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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Sair Dowdy and I'm Delaine and rucolate Boarding, and

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Speaker 1: today we are going to be talking about the poet

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Speaker 1: and playwright Christopher Marlowe. And marlow is just about the

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Speaker 1: double of William Shakespeare. They were born the same year,

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Speaker 1: only a few months apart. They're both sons of kind

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Speaker 1: of you know, decent earning tradesmen, and they showed remarkable

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Speaker 1: promise as boys, read voraciously and then moved to London

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Speaker 1: and started very successful careers in the theater, but their past.

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Speaker 1: While Shakespeare went on too great fame and security, he

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Speaker 1: ended up retiring in his hometown in his late forties.

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Speaker 1: Marlowe died with a stab wound to I at age

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Speaker 1: twenty nine. Sounds like a really bad way to go, definitely,

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Speaker 1: and we don't even know that entirely for sure that

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Speaker 1: he died with this stab wound to the eye, but

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Speaker 1: it's what we think. Everything about Marlowe is really really sketchy.

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Speaker 1: Even his last name. It's variously Marlowe, Marl, Marley, Morley, Marlin, Marlin,

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Speaker 1: and Marling. How does that work. So, I mean, the

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Speaker 1: Elizabethans are notoriously bad spellers, but come on, that's a

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Speaker 1: lot of majors. So if we're gonna assume it's one

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Speaker 1: guy though, Christopher Marlowe, what do we know about him? Well,

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Speaker 1: he was the son of a shoemaker, as we mentioned,

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Speaker 1: kind of a tradesman. Low beginning, lowish beginning. He was

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Speaker 1: born in Canterbury and baptized around February fifteen sixty four. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so we can assume it was probably born a few

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Speaker 1: days before that. When he was in his early teens.

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Speaker 1: He entered King's School, Canterbury on tuition, so he must

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Speaker 1: have shown some kind of promise as a young boy

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Speaker 1: to earn this scholarship. But being a scholarship student is

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Speaker 1: not an easy job at all. I mean, it's an

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Speaker 1: enormous privilege for him, but it's also a lot of work,

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Speaker 1: long days. Yeah, he apparently had like eighteen hour work days,

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Speaker 1: so getting up at the craft of dawn and working

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Speaker 1: until late at night, mostly doing Greek and Latin memorizations translations,

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Speaker 1: so not anything, not exactly very exciting. And also, you know,

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Speaker 1: he had to show that he was humble and that

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Speaker 1: he was appreciative of this gift he was receiving, where

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Speaker 1: dark wool clothes keep his hair cut short. Um, yeah

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Speaker 1: it's not. I mean it's it's lucky for him, I guess,

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Speaker 1: but not super fun sounding yep. But a year after

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Speaker 1: that he was off to Cambridge in Corpus Christi College,

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Speaker 1: where he earn does b A in fifteen four U.

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Speaker 1: Until that point, the paper trail, as we mentioned, shows

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Speaker 1: pretty promising youth for for Marlowe. Looks like things might

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Speaker 1: might go pretty good for this kid. Yeah, he's been studying, well,

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Speaker 1: probably been studying a little bit of the Bible, some

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Speaker 1: Reformation theology, philosophy, history. But then there's a bit of

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Speaker 1: a blip. Yeah, and that comes from seven and Marlowe

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Speaker 1: is just about to earn his master's degree and suddenly

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Speaker 1: the school hesitates about granting it to him. Um, the

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Speaker 1: problem is he's been absent, Like he's been absent quite

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Speaker 1: a bit, way more than your average students should be,

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Speaker 1: and they don't know what he's been up to, what

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Speaker 1: he's been doing. Then the officials here from the Privy Council,

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Speaker 1: which the Privy Council is Queen Elizabeth's own body of

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Speaker 1: advisor so that's a pretty serious call to make. That's

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Speaker 1: very official, and they pretty much encouraged the school to

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Speaker 1: grant him a degree. Yeah, so lucky guy. They say

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Speaker 1: that his absences are totally excusable. In fact, they were

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Speaker 1: due to his quote working on matters touching the benefit

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Speaker 1: of his country, which I don't know. What is this

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Speaker 1: college student doing for his country that's so secret? Spying? Spying,

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Speaker 1: and that's what most historians think. It's not well documented

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Speaker 1: for obvious reasons. And of course a lot from the

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Speaker 1: Elizabethan era isn't well documented in the first place. But

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Speaker 1: obviously spy documents are going to be not easy to

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Speaker 1: get your hands on, I would hope, so I would

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Speaker 1: hope that those spy documents are well well hidden. But

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Speaker 1: from what we know or what we can guess, it

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Speaker 1: seems like Marlowe was recruited while he was still a

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Speaker 1: student by elizabeth spy master Sir Francis Walshingham. And you

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Speaker 1: might remember that name pop up in the Mary Stuart episode.

