Maybe listening it for the second time, and it keeps on getting spookier and intriguing. I believe if students of literature could reverse the clock and change history Marlowe would be the one to live a fuller life and die a natural death until the branch had become a tree... thank you Giles for bringing him up!!
Hmm. Shakespeare might have had a longer career, but Marlowe was way more interesting as a person. I'm taking a Shakespeare class right now, and I'm thinking about writing on the similarities of Marlowe's Edward II and Shakespeare's Richard II. Both troubling for the queen, it seems!
At 26:16 you state that the Jew of Malta, Massacre of Paris, Titus Andronicus, Henry VI, were all playing on Jan. 1593, Marlowe died May 30, 1593. According to Wikipedia, "The first time the name William Shakespeare is known to have been connected with any literary work whatsoever was with the publication of Venus and Adonis just a week or two after the death of Marlowe." So how was this possible?
That depends on your definition of "known". The first work in print that was credited to William Shakespeare was _Venus and Adonis_ in 1593, however we know that prior to this _Titus Andronicus_ and a "harey the vj" that scholars think was _1 Henry VI_ were playing. We know these facts from Philip Henslowe's Diary. At the time, his diary didn't record any information about the authors, but merely the title (or whatever title Henslowe chose to give it, which was not always the same as the printed title), the date of the performance, the total takings, and the company that performed it. However, both these plays were subsequently printed in the First Folio with the author being identified as William Shakespeare, so if _Titus Andronicus_ and _1 Henry VI_ were attributed to William Shakespeare in 1623, it stands to reason that they were also by William Shakespeare when they were recorded as being performed in 1592. We also have an oblique reference to William Shakespeare in Robert Greene's _A Groats-Worth of Wit Bought with a Million of Repentance_ . In a section titled "To those Gentlemen his Quondam acquaintance, that spend their wits in making Plays, R. G. wisheth a better exercise, and wisdom to prevent his extremities", Robert Greene warns three playwrights identifiable as Christopher Marlowe, George Peele, and Thomas Nashe against trusting actors, and he vents his spleen specifically about an up-and-coming actor who has taken to writing plays, and thus represents an economic threat to all the professional playwrights. He wrote, "Yes, trust them not: for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and, being an absolute Johannes Factotum [jack-of-all-trades], is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country." Not only does Greene identify Shakespeare by punning on his name, but he also lampoons a quote from the play _3 Henry VI_ , "O tiger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide!" _Groats-Worth_ was published in 1592 after Greene's death, and the theatres were closed from mid-June onward that year (first owing to unrest and then they were kept closed until the spring of 1594 due to a severe outbreak of the plague), so Greene had to have heard the line sometime in the first half of 1592. So with that fact established, and with Henslowe's Diary to testify to performances of Shakespeare plays (even if they weren't yet identified as Shakespeare's), we know that William Shakespeare was active as a playwright at least as early as 1592, and more likely c. 1590 or 1591 to write (or at least collaborate on) the entire _Henry VI_ trilogy and _Titus Andronicus_ . Plus there are other likely or at least possible early plays, like _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_ , which is thought may be his inaugural play since it's the least polished and most immature of his works, and there's some proposals that he may have collaborated on _Arden of Faversham_ (published in 1592). Certainly something seems to happen in the middle of the play because characters who were speaking in short back-and-forth dialogue break out into soliloquies, and this is the section that has been identified as Shakespeare's.
Glad to see you properly give short shrift to the absurd authorship question. The idea that Marlowe could have fled to the continent and then proceeded to write for a company he had never seen-as the incarnation of the Lord Chamberlain's Men with Shakespeare in it only began in 1594-betrays the Marlovians' utter unfamiliarity with how early modern theatre worked. And I, like you, favor the "Stuff Happens" explanation, if I may coin a phrase from Donald Rumsfeld. Personally, it's the location of the wound that I find utterly incompatible with either a planned or a faked death. It is possible for such a wound to result in death by the severing of the anterior and middle cerebral arteries, but you'd have to be an anatomist to know that. If I were planning an assassination, I'd have decoyed Marlowe to a dark alley alongside the river, knifed him in the heart or slit his throat, and then dumped the body in the Thames and the authorities could then whistle for the slightest clue. And the same thing would occur to anyone staging his death. They'd want to make a wound that _looked fatal_ , and stabbing a dead body over the right eye would have been too _outré_ for a group of semi-professional spies and con artists. However, I do wish you'd have spent a bit more time on the plays, rather than the biography, because they are a remarkable collection for such a young man, and they did pave the way for Shakespeare's further experiments in blank verse, breaking it up and making it more like naturalistic speech. I've read and reread Marlowe's plays (not to mention Shakespeare's complete works) many times, most recently reading the complete plays in the Everyman's Library edition edited by Mark Thornton Burnett back in 2022. I'm rereading _Edward II_ right now in the _Harvard Classics_ , Volume 46, and his _Doctor Faustus_ is paired with Goethe's _Faust_ , Part 1 (along with _Egmont_ and _Hermann and Dorothea_ ) in Volume 19.
