John Hinckley, Jr.

 

John Warnock Hinckley Jr. (born May 29, 1955) is an American man who attempted to assassinate U.S. President Ronald Reagan in Washington, D.C., on March 30, 1981, two months after Reagan's first inauguration. Using a .22 caliber revolver, Hinckley wounded Reagan; police officer Thomas Delahanty; Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy; and White House Press Secretary James Brady, who was left permanently disabled and eventually died due to the extent of his injuries. Hinckley was reportedly seeking fame to impress actress Jodie Foster, with whom he had a fixation. He was found not guilty because of insanity and remained under institutional psychiatric care for over three decades. Public outcry over the verdict led state legislatures and Congress to narrow their respective insanity defenses.

In 2016, a federal judge ruled that Hinckley could be released from psychiatric care as he was no longer considered a threat to himself or others, albeit with many conditions. After 2020, a ruling was issued that Hinckley may showcase his artwork, writings, and music publicly under his own name, rather than anonymously as he had in the past. Since then, he has maintained a YouTube channel for his music. His restrictions were unconditionally lifted in June 2022, over 40 years after the assassination attempt.

Early life

John Warnock Hinckley Jr. was born in Ardmore, Oklahoma, and moved with his wealthy family to Dallas, Texas at the age of four. His father was John Warnock Hinckley (1925–2008), founder, chairman, chief executive, and president of the Vanderbilt Energy Corporation. His mother was Jo Ann Hinckley (née Moore; 1925–2021).

Hinckley grew up in University Park, Texas, and attended Highland Park High School in Dallas County. After Hinckley graduated from high school in 1973, his family, owners of the Hinckley oil company, moved to Evergreen, Colorado, where the new company headquarters was located. He was an off-and-on student at Texas Tech University from 1974 to 1980 but eventually dropped out. In 1975, he went to Los Angeles in the hope of becoming a songwriter. His efforts were unsuccessful, and he wrote to his parents with tales of misfortune and pleas for money. He also spoke of a girlfriend, Lynn Collins, who turned out to be a fabrication. In September 1976, he returned to his parents' home in Evergreen. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Hinckley began purchasing weapons and practicing with them. He was prescribed antidepressants and tranquilizers to deal with his emotional problems.

Obsession with Jodie Foster

Hinckley became obsessed with the 1976 film Taxi Driver, in which disturbed protagonist Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) plots to assassinate a presidential candidate. Bickle was partly based on the diaries of Arthur Bremer, who attempted to assassinate George Wallace. Hinckley developed an infatuation with Jodie Foster, who played Iris Steensma, a sexually trafficked 12-year-old child, in the film. When Foster entered Yale University, Hinckley moved to New Haven, Connecticut, for a short time to stalk her. He sent Foster love letters and romantic poems, and repeatedly called and left her messages.

Failing to develop any meaningful contact with Foster, Hinckley fantasized about conducting an aircraft hijacking or killing himself in front of her to get her attention. Eventually, he settled on a scheme to impress her by assassinating the president, thinking that by achieving a place in history, he would appeal to her as an equal. Hinckley trailed President Jimmy Carter from state to state and was arrested in Nashville, Tennessee, on a firearms charge. Penniless, he returned home. Despite psychiatric treatment for depression, his mental health did not improve. He began to target the newly elected president Ronald Reagan in 1981. For this purpose, he collected material on the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Hinckley wrote to Foster just before his attempt on Reagan's life:

Over the past seven months, I've left you dozens of poems, letters, and love messages in the faint hope that you could develop an interest in me. Although we talked on the phone a couple of times I never had the nerve to simply approach you and introduce myself. ... The reason I'm going ahead with this attempt now is because I cannot wait any longer to impress you. — John Hinckley Jr.

Ronald Reagan assassination attempt

On March 30, 1981, at 2:27 p.m. EST, Hinckley shot a .22 caliber Röhm RG-14 revolver six times at Reagan as he left the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C., after the president addressed an AFL–CIO conference.

Ronald Reagan waves just before he is shot. From left are Jerry Parr, in a trench coat, who pushed Reagan into the limousine; press secretary James Brady, who was seriously wounded by a gunshot to the head; Reagan; aide Michael Deaver; an unidentified policeman; policeman Thomas K. Delahanty, who was shot in the neck; and secret service agent Tim McCarthy, who was shot in the chest.

Hinckley wounded police officer Thomas Delahanty and Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy, and critically wounded press secretary James Brady. Though Hinckley did not hit Reagan directly, the president was seriously wounded when a bullet ricocheted off the side of the presidential limousine and hit him in the chest. Alfred Antenucci, a Cleveland, Ohio labor official who stood near Hinckley and saw him firing, hit Hinckley in the head and pulled him to the ground. Within two seconds Agent Dennis McCarthy (no relation to Agent Timothy McCarthy) dove into Hinckley, intent on protecting Hinckley and avoiding what happened to Lee Harvey Oswald, who was killed before he could be tried for the assassination of President Kennedy.  Another Cleveland-area labor official, Frank J. McNamara, joined Antenucci and started punching Hinckley in the head, striking him so hard he drew blood. Brady had been shot by Hinckley in the right side of the head and endured a long recuperation period, remaining paralyzed on the left side of his body until his death on August 4, 2014. Brady's death was ruled a homicide 33 years after the shooting.

Trial

At trial, the government emphasized Hinckley's premeditation of the shooting: noting that he had purchased a gun, trailed President Reagan, traveled to Washington, D.C., left a note detailing his plan, selected particularly devastating ammunition, and fired six shots. The defense, on the other hand, argued that Hinckley's actions and his obsession with Foster indicated that he was legally insane.  The trial was chiefly devoted to a battle of the psychiatric experts concerning Hinckley's mental state.  Because Hinckley was charged in federal court, the prosecution was required to prove his sanity beyond reasonable doubt. While detained, Hinckley attempted suicide twice.

For the defense, William T. Carpenter, who diagnosed Hinckley with schizophrenia, testified for three days, opining that Hinckley had amalgamated various personalities from fiction and real life—including Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver and John Lennon. Carpenter concluded that Hinckley could not emotionally appreciate the wrongfulness of his actions because he was consumed by the prospect of a "magical unification with Jodie Foster". David Bear testified that Hinckley's actions followed "the very opposite of logic" and that Hinckley did not exhibit signs of malingering. Bear said that his opinion was in part supported by a CAT scan of Hinckley's brain showing widened sulci, a feature Bear said was found in 1⁄3 of persons with schizophrenia but only 2 percent of non-schizophrenics.  And Ernest Prelinger testified that, while Hinckley had an above-average IQ, his results on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory were highly abnormal—specifically, Prelinger said that only one person out of a million with Hinckley's score would not be suffering from serious mental illness.

For the prosecution, Park Dietz testified that he had diagnosed Hinckley with dysthymia and three types of personality disorders: narcissistic; schizoid; and mixed, with borderline, and passive-aggressive features. Dietz found that none of these illnesses rendered Hinckley legally insane; his report said that there was "no evidence that [Hinckley] was so impaired that he could not appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct or conform his conduct to the requirements of the law". Sally Johnson, a psychiatrist in the federal prison who interviewed Hinckley more than any other doctor, emphasized that Hinckley had planned the shooting and that he was preoccupied with being famous. Johnson said that Hinckley's interest in Foster was no different than any young man's interest in a movie star.

The insanity instructions provided to the Hinckley jurors were based on the American Law Institute's Model Penal Code:

The burden is on the Government to prove beyond a reasonable doubt either that the defendant was not suffering from a mental disease or defect on March 30, 1981, or else that he nevertheless had substantial capacity on that date both to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law and to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct. — Jury instructions.

Hinckley was found not guilty because of insanity on June 21, 1982.

Aftermath

Soon after his trial, Hinckley wrote that the shooting was "the greatest love offering in the history of the world" and was disappointed that Foster did not reciprocate his love. In 1985, Hinckley's parents wrote Breaking Points, a book detailing their son's mental condition.

On August 4, 2014, James Brady died; because the medical examiner determined his death to be a result of the "gunshot wound and consequences thereof", it was labeled a homicide. Hinckley did not face charges as a result of Brady's death because he had been found not guilty of the original crime because of insanity. In addition, since Brady's death occurred more than 33 years after the shooting, prosecution of Hinckley was barred under the year-and-a-day law in effect in the District of Columbia at the time of the shooting.

Effect on insanity defenses

Before the Hinckley case, the insanity defense had been used in less than 2% of all American felony cases and was unsuccessful in almost 75% of those trials. Created in 1962, the Model Penal Code's insanity test broadened the then-dominant M'Naghten test; by 1981, it was adopted in ten of the eleven federal circuits and a majority of the states.  As a consequence of public outcry over the Hinckley verdict, the United States Congress and several states enacted legislation making the insanity defense more restrictive; Congress rejected the MPC test, and by 2006 only 14 states retained it. Eighty percent of insanity defense reforms between 1978 and 1990 occurred shortly after the Hinckley verdict.  In addition to restricting eligibility for the defense, many of these reforms also shifted the burden of proof to the defendant.

For the first time, Congress passed a law stipulating the insanity test to be used in all federal criminal trials, the Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984. The IDRA excised the Model Penal Code's volitional element in favor of an exclusively cognitive test, affording the insanity defense to a defendant who can show that, "at the time of the commission of the acts constituting the offense, the defendant, as a result of a severe mental disease or defect, was unable to appreciate the nature and quality or the wrongfulness of his acts". At the state level, Idaho, Montana, and Utah abolished the defense altogether.