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Speaker 1: And if you haven't listened to those there from about

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Speaker 1: a year ago, I would definitely recommend maybe after this one,

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Speaker 1: going back going over them. They'll explain a lot about

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Speaker 1: the Catholic Protestant trouble going on at the time. In

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Speaker 1: Elizabeth deep fear of plots that really runs through this

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Speaker 1: whole episode. So what we think happened at that time

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Speaker 1: is that he was sent to Ream where he would

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Speaker 1: have spied on English Catholic expats. Yah'd be listening for

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Speaker 1: trouble essentially. Yeah, threats, possible invasions, that sort of thing. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and we should know too. This is only two years

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Speaker 1: after the Babington plot was uncovered, and again that pops

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Speaker 1: up in one of those Mary Stewart episodes. But it

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Speaker 1: was the plot to restore her to the throne. She's

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Speaker 1: in prison, she's the Catholic queen and Catholics kind of

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Speaker 1: held her as as their hope to supplant Elizabeth. And

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Speaker 1: it's also the plot that led to Elizabeth having to

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Speaker 1: execute her finally in February seven. So Elizabeth is in

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Speaker 1: a high state of paranoia, but she has ably definitely.

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Speaker 1: But Marlowe he's not worried at all. He's not. He's

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Speaker 1: a little troublemaker. After graduating, he moved to London, where

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Speaker 1: his degree should have put him on a path to

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Speaker 1: becoming a gentleman. Which would have been a step up

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Speaker 1: from his beginnings, his tradesmen father beginnings. But he's successful

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Speaker 1: in his own right. Yeah, he is successful. He's definitely

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Speaker 1: not on the path but becoming a gentleman. Now he's

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Speaker 1: working in the theater and his writing, his playwriting, does

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Speaker 1: set new standards. He writes Tamberlaine The Great, which was

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Speaker 1: in two parts performed in seven and it is just

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Speaker 1: a huge hit. The s Lewis later called it the

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Speaker 1: story of Giant the jack Killer, so that gives you

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Speaker 1: a good idea of um, kind of the gist of

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Speaker 1: the plot if you've never read it or seen it yourself.

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Speaker 1: But it's a really violent and passionate play. And it

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Speaker 1: goes to print only a couple of years after its debut,

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Speaker 1: which was a really good sign of how popular something was.

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Speaker 1: Because at this point, playwrights didn't publish their work right away.

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Speaker 1: They were owned by the company, and the company kind

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Speaker 1: of kept them close because if the other company got

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Speaker 1: ahold of all their plays, then they could stage them

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Speaker 1: and not have to pay for it. Um. It was

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Speaker 1: only if the public absolutely demanded to have a copy

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Speaker 1: of the play that it would be published. So this

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Speaker 1: was a big deal. Definitely. It was a big deal,

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Speaker 1: and I think it was the only thing published during

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Speaker 1: Marlowe's lifetime, So this also had an impression on other

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Speaker 1: writers of the time as well. The history format clearly

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Speaker 1: influenced Shakespeare, who at this point was making his living

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Speaker 1: as a player, not a playwright. Shortly after that he

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Speaker 1: started his own history project, The Henry the Sixth Place,

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Speaker 1: which are so like the work of Marlowe that scholars

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Speaker 1: once thought they were some kind of joint venture together. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it was kind of one up in the way too.

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Speaker 1: It was it was a history play, but it was

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Speaker 1: going to be an English history play, which was going

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Speaker 1: to require a lot of delicacy to make sure, you know,

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Speaker 1: he didn't say anything he shouldn't say. Um, but Marlowe,

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Speaker 1: we we mentioned he was definitely not on the path

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Speaker 1: to becoming a gentleman, and this is why he's living unconventionally.

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Speaker 1: To say the least, he supposedly would make heretical comments.

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Speaker 1: He was possibly even into the occult. He's supposed to

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Speaker 1: have said that Jesus's mother was quote dishonest, plus a

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Speaker 1: whole lot of other stuff that would get you killed

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Speaker 1: pretty quickly. At the time, he would. Yep, he was

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Speaker 1: also said to be homosexual. He one of the things

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Speaker 1: he was supposed to have said was that all they

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Speaker 1: that love not tobacco and boys are fools. And probably

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Speaker 1: most famously, he's known for his brawling. He's even involved

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Speaker 1: in the death of a man. There's this fight with

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Speaker 1: an innkeeper's son, William Bradley, and Marlow's friend Thomas Watson,

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Speaker 1: who was another member of this poet Bad Boys, that intervenes.

