Farey chimes in

It didn't take long for Peter Farey to answer Lorenzo's music with some notable arguments of his own in rime royal, to boot. He wrote

> The documented record is quite clear -
> A quarrel over just a 'sum of pence'.
> With Skeres and Poley sitting very near,
> Kit died, and Frizer claimed 'twas self-defence.
> Few think this true. It lacks the evidence
> Of how it came that they (and only they)
> Were gathered at that place, that time, that day.
>
> He should have been at Nonsuch, checking in.
> And Poley had some messages 'in poste',
> The other two a coney for to skin,
> And in their mind such things were uppermost.
> Why were these three in Deptford, playing host
> To Marlowe, poet/playwright, atheist,
> Unless they had been called on to assist?
>
> Assist in what? Perhaps his 'sudden end'?
> A murder has been mooted oftentime:
> But Cecil (boss) and Walsingham, their friend,
> Were hardly like to join in such a crime.
> To help him flee? I have to say that I'm
> Unable to buy that - the corpse denies.
> So what is left? A make-believe demise.
>
> Undoubtedly he was in deepest shtuck,
> Odds on for execution, so they say,
> You write an anti-Trinitarian book,
> You get sent permanently on your way.
> Perhaps his friends could get the Queen's OK
> His skin might yet be saved, if not too late,
> His talent still of value to the state.
>
> The team's assembled: one to perpetrate,
> One to keep watch and one to organize;
> A man condemned to die around that date;
> A safe house, far away from prying eyes.
> The Queen's own coroner to supervise
> The inquest, and to see the jury swore
> The tale they heard was true - no less, no more.
>
> Is there a happy ending? That I doubt.
> The likely penance permanent exile,
> False name, false background, from now on without
> Old haunts, old friends (but newest juvenile?),
> The Rose, with Alleyn putting on the style.
> He still could write, of course. The play's the thing
> Where reconciliation he might sing.
>
> Did he? Who knows. But on the Avon's brim,
> A monument with wording strange we find
> (To Stratford's William Shakespeare, not to him,
> Except for those with a more curious mind).
> "Read who is here with Will, if you're not blind"
> It says, and there he is, as born anew.
> And odds of twenty million cry "It's true".