Marlowe's Education

Gresshop's Library

As we have seen, Marlowe remained a funded King's Scholar for just under two years. During this time there were two headmasters. John Gresshop, of Christ Church Oxford, arrived in Canterbury in 1566 and occupied the post until he died early in 1580. Marlowe left later that same year for Cambridge, whilst Gresshop was succeeded by Nicholas Goldsborough who stayed as headmaster for just four years. Following the former's demise, members of the Cathedral foundation gathered at his rooms to record "the apprisement of suche goodes as were late Mr John Greshops schoolemaister at Caunterburie deceased, made the xxiijth of february 1579" [1580].1 After a thorough inventory of the late headmaster's clothes, furniture and other household items, there followed full details recorded of an exceptionally extensive library whose books were to be found stored in the window and on shelves located "in the upper study by the schoole doare" and "in the lower study".

It is not recorded whether the King's School pupils were allowed general access to these volumes, of which there were around 350. If so, it would have given Marlowe, at an early age, a remarkably privileged opportunity to read on a wide range of subjects contained in what was "a larger private library than [that of] almost anyone outside the circles of bishops and noblemen, far greater than the private collections of university dons".2 We can only imagine what inspiration such a library might have provided.

There were plenty of dull school textbooks, including over 20 on grammar (Latin and Greek), rhetoric and logic, with a similar number of Catechisms (of which nine were Nowell's in both Latin and English). But the volumes on the practise of education suggest Gresshop may have brought a humanist outlook to his vocation. In The Scholemaster (1570), Roger Ascham (1515-68) produced a guide intended for the private education of noblemen's children, and as we have seen he strongly advocated a teaching style based on gentle encouragement rather than the threat of corporal punishment. Jacopo Sadoleto (1477-1547) was an Italian Catholic Cardinal but also a renaissance humanist, and his De Pueris Recte Instituendis (On the Proper Education of Children, 1533) proposes a liberal approach to the education of youth, based on moral strength and dignity, piety, and literary training via the classics, with flogging strictly prohibited. A more radical humanist approach is advocated by Juan Luis Vives (1493-1540) in his De Disciplinis (1532), also to be found on Gresshop's shelves. He was of the opinion that teachers should be paid by the state, and should develop individual programmes of education for each child based on their needs and abilities. Erasmus (1466-1536), the great humanist thinker who inspired much of this writing, and who himself was an admirer of Vives, is also very well represented in the King's School library with no fewer than eight titles.

This Cathedral school library was of course well stocked with religious literature, and a quarter of all the books were written by protestant reformers including Luther, Calvin, Oecolampadius, Knox, Fisher, Bucer, Beza and Melancthon. There are no fewer than nine works by Peter Martyr Vermigli, the Italian reformed theologian who had spent the reign of Edward VI at Oxford University (whose Christ Church college was Gresshop's alma mater). There were nine bibles (in Greek, Latin and English), including a Geneva Bible, together with plenty of biblical commentaries and over 30 other theological works both old and modern.

The classics were an important part of the Elizabethan grammar school curriculum, and there was a wide selection in Gresshop's library: Cicero, Virgil, Plato, Aristotle, Homer and Demosthenes to name but a few. Perhaps the tragedies and comedies of Aristophanes, Sophocles, Plautus and Terence ignited Marlowe's imagination. We might speculate that the King's School under Gresshop encouraged the dramatic arts. The precedent of funding for Christmas plays had been established before he became head,3 and pupils during Gresshop's time included John Lyly and Stephen Gosson who, like Marlowe, would go on to write plays professionally. Gosson, though, would soon recant, publishing The Schoole of Abuse (1579), "a plesaunt [sic] inuectiue against poets, pipers, plaiers, iesters, and such like", with a similarly themed follow-up, The Ephemerides of Phialo (1579), that was also to be found in his former headmaster's library.

There was also an inspiring range of poetry to be found in the collection, from antiquity (Claudian, Juvenal) through the early renaissance (Petrarch, Ovid) right up to more recent anthologies of English poetry (Tottel's Micellany and A Mirror for Magistrates). Ovid was a big influence on Marlowe, and the King's School's book shelves contained no less than three copies of Metamorphoses (including the one "wth the pictures"). Boccaccio and Ficino were also represented, along with an edition of Chaucer, and a copy of More's Utopia.

Some of these school library books may have first introduced Marlowe to subjects that later inspired his drama. The shelves held two editions of Virgil, whose Aeneid was the primary source for Dido, Queen of Carthage. Gresshop had acquired a number of historical chronicles by Languett, Fabian and Solinus, and also boasted an edition of cartographer Sebastian Munster's detailed and accurate world map, Cosmographia. There were two editions of Lucian of Samosata's Dialogi, which contained the inspiration for Marlowe's most famous line about Helen of Troy and a thousand ships. Gresshop also owned a collection of Locorum Communium ("common places") by Johann Manlius (1562), a some-time student of the reformer Philip Melanchthon who claimed to have known and met Johann Faust in his younger days. Manlius draws on notes by Melanchthon to recount a number of fabulous if unreliable tales of Faustus' magic, including how the Devil came to kill Faustus one night.4 "Fentons Discourse of the Warres in France" was an English translation of Jean de Serres' work published in 1570. Marlowe's later dramatisation would only begin with the St Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572, but this book may have piqued an early interest in the contemporary Wars of Religion in France.

One other volume listed in Gresshop's library that would play a part in Marlowe's real-life drama was The fall of the Late Arrian, an old theological tract written by John Proctour (1549). The subject of this piece is thought to be John Assheton, an Anglican priest at "Shiltelington" who had stated an objection to the Trinity, the person and personality of the Holy Spirit. Proctour, a Catholic, had included 'heretical' unitarian quotes in order to rebut them. It was "some fragments of a disputation" transcribing the views of Assheton that were found among Thomas Kyd's papers in May 1593. Kyd claimed that the paper was one of Marlowe's that somehow had become "shufled wth some of myne (unknown to me) by some occasion of wrytinge in one chamber twoe yeares synce". The authorities described the transcript as "vile heretical Conceiptes denyinge the deity of Jhesus Christe o[u]r Savior". It would not end well for either Marlowe or Kyd.

In addition to all these books, Christopher Marlowe perhaps had something more fundamental to be grateful to Gresshop for. On 06 July 1580, following the headmaster's death and the recording of the inventory, John Marlowe attended a session of the probate court in the Cathedral nave along with other creditors with a claim on Gresshop's estate. Christopher's father claimed the sum of 16s 4d "receved by me Jon Marlowe" for providing lodging and footwear for two pupils who were Commoners at the King's School, one "Mungey", and John Parete. The butcher William Potter, whose son was also a King's scholar, makes a similar claim for the supply of meat to the school.5 Were these simply outstanding debts, or could the provision of these services by the tradesmen have helped procure places and maybe even scholarships for their sons? It might perhaps help explain how a cobbler was able to initially send his son to the King's School.