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Speaker 1: At the end of it all, Bradley, the innkeeper's son,

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Speaker 1: ends up with Watson's sword stuck six inches deep in

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Speaker 1: his chest, and both Marlowe and Watson were arrested on

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Speaker 1: suspicion of murder, obviously, and they end up being released

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Speaker 1: because of you know, it seems like it's self defense.

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Speaker 1: But this is the kind of trouble that marlow gets into,

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Speaker 1: some serious trouble, and he's It's interesting that you mentioned

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Speaker 1: his friends, because he was involved in kind of a crowd,

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Speaker 1: a group of men called the University Wits, that's what

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Speaker 1: they called themselves, and they were bound by their allegiances

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Speaker 1: to Cambridge and Oxford. But it didn't really matter if

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Speaker 1: they were rich or poor. They were just a group

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Speaker 1: of c They were an interesting group. Some of them

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Speaker 1: would be from very high families and others would be

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Speaker 1: Marlow himself, you know, tradesman son who had gotten noticed

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Speaker 1: for his intelligence and worked his way up. Um. But

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Speaker 1: they really, they really insisted on that university education to

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Speaker 1: be a member of their group. And they would have

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Speaker 1: they would have considered Shakespeare lacking because of his lack

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Speaker 1: of university education. Yeah, he would have seemed like kind

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Speaker 1: of a country boy to them in a way. Definitely. Um,

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Speaker 1: but some of these university withs are scary guys. I mean,

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Speaker 1: Watson was one of them, as we mentioned. Um. Yet

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Speaker 1: you think maybe thugs and poets don't go hand in hand,

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Speaker 1: but in this case they did. Yeah, they did, and

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Speaker 1: they still managed to write a lot of very learned material,

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Speaker 1: and Marlow, especially in his six year career. He followed

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Speaker 1: up his first big hit with The Jew of Malta,

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Speaker 1: Dr Faustus, the Massacre at Paris and Edward the Second,

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Speaker 1: which was likely a response to Shakespeare's success with Henry

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Speaker 1: the Sex. Yeah, and if you remember Edward the Second,

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Speaker 1: we actually did a podcast on him. It was who

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Speaker 1: is the Greatest Trader? So another another one to check,

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Speaker 1: another one to check again. Um. And he also wrote

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Speaker 1: poetry to his unfinished poem here on Leander was called

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Speaker 1: the finest Elizabethan poem after those of Edmund Spencer. So

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Speaker 1: I mean he's a he's a talented writer despite all

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Speaker 1: that's going on. I just want to make that point

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Speaker 1: before we move on to the We don't want to

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Speaker 1: just point out how his thug qualities. We also want

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Speaker 1: to point out his poetry, his prowess in the poetry realm.

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Speaker 1: But life starts to catch up with him. Yep, he's

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Speaker 1: arrested in Flushing, supposedly there on business, I guess one

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Speaker 1: would think, but who knows an assumption. He's arrested there

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Speaker 1: for forgery and for being pro Catholic. And then more seriously,

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Speaker 1: in Free somebody nails up this xenophobic placard on the

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Speaker 1: Dutch church in London. And as we mentioned, there's a

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Speaker 1: lot of paranoia going on. There's a lot of fears

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Speaker 1: of Catholic plots, but also radical Puritans. So anything that's

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Speaker 1: trying to stir up religious unrest is going to be

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Speaker 1: frowned upon by the authorities, to say the least. And

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Speaker 1: so they start to try to hunt down the author,

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Speaker 1: and rumor has it the author it was Marlowe himself,

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Speaker 1: and that's because this placard was written in blank verse

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Speaker 1: and it was signed Tamberlaine. What a clue. Yeah, So,

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Speaker 1: I mean it seems like maybe this well known troublemaker

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Speaker 1: might have something to do with this. So the authorities

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Speaker 1: go to Marlowe's place. They learn he's been living with

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Speaker 1: another dramatist named Thomas kidd In. They search this place

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Speaker 1: and there's no marlow there, but there are plenty of

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Speaker 1: heretical papers around. So they questioned his roommate Kid, and

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Speaker 1: they torture him, and they torture him. Yes, and under

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Speaker 1: under duress, Kid says it is all marlow stuff. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So then marlow is summoned before the Privy Council and

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Speaker 1: they let him go, but they tell him report that

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Speaker 1: to us every single day until you get further orders.

