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The National Register of Archives holds further information about manuscripts and historical records on Marlowe, Christopher (1564-1593) Dramatist

[edit] Inquest into his death

The coroner’s inquest is held at The National Archives under the reference C 260/174, no. 27. It is written in Latin, apart from the English words ‘le reknynge’ and ‘nere the bed’. It has been transcribed and translated in J.L. Hotson, The Death of Christopher Marlowe (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1929), pp. 28-34. A reproduction of the manuscript is found in C. Nicholl, The Reckoning; the Murder of Christopher Marlowe (Jonathan Cape, London, 1992), facing page 176. Nicholl goes into further detail of the killing on pp. 17-21. Since the incident occurred within the twelve mile ‘verge’ of the palace at Greenwich, where Elizabeth I was resident in May 1593, the inquisition was held by the coroner of the Royal Household, William Danby, but it offers no additional medical evidence beyond that usual in any murder inquest. A debate over the fatality of Marlowe’s wound has appeared in a number of published sources, many of which are listed in Nicholl’s bibliography. Nicholl himself, in discussing the medical consequences of a knife wound through the right eye socket, was advised by Mr Adrian White, consultant ophthalmic surgeon at Victoria Eye Hospital, Hereford.

The coroner, however, was only concerned with the a legal investigation of the circumstances surrounding Marlowe’s death. Since the only witnesses to Marlowe’s last moments were the men directly involved in the fatal argument during which he died - Ingram Frizer (who supposedly inflicted the wound), Nicholas Skeres and Robert Poley - their information was the only verbal evidence upon which the inquest jury could base a verdict. Much of Nicholl’s book constructs a world of double-dealing and espionage, which suggests that all three men were complicit in the political murder of Marlowe, and that they perjured themselves to disguise his death as an act of self defence. With such self-interest directing the only witnesses, the coroner simply recorded that Marlowe had died instantly. This may have been the case, or he may have expired slightly more slowly from haemorrhage or an embolism. In reality, the extant evidence prevents the ‘actual truth’ from ever being uncovered.