Water Lane

The Christopher Marlowe who pauses at Water Lane is at a crossroads of his inner-life. He is well aware, at the time of his visit to Ospringe,  that he is in a very different situation than Chaucer would have been on a similar visit. He is under great stress. He is embarked on a dark pilgrimage, one which is taking place during what might turn out to be the last days of his life -- a reverse pilgrimage in which Marlowe is proceeding from Canterbury, his home town, towards London, where he has been summoned to answer charges of blasphemy and treason.

It is a grim pilgrimage, a pilgrimage under duress, during which he is beset by threatening forces which he cannot fathom and yet needs to comprehend if he is to survive. Fearing that his death is imminent, he re-orders his experience, both past and present, in an attempt to achieve an understanding of his life and art.

The Christopher Marlowe who pauses at Water Lane is a man of wide interests who has outgrown the narrow world of politics which he entered as a patriot and young adventurer. He is a man who has enjoyed the liveliness of the times, and who has taken part in the philosophical debates that the new discoveries and ideas have made so exciting. His awareness that the world of Thomas à Becket and Chaucer has been overthrown has made him sceptical of the authority that dictates official beliefs and punishes treason and heresy. In May of 1593, as the political climate heats up, with threats to England from without and within making government more repressive, and with political leaders relying on accusation and hearsay to determine England’s enemies, Marlowe’s penchant for unorthodox thinking and outspokenness have made him a danger to his enemies and an embarrassment to his friends.

Relentlessly, hostile forces close in on him.