Christopher Marlowe: Every Word Doth Almost Tell My Name

Cynthia Morgan

Description

These essays from The Marlowe Studies give the Shakespeare authorship evidence for Christopher Marlowe that has been overlooked by traditionalists resistant to the idea someone other than the Stratford man wrote the works. While the authorship debate continues, the words of Shakespeare himself sit silent on the sidelines. The essays herein bring his words into the spotlight and interpret them within the Marlowe context, so readers can decide for themselves whose autobiography they voice. Whether or not we believe Marlowe was the man behind a pseudonymous Shakespeare name, no invention is needed to see that these sonnets and plays answer our questions about his character, Baines’s Note, a staged death at Deptford, Thomas Walsingham, and the bestowal of the pseudonym. The essays also offer a new explanation for cryptic Sonnet 112, new information about the man
who sued Marlowe for assault, a look at the literary similarities between Marlowe and Shakespeare, an examination of the “heretical” papers in Kyd’s room, and an exploration of Marlowe’s Cambridge education that reveals how it shaped his plays and his ideas about religion. Signals for Marlowe being the true author of Shakespeare’s works are found in Ben Jonson’s authorship clues, the clues in As You Like It and Hamlet, and the eighteen clues in the Inductions to The Taming of a Shrew and The Shrew. Evidence is also given for Marlowe’s authorship of Venus and Adonis, the King Henry VI trilogy, and three anonymous plays: Edward the Third, The Troublesome Raigne of King John, and The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth.

Sujets

• Shakespare
• Literary Criticism
• Calvin Hoffman
• Tamburlaine (play)
• Shakespeare authorship question
• Thomas Walsingham
• As You Like It
• Tamburlaine
• Marlowe
• Christopher Marlowe
• Renaissance

Informations

• Publié par: iUniverse
• Date de parution: 25 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781663233356
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Marlowe Stu dies
 
 
Christopher Marlowe: Every Word Doth Almost Tell My Name
 
27 Essays from The Marlowe Studies
The Christopher Marlowe Library
 
 
Cynthia Morgan
 
 
 

 
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE: EVERY WORD DOTH ALMOST TELL MY NAME
27 ESSAYS FROM THE MARLOWE STUDIES
 
Copyright © 2021 Cynthia Morgan.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
 
 
iUniverse
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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
Cover and book design by Cynthia Morgan
 
ISBN: 978-1-6632-3334-9 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-3335-6 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021924902
 
iUniverse rev. date: 08/08/2022
 
 
 
 
In memory of A.D. Wraight and Peter Farey, whose principled pioneering research laid the foundation for 21 st century Marlowe/Shakespeare studies.
AND
To Alex Jack, another Marlowe trailblazer. Fourteen years ago Alex suggested I create a Christopher Marlowe website: hence, The Marlowe Studies.


Whatever we are told or taught at first
is what’s believed for life (for best or worst)
unless our minds are changed by instant burst
of consequential light—belief reversed
like Saul of Tarsus suddenly unhorsed
by blinding evidence divinely sourced—
or finding facts through study in due course.


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Excerpt from The Marliad by David More
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
1.The Sonnets of Exile
Cynthia Morgan
2.The Misshapen Image
Cynthia Morgan
3.How I Got Hooked on Marlowe’s Story
Details of a Staged Death
Cynthia Morgan
4.Deconstructing Marlowe
A Summary of David Riggs: Cynthia Morgan
5.Claudius: O Wicked Wit and Gifts
Alex Jack
6.Why Is the Shakespeare Monument in Stratford?
Cynthia Morgan
7.Marlowe and the Age of Reason
Cynthia Morgan
8.Ben Jonson’s Clues
A Summary of Daryl Pinksen with Further Commentary: Cynthia Morgan
9.Every Word Doth Almost Tell My Name
Cynthia Morgan
10.The Profound Abysm of Sonnet 112
Cynthia Morgan
11.Marlowe’s State Plays
Cynthia Morgan
12.Reconsidering Corkyn v. Marlowe
Cynthia Morgan
13.Marlowe v. Kuriyama
Cynthia Morgan
14.Marlowe’s Cambridge Portrait
A Summary of A.D. Wraight and Park Honan: Cynthia Morgan
15.Marlowe’s Venus and Adonis / Hero and Leande r
A Summary of John Baker with Further Commentary: Cynthia Morgan
16.Marlowe/Shakespeare Literary Similarities
Alex Jack
17.The Clue in the Shrew
Isabel Gortazar
18.Was Shakespeare an Atheist?
Gary Sloan
19.Did the Pseudonym Come Before the Front Man?
Cynthia Morgan
20.Hamlet: Courtier, Soldier, Scholar
Alex Jack
21.Marlowe’s Edward the Thir d
A Summary of A.D. Wraight with Further Commentary: Cynthia Morgan
22.Marlowe’s Style in Edward the Thir d
A Summary of A.D. Wraight: Cynthia Morgan
23.Rejection of Marlowe’s Edward the Third Authorship
A Summary of A.D. Wraight: Cynthia Morgan
24.Marlowe’s Authorship of King Henry VI: Parts 1, 2 and 3
A.D. Wraight
25.Groatsworth
A Brief Summary of Wraight’s “Groatsworth”: Cynthia Morgan
26.Stephen Greenblatt’s Marlowe
Cynthia Morgan
27.What Tamburlaine’s Sources Tell Us About Marlowe
Excerpts from A.D. Wraight’s “A Dramatist of History”
AFTERWORD
REFERENCES
ABOUT THE AUTHOR


ILLUSTRATIONS
Most of the rare photographs in this book come from A.D. Wraight’s In Search of Christopher Marlowe: A Pictorial Biography, text by A.D. Wraight and photography by Virginia F. Stern. Much gratitude to A.D. Wraight’s daughter, Virginia Waterhouse, for her permission to use these photos.
 
