Books, Arts & Manners: Murther Cannot Be Hid

The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe, by Charles Nicholl (Harcourt, Brace, 413 pp., $24.95)

ON MAY 30, 1593, Christopher Marlowe was killed in the port town of Deptford, a few miles downriver of London. He was stabbed through the eye by a certain Ingram Frizer in a dispute (so said Frizer and the two other men present, Robert Foley and Nicholas Skeres) over “the reckoning”—the bill for the day’s entertainment. Frizer was eventually acquitted on grounds of self-defense.

About the Author

Linda Bridges

Ms. Bridges is the former editor-at-large of National Review.

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The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe, by Charles Nicholl (Harcourt, Brace, 413 pp., $24.95)

ON MAY 30, 1593, Christopher Marlowe was killed in the port town of Deptford, a few miles downriver of London. He was stabbed through the eye by a certain Ingram Frizer in a dispute (so said Frizer and the two other men present, Robert Foley and Nicholas Skeres) over “the reckoning”—the bill for the day’s entertainment. Frizer was eventually acquitted on grounds of self-defense.