Post on 10-Mar-2023
KHANNA1
NAME:UDAY KHANNA
B.A.(HONS)ENGLISH
4th SEMESTER
ENROLL NO. A77061130027
SUBMITTED TO- DR. ANUPRIYA ROY SRIVASTAVA
DATE –12th February, 2015
Christopher Marlowe: An Insight into The Man,The Myth
Abstract :
The objective of this research paper is to talk about the life
and adventures of Christopher Marlowe as an alleged spy and the
myth they call the " Marlovian Theory". Is it really a myth or
are there enough facts to prove that Christopher Marlowe and
William Shakespeare were one and the same person ? This research
paper aims to highlight the facts and beliefs in favor of the
Marlovian authorship to the plays attributed to a certain William
Shakespeare. I plan to present information which I believe to be
accurate and well-reasoned arguments in favor of this belief.
KHANNA2
Keywords: Myth, Influence, Fake, Death, Spy.
Life of Christopher Marlowe
Christopher Marlowe was the greatest of the ''University Wits'',
a group of young playwrights out of the Universities of Cambridge
and Oxford. He was born on 26th February, 1564, exactly two
months before the birth of the man in question, William
Shakespeare.
He was the foremost Elizabethan Tragedian of his day and it is
said that he greatly ''influenced'' William Shakespeare.
At the age of 23, in 1587, Marlowe produced his first well
received play, Tamburlaine.
KHANNA3
The Tragical history of Doctor Faustus contains some of the finest poetry
in the English Language and is generally regarded and accepted as
Marlowe's best work.
The Jew of Malta shows a remarkable advance over the earlier plays in
cause and effect.
EdwardII best exhibits its author's skill as a playwright and was
the first Elizabethan historical drama.
Each of these plays represent what may be called the one-man type
of tragedy. Each revolves around one central personality who is
consumed by the lust for power. Marlowe established the supremacy
of blank verse as the appropriate meter for dramatic work.
Marlowe gave to English drama a unity which it had not possessed
before. Plays written by his predecessors had been lacking in
form. Those plays were a succession of scenes having no proper
connecting links. But Marlowe wrote plays in which there was a
regular development of plot.
Death of Christopher Marlowe
KHANNA4
Various accounts of Marlowe's death have been given by various
writers and researchers. However, according to the most reliable
version, based on the evidence of documents in the Public Record
Office, Marlowe was kill by a companion of his, one Ingram
Frizer, at an inn on 30th of May, 1593. There were witnesses
present to give an account of what took place, namely Robert
Poley and Nicholas Skeres.
Christopher Marlowe: The Man
Marlowe was a rebel in all sense of the word. He was an
embodiment of rebellion in every form. He had the reputation of
being an atheist, a mocker of religion, almost certainly a
homosexual and very possibly a government spy. The information on
Marlowe is so tenuous that there is uncertainty even about his
last name, which appears variously in the existing documents as
Marlow, Marle, Marley, Morley, Marlen, Marlin and Marlinge.
KHANNA5
In 1587, the Privy council ordered the University of Cambridge to
award Marlowe his degree of Masters in Arts, saying that he had
been involved in some unspecified by ''good service'' to the
nation. The surviving records from the college also show that
Marlowe was absent from the University for unusually long periods
without any explanations, much longer than permitted by the
University rules.
The surviving provision store records also shed a light on this
by indicating that Marlowe began spending extravagantly on food
and other college supplies when he was present in the college,
much more than he could afford on his scholarship income.
He was involved in various brawls and brushes with the law and
Marlowe had been arrested a few times in his life but was always
bailed out and cleared of all charges and any kind of
wrongdoings. Marlowe was reputed to be an atheist, which, at that
time, held the dangerous implication of being an enemy of God.
Some modern historians, however, consider that his professed
atheism, as with his supposed Catholicism, may have been no more
KHANNA6
than an elaborate and sustained pretence adopted to further his
work as a government spy.
On 18th May, a warrant for Marlowe's arrest was issued and he was
killed on 30th May. But did he really die ?
Marlowe was known for his rebellious attitude and his open
rejection of religion and Christ. He was also a known government
spy who had a charge against him of being a homosexual. Scholars
and researchers have found passages in his work that support the
charge of him being a homosexual. For example, Edward II contains
the following passage :
''The mightiest kings have had their minions;
Great Alexander loved Hephaestion,
The conquering Hercules for Hylas wept;
And for Patroclus, stern Achilles drooped.
And not kings only, but the wisest men:
The Roman Tully loved Octavius,
Grave Socrates, wild Alcibiades''(Marlowe)
KHANNA7
Marlowe was a clever and a rebellious person but the ground below
him was melting, following all these charges and accusations and
his unorthodox behavior.
He was apparently killed on 30th May, 1593 but the details of it
are so shoddy that it has led major scholars and researchers to
believe that Marlowe might have faked his death and gotten away
to another country, Italy, as most suggest. The theory says that
Marlowe's work flourished in Italy, and eventually was passed
through various contacts back to his native land, where he came
back and the plays written by him were fronted by a stage actor
named ''Shakespeare".
