Abstract

On Thursday 29 June 1587 the Privy Council drafted a minute to the authorities of Corpus Christi College Cambridge ordering them to stop making difficulties in the matter of conferring Marlowe’s degree and declaring that “Whereas it was reported that Christopher Morley was determined to have gone beyond the seas to Reames and there to remain, their Lordships thought good to certify that he had no such intentµ. It is not clear whether this means that Marlowe had never in fact gone to “Reamesµ (i.e. the French city of Rheims) at all or whether it means that he had gone there but had not intended to stay, but we do know that such a visit is not improbable, for since 1578 Rheims had been the home of the seminary to which English Catholics could go in secret to train for the priesthood. If Marlowe did indeed visit Rheims, two aspects of its splendid cathedral would surely have caught his attention: first, that it was used for the coronations of the kings of France; second, that its west façade, site of its principal iconographic programme, gives prominence to two themes, crowns and a kind of strange opposite of coronation, decapitation. This essay argues that both these motifs are pertinent for understanding Marlowe’s work.