The entrance to Thomas Walsingham’s Scadbury estate
Marlowe’s childhood home in Canterbury
John White watercolor of Algonquian with bow
John White watercolor of Algonquians fishing
John White watercolor of Algonquian campfire
John White watercolor of Algonquian village
Painting of Henry Percy, the “Wizard Earl”
1550 painting “Jacob’s Dream”
St. Pauls
The beech tree on Thomas Walsingham’s estate
Christopher Marlowe’s initials carved into the beech tree
Student’s room at Cambridge
Likely the view from Marlowe’s Cambridge room
Archbishop John Whitgift
The ruins of St. Augustine’s Abbey near Marlowe’s home
The Shakespeare bust over the monument’s inscription
Painting of The Chess Players
Torture rack
The entrance to Canterbury’s King’s School
Canterbury Cathedral cloisters
The Dark Entry
George Chapman
The mysterious tomb on Thomas Walsingham’s estate
Scadbury Manor
The moat around Scadbury Manor
Sir Francis Walsingham 1530?-1590
The page of Massacre at Pari s in Marlowe’s handwriting
Christopher Marlowe’s signature
The signatures on Katherine Benchkin’s will
Mercery Lane in Canterbury
Pilgrims leaving Canterbury
Marlowe’s Cambridge portrait before repair
The cliffs of Dover
Composite of First Folio Shakespeare/Marlowe
The Hampton Court portrait of William Shakespeare
Shoestrings in William Herbert’s ear
Droushout engraving William Shakespeare
London inn where plays were performed
The Rose, the Hope, or the Globe
Effigy of the Black Prince in Canterbury Cathedral
Edward Alleyn
Effigy of King Henry IV and his Queen Joan of Navarre
The West Gate towers, Canterbury
Will in the Worl d book cover, Chandos portrait
Choir area in Canterbury Cathedral

INTRODUCTION
Shakespeare’s sonnets are the most disputed of all collections of poetry in the English language. This is not surprising, for they are personal and intimate poems written to individuals, which would tell much of Shakespeare’s life if only some facts about them could be indisputably established. G.B. Harrison: Editor, The Sonnets and A Lover’s Compl aint
W hile the Shakespeare authorship debate continues, the plays and sonnets sit quietly offstage as if they have nothing to say about the matter. Although many of the sonnets read like autobiography, we are unable to connect them to the Shakespeare from Stratford. Some scholars have concluded he must have made a conscious choice to put nothing of his life in his works. Ralph Waldo Emerson epitomized this circular reasoning when he wrote of Shakespeare, “It is the essence of poetry to spring like the rainbow daughter of Wonder from the invisible, to abolish the past, and refuse all history.” 1 It is also true to say the essence of poetry springs from the visible, embraces the past, and affirms all history; therefore, we can just as reasonably conclude the Stratford Shakespeare has not been found in the plays and sonnets because he is not there.
Should we choose to look for a concrete life in the Shakespeare works, it is Christopher Marlowe’s autobiography we find. Whether or not we believe Marlowe was the man behind a pseudonymous Shakespeare name, little ingenuity is needed to interpret many of the sonnets addressing his feelings leaving England on his way into exile, his truth about the informer Richard Baines, his acceptance of the William Shakespeare pseudonym, his loneliness in exile, and the disgrace he felt because of the method they used when feigning his death at Deptford so that his patron’s employee, Ingram Frizer, would get off on a plea of murder in self-defense. The sonnet interpretations brought forth in these essays are reinforced by the dialogue in several Shakespeare plays.
As evidenced by their writing, few traditional scholars have held a willing suspension of disbelief for the span of time it would take to look at the Shakespeare plays and sonnets in search of possible answers to questions about Marlowe’s character, the informer Richard Baines’s accusations, and the death or non-death at Deptford. The following essays from The Marlowe Studies bring the sonnets and plays into the spotlight, where they speak the lines that tell his story. Novelists have had a field day recreating Marlowe’s life through their imaginations. It is time to hear what the Shakespeare works themselves have to say.
In Who Wrote Shakespeare? John Michell concludes, “Were it not for the record of his early death Christopher Marlowe would be the strongest of Shakespeare candidates.” 2 The first problem is Marlowe was supposed to have died, and yet we find the author of Shake-spears Sonnets telling us repeatedly he is dead to all the world and it is someone else whose name from hence immortal life shall have, someone else who still shall live when all the breathers of this world are dead because of the virtue of my pen. The essays, “Every Word Doth Almost Tell My Name,” and, “The Profound Abysm of Sonnet 112,”