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Speaker 1: So at this point anything could happen. Yeah, he's definitely

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Speaker 1: in trouble. It's serious situation. But he is let go

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Speaker 1: out into the world, but then only a couple of

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Speaker 1: weeks later he's dead. All right, So this is where

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Speaker 1: we get down to the mystery. The old story has

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Speaker 1: Marlow dying in a drunken brawl at a tavern, which

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Speaker 1: sounds like a completely plausible story. Crazy Marlow getting drunk,

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Speaker 1: getting into a Friday with the boys, getting in over

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Speaker 1: his head. And this is what people thought for years

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Speaker 1: and years and that ended or the story changed dramatically

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Speaker 1: in nineteen, yes, like nineteen so recently, And that's when

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Speaker 1: historian John Leslie Hodson uncovered the Corners Report in London's

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Speaker 1: Public Records Office. He was looking for something else entirely,

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Speaker 1: but found this very crucial document and published it in

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Speaker 1: his nineteen book. And suddenly this drunken brawl or you know,

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Speaker 1: the story of the drunken Brawl featured three very unsavory

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Speaker 1: characters from the London underworld who all had ties to

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Speaker 1: the Spine at Work. What a coincidence. And there's another

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Speaker 1: coincidence too. Yes, the tavern also turned out to be

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Speaker 1: a lodging house that had connections to the network as well. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: kind of a safe house of sorts. Right. So here's

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Speaker 1: what's supposedly happened. According to this theory, May Marlow goes

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Speaker 1: to Deptford, outside of London and goes to the widow

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Speaker 1: eleanor Bull's lodging house, which is this house that we

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Speaker 1: just mentioned with connections connections to the network. There he

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Speaker 1: meets Ingram Freezer, who is a blackmailer and also in

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Speaker 1: the employee of his old boss, Washingham. He also meets

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Speaker 1: Nicholas Skiers, who's a thug working with Freezer, and Robin

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Speaker 1: Poy who is likely a deep cover agent provocateur. He's

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Speaker 1: operated out of Brussels, Antwerp and Flushing, where Marlow also was,

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Speaker 1: and at the time he was working on the Queen's

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Speaker 1: business in London, but still somehow able to take the

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Speaker 1: day off to hang out with Marlow and his pals.

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Speaker 1: And that's exactly what they do. They apparently spend the

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Speaker 1: day eating, smoking, walking around the courtyard, just kind of

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Speaker 1: hanging out. It all seems like it's going fine, and

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Speaker 1: then after dinner an argument breaks out, supposedly over an

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Speaker 1: unpaid bill. Um. We have the Corner Report by William Danby,

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Speaker 1: and I just have to say I had to cut

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Speaker 1: this in a weird place because the Corners Report is

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Speaker 1: essentially a run on sentence that goes on for probably

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Speaker 1: about three or four hundred words, but lots of as Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it just and and I and I'm gonna just read

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Speaker 1: a part of it. Christopher Morley, on a sudden end

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Speaker 1: of his malice towards the said Ingram a forethought, then

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Speaker 1: and there maliciously drew the dagger of the said Ingram,

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Speaker 1: which was at his back. And with the same dagger,

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Speaker 1: the said Christopher Morley then and there maliciously gave the

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Speaker 1: aforesaid Ingram two wounds on his head of the length

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Speaker 1: of two inches and of the depth of a quarter

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Speaker 1: of an inch. Okay, so it sounds like Marlowe has

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Speaker 1: grabbed the knife of Ingram Freezer and tried to attack

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Speaker 1: him with it. At this point, Freeze are wrestles with

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Speaker 1: Marlowe and somehow regained his weapon and then stabbed marlow

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Speaker 1: over his right eye. And this wound is described as

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Speaker 1: being two inches deep one inch wide and killing marlow instantly.

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Speaker 1: So that's kind of a different story from the drunken brawl.

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Speaker 1: And the other men corroborate this story. There's an inquest,

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Speaker 1: and the inquest concludes um with this corner's report, and

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Speaker 1: then one month later the Queen pardons Freezer up, saying well,

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Speaker 1: self defense defense sounds like kind of Marlowe's story. Way back.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, this seems to be a typical defense for

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Speaker 1: these guys. You know, you can get away with murder perhaps,

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Speaker 1: but um, yeah, it definitely changes the entire perception of

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Speaker 1: Marlow's death when you consider the company he was with

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Speaker 1: and the place he was and what had just recently

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Speaker 1: happened to him, which was getting into some serious trouble. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it raises a lot of questions, but it doesn't end there.

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Speaker 1: I mean that that raises plenty of questions, just as is.