Marlowe was government spy and had a host of powerful friends who
had the means to arrange and organize a ''fake'' death. The
accusations concerning Marlowe contained in various documents
sent to the Privy Council at the time were very serious. It is
therefore somewhat remarkable that, despite the initial summons
for his arrest being on 18 May, he was apparently still at
liberty on 30 May to attend the Deptford meeting. Whatever the
KHANNA8
reason for this, it would have certainly given the opportunity
for a faked death to be organized and carried out.
Most scholars and researchers suggest that the witnesses created
a false account of Marlowe's behavior, swore about it at the
inquest and hence deceived the jury. In the resultant brawl,
Marlowe had been stabbed above the eye which killed him
''instantly''. But physicians and surgeons have argued that such
a wound would not have resulted in an instant death, as has been
asserted.
One of the major reasons for doubting the so-called ''true
account'' of Marlowe's death is the reliability of his witnesses.
It has been noted that Robert Poley was an accomplished liar. The
other companion, Nicholas Skeres was a con man and a trickster
along with Marlowe's alleged killer, Ingram Frizer. Poley, Frizer
KHANNA9
and Skeres all made a living from being able to lie convincingly
and had previously been in trouble for fraud.
It has been argued that if the witnesses were consummate liars,
they could have easily lied about the identity of the corpse too,
as they were the only ones in a position to recognize it. Marlowe
was supposedly ''buried'' in an unmarked grave and in fact it was
someone else's body that the jury was called upon to examine.
Christopher Marlowe as William Shakespeare: The Myth uncovered
KHANNA10
"Marlovians"- People who subscribe to the theory that Christopher
Marlowe did not die on 30th May, 1593 and instead faked his death
and is the real author of the plays attributed to ''William
Shakespeare".
Their arguments are based on the fact that it has not yet been
proven how Christopher Marlowe died and the details surrounding
his apparent murder are not clear and the notable influence
Marlowe had on Shakespeare and the similarities in their works
and styles.
In her book The Marlowe-Shakespeare continuum, Donna N. Murphy states
that Thomas Nashe was the newsmonger of that era. He practically
wrote about anybody who was somebody in the literary realm:
Christopher Marlowe, Robert Greene, John Lyly, George Peele,
Thomas Kyd, Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney and many more. But
he did not write a word about a William Shakespeare. The silence
of a pamphleteer like Nashe speaks volumes.
KHANNA11
Christopher Marlowe was born only two months before William
Shakespeare and yet the first time it was heard of Shakespeare in
the literary circle was when his poem Venus and Adonis was
published, just a week or two after Marlowe's supposed demise.
Venus and Adonis has enough in common with Marlowe's Hero and Leander
that it begs the question, was it written by the same person ?
Hero and Leander was published five years after Marlowe's death, in
the year 1598. Marlowe had left the poem unfinished before his
untimely death.
What if, after his apparent death, this was first piece of work
he wanted to complete and did so in the lieu of Venus and Adonis ?
There are enough similarities between the two texts to support
this.
The title page on several editions of Venus and Adonis had on them
the words, in modern writing, ”I live to die, I die to live".
What better motto to place upon the cover of your first
publication after your supposed death ?
KHANNA12
Venus and Adonis is very similar in style, tone and imagery to
Marlowe's Hero and Leander. So similar in style that critics have
concluded that Shakespeare must have had access to the original
manuscript since Hero and Leander was not published until 1598, at
least four to five years after the publication on Venus and
Adonis.For instance, in both poems, the beautiful youth is
referred to as ''rose-cheeked'' and both youth are compared to
Narcissus.
Many characters in the Marlovian and Shakespearean works are cut
from the same dramatic cloth, including Tamburlaine and Titus,
Barabas and Shylock, Abigail and Jessica, the Duke of Guise and
Aaron, Edward II and Richard II, and Mortimer and Hotspur.
According to researcher John Baker, Marlowe’s canon organically
matures into Shakespeare’s, and his Dido becomes Romeo and Juliet and
then Anthony and Cleopatra and Troilus and Cressida. Edward II matures
into Richard II. The Massacre at Paris evolves into Measure for Measure,
while The Jew of Malta metamorphoses into or The Merchant of Venice.
KHANNA13
There's also a small question of their meeting. How is it that
two of the greatest writers of that time never even met each
other or crossed paths ? If they did, there would have been a
record of it somewhere or the other. All we have on that is word
of the mouth and rumors and no actual facts of the two ever
meeting each other. They worked in the same theaters, in the same
town of the same country and had the same contemporaries. How did
they not meet ? And if they did, why is there no record of such a
meeting taking place ?
There are numerous instances where Shakespeare has referred to
Marlowe in his work. Most famously in As you like it, where he calls
Marlowe 'Dead shepherd' and proceeds to write Marlowe's famous
lines from Hero and Leander:
“Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?”(Marlowe)
There are enough similarities between Edward II and Richard II. The
structure of the play is also parallel and both of these plays
KHANNA14
begin with a dispute. In each play there are three king’s
favorites: Gaveston and the two Spensers in Edward II, Busby,
Green, and Bagot in Richard II. Both of these kings are caught
unawares and unprepared by the attack of an enemy who had been
absent for a while and took the opportunity well. In the end,
each King is murdered and their coffin is brought on stage in the
final scene.