Modern law rarely excepts evidence older than 30 years. How anybody can think they know exactly what happened 400+ years ago is nonsense. Nobody knows, nobody can know its all guess work / conjecture.
Stupendous presentation! Thank you. Please keep your mind open. The truth will be revealed soon. Marlowe was an alias for another famous man. Look carefully at the painting found at Cambridge. It tells who he actually was and who painted him. The written information can be decrypted rather easily, using Elizabethan short cipher. Also, look carefully at his clothing, as it gives some hints. The alias died that day however, the man went on to be well-known, even to Americans.
It is one more video, but very funny and didactic, repeating the same arguments from the 50s about the Marlowe Theory. There are so many illuminating but not conclusive indications, yet it is a stagnant issue. Also Giles Milton and Bastian Conrad are tireless to try to demonstrate this Theory but for the academic community nothing. Anyway, it is admirable that even on cruise ships the auditorium is filled to see a Lecture on which Marlowe was the author of Shakespeare's plays.
Thank you for posting and keeping this most excellent lecture to UA-cam.
A superb lecture. Thank you Giles
Great lecture, thanks a lot for the upload.
Terrific Lecturer. Have attended his courses at the V&A as well and they are fascinating.
What a riveting lecture!
Really enjoyed the lecture, v insightful to what is otherwise made out to be an incident in the alleys. More than meets the eye this.
Thank you.
Bravo 👏
Maybe listening it for the second time, and it keeps on getting spookier and intriguing. I believe if students of literature could reverse the clock and change history Marlowe would be the one to live a fuller life and die a natural death until the branch had become a tree... thank you Giles for bringing him up!!
Hmm. Shakespeare might have had a longer career, but Marlowe was way more interesting as a person. I'm taking a Shakespeare class right now, and I'm thinking about writing on the similarities of Marlowe's Edward II and Shakespeare's Richard II. Both troubling for the queen, it seems!
Nice lecture.
At 26:16 you state that the Jew of Malta, Massacre of Paris, Titus Andronicus, Henry VI, were all playing on Jan. 1593, Marlowe died May 30, 1593. According to Wikipedia, "The first time the name William Shakespeare is known to have been connected with any literary work whatsoever was with the publication of Venus and Adonis just a week or two after the death of Marlowe." So how was this possible?
That depends on your definition of "known". The first work in print that was credited to William Shakespeare was _Venus and Adonis_ in 1593, however we know that prior to this _Titus Andronicus_ and a "harey the vj" that scholars think was _1 Henry VI_ were playing. We know these facts from Philip Henslowe's Diary. At the time, his diary didn't record any information about the authors, but merely the title (or whatever title Henslowe chose to give it, which was not always the same as the printed title), the date of the performance, the total takings, and the company that performed it. However, both these plays were subsequently printed in the First Folio with the author being identified as William Shakespeare, so if _Titus Andronicus_ and _1 Henry VI_ were attributed to William Shakespeare in 1623, it stands to reason that they were also by William Shakespeare when they were recorded as being performed in 1592.