Hinckley's acquittal led to the popularization of the "guilty but mentally ill" (GBMI) verdict, typically used when a defendant's mental illness did not result in sufficient impairment to warrant insanity. A defendant receiving a GBMI verdict generally receives an identical sentence to a defendant receiving a guilty verdict, but the designation allows for a medical evaluation and treatment.  Studies have suggested that jurors often favor a GBMI verdict, considering it to be a compromise.

Changes in federal and some state rules of evidence laws have since excluded or restricted the use of the testimony of an expert witness, such as a psychologist or psychiatrist, regarding conclusions on "ultimate" issues in insanity defense cases, including whether a criminal defendant is legally "insane", but this is not the rule in most states.

Treatment

Hinckley was confined at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C. After Hinckley was admitted, tests found that he was an "unpredictably dangerous" man who might harm himself or any third party. In 1983, he told Penthouse that on a normal day, he would "see a therapist, answer mail, play guitar, listen to music, play pool, watch television, eat lousy food, and take delicious medication".

Around 1986, Hinckley and the hospital began seeking various conditional releases, which required judicial authorization.  The Reagan family frequently spoke out against these requests. In 1986, a judge denied Hinckley's request to be transferred to a less restrictive ward. In 1987, the hospital requested that Hinckley be given a 12-hour unescorted pass allowing Hinckley to visit his parents on Easter. Glenn Miller, who had performed the initial evaluation of Hinckley, testified, "I do not believe he's suicidal, I do not believe he's a danger to Jodie Foster, I do not believe he's a danger to Mr. Reagan or Mr. Brady." But Miller also revealed that Hinckley had written to serial killer Ted Bundy, sought the address of Charles Manson, and received a letter from Manson family member Lynette Fromme. The hospital subsequently withdrew the request for "administrative" reasons, though it emphasized that the "clinical" assessment was unchanged. In 1992, Hinckley again submitted a request for additional privileges, but he later withdrew that request.  During this period, St. Elizabeth's gradually expanded Hinckley's privileges by allowing off-site trips under custodial supervision. 

In 2003, Hinckley, for the first time, received judicial approval for a release proposal: six local day visits under the supervision of his parents and, upon the successful completion and evaluation of those day visits, two local overnight visits also under parental supervision. On June 17, 2009, Judge Friedman ruled that Hinckley would be permitted to visit his mother for a dozen visits of 10 days at a time, rather than six, to spend more time outside of the hospital, and to have a driver's license. The court also ordered that Hinckley be required to carry a GPS-enabled cell phone to track him whenever he was outside of his parents' home. He was prohibited from speaking with the news media. Prosecutors objected to this ruling, saying that Hinckley was still a danger to others and had unhealthy and inappropriate thoughts about women. Hinckley had recorded a song, "Ballad of an Outlaw", which the prosecutors claimed was "reflecting suicide and lawlessness".

On March 29, 2011, the day before the 30th anniversary of the assassination attempt, Hinckley's attorney filed a court petition requesting more freedom for his client, including additional unsupervised visits to the Virginia home of Hinckley's mother, Jo Ann. On November 30, 2011, a hearing in Washington was held to consider whether he could live full-time outside the hospital. The Justice Department opposed this, stating that Hinckley still poses a danger to the public. Justice Department counsel argued that Hinckley had been known to deceive his doctors in the past. By December 2013, the court ordered that visits be extended to his mother, who lives near Williamsburg. Hinckley was permitted up to eight 17-day visits, with evaluation after the completion of each one.

Release

On July 27, 2016, a federal judge ruled that Hinckley could be released from St. Elizabeths on August 5, as he was no longer considered a threat to himself or others. Patti Davis, one of Reagan's daughters, and then-presidential candidate Donald Trump both denounced Hinckley's release.

Hinckley was released from institutional psychiatric care on September 10, 2016, with many conditions—including that he was required to live full-time at his mother's home in Williamsburg, Virginia, to work at least 3 days a week and record his browser history. He was also prohibited from a variety of activities, including contacting the Reagan, Brady, or Foster families; watching or listening to violent media; accessing pornography; and speaking to the press. In November 2018, Judge Friedman ruled Hinckley could move out of his mother's house in Virginia and live on his own upon location approval from his doctors.

In September 2019, Hinckley's attorney stated that he had planned to ask for full, unconditional release from the court orders that determined how he could live by the end of that year. Just over two years later, on September 27, 2021, a federal judge approved Hinckley for unconditional release beginning June 2022. Michael Reagan, Reagan's son, spoke out in favor of the decision, while Davis again denounced it. On June 15, 2022, Hinckley was fully released from court restrictions. In a subsequent interview with CBS, Hinckley expressed remorse for his actions and apologized to the Reagan and Brady families as well as Jodie Foster.

Depiction in media

Phoenix, Arizona hardcore punk band Jodie Foster's Army (JFA) formed in 1981 and their name was a reference to the assassination attempt. Their eponymous song referred to Hinckley. Ohio new wave band Devo recorded the song "I Desire" for their fifth studio album, Oh, No! It's Devo (1982), which brought the band controversy because the lyrics were taken directly from a poem written by Hinckley. Hinckley has claimed that he has not received royalties for the use of his poem by them. In 1984 Lansing, Michigan hardcore band the Crucifucks recorded "Hinkley Had a Vision” which expressed a desire to kill the president. Another new wave band, Wall of Voodoo, released a song about Hinckley and his life titled "Far Side of Crazy" (1985), with the name also being a quotation from his poetry. Singer-songwriter Carmaig de Forest devoted a verse of his song "Hey Judas" to Hinckley, blaming him for Reagan's increased popularity following the assassination attempt.

Hinckley is featured as a character in the Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman musical Assassins (1990), in which he and Lynette Fromme sing "Unworthy of Your Love", a duet about their respective obsessions with Foster and Charles Manson. Hinckley's life leading up to the assassination attempt is fictionalized in the 2015 novel Calf by Andrea Kleine. The novel also includes a fictionalization of Hinckley's former girlfriend, Leslie deVeau, whom he met at St. Elizabeth's Hospital.

Hinckley is portrayed by Steven Flynn in the American television film, Without Warning: The James Brady Story (1991). Hinckley appears as a character in the television film The Day Reagan Was Shot (2001), portrayed by Christian Lloyd. He was portrayed by Kevin Woodhouse in the television film The Reagans (2003). Hinckley is portrayed by Kyle S. More in the movie Killing Reagan, released in 2016. In the TV series Timeless (2018), he is portrayed by Erik Stocklin.

Sketch comedy show The Whitest Kids U' Know made a skit that fictionalized the attempted assassination while also satirizing the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

Transgressive punk rock singer GG Allin was arrested by the US Secret Service in Illinois in September 1989 after he corresponded with Hinckley and they discovered he had an outstanding arrest warrant for assault in Michigan.

Art

Following his release, Hinckley has created multiple paintings, often using his pet cat as a reference, to sell online.

Songwriting and performance

As a young adult, Hinckley made unsuccessful efforts to become a songwriter; years later he posted music online anonymously but received little interest. In October 2020, a federal court ruled that Hinckley may showcase and market his artwork, writings, and music publicly under his own name, but his treatment team could rescind the display privilege. Hinckley created a YouTube channel where, since December 2020, he has posted videos of himself performing original songs with a guitar and covers of songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind" by Bob Dylan and the Elvis Presley song "Can't Help Falling in Love". His subscribers totaled over 32,500 by June 2023.

On June 6, 2021, Hinckley stated in a YouTube video that he was working on an album and looking for a record label to release it. Hinckley later announced in December 2021 that the album would be released in early 2022 on Emporia Records, a label he founded to "[release] the music of others, music that needs to be heard".

On October 7, 2021, Hinckley self-published his first single called "We Have Got That Chemistry" onto streaming platforms.

On November 10, 2021, Hinckley self-published another single called "You Let Whiskey Do Your Talking" onto multiple streaming platforms. Hinckley has also continued to release other original songs on his YouTube channel.

In January 2022, Hinckley announced that he was looking for members for his own band.

On June 15, 2022, after his restrictions were unconditionally lifted, it was announced that what would have been Hinckley's first live performance in front of a physically present audience at a Brooklyn, New York venue had been canceled over security concerns for "vulnerable communities" after it had received threats. Three other planned concerts that summer, in Chicago; Hamden, Connecticut; and Williamsburg, Virginia were also cancelled because of threats to the venues. Asbestos Records announced that they planned to release some of Hinckley's songs on vinyl in the fall of 2022. The album was eventually released on July 12, 2023.

Valerie Solanas: The Woman Who Shot Andy Warhol

 Valerie Jean Solanas (April 9, 1936 – April 25, 1988) was an American radical feminist known for the SCUM Manifesto, which she self-published in 1967, and for her attempt to murder artist Andy Warhol in 1968.

Solanas had a turbulent childhood, reportedly suffering sexual abuse from both her father and grandfather, and experiencing a volatile relationship with her mother and stepfather. She came out as a lesbian in the 1950s. After graduating with a degree in psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park, Solanas relocated to Berkeley. There she began writing the SCUM Manifesto, which urged women to "overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex."

