ABSTRACT
The tattered manuscript of The Massacre at Paris survives in what J. B. Steane has rightly called a 'much maimed and abbreviated form'. Christopher Marlowe's greatest departure from English accounts of the massacre is his assumption that the events were not fundamentally motivated by genuine disagreements about religion. This chapter argues that the dramatized murder of Peter Ramus, while brief, is nevertheless a crux of the play. Keeping in mind Julia Briggs's argument that Marlowe variously presents the massacre from both Catholic and Protestant perspectives, we now turn directly to Marlowe's text, and first to the distinctly Protestant episode of Admiral Coligny's murder. Historically there was a good deal of contemporary notice of Henry's 'homosexuality'. In the play, its possibility is raised only discreetly. Finally, the chapter suggests that the silencing of the duchess of Guise and the murder of Peter Ramus are not unrelated acts of violence, but instead of a piece.