We also have an oblique reference to William Shakespeare in Robert Greene's _A Groats-Worth of Wit Bought with a Million of Repentance_ . In a section titled "To those Gentlemen his Quondam acquaintance, that spend their wits in making Plays, R. G. wisheth a better exercise, and wisdom to prevent his extremities", Robert Greene warns three playwrights identifiable as Christopher Marlowe, George Peele, and Thomas Nashe against trusting actors, and he vents his spleen specifically about an up-and-coming actor who has taken to writing plays, and thus represents an economic threat to all the professional playwrights. He wrote, "Yes, trust them not: for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and, being an absolute Johannes Factotum [jack-of-all-trades], is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country." Not only does Greene identify Shakespeare by punning on his name, but he also lampoons a quote from the play _3 Henry VI_ , "O tiger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide!" _Groats-Worth_ was published in 1592 after Greene's death, and the theatres were closed from mid-June onward that year (first owing to unrest and then they were kept closed until the spring of 1594 due to a severe outbreak of the plague), so Greene had to have heard the line sometime in the first half of 1592. So with that fact established, and with Henslowe's Diary to testify to performances of Shakespeare plays (even if they weren't yet identified as Shakespeare's), we know that William Shakespeare was active as a playwright at least as early as 1592, and more likely c. 1590 or 1591 to write (or at least collaborate on) the entire _Henry VI_ trilogy and _Titus Andronicus_ . Plus there are other likely or at least possible early plays, like _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_ , which is thought may be his inaugural play since it's the least polished and most immature of his works, and there's some proposals that he may have collaborated on _Arden of Faversham_ (published in 1592). Certainly something seems to happen in the middle of the play because characters who were speaking in short back-and-forth dialogue break out into soliloquies, and this is the section that has been identified as Shakespeare's.
Glad to see you properly give short shrift to the absurd authorship question. The idea that Marlowe could have fled to the continent and then proceeded to write for a company he had never seen-as the incarnation of the Lord Chamberlain's Men with Shakespeare in it only began in 1594-betrays the Marlovians' utter unfamiliarity with how early modern theatre worked.
And I, like you, favor the "Stuff Happens" explanation, if I may coin a phrase from Donald Rumsfeld. Personally, it's the location of the wound that I find utterly incompatible with either a planned or a faked death. It is possible for such a wound to result in death by the severing of the anterior and middle cerebral arteries, but you'd have to be an anatomist to know that. If I were planning an assassination, I'd have decoyed Marlowe to a dark alley alongside the river, knifed him in the heart or slit his throat, and then dumped the body in the Thames and the authorities could then whistle for the slightest clue. And the same thing would occur to anyone staging his death. They'd want to make a wound that _looked fatal_ , and stabbing a dead body over the right eye would have been too _outré_ for a group of semi-professional spies and con artists.
However, I do wish you'd have spent a bit more time on the plays, rather than the biography, because they are a remarkable collection for such a young man, and they did pave the way for Shakespeare's further experiments in blank verse, breaking it up and making it more like naturalistic speech. I've read and reread Marlowe's plays (not to mention Shakespeare's complete works) many times, most recently reading the complete plays in the Everyman's Library edition edited by Mark Thornton Burnett back in 2022. I'm rereading _Edward II_ right now in the _Harvard Classics_ , Volume 46, and his _Doctor Faustus_ is paired with Goethe's _Faust_ , Part 1 (along with _Egmont_ and _Hermann and Dorothea_ ) in Volume 19.
Modern law rarely excepts evidence older than 30 years. How anybody can think they know exactly what happened 400+ years ago is nonsense. Nobody knows, nobody can know its all guess work / conjecture.
No, let's not forget it. Kydd gave it away in his letter!
Maybe Marlowe was reincarnated as Oscar Wilde
Why didn't you mention what else Kydd's letter said..? Rather important..
Stupendous presentation! Thank you. Please keep your mind open. The truth will be revealed soon. Marlowe was an alias for another famous man. Look carefully at the painting found at Cambridge. It tells who he actually was and who painted him. The written information can be decrypted rather easily, using Elizabethan short cipher. Also, look carefully at his clothing, as it gives some hints. The alias died that day however, the man went on to be well-known, even to Americans.
It is one more video, but very funny and didactic, repeating the same arguments from the 50s about the Marlowe Theory.
There are so many illuminating but not conclusive indications, yet it is a stagnant issue. Also Giles Milton and Bastian Conrad are tireless to try to demonstrate this Theory but for the academic community nothing. Anyway, it is admirable that even on cruise ships the auditorium is filled to see a Lecture on which Marlowe was the author of Shakespeare's plays.
41:50 - Did you even watch the video?