In New York City, Solanas asked Warhol to produce her play Up Your @$$, but he claimed to have lost her script and hired her to perform in his film, I, a Man, by way of compensation. At this time, a Parisian publisher of censored works, Maurice Girodias, offered Solanas a contract, which she interpreted as a conspiracy between him and Warhol to steal her future writings.

On June 3, 1968, Solanas went to The Factory, shot Warhol and art critic Mario Amaya, and attempted to shoot Warhol's manager, Fred Hughes. She then turned herself into the police. Solanas was charged with attempted murder, assault, and illegal possession of a firearm. She was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and pleaded guilty to "reckless assault with intent to harm," serving a three-year prison sentence, including treatment in a psychiatric hospital. After her release, she continued to promote the SCUM Manifesto. She died in 1988 of pneumonia in San Francisco.

Early life

Valerie Solanas was born in 1936 in Ventnor City, New Jersey, to Louis Solanas and Dorothy Marie Biondo. Her father was a bartender and her mother was a dental assistant. She had a younger sister, Judith Arlene Solanas Martinez. Her father was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, to parents who immigrated from Spain. Her mother was an Italian-American of Genoan and Sicilian descent born in Philadelphia.

Solanas reported that her father regularly sexually abused her. Her parents divorced when she was young, and her mother remarried shortly afterward. Solanas disliked her stepfather and began rebelling against her mother, becoming a truant. As a child, she wrote insults for children to use on one another, for the cost of a dime. She beat up a girl in high school who was bothering a younger boy and also hit a nun.

Because of her rebellious behavior, Solanas' mother sent her to be raised by her grandparents in 1949. Solanas reported that her grandfather was a violent alcoholic who often beat her. When she was aged 15, she left her grandparents and became homeless. In 1953, Solanas gave birth to a son, fathered by a married sailor. The child, named David, was taken away and she never saw him again.

Despite this, Solanas graduated from high school on time and earned a degree in psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park, where she was in the Psi Chi Honor Society. While at the University of Maryland, she hosted a call-in radio show where she gave advice on how to combat men. Solanas was an open lesbian, despite the conservative cultural climate of the 1950s.

Solanas attended the University of Minnesota's Graduate School of Psychology, where she worked in the animal research laboratory, before dropping out and moving to attend Berkeley for a few courses. It was during this time that she began writing the SCUM Manifesto.

New York City and the Factory

In the mid-1960s, Solanas moved to New York City and supported herself through begging and prostitution In 1965 she wrote two works: an autobiographical short story, "A Young Girl's Primer on How to Attain the Leisure Class", and a play, Up Your @$$, about a young prostitute. According to James Martin Harding, the play is "based on a plot about a woman who 'is a man-hating hustler and panhandler' and who ... ends up killing a man." Harding describes it as more a "provocation than ... a work of dramatic literature" and "rather adolescent and contrived." The short story was published in Cavalier magazine in July 1966. Up Your @$$ remained unpublished until 2014.

In 1967, Solanas encountered pop artist Andy Warhol outside his studio, The Factory, and asked him to produce Up Your Ass. He accepted the manuscript for review, told Solanas it was "well-typed", and promised to read it. According to Factory lore, Warhol, whose films were often shut down by the police for obscenity, thought the script was so pornographic that it must have been a police trap. Solanas contacted Warhol about the script and was told that he had lost it. He also jokingly offered her a job at the Factory as a typist. Insulted, Solanas demanded money for the lost script. Instead, Warhol paid her $25 to appear in his film I, a Man (1967).

In her role in I, a Man, Solanas leaves the film's title character, played by Tom Baker, to fend for himself, explaining, "I gotta go beat my meat" as she exits the scene. She was satisfied with her experience working with Warhol and her performance in the film, and brought Maurice Girodias, the founder of Olympia Press, to see it. Girodias described her as being "very relaxed and friendly with Warhol." Solanas also had a nonspeaking role in Warhol's film Bike Boy (1967).

SCUM Manifesto

In 1967, Solanas self-published her best-known work, the SCUM Manifesto, a scathing critique of patriarchal culture. The manifesto's opening words are:

"Life" in this "society" is, at best, an utter bore, and no aspect of "society" is at all relevant to women, there remain civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and eliminate the male sex.

Some authors have argued that the Manifesto is a parody and satirical work targeting patriarchy. According to Harding, Solanas described herself as "a social propagandist," but she denied that the work was "a put-on" and insisted that her intent was "deadly serious." According to another source, Solanas later wrote that The Manifesto was satirical and "was designed to provoke debate rather than a practical plan of action". The Manifesto has been translated into over a dozen languages and is excerpted in several feminist anthologies.

While living at the Chelsea Hotel, Solanas introduced herself to Girodias, a fellow resident of the hotel. In August 1967, Girodias and Solanas signed an informal contract stating that she would give Girodias her "next writing, and other writings." In exchange, Girodias paid her $500. Solanas took this to mean that Girodias would own her work. She told Paul Morrissey that "everything I write will be his. He's done this to me ... He's screwed me!" Solanas intended to write a novel based on the SCUM Manifesto and believed that a conspiracy was behind Warhol's failure to return the Up Your @$$ script. She suspected that he was coordinating with Girodias to steal her work.

Shooting

Andy Warhol

According to an unquoted source in The Outlaw Bible of American Literature, on June 3, 1968, at 9:00 a.m., Solanas reportedly arrived at the Hotel Chelsea and asked for Girodias at the desk, only to be told he was gone for the weekend. She remained at the hotel for three hours before heading to the Grove Press, where she asked for Barney Rosset, who was also not available. In her 2014 biography of Solanas, Breanne Fahs argues that it is unlikely that she appeared at the Chelsea Hotel looking for Girodias, speculating that Girodias may have fabricated the account to boost sales for the SCUM Manifesto, which he had published.

Fahs states that "the more likely story ... places Valerie at the Actors Studio at 432 West Forty-Fourth Street early that morning." Actress Sylvia Miles states that Solanas appeared at the Actors Studio looking for Lee Strasberg, asking to leave a copy of Up Your @$$ for him. Miles said that Solanas "had a different look, a bit tousled, like somebody whose appearance is the last thing on her mind." Miles told Solanas that Strasberg would not be in until the afternoon, accepted the script, and then "shut the door because I knew she was trouble. I didn't know what sort of trouble, but I knew she was trouble."

Fahs records that Solanas then traveled to producer Margo Feiden's (then Margo Eden) residence in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, as she believed that Feiden would be willing to produce Up Your Ass. As related to Fahs, Solanas talked to Feiden for almost four hours, trying to convince her to produce the play and discussing her vision for a world without men. Throughout this time, Feiden repeatedly refused to produce the play. According to Feiden, Solanas then pulled out her gun, and when Feiden again refused to commit to producing the play, she responded, "Yes, you will produce the play because I'll shoot Andy Warhol and that will make me famous and the play famous, and then you'll produce it." As she was leaving Feiden's residence, Solanas handed Feiden a partial copy of an earlier draft of the play and other personal papers.

Fahs describes how Feiden then "frantically called her local police precinct, Andy Warhol's precinct, police headquarters in Lower Manhattan, and the offices of Mayor John Lindsay and Governor Nelson Rockefeller to report what happened and inform them that Solanas was on her way at that very moment to shoot Andy Warhol." In some instances, the police responded "You can't arrest someone because you believe she is going to kill Andy Warhol," and even asked Feiden, "Listen, lady, how would you know what a real gun looked like?" In a 2009 interview with James Barron of The New York Times, Feiden said that she knew Solanas intended to kill Warhol, but could not prevent it. (A New York Times assistant Metro editor responded to an online comment regarding the story, saying that the Times "does not present the account as definitive.")

Solanas proceeded to the Factory and waited outside. Morrissey arrived and asked her what she was doing there, and she replied, "I'm waiting for Andy to get money." Morrissey tried to get rid of her by telling her that Warhol was not coming in that day, but she told him she would wait. At 2:00 p.m. Solanas went up into the studio. Morrissey told her again that Warhol was not coming in and that she had to leave. She left but rode the elevator up and down until Warhol finally boarded it.

Solanas entered The Factory with Warhol, who complimented her on her appearance as she was uncharacteristically wearing makeup. Morrissey told her to leave, threatening to "beat the hell" out of her and throw her out otherwise. The phone rang and Warhol answered while Morrissey went to the bathroom. While Warhol was on the phone, Solanas fired at him three times. Her first two shots missed, but the third went through his spleen, stomach, liver, esophagus, and lungs. She then shot art critic Mario Amaya in the hip. Solanas further tried to shoot Fred Hughes, Warhol's manager, but her gun jammed. Hughes asked her to leave, which she did, leaving behind a paper bag with her address book on a table. Warhol was taken to Columbus–Mother Cabrini Hospital, where he underwent a successful five-hour operation.

Later that day, Solanas turned herself in to the police, gave up her gun, and confessed to the shooting, telling an officer that Warhol "had too much control in my life." She was fingerprinted and charged with felonious assault and possession of a deadly weapon. The next morning, the New York Daily News ran the front-page headline: "Actress Shoots Andy Warhol." Solanas demanded a retraction of the statement that she was an actress. The Daily News changed the headline in its later edition and added a quote from Solanas stating, "I'm a writer, not an actress."

