machiavelli.

In the Prologue to Marlowe’s Jew of Malta, that devastatingly satirical play, Marlowe speaks through Machiavelli: "And let them know that I am Machiavel" (Jew, Prologue). It is tempting to see Marlowe punning on his own name when we read Tract IV:

"... they who defend this false and bastardly government of archbishops and bishops ... are likely, in a while to become Mar-prince, Mar-state, Mar-law, Mar-magistrate, Mar-commonwealth. As for Mar-church and Mar-religion, [these] they have long since proved themselves to be.

(Tract IV, 237)