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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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)

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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

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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

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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

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"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.

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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 ?

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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.

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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

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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)

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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 ?

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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

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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 ?

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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.

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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

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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.

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