At her arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court, Solanas denied shooting Warhol because he wouldn't produce her play but said "it was for the opposite reason", that "he has a legal claim on my works. “ She told the judge "It's not often that I shoot somebody. I didn't do it for nothing. Warhol had tied me up, lock, stock, and barrel. He was going to do something to me which would have ruined me." She declared that she wanted to represent herself and she insisted that she "was right in what I did! I have nothing to regret!" The judge struck Solanas' comments from the court record and had her admitted to Bellevue Hospital for psychiatric observation.

Trial

I consider that a moral act. And I consider it immoral that I missed it. I should have done target practice.— Valerie Solanas on her assassination attempt on Andy Warhol

After a cursory evaluation, Solanas was declared mentally unstable and transferred to the prison ward of Elmhurst Hospital. She appeared at the New York Supreme Court on June 13, 1968. Florynce Kennedy represented her and asked for a writ of habeas corpus, arguing that Solanas was being held inappropriately at Elmhurst. The judge denied the motion and Solanas returned to Elmhurst. On June 28, Solanas was indicted on charges of attempted murder, assault, and illegal possession of a firearm. She was declared "incompetent" in August and sent to Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. That same month, Olympia Press published the SCUM Manifesto with essays by Girodias and Krassner.

In January 1969, Solanas underwent psychiatric evaluation and was diagnosed with chronic paranoid schizophrenia. In June, she was deemed fit to stand trial. She represented herself without an attorney and pleaded guilty to "reckless assault with intent to harm." Solanas was sentenced to three years in prison, with one year of time served.

After murder attempt

The shooting of Warhol propelled Solanas into the public spotlight, prompting a flurry of commentary and opinions in the media. Robert Marmorstein, writing in The Village Voice, declared that Solanas "has dedicated the remainder of her life to the avowed purpose of eliminating every single male from the face of the earth." Norman Mailer called her the "Robespierre of feminism."

Ti-Grace Atkinson, the New York chapter president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), described Solanas as "the first outstanding champion of women's rights" and "a 'heroine' of the feminist movement," and "smuggled [her manifesto] ... out of the mental hospital where Solanas was confined." According to Betty Friedan, the NOW board rejected Atkinson's statement. Atkinson left NOW and founded another feminist organization. According to Friedan, "the media continued to treat Ti-Grace as a leader of the women's movement, despite its repudiation of her." Kennedy, another NOW member, called Solanas "one of the most important spokeswomen of the feminist movement."

English professor Dana Heller argued that Solanas was "very much aware of feminist organizations and activism," but "had no interest in participating in what she often described as a civil disobedience luncheon club.'" Heller also stated that Solanas could "reject mainstream liberal feminism for its blind adherence to cultural codes of feminine politeness and decorum which the SCUM Manifesto identifies as the source of women's debased social status."

Solanas and Warhol

After Solanas was released from the New York State Prison for Women in 1971, she stalked Warhol and others over the telephone and was arrested again in November 1971. She was subsequently institutionalized several times and then drifted into obscurity.

The shooting had a profound impact on Warhol and his art, and security at the Factory became much stronger afterward. For the rest of his life, Warhol lived in fear that Solanas would attack him again. "It was the Cardboard Andy, not the Andy I could love and play with," said close friend and collaborator Billy Name. "He was so sensitized you couldn't put your hand on him without him jumping. I couldn't even love him anymore, because it hurt him to touch him."

Later life

Solanas died in 1988 of pneumonia at the Bristol Hotel in San Francisco.

Solanas may have intended to write an eponymous autobiography. In a 1977 Village Voice interview, she announced a book with her name as the title. The book, possibly intended as a parody, was supposed to deal with the "conspiracy" that led to her imprisonment. In a corrective 1977 Village Voice interview, Solanas said the book would not be autobiographical other than a small portion and that it would be about many things, including proof of statements in the manifesto, and would "deal very intensively with the subject of bullshit," but she said nothing about parody.

In the mid-1970s, according to Heller, Solanas was "apparently homeless" in New York City, "continued to defend her political beliefs and the SCUM Manifesto", and "actively promoted" her new Manifesto revision. In the late 1980s, Ultra Violet tracked down Solanas in northern California and interviewed her over the phone. According to Ultra Violet, Solanas had changed her name to Onz Loh and stated that the August 1968 version of the Manifesto had many errors, unlike her own printed version of October 1967, and that the book had not sold well. Solanas said that until she was informed by Violet, she was unaware of Warhol's death in 1987.

Death

On April 25, 1988, at the age of 52, Valerie Solanas died of pneumonia at the Bristol Hotel in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. A building superintendent at the hotel, not on duty that night had a vague memory of Solanas: "Once, he had to enter her room, and he saw her typing at her desk. There was a pile of typewritten pages beside her. What she was writing and what happened to the manuscript remains a mystery." Her mother burned all her belongings posthumously.

Legacy

Popular culture

Composer Pauline Oliveros released "To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe in Recognition of Their Desperation" in 1970. In the work, Oliveros seeks to explore how "Both women seemed to be desperate and caught in the traps of inequality: Monroe needed to be recognized for her talent as an actress. Solanas wished to be supported for her own creative work."

Actress Lili Taylor played Solanas in the film I Shot Andy Warhol (1996), which focused on Solanas's assassination attempt on Warhol (played by Jared Harris). Taylor won Special Recognition for Outstanding Performance at the Sundance Film Festival for her role. The film's director, Mary Harron, requested permission to use songs by The Velvet Underground but was denied by Lou Reed, who feared that Solanas would be glorified in the film. Six years before the film's release, Reed and John Cale included a song about Solanas, "I Believe," on their concept album about Warhol, Songs for Drella (1990). In "I Believe," Reed sings, "I believe life's serious enough for retribution... I believe being sick is no excuse. And I believe I would've pulled the switch on her myself." Reed believed Solanas was to blame for Warhol's death from a gallbladder infection twenty years after she shot him.

Up Your @$$ was rediscovered in 1999 and produced in 2000 by George Coates Performance Works in San Francisco. The copy Warhol had lost was found in a trunk of lighting equipment owned by Billy Name. Coates learned about the rediscovered manuscript while at an exhibition at The Andy Warhol Museum marking the 30th anniversary of the shooting. Coates turned the piece into a musical with an all-female cast. Coates consulted with Solanas' sister, Judith, while writing the piece, and sought to create a "very funny satirist" out of Solanas, not just showing her as Warhol's attempted assassin.

Solanas' life has inspired three plays. Valerie Shoots Andy (2001), by Carson Kreitzer, starred two actors playing a younger (Heather Grayson) and an older (Lynne McCollough) Solanas. Tragedy in Nine Lives (2003), by Karen Houppert, examined the encounter between Solanas and Warhol as a Greek tragedy and starred Juliana Francis as Solanas. Most recently, in 2011, Pop!, a musical by Maggie-Kate Coleman and Anna K. Jacobs, focused mainly on Warhol (played by Tom Story). Rachel Zampelli played Solanas and sang "Big Gun," described as the "evening's strongest number" by The Washington Post.

Swedish author Sara Stridsberg wrote a semi-fictional novel about Solanas called Drömfakulteten (English: The Dream Faculty), published in 2006. The book's narrator visits Solanas toward the end of her life at the Bristol Hotel. Stridsberg was awarded the Nordic Council's Literature Prize for the book. The novel was later translated into and published in English under the title Valerie, or, The Faculty of Dreams: A Novel in 2019.

Solanas was featured in a 2017 episode of the FX series American Horror Story: Cult, "Valerie Solanas Died for Your Sins: Scumbag." She was played by Lena Dunham. The episode portrayed Solanas as the instigator of most of the Zodiac Killer murders.

Influence and analysis

Author James Martin Harding explained that, by declaring herself independent from Warhol, after her arrest she "aligned herself with the historical avant-garde's rejection of the traditional structures of bourgeois theater," and that her anti-patriarchal "militant hostility... pushed the avant-garde in radically new directions." Harding believed that Solanas' assassination attempt on Warhol was its own theatrical performance. At the shooting, she left on a table at the Factory a paper bag containing a gun, her address book, and a sanitary napkin. Harding stated that leaving behind the sanitary napkin was part of the performance, and called "attention to basic feminine experiences that were publically taboo and tacitly elided within avant-garde circles."

Feminist philosopher Avital Ronell compared Solanas to an array of people: Lorena Bobbitt; a "girl Nietzsche"; Medusa; the Unabomber; and Medea. Ronell believed that Solanas was threatened by the hyper-feminine women of the Factory that Warhol liked and felt lonely because of the rejection she felt due to her own butch androgyny. She believed Solanas was ahead of her time, living in a period before feminist and lesbian activists such as the Guerrilla Girls and the Lesbian Avengers.

Solanas has also been credited with instigating radical feminism. Catherine Lord wrote that "the feminist movement would not have happened without Valerie Solanas." Lord believed that the reissuing of the SCUM Manifesto and the disowning of Solanas by "women's liberation politicos" triggered a wave of radical feminist publications. According to Vivian Gornick, many of the women's liberation activists who initially distanced themselves from Solanas changed their minds a year later, developing the first wave of radical feminism. At the same time, perceptions of Warhol were transformed from largely nonpolitical into political martyrdom because the motive for the shooting was political, according to Harding and Victor Bockris. Solanas' idiosyncratic views on gender are a focus of Andrea Long Chu's 2019 book, Females.

