“Lightborne”, the debut novel from author Hesse Phillips, is the newest addition to a series of fictional narratives exploring the circumstances surrounding the murder of Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593). Marlowe’s life is a spellbinding story. As a scholarship student in Cambridge, he was scouted and chosen to work undercover. His later works displayed an electrifying intensity, with central characters who relentlessly pursued their passions, even onto a path of destruction. Accusations against him for his ostensibly ‘deviant’ beliefs relating to faith and homosexuality led to his arrest. Shortly after, he suffered a fatal stab wound just above his eye during a clandestine meeting at a private residence in Deptford, with his fellow intelligence affiliates present. The true nature of the incident remains unclear – it could have been an impromptu altercation fuelled by alcohol, or a planned homicide ordered by high-ranking officials to resolve ‘the Marlowe issue’, potentially as he was attempting to escape England.
In the concluding remarks to “Lightborne”, Marlowe is recognised as a ‘queer ancestor’, a perspective that is widely accepted. The novel presents a distinctively modern interpretation of Marlowe’s challenging situation. The narrative connects not only Marlowe’s murder with the major conspiracy of his era – the Jesuit ‘Babington Plot’ against Elizabeth I – but also links them to a love story between men that ended in betrayal. The novel implies that this love story was repressed by a society that permitted, and perhaps even exploited, pederastic abuse in concealed endeavours to safeguard the Tudor monarchy, whose rule hinged on Anglican conformity.
The novel is also modern in its approach to retelling history. Lightborne incorporates elements of the Renaissance period in a laid-back, trendy manner. Its rapid succession of dramatic sequences revitalizes clichéd images from the 16th century, although some explicit background information might be necessary for readers unfamiliar with the context.
Marlowe undisputedly expressed homosexual inclinations in ‘Edward II,’ a point to which Lightborne’s title makes reference, and challenged the norms and literary conventions of the aristocracy of his time. It is suggested that such audacious display could lead to severe retribution. This infringement of norms, in conjunction with the exposure to potential suppression, renders Marlowe, in the words of Phillips, as “someone like me” – someone in tune with the contemporary politics of identity. In a constant allusion to this idea, Marlowe is persistently attributed with deep, thought-provoking facets within the novel. He’s described as “a subtler creature,” more refined than his overly ambitious fictional characters. He dismisses Tamburlaine, the hero cherished by his audience, as a “clown.”
Unlike the “vacant,” “void” tormentors in the incipient, distinctly cruel security state where he also serves, Marlowe, as depicted by Lightborne, would never harm what he cherishes. Phillips, by the finale, also modernises this Wildean motif.