Some historians (including Mr. Osbourne from the in-class video) say that Christopher Marlowe might have been a secret Catholic in Protestant England. While Anglicanism is incredibly similar in doctrine to Catholicism, it was still quite controversial to be Catholic in Britain at the time to say the least. It then follows that a secret Catholic might try to hide subtle references for his compatriots in his written works, specifically those that deride the parents of the Reformation. And who is a bigger paragon of Reformation values than Martin Luther? Both Luther and Faustus were born in small German towns, and they both went in "riper years to Wittenburg" (p 502, ln 13) to seek their education. As such, both are well versed in matters theological and physical and both speak latin with fluency and with a good grasp of common aphorisms. This direct allusion is not an accident, nor would it appear to be to anyone who had been paying attention to history.
So how does Marlowe get away with this? Consider this; at the time, Anglicans, while decidedly anti-Catholic, were by no means pro-Luther. Marlowe plays both crowds brilliantly; on the one hand, he is able to appeal to the crown by comparing the roundly disliked Luther to the megalomaniac Faustus. On the other, he is able to encode a secret anti-reform message to all of his Catholic friends, assuming the theory is true.
1. Why else might Marlowe encode this allusion to Martin Luther within the framing of the story?
2. Who might have killed him? The crown could have simply jailed him, so they're not very likely as the culprit.
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