Fahs describes Solanas as a contradiction that "alienates her from the feminist movement", arguing that Solanas never wanted to be "in movement" but nevertheless fractured the feminist movement by provoking NOW members to disagree about her case. Many contradictions are seen in Solanas' lifestyle as a lesbian who sexually serviced men, her claim to be asexual, a rejection of queer culture, and a non-interest in working with others despite a dependency on others. Fahs also brings into question the contradictory stories of Solanas' life. She is described as a victim, a rebel, and a desperate loner, yet her cousin says she worked as a waitress in her late 20s and 30s, not primarily as a prostitute, and friend Geoffrey LaGear said she had a "groovy childhood." Solanas also kept in touch with her father throughout her life, despite claiming that he sexually abused her. Fahs believes that Solanas embraced these contradictions as a key part of her identity.

In 2018, The New York Times started a series of delayed obituaries of significant individuals whose importance the paper's obituary writers had not recognized at the time of their deaths. In June 2020, they started a series of obituaries on LGBTQ individuals, and on June 26, they profiled Solanas.

Alice Echols stated that Solanas' "unabashed misandry" was not typical within most radical feminist groups during the latter's time.

Works

Up Your @$$ (1965)

"A Young Girl's Primer on How to Attain the Leisure Class," Cavalier (1966)

SCUM Manifesto (1967)

Notes

 Solanas's cousin claimed the man was a sailor, and that she may have also given birth to a second child before leaving home.

 Lord stated that Solanas and her son lived with "a middle-class military couple outside of Washington, D.C." before she went to the University of Maryland. This couple might have paid for her college tuition, according to Lord.

 The original title of the work is Up Your @$$, or, From the Cradle to the Boat,, The Big S**k, or From the Slime.

 "The Times does not present Ms. Fieden's account as definitive.... [but] consider[s] this just one angle of the story".

 Violet objected to assassination; for a possible contrast in her views, see Violet (1990), p. 241 for another near-killing of Warhol.

 Although Up Your @$$ was written in 1965, it was not produced as a play until 2000 and was not published until 2014 (as a Kindle ebook).

Dipendra of Nepal

 

Dipendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev (Nepali: दीपेन्द्र वीर विक्रम शाह देव; 27 June 1971 – 4 June 2001) was the King of Nepal for three days from 1 to 4 June 2001. For the duration of his three-day reign, he was in a coma after he shot his father, King Birendra, his mother, Queen Aishwarya, his younger brother and sister, and other members of the royal family before turning the gun on himself in an event known as the Nepalese royal massacre.

As the eldest of the three children of King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya, Dipendra was the crown prince. Under the Nepalese constitution, the Privy Council named Dipendra king upon the death of his father. Upon Dipendra's death, his paternal uncle Gyanendra became king.

Early life

Dipendra was born on 27 June 1971 at the Narayanhiti Royal Palace as the eldest child of Birendra, the Crown Prince of Nepal, and Princess Aishwarya. In his family he was known as "CP" and famously as "Dippy" among his friends.

Education

Dipendra received his early education from Kanti Ishwori High School, Kathmandu. Then he went to Budhanilkantha School in Kathmandu. Later, he attended Eton College in the United Kingdom. After Eton, he attended Tri Chandra College affiliated with Tribhuvan University in Nepal, and later joined the Military Academy in Kharipati, Nepal. He studied Geography at Tribhuvan University for his master's degree and was a Nepal topper receiving a gold medal. He was a PhD student at the same university. He received military training from the Academy of Royal Nepalese Gurkha Army, and piloting training from the Civil Aviation Department.

Interests

Dipendra was interested in the fields of social service and sports. He attended various national and international sports ceremonies where Nepalese players participated. Dipendra became a karateka when he was studying in England and received a black belt at around the age of 20. He was a patron of the National Sports Council and Nepal's Scouts. Dipendra also wrote articles that were published in Nepalese periodicals. His writings were often on the motifs of nationhood and nationality.

Nepalese royal massacre

On 1 June 2001, Dipendra opened fire at a house on the grounds of the Narayanhity Royal Palace, the residence of the Nepalese monarchy, where a party was being held. He shot and killed his father, King Birendra, his mother, Queen Aishwarya, his younger brother and sister, and other members of the royal family before shooting himself in the head. Because he had killed most of the line of succession, he became king while in a comatose state from the head wound.

His motive for the murders is unknown, but there are various theories. Dipendra desired to marry Devyani Rana, the daughter of an Indian royal family whom he had met in England, but due to her family's lower caste and her father's political alliances, Dipendra's parents objected; he was told that he would have to give up his claim to the throne to marry her. Other theories allege that Dipendra was unhappy with the country's shift from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy and that too much power had been given away following the 1990 People's Movement.

Much controversy surrounds the circumstances of the massacre, and even today, with the monarchy abolished, many questions remain within Nepal about its cause. Sources of the yet unanswered questions include details such as the apparent lack of security at the event; the absence of Prince Gyanendra, Dipendra's uncle who succeeded him, from the party; the fact that, despite being right-handed, Dipendra's self-inflicted head-wound was located at his left temple; and finally that the subsequent investigation lasted for only two weeks and did not involve any major forensic analysis.

Portrayals

Upendra portrayed the crown prince in the 2002 Indian film Super Star, which was loosely based on the massacre.

Indian actor Ashish Kapoor portrayed the role of Dipendra in the third season of the documentary series Zero Hour, which showed a reconstruction of the massacre taken from surviving eyewitnesses.

Honors

National honors

Sovereign of the Order of Nepal Pratap Bhaskara

Sovereign of the Order of Ojaswi Rajanya

Sovereign of the Order of Nepal Taradisha

Sovereign of the Order of Tri Shakti Patta

Sovereign of the Order of Gorkha Dakshina Bahu

Most Glorious Mahendra Chain

King Birendra Investiture Medal (24 February 1975)

Commemorative Silver Jubilee Medal of King Birendra (31 January 1997)

Foreign honors

 Denmark: Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Dannebrog (17 October 1989)

 Germany: Knight Grand Cross Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (1997)

 Japan: Knight Grand Cordon of the Order of the Chrysanthemum (12 April 2001)

Christopher "Kit" Marlowe

 

Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe (/ˈmɑːrloʊ/; baptized 26 February 1564 – 30 May 1593), was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe is among the most famous of the Elizabethan playwrights. Based upon the "many imitations" of his play Tamburlaine, modern scholars consider him to have been the foremost dramatist in London in the years just before his mysterious early death. Some scholars also believe that he greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was baptized in the same year as Marlowe and later succeeded him as the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright. Marlowe was the first to achieve a critical reputation for his use of blank verse, which became the standard for the era. His plays are distinguished by their overreaching protagonists. Themes found within Marlowe's literary works have been noted as humanistic with realistic emotions, which some scholars find difficult to reconcile with Marlowe's "anti-intellectualism" and his catering to the prurient tastes of his Elizabethan audiences for generous displays of extreme physical violence, cruelty, and bloodshed.

Events in Marlowe's life were sometimes as extreme as those found in his plays. Differing sensational reports of Marlowe's death in 1593 abounded after the event and are contested by scholars today owing to a lack of good documentation. There have been many conjectures as to the nature and reason for his death, including a vicious bar-room fight, blasphemous libel against the church, homosexual intrigue, betrayal by another playwright, and espionage from the highest level: the Privy Council of Elizabeth I. An official coroner's account of Marlowe's death was discovered only in 1925, and it did little to persuade all scholars that it did not tell the whole story, nor did it eliminate the uncertainties present in his biography.

Early life

Christopher Marlowe, the second of nine children, and oldest child after the death of his sister Mary in 1568, was born to Canterbury shoemaker John Marlowe and his wife Katherine, daughter of William Arthur of Dover. He was baptized at St George's Church, Canterbury, on 26 February 1564 (1563 in the old style dates in use at the time, which placed the New Year on 25 March). Marlowe's birth was likely to have been a few days before, making him about two months older than William Shakespeare, who was baptized on 26 April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon.

By age 14, Marlowe was a pupil at The King's School, Canterbury on a scholarship and two years later a student at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he also studied through a scholarship with the expectation that he would become an Anglican clergyman. Instead, he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1584. Marlowe mastered Latin during his schooling, reading and translating the works of Ovid. In 1587, the university hesitated to award his Master of Arts degree because of a rumor that he intended to go to the English seminary at Rheims in northern France, presumably to prepare for ordination as a Roman Catholic priest. If true, such an action on his part would have been a direct violation of the royal edict issued by Queen Elizabeth I in 1585 criminalizing any attempt by an English citizen to be ordained in the Roman Catholic Church.

Large-scale violence between Protestants and Catholics on the European continent has been cited by scholars as the impetus for the Protestant English Queen's defensive anti-Catholic laws issued from 1581 until she died in 1603. Despite the dire implications for Marlowe, his degree was awarded on schedule when the Privy Council intervened on his behalf, commending him for his "faithful dealing" and "good service" to the Queen. The nature of Marlowe's service was not specified by the council, but its letter to the Cambridge authorities has provoked much speculation by modern scholars, notably the theory that Marlowe was operating as a secret agent for Privy Council member Sir Francis Walsingham. The only surviving evidence of the Privy Council's correspondence is found in their minutes, the letter being lost. There is no mention of espionage in the minutes, but its summation of the lost Privy Council letter is vague in meaning, stating that "it was not Her Majesties pleasure" that persons employed as Marlowe had been "in matters touching the benefit of his country should be defamed by those who are ignorant in th'affaires he went about." Scholars agree the vague wording was typically used to protect government agents, but they continue to debate what the "matters touching the benefit of his country" actually were in Marlowe's case and how they affected the 23-year-old writer as he launched his literary career in 1587.