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Speaker 1: If we accept the Corners report at face value. Um,

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Speaker 1: the fight over the bill starts to look a lot

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Speaker 1: more like an assassination, especially since it followed so soon

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Speaker 1: after the arrest. Yeah, exactly. But some people don't think

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Speaker 1: that Marlowe died in at all, and this is especially

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Speaker 1: coming from the International marlow Shakespeare Society. They think the

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Speaker 1: inquest was entirely faked, and as you said, it was

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Speaker 1: the other three men who were at the inquest, So yeah,

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Speaker 1: I guess the theory could be plausible. So they're they're

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Speaker 1: saying that the only men who could have identified Marlowe

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Speaker 1: at his inquest where his body was present, were these

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Speaker 1: three sketchy characters. Um. Essentially, They think that marlow was

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Speaker 1: in really deep trouble after this arrest, and he was worried,

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Speaker 1: and none of his high ranked protectors like watching him

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Speaker 1: or William Cecil, Lord Burley, who we've mentioned in an

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Speaker 1: earlier podcast, none of them could do anything for him themselves.

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Speaker 1: But maybe these other guys but could do something. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: maybe they're kind of low life employees, could do something

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Speaker 1: for him, like bake his death for instance. Except oh,

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Speaker 1: there would have to be a body. Yeah, that's what

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Speaker 1: disturbs me maybe the most about this theory. Who is

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Speaker 1: the body with the stab wound to the eye? Um,

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Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe we'll just end that there. But

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Speaker 1: the Marla Shakespeare people take this theory a step further.

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Speaker 1: They suggest that Marlowe actually lived on as Shakespeare and

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Speaker 1: writing all of those works works. So make of that

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Speaker 1: what you will, U. I think a lot of English

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Speaker 1: departments would have to be sand blasted if that were

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Speaker 1: the case. Definitely, But that didn't die. Theory such as

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Speaker 1: it is, is interesting enough on its own. Um, yeah,

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Speaker 1: without the whole Marlowe lives on a Shakespeare addition, right,

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Speaker 1: and Marlow's much belated window in Westminster Abbey's poets corner

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Speaker 1: has a question mark about a date of death. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so I guess we're going to close out this episode

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Speaker 1: with Marlo's own motto. It's always nice to close in

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Speaker 1: the words of a writer. His motto was what nourishes

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Speaker 1: me destroys me, and it certainly fits the man. Apparently

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Speaker 1: also fits Angelina Jolie, and I hope I didn't infect

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Speaker 1: my computer by searching Angelina Jolie tattoo. But um she

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Speaker 1: has a Latin translation of this quote. So there you go.

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Speaker 1: And I think that talk of tattoos brings us to

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Speaker 1: Listener Mail. This edition of Listener Mail is real male

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Speaker 1: and it is from Sarah, who is a history teacher

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Speaker 1: living in the Netherlands. And I picked this specifically because

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Speaker 1: Marlowe name would he shows my name? Um? Well? Marlowe

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Speaker 1: operated out of Flushing, and hopefully Sarah is having a

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Speaker 1: better time in the Netherlands than marlow did. But she

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Speaker 1: wrote to us, I love your podcast and I've listened

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Speaker 1: to them all since I discovered them. I hate having

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Speaker 1: to wait for them now. The town I live in

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Speaker 1: is Lyden. It is home to Lyon University, established by

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Speaker 1: William the first Orange in fifty oldest Netherlands university, the

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Speaker 1: birthplace of Rembrandt, and the home of the Pilgrims before

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Speaker 1: they sailed to the New World, which I think that

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Speaker 1: is something we mentioned in the first Thanksgiving episode. I'm

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Speaker 1: just like plugging every old episode today. I can't help it. Um.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, I think some Netherlands history would be fun,

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Speaker 1: and especially since Therasa, you'd make my day if you

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Speaker 1: read my letter during listener meal. She sent us pictures

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Speaker 1: of tulips, which definitely encouraged my resolution to read it

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Speaker 1: as part of listener meal. They're very right, colorful and

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Speaker 1: perfect for brightening up a death in the winter. Um.

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Speaker 1: But anyways that if you have any comments or requests

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Speaker 1: or I don't know favorite Marlowe theories you want to

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Speaker 1: send our way, you can find us at History Podcast

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Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. We're also on Twitter

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Speaker 1: at Miston History, and we're on Facebook and and if

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Speaker 1: you want to find out more about spies, you can

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Speaker 1: visit our homepage and type in spies and at how

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Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands

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Speaker 1: of other topics. Visit how stuff works dot com. To

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Speaker 1: learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon

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Speaker 1: in the upper right corner of our homepage. The House

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Speaker 1: Efforts iPhone app has a ride. Download it today on iTunes,

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Speaker 1: m