"Hell hath no limits", writes Christopher Marlowe, "for where we are is hell/And where hell is there must we ever be".
Lines like this must have shot up hairs on the back of necks of audiences for whom, living in the Elizabethan era, God and the teachings of the bible were instilled as definitive truths. His antagonist Mephistopheles goes on to describe God as a "wretched" finding comfort in "companions in misery" (and in latin, to boot).
Marlowe's untimely death - reportedly, a stabbing through the eye in a tavern brawl - came only ten days after an arrest warrant issued by the Privy Council, assumingly on grounds of heresy. Speculation over his murder grew with the revelation of a letter by the Council sent to his university insisting that he receive his Masters degree for he was "working on matters touching the benefit of his country". Was Christopher Marlowe a spy?
This world of Elizabethan espionage has attracted playwright Stephen McDermott, whose new play, The Secret Art of Murder, is not a recreation of the dramatist's death but of the investigation into his death that has haunted the literary consciousness for centuries.