Adult life and legend

Little is known about Marlowe's adult life. All available evidence, other than what can be deduced from his literary works, is found in legal records and other official documents. Writers of fiction and non-fiction have speculated about his professional activities, private life, and character. Marlowe has been described as a spy, a brawler, and a heretic, as well as a "magician", "duelist", "tobacco user", "counterfeiter" and "rakehell". While J. A. Downie and Constance Kuriyama have argued against the more lurid speculations, it is the usually circumspect J. B. Steane who remarked, "It seems absurd to dismiss all of these Elizabethan rumors and accusations as 'the Marlowe myth'".  Much has been written on his brief adult life, including speculation of his involvement in royally-sanctioned espionage; his vocal declaration as an atheist; his (possibly same-sex) sexual interests; and the puzzling circumstances surrounding his death.

Spying

Marlowe is alleged to have been a government spy. Park Honan and Charles Nicholl speculate that this was the case and suggest that Marlowe's recruitment took place when he was at Cambridge. In 1587, when the Privy Council ordered the University of Cambridge to award Marlowe his degree as Master of Arts, it denied rumors that he intended to go to the English Catholic College in Rheims, saying instead that he had been engaged in unspecified “affaires “on” matters touching the benefit of his country. “ Surviving college records from the period also indicate that, in the academic year 1584–1585, Marlowe had had a series of unusually lengthy absences from the university which violated university regulations. Surviving college buttery accounts, which record student purchases for personal provisions, show that Marlowe began spending lavishly on food and drink during the periods he was in attendance; the amount was more than he could have afforded on his known scholarship income.

It has been speculated that Marlowe was the "Morley" who was tutor to Arbella Stuart in 1589. This possibility was first raised in a Times Literary Supplement letter by E. St John Brooks in 1937; in a letter to Notes and Queries, John Baker added that only Marlowe could have been Arbella's tutor owing to the absence of any other known "Morley" from the period with an MA and not otherwise occupied. If Marlowe was Arbella's tutor, it might indicate that he was there as a spy, since Arbella, niece of Mary, Queen of Scots, and cousin of James VI of Scotland, later James I of England, was at the time a strong candidate for the succession to Elizabeth's throne. Frederick S. Boas dismisses the possibility of this identification, based on surviving legal records which document Marlowe's "residence in London between September and December 1589". Marlowe had been party to a fatal quarrel involving his neighbors and the poet Thomas Watson in Norton Folgate and was held in Newgate Prison for a fortnight. In fact, the quarrel and his arrest occurred on 18 September, he was released on bail on 1 October and he had to attend court, where he was acquitted on 3 December, but there is no record of where he was for the intervening two months.

In 1592 Marlowe was arrested in the English garrison town of Flushing (Vlissingen) in the Netherlands, for alleged involvement in the counterfeiting of coins, presumably related to the activities of seditious Catholics. He was sent to the Lord Treasurer (Burghley), but no charge or imprisonment resulted. This arrest may have disrupted another of Marlowe's spying missions, perhaps by giving the resulting coinage to the Catholic cause. He was to infiltrate the followers of the active Catholic plotter William Stanley and report back to Burghley.

Philosophy

Marlowe was reputed to be an atheist, who held the dangerous implication of being an enemy of God and the state, by association. With the rise of public fears concerning The School of Night, or "School of Atheism" in the late 16th century, accusations of atheism were closely associated with disloyalty to the Protestant monarchy of England.

Some modern historians consider that Marlowe's professed atheism, as with his supposed Catholicism, may have been no more than a sham to further his work as a government spy. Contemporary evidence comes from Marlowe's accuser in Flushing, an informer called Richard Baines. The governor of Flushing had reported that each of the men had "of malice" accused the other of instigating the counterfeiting and of intending to go over to the Catholic "enemy"; such an action was considered atheistic by the Church of England. Following Marlowe's arrest in 1593, Baines submitted to the authorities a "note containing the opinion of one Christopher Marly concerning his damnable judgment of religion and scorn of God's word". Baines attributes to Marlowe a total of eighteen items which "scoff at the pretensions of the Old and New Testament" such as, "Christ was a bastard and his mother dishonest [unchaste]", "the woman of Samaria and her sister were whores and that Christ knew them dishonestly", "St John the Evangelist was bedfellow to Christ and leaned always in his bosom" (cf. John 13:23–25) and "that he used him as the sinners of Sodom". He also implied that Marlowe had Catholic sympathies. Other passages are merely skeptical in tone: "he persuades men to atheism, willing them not to be afraid of bugbears and hobgoblins". The final paragraph of Baines's document reads:

These thinges, with many other, shall by good & honest witnes be approved to be his opinions and Comon Speeches, and that this Marlowe doth not only hould them himself, but almost into every Company he Cometh he persuades men to Atheism willing them not to be afeard of bugbeares and hobgoblins, and vtterly scorning both god and his ministers as I Richard Baines will Justify & approue both by mine oth and the testimony of many honest men, and almost al men with whome he hath Conversed any time will testify the same, and as I think all men in Cristianity ought to indevor that the mouth of so dangerous a member may be stopped, he saith likewise that he hath quoted several Contrarieties oute of the Scripture which he hath giuen to some great men who in Convenient time shalbe named. When these thinges shalbe Called in question the witnes shalbe produced.

Similar examples of Marlowe's statements were given by Thomas Kyd after his imprisonment and possible torture; Kyd and Baines connect Marlowe with mathematician Thomas Harriot's and Sir Walter Raleigh's circle. Another document claimed about that time that "one Marlowe can show more sound reasons for Atheism than any divine in England can give to prove divinity and that ... he hath read the Atheist lecture to Sir Walter Raleigh and others".

Some critics believe that Marlowe sought to disseminate these views in his work and that he identified with his rebellious and iconoclastic protagonists. Plays had to be approved by the Master of the Revels before they could be performed and the censorship of publications was under the control of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Presumably, these authorities did not consider any of Marlowe's works to be unacceptable other than the Amores.

Sexuality

It has been claimed that Marlowe was homosexual. Some scholars argue that the identification of an Elizabethan as gay or homosexual in the modern sense is "anachronistic," claiming that for the Elizabethans the terms were more likely to have been applied to homoerotic affections or sexual acts rather than to what we currently understand as a settled sexual orientation or personal role identity. Other scholars argue that the evidence is inconclusive and that the reports of Marlowe's homosexuality may be rumors produced after his death. Richard Baines reported Marlowe as saying: "All they that love not Tobacco & Boies were fools". David Bevington and Eric C. Rasmussen describe Baines's evidence as "unreliable testimony" and "[t]hese and other testimonials need to be discounted for their exaggeration and for their having been produced under legal circumstances we would now regard as a witch-hunt".

J. B. Steane considered there to be "no evidence for Marlowe's homosexuality at all". Other scholars point to the frequency with which Marlowe explores homosexual themes in his writing: in Hero and Leander, Marlowe writes of the male youth Leander: "in his looks were all that men desire..." Edward the Second contains the following passage enumerating homosexual relationships:

The mightiest kings have had their minions;

Great Alexander loved Hephaestion,

The conquering Hercules for Hylas wept;

And for Patroclus, stern Achilles drooped.

And not kings only, but the wisest men:

The Roman Tully loved Octavius,

Grave Socrates, wild Alcibiades.

Marlowe wrote the only play about the life of Edward II up to his time, taking the humanist literary discussion of male sexuality much further than his contemporaries. The play was extremely bold, dealing with a star-crossed love story between Edward II and Piers Gaveston. Though it was a common practice at the time to reveal characters as homosexual to give audiences reason to suspect them as culprits in a crime, Christopher Marlowe's Edward II is portrayed as a sympathetic character. The decision to start the play Dido, Queen of Carthage with a homoerotic scene between Jupiter and Ganymede that bears no connection to the subsequent plot has long puzzled scholars.

Arrest and death

In early May 1593, several bills were posted about London threatening the Protestant refugees from France and the Netherlands who had settled in the city. One of these, the "Dutch church libel", written in rhymed iambic pentameter, contained allusions to several of Marlowe's plays and was signed, "Tamburlaine". On 11 May the Privy Council ordered the arrest of those responsible for the libels. The next day, Marlowe's colleague Thomas Kyd was arrested, his lodgings were searched and a three-page fragment of a heretical tract was found. In a letter to Sir John Puckering, Kyd asserted that it had belonged to Marlowe, with whom he had been writing "in one chamber" some two years earlier. In a second letter, Kyd described Marlowe as blasphemous, disorderly, holding treasonous opinions, being an irreligious reprobate, and "intemperate & of a cruel hart". They had both been working for an aristocratic patron, probably Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange. A warrant for Marlowe's arrest was issued on 18 May, when the Privy Council apparently knew that he might be found staying with Thomas Walsingham, whose father was a first cousin of the late Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's principal secretary in the 1580s and a man more deeply involved in state espionage than any other member of the Privy Council. Marlowe duly presented himself on 20 May but there apparently being no Privy Council meeting on that day, was instructed to "give his daily attendance on their Lordships until he shall be licensed to the contrary". On Wednesday, 30 May, Marlowe was killed.