In Marlowe's Jew of Malta when Barabas, sees Abigail on a balcony
above him, he says:
But stay! What star shines yonder in the east?
The lodestar of my life, if Abigail! (Marlowe)
Which is quite similar to the famous lines spoken by Romeo in
Romeo and Juliet:
But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!(Shakespeare)
KHANNA15
Christopher Marlowe was the first Elizabethan dramatist to
practice the Renaissance elements in his plays and the use of
supernatural. Supernatural was also prominent in the plays of
Shakespeare as they both mentioned and invoked the services of
Greek Goddess, Hecate. She is even mentioned in the ''Dagger''
scene in Macbeth.
"Witchcraft celebrates pale Hecate's offerings..."(Shakespeare 64)
Most of their classical sources were also the same. For example,
Ovid, Plutarch, Belleforest, Holinshed, Halle, etc. It is a known
fact that many playwrights of that time, including Marlowe,
borrowed from the Holinshed's chronicles. What if after his
apparent death, he continued to do so in Shakespeare's name and
borrowed the whole plot of Macbeth from the famous Chronicles ?
KHANNA16
Marlowe translated the Latin and Greek texts as he had a learning
of them and studied them at college but there is no record that
states that Shakespeare had any kind of formal education at all.
Marlowe started writing and publishing his work at the tender age
of Eighteen. His earliest works were translations of Lucan's
"Pharsalia" and Ovid's "Elegies". On the other hand,
Shakespeare's first work came out when he was nearly Thirty years
of age. Marlowe was about Twenty nine when he a supposedly died
and Shakespeare's first work was published right after Marlowe's
death. Coincidence ?
A few of Shakespeare's play are set in the country of Italy, most
famously, The Merchant of Venice. One cannot gain such knowledge about
a city or country by merely reading about it. One cannot write
about the day to day life of a city where one has not lived, but
Shakespeare did so in the above mentioned play. I already talked
about the belief that many scholars and researchers have that
KHANNA17
Marlowe fled to Italy after faking his death. Another coincidence
? I think not.
Shakespeare used a number of lines and phrases from Marlowe's
works, sometimes lifting them verbatim. There are mentions of the
writer being in exile in the sonnets of Shakespeare, something
that never really happened to him. In Sonnet 25, for example,
something unforeseen has happened to the poet, which will deny
him the chance to boast of "public honor and proud titles", and
which seems to have led to some enforced travel far away,
possibly even overseas. In one sonnet, which was published in
1609, Shakespeare calls himself,'' "our ever-living poet", which
was a phrase that almost always referred to someone deceased.
Shakespeare was well and alive in 1609 when this sonnet was
published. Marlowe was apparently not. The sonnets have no
mention of the life works of Shakespeare himself and they mainly
talk about 'exile' and 'disgrace'. Could this be Marlowe pointing
something out ?
KHANNA18
There are many clues in the plays by Shakespeare as well. Many
characters in his plays are either lost somewhere, lost their
identity, fake their death or run away from the scene of
happening. Perhaps the most famous of these phrases is the one
from As you like it, Act 3, Scene 3 :
"When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with the
forward child, understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a
little room."(Shakespeare)
Almost everyone agrees and accepts that this is a reference to
the apparent murder of Christopher Marlowe in that infamous
brawl. It makes much more sense if Christopher Marlowe, who
experienced this, writes about it rather than a William
Shakespeare.
KHANNA19
I believe to have provided enough evidence in this paper that the
actual myth is the man from Stratford and it is indeed
Christopher ''Kit'' Marlowe who is the real author of the works
attributed to "William Shakespeare".
"The way to really develop as a writer is to make yourself a political outcast, so that you
have to live in secret. This is how Marlowe developed into Shakespeare."(Hughes Tedd
120)
WORK CITED
KHANNA20
Shakespeare William.Macbeth. Milan MitraPublication.2009.Allahabad.Print.
Murphy N Donna. The Marlowe- Shakespeare Continuum.CambridgeScholars Publication 2013.England.Print.
Anonymous. The Shakesperean AuthorshipTrust.www.shakespereanauthorship.uk.n.d.Web.n.d
<www.shakespereanauthorshiptrust.org.uk/pages/candidates/marlowe.htm>
Jack Alex.Literary Similarities between Marlowe andShakespeare.www.themarlowestudies.org.n.d.Web.2009
<www.themarlowestudies.org/literarysimilarities.html>
Marlowe Christopher. The Tragic History of Doctor Faustus.DoverThrift Editions2009.n.d.Print.
Marlowe Christopher. Hero and Leander. Nabu Press 2011.n.d.Print.
William Shakespeare.Venus and Adonis. Nabu Press 2010.n.d.Print.