Various accounts of Marlowe's death were current over the next few years. In his Palladis Tamia, published in 1598, Francis Meres says Marlowe was "stabbed to death by a bawdy serving-man, a rival of his in his lewd love" as punishment for his "epicurism and atheism". In 1917, in the Dictionary of National Biography, Sir Sidney Lee wrote, on slender evidence, that Marlowe was killed in a drunken fight. His claim was not much at variance with the official account, which came to light only in 1925, when the scholar Leslie Hotson discovered the coroner's report of the inquest on Marlowe's death, held two days later on Friday 1 June 1593, by the Coroner of the Queen's Household, William Danby. Marlowe had spent all day in a house in Deptford, owned by the widow Eleanor Bull, with three men: Ingram Frizer, Nicholas Skeres, and Robert Poley. All three had been employed by one or other of the Walsinghams. Skeres and Poley had helped snare the conspirators in the Babington plot and Frizer was a servant to Thomas Walsingham probably in the role of a financial or business agent, as he was for Walsingham's wife Audrey a few years later. These witnesses testified that Frizer and Marlowe had argued over payment of the bill (now famously known as the 'Reckoning') exchanging "divers malicious words" while Frizer was sitting at a table between the other two and Marlowe was lying behind him on a couch. Marlowe snatched Frizer's dagger and wounded him on the head. In the ensuing struggle, according to the coroner's report, Marlowe was stabbed above the right eye, killing him instantly. The jury concluded that Frizer acted in self-defense and within a month he was pardoned. Marlowe was buried in an unmarked grave in the churchyard of St. Nicholas, Deptford immediately after the inquest, on 1 June 1593.

The complete text of the inquest report was published by Leslie Hotson in his book, The Death of Christopher Marlowe, in the introduction to which Prof. George Kittredge said, "The mystery of Marlowe's death, heretofore involved in a cloud of contradictory gossip and irresponsible guess-work, is now cleared up for good and all on the authority of public records of complete authenticity and gratifying fullness" but this confidence proved fairly short-lived. Hotson had considered the possibility that the witnesses had "concocted a lying account of Marlowe's behavior, to which they swore at the inquest, and with which they deceived the jury" but came down against that scenario. Others began to suspect that this scenario was indeed the case. Writing to the Times Literary Supplement shortly after the book's publication, Eugénie De Kalb disputed that the struggle and outcome as described were even possible and Samuel A. Tannenbaum insisted the following year that such a wound could not have possibly resulted in instant death, as had been claimed. Even Marlowe's biographer John Bakeless acknowledged that "some scholars have been inclined to question the truthfulness of the coroner's report. There is something queer about the whole episode" and said that Hotson's discovery "raises almost as many questions as it answers". It has also been discovered more recently that the apparent absence of a local county coroner to accompany the Coroner of the Queen's Household would if noticed, have made the inquest null and void.

One of the main reasons for doubting the truth of the inquest concerns the reliability of Marlowe's companions as witnesses. As an agent provocateur for the late Sir Francis Walsingham, Robert Poley was a consummate liar, the "very genius of the Elizabethan underworld" and is on record as saying "I will swear and forswear myself, rather than I will accuse myself to do me any harm". The other witness, Nicholas Skeres, had for many years acted as a confidence trickster, drawing young men into the clutches of people in the money-lending racket, including Marlowe's apparent killer, Ingram Frizer, with whom he was engaged in such a swindle. Despite their being referred to as generosi (gentlemen) in the inquest report, the witnesses were professional liars. Some biographers, such as Kuriyama and Downie, take the inquest to be a true account of what occurred, but in trying to explain what really happened if the account was not true, others have come up with a variety of murder theories:

Jealous of her husband Thomas's relationship with Marlowe, Audrey Walsingham arranged for the playwright to be murdered.

Sir Walter Raleigh arranged the murder, fearing that under torture Marlowe might incriminate him.

With Skeres the main player, the murder resulted from attempts by the Earl of Essex to use Marlowe to incriminate Sir Walter Raleigh.

He was killed on the orders of father and son Lord Burghley and Sir Robert Cecil, who thought that his plays contained Catholic propaganda.

He was accidentally killed while Frizer and Skeres were pressuring him to pay back the money he owed them.

Marlowe was murdered at the behest of several members of the Privy Council, who feared that he might reveal them to be atheists.

The Queen ordered his assassination because of his subversive atheistic behavior.

Frizer murdered him because he envied Marlowe's close relationship with his master Thomas Walsingham and feared the effect that Marlowe's behaviour might have on Walsingham's reputation.

Marlowe's death was faked to save him from trial and execution for subversive atheism.

Since there are only written documents on which to base any conclusions and since, probably, the most crucial information about his death was never committed to paper, it is unlikely that the full circumstances of Marlowe's death will ever be known.

Reputation among contemporary writers

For his contemporaries in the literary world, Marlowe was above all an admired and influential artist. Within weeks of his death, George Peele remembered him as "Marley, the Muses' darling"; Michael Drayton noted that he "Had in him those brave translunary things / That the first poets had" and Ben Jonson even wrote of "Marlowe's mighty line". Thomas Nashe wrote warmly of his friend, "poor deceased Kit Marlowe," as did the publisher Edward Blount in his dedication of Hero and Leander to Sir Thomas Walsingham. Among the few contemporary dramatists to say anything negative about Marlowe was the anonymous author of the Cambridge University play The Return from Parnassus (1598) who wrote, "Pity it is that wit so ill should dwell, / Wit lent from heaven, but vices sent from hell".

The most famous tribute to Marlowe was paid by Shakespeare in As You Like It, where he not only quotes a line from Hero and Leander ("Dead Shepherd, now I find thy saw of might, 'Who ever lov'd that lov'd not at first sight?'") but also gives to the clown Touchstone the words "When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with the forward child, understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room." This appears to be a reference to Marlowe's murder which involved a fight over the "reckoning," the bill, as well as to a line in Marlowe's Jew of Malta, "Infinite riches in a little room."

Shakespeare was much influenced by Marlowe in his work, as can be seen in the use of Marlovian themes in Antony and Cleopatra, The Merchant of Venice, Richard II and Macbeth (Dido, Jew of Malta, Edward II and Doctor Faustus, respectively). In Hamlet, after meeting with the traveling actors, Hamlet requests the Player perform a speech about the Trojan War, which at 2.2.429–432 has an echo of Marlowe's Dido, Queen of Carthage. In Love's Labor’s Lost Shakespeare brings on a character "Marcade" (three syllables) in conscious acknowledgment of Marlowe's character "Mercury", also attending the King of Navarre, in Massacre at Paris. The significance, to those of Shakespeare's audience who were familiar with Hero and Leander, was Marlowe's identification of himself with the god Mercury.

Shakespeare authorship theory

An argument has arisen about the notion that Marlowe faked his death and then continued to write under the assumed name of William Shakespeare. Academic consensus rejects alternative candidates for authorship of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, including Marlowe.

Literary career

Plays

Six dramas have been attributed to the authorship of Christopher Marlowe either alone or in collaboration with other writers, with varying degrees of evidence. The writing sequence or chronology of these plays is mostly unknown and is offered here with any dates and evidence known. Among the little available information we have, Dido is believed to be the first Marlowe play performed, while it was Tamburlaine that was first to be performed on a regular commercial stage in London in 1587. Believed by many scholars to be Marlowe's greatest success, Tamburlaine was the first English play written in blank verse and, with Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, is generally considered the beginning of the mature phase of the Elizabethan theater.

The play Lust's Dominion was attributed to Marlowe upon its initial publication in 1657, though scholars and critics have almost unanimously rejected the attribution. He may also have written or co-written Arden of Faversham.

Poetry and translations

Publication and responses to the poetry and translations credited to Marlowe primarily occurred posthumously, including:

Amores, first book of Latin elegiac couplets by Ovid with translation by Marlowe (c. 1580s); copies publicly burned as offensive in 1599.

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love, by Marlowe. (c. 1587–1588); a popular lyric of the time.

Hero and Leander, by Marlowe (c. 1593, unfinished; completed by George Chapman, 1598; printed 1598).

Pharsalia, Book One, by Lucan with translation by Marlowe. (c. 1593; printed 1600)

Collaborations

Modern scholars still look for evidence of collaborations between Marlowe and other writers. In 2016, one publisher was the first to endorse the scholarly claim of a collaboration between Marlowe and the playwright William Shakespeare:

Henry VI by William Shakespeare is now credited as a collaboration with Marlowe in the New Oxford Shakespeare series, published in 2016. Marlowe appears as co-author of the three Henry VI plays, though some scholars doubt any actual collaboration.

Charles Howard, 1st Earl of Nottingham, Lord High Admiral, shown here c. 1601 in a procession for Elizabeth I of England, was patron of the Admiral's Men during Marlowe's lifetime.

Contemporary reception

Marlowe's plays were enormously successful, possibly because of the imposing stage presence of his lead actor, Edward Alleyn. Alleyn was unusually tall for the time and the haughty roles of Tamburlaine, Faustus, and Barabas were probably written for him. Marlowe's plays were the foundation of the repertoire of Alleyn's company, the Admiral's Men, throughout the 1590s. One of Marlowe's poetry translations did not fare as well. In 1599, Marlowe's translation of Ovid was banned and copies were publicly burned as part of Archbishop Whitgift's crackdown on offensive material.

Chronology of dramatic works

(Patrick Cheney's 2004 Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe presents an alternative timeline based on printing dates.)

Dido, Queen of Carthage (c. 1585–1587)

Tamburlaine, Part I (c. 1587); Part II (c. 1587–1588)

The Jew of Malta (c. 1589–1590)

Doctor Faustus (c. 1588–1592)

Edward the Second (c. 1592)

The Massacre at Paris (c. 1589–1593)

Memorials

The Muse of Poetry, a bronze sculpture by Edward Onslow Ford references Marlowe and his work. It was erected on Buttermarket, Canterbury in 1891, and now stands outside the Marlowe Theatre in the city.

In July 2002, a memorial window to Marlowe was unveiled by the Marlowe Society at Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey. Controversially, a question mark was added to his generally accepted date of death. On 25 October 2011, a letter from Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells was published by The Times newspaper, in which they called on the Dean and Chapter to remove the question mark because it "flew in the face of a mass of unimpugnable evidence". In 2012, they renewed this call in their e-book Shakespeare Bites Back, adding that it "denies history" and again the following year in their book Shakespeare Beyond Doubt.

The Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury, Kent, UK, was named for Marlowe in 1949.

Marlowe in fiction

Marlowe has been used as a character in books, theatre, film, television, games, and radio.

Modern compendia

Modern scholarly collected works of Marlowe include:

The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe (edited by Roma Gill in 1986; Clarendon Press published in partnership with Oxford University Press)

The Complete Plays of Christopher Marlowe (edited by J. B. Steane in 1969; edited by Frank Romany and Robert Lindsey, Revised Edition, 2004, Penguin)

Works of Marlowe in performance

Poster for the 1937, New York WPA Federal Theatre Project production of Doctor Faustus

Radio

BBC Radio broadcast adaptations of Marlowe's six plays from May to October 1993.

Royal Shakespeare Company

Dido, Queen of Carthage, directed by Kimberly Sykes, with Chipo Chung as Dido. Swan Theater, 2017.

Tamburlaine the Great, directed by Terry Hands, with Anthony Sher as Tamburlaine. Swan Theater, 1992; Barbican Theater, 1993.

Tamburlaine the Great directed by Michael Boyd, with Jude Owusu as Tamburlaine. Swan Theater, 2018.

The Jew of Malta, directed by Barry Kyle, with Jasper Britton as Barabas. Swan Theater, 1987; People's Theatre, and Barbican Theater, 1988.

The Jew of Malta, directed by Justin Audibert, with Jasper Britton as Barabas. Swan Theater, 2015.

Edward II, directed by Gerard Murphy, with Simon Russell Beale as Edward. Swan Theater, 1990.

Doctor Faustus, directed by John Barton, with Ian McKellen as Faustus. Nottingham Playhouse and Aldwych Theater, 1974, and Royal Shakespeare Theater, 1975.

Doctor Faustus directed by Barry Kyle with Gerard Murphy as Faustus, Swan Theater and Pit Theater, 1989.

Doctor Faustus directed by Maria Aberg, with Sandy Grierson and Oliver Ryan sharing the roles of Faustus and Mephistophilis. Swan Theatre and Barbican Theater, 2016.

Royal National Theater

 

Tamburlaine, directed by Peter Hall, with Albert Finney as Tamburlaine. Olivier Theater, 1976.

Dido, Queen of Carthage, directed by James McDonald with Anastasia Hille as Dido. Cottesloe Theater, 2009.

Edward II, directed by Joe Hill-Gibbins, with John Heffernan as Edward. Olivier Theater, 2013.

Shakespeare's Globe

Dido, Queen of Carthage, directed by Tim Carroll, with Rakie Ayola as Dido, 2003.

Edward II, directed by Timothy Walker, with Liam Brennan as Edward, 2003.

Malthouse Theater

The Marlowe Sessions

Dido, Queen of Carthage, Directed/Produced by Ray Mia, Performance direction by Stephen Unwin, with Thalissa Teixeira as Dido, 2022.

Tamburlaine The Great, Part 1, Directed/Produced by Ray Mia, Performance direction by Phillip Breen, with Alan Cox as Tamburlaine, 2022.

The Jew of Malta, Directed/Produced by Ray Mia, Performance direction by Stephen Unwin, with Adrian Schiller as Barrabus, 2022.

Tamburlaine The Great, Part 2, Directed/Produced by Ray Mia, Performance direction by Phillip Breen, with Alan Cox as Tamburlaine, 2022.

Edward The Second, Directed/Produced by Ray Mia, Performance direction by Abigail Rokison, with Jack Holden as Edward II, 2022.

The Massacre at Paris, Directed/Produced by Ray Mia, Performance direction by Abigail Rokison, with Michael Maloney as Guise, 2022.

Dr Faustus, Directed/Produced by Ray Mia, Performance direction by Phillip Breen, with Dominic West as Faustus and Talulah Riley as Mephistopheles, 2022.

The Poetry of Christopher Marlowe, Directed/Produced by Ray Mia, Performance direction by Philip Bird, read by Jack Holden, Fisayo Akinade, and Philip Bird, 2022.

Other stage

Tamburlaine. Yale University, 1919.

Tamburlaine, directed by Tyrone Guthrie, with Donald Wolfit as Tamburlaine. The Old Vic, 1951.

Doctor Faustus, co-directed by Orson Welles and John Houseman, with Welles as Faustus and Jack Carter as Mephistopheles. Maxine Elliott's Theater, 1937.

Doctor Faustus, directed by Adrian Noble. Royal Exchange, 1981.

Edward II, directed by Toby Robertson, with John Barton as Edward. Cambridge, 1951.

Edward II, directed by Toby Robertson, with Derek Jacobi as Edward. Cambridge, 1958.

Edward II, directed by Toby Robertson, with Ian McKellen as Edward. Assembly Rooms, 1969.

Edward II, directed by Jim Stone, Washington Stage Company, 1993;

Edward II, directed by Jozsef Ruszt. Budapest, 1998;

Edward II, directed by Michael Grandage, with Joseph Fiennes as Edward. Crucible Theater, 2001.

The Massacre in Paris, directed by Patrice Chéreau. France, 1972.

Stage adaptations

Edward II, Phoenix Society, London, 1923.

Leben Eduards des Zweiten von England, by Bertolt Brecht (the first play he directed). Munich Chamber Theatre, Germany, 1924.

The Life of Edward II of England, by Marlowe and Bertold Brecht, directed by Frank Dunlop. National Theater, 1968.

Edward II adapted as a ballet, choreographed by David Bintley. Stuttgart Ballet, 1995.

Doctor Faustus, additional text by Colin Teevan, directed by Jamie Lloyd, with Kit Harington as Faustus. Duke of York's Theater, 2016.

Faustus, That Damned Woman by Chris Bush, directed by Caroline Byrne. Lyric Theater, 2020.

Film

Doctor Faustus, based on Nevill Coghill's 1965 production, was adapted for Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, in 1967.

Edward II, directed by Derek Jarman, 1991.

Faust, with some Marlowe dialogue, directed by Jan Švankmajer, 1994.

Notes

 "Christopher Marlowe was baptized as 'Marlow,' but he spelled his name 'Marley' in his one known surviving signature."

 "During Marlowe's lifetime, the popularity of his plays, Robert Greene's unintentionally elevating remarks about him as a dramatist in A Groatsworth of Wit, including the designation “famous,” and the many imitations of Tamburlaine suggest that he was for a brief time considered England's foremost dramatist." Logan also suggests consulting the business diary of Philip Henslowe, which is traditionally used by theatre historians to determine the popularity of Marlowe's plays.

 No birth records, only baptismal records, have been found for Marlowe and Shakespeare, therefore any reference to a birthdate for either man probably refers to the date of their baptism.

 "…as one of the most influential current critics, Stephen Greenblatt frets, Marlowe's 'cruel, aggressive plays' seem to reflect a life also lived on the edge: 'a courting of disaster as reckless as any that he depicted on stage'."

 The earliest record of Marlowe at The King's School is their payment for his scholarship of 1578/79, but Nicholl notes this was "unusually late" to start as a student and proposes he could have begun school earlier as a "fee-paying pupil".

 It is known that some poorer students worked as laborers in the Corpus Christi College chapel, then under construction, and were paid by the college with extra food. It has been suggested this may be the reason for the sums noted in Marlowe's entry in the buttery accounts.

 He was described by Arbella's guardian, the Countess of Shrewsbury, as having hoped for an annuity of some £40 from Arbella, his being "so much damnified (i.e. having lost this much) by leaving the University."

 The so-called 'Remembrances' against Richard Cholmeley.

 J. R. Mulryne states in his ODNB article that the document was identified in the 20th century as transcripts from John Proctour's The Fall of the Late Arian (1549).

 "Useful research has been stimulated by the infinitesimally thin possibility that Marlowe did not die when we think he did. ... History holds its doors open."

 Performing company is listed on the title page of the 1590 Octavo. Henslowe's diary first lists Tamburlaine performances in 1593, so the original playhouse is unknown.