According to David Riggs, "Queen Elizabeth I herself was said to have pronounced Christopher Marlowe's death sentence ('prosecute it to the full') at court. A few days later, on 30 May 1593, Marlowe died from a puncture wound above the eye in the nearby home of a genteel widow." So opens his 2004 biography The World of Christopher Marlowe, but in my opinion these statements are almost entirely wrong.
Of course, we Marlovians do not accept that Marlowe really died then, his death having been faked, and it was a Marlovian (William Honey) who first pointed out that the court was not at "nearby" Greenwich, as Riggs and all other biographers apparently thought, but 13 miles away at Nonsuch in Surrey. This is not all that Riggs has wrong, however. I would argue that the Queen's command had nothing to do with Marlowe.
The source of Riggs's statement is the letter written by Thomas Drury to Anthony Bacon on 1 August 1593 in which he wrote: "Then after all this there was by my only means set down unto the Lord Keeper (and) the Lord of Buckhurst the notablest and vilest articles of Atheism that I suppose the like was never known or read of in any age all which I can show unto you they were delivered to her highness and command given by her self to prosecute it to the full..."
There has been almost unanimous agreement among biographers that the "vilest articles of Atheism" he is talking about must be the so-called Baines Note. This does appear to have gone to Lord Keeper Puckering, it was indeed sent to "her highness," it followed a meeting of Drury with Baines, and it certainly fitted his description. Until now, I have nevertheless found it difficult to accept this for three reasons.
Firstly, the dates are wrong. We have a copy of what was actually sent to Her Highness, and it includes the news of the "sudden and fearful end" of Marlowe's life. So why would she want it "prosecuted to the full," as Riggs suggests, if he was already dead?
Second, just before the "vilest articles" bit in his letter Drury had been telling of "a notable villain or two which are close prisoners and bad matters against them of an exceeding nature," which is generally believed to concern Richard Cholmeley and his atheistic "crew." Immediately after it he goes on talking about "this damnable sect" concerning the same subject, so the Baines Note (concerned almost entirely with Marlowe's doings) doesn't seem to fit there at all.
Third, there is another document which is by the same author as the "Remembrances" on Cholmeley (presumed to be Drury) which continues the accusations against him - so better suits its position in this letter - and which also fits the "vilest articles of atheism" description just as well. The problem with this one, however, is that it was sent to someone he calls "your worship," a form of address unsuitable for either the Lord Keeper or Lord Buckhurst, and which therefore seems to have been intended for Justice Young instead.
How then to find the concord of this discord? The best answer I can come up with (as I partly suggested here in my item "Marlowe and the Privy Council") is that Drury obtained the "Note" from Baines and passed it on to Lord Keeper Puckering, whilst making a copy for himself and using it as the basis for his letter to Justice Young. What is of the greatest importance to him is the "Cholmeley question," however, so that as far as he is concerned the Baines Note is really just a sort of appendix to his Remembrances, giving futher information about the sort of things which Cholmeley and his gang must have believed and said because of Marlowe's influence. So in his mind the Remembrances and the Baines Note are lumped together, and it is only their relevance to the Cholmeley matter which he is thinking of when he says that the Queen said that it should be prosecuted to the full.
Furthermore, if Lord Keeper Puckering saw it in much the same way, it would very well explain the bits he chose to remove from the Baines Note - the "tobacco and boys," the "right to coin," and the "great men" witnesses. Looking at them from this point of view, we can see that all of those bits which were deleted are those which have no apparent relevance to Cholmeley and his crew's atheism. This would also provide one explanation for the Baines Note being sent to her even after Marlowe's supposed death.
© Peter Farey, 2011
Peter Farey's essay “Hoffman and the Authorship” is the 2007 recipient of the Calvin & Rose G. Hoffman Prize, administered annually by The King's School in Canterbury for a "distinguished publication on Christopher Marlowe." He is a founding member of the International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society.E
mmerich Anonymous
Click here for the blog's home page and recent content.THE MARLOWE PAPERS
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Who Was Responsible for Marlowe's Escape? by Isabel Gortázar
In a recent piece posted on this blog, Peter Farey develops the theory that despite appalling accusations of heresy and immorality presented against him by Richard Baines, the entire Privy Council, including Archbishop Whitgift, decided to spare Marlowe’s life, fake his death and send him abroad without interrogation and trial.
For my part, I find Farey’s theory improbable in the extreme, so I will explain my interpretation of the available evidence according to my sense of logic.
Farey’s research traces all Councillors absent and present at the Privy Council’s sessions on the dates when Marlowe’s fate would have been been discussed, logically between May 21st to 29th. He points out that both the Earl of Essex and Lord Burghley did not attend the Council Meetings during that period. Indeed, Lord Burghley remained at home towards the end of May on account of his gout.1
When debating the issue, presumably those Councillors present would have been aware of the consequences of their decision, and the two possible scenarios in the “dead” man’s immediate future:
A) Marlowe could be left somewhere in the Continent to fend for himself, without a legal persona and without funds, papers or travelling companions, which would have meant a slow death from exposure and starvation, or being murdered at the first crossroads for whatever money he may have had on him. This would be practically tantamount to a death sentence without any attempt at exemplarity. So, what was the Deptford charade in aid of? Whom were they trying to fool that could not have been fooled more easily and with a lot less fuss?
That said, eventually Marlowe might have learned to cope with such a situation like his late character Autolycus (or Autolykos, the lone wolf) in The Winter’s Tale. The mythological Autolycus, son of the god Hermes/Mercury, was like his father a thief and a trickster; he also had, like Pallas Athena, a helmet that made him invisible. Unless the merciful Councillors had come to his rescue, Marlowe may have had to survive, hopefully not for long, as a pickpocket and a ballad-monger.
In any case, I don’t see how in these circumstances it would have been possible for Kit to send the MSS of his new plays more or less regularly to London, as he did between 1593 and 1599.
B) The Privy Council, in their infinite mercy, decided not just to spare this atheist’s life without an exemplary punishment, but also to provide him with money, passports, and letters of introduction, so that he could travel in the Continent, find a job and send his new MSS (to whom?) in England.
Farey has suggested that Marlowe’s fate was discussed in the Privy Council; therefore, the risky decision would have been taken in the absence of at least Essex and Lord Burghley. In the recorded Acts of the Privy Council, there is no mention of Christopher Marlowe at all after May 20th, when his appearance (or attempted appearance), before the Council was recorded.2 Had the case been officially discussed during the sessions, some mention of it would have remained, though perhaps allowing a “criminal” to escape to the Continent on a State pension is not the kind of decision that the Council would leave on written record.
That said, the intervention of Coroner Danby strongly suggests that the decision to save Marlowe’s life was approved by the Queen, however reluctantly. This then might imply that the idea was privately discussed, not by the Privy Council as such, but by some individual Councillor/s who had enough influence with the Queen to persuade her to agree. As Queen Elizabeth was notoriously tight-fisted, whoever was at the head of the Marlowe-friendly conspiracy would have undertaken to keep him in funds abroad.
Once I reach this point in my reasoning, I need to think which of the two most influential men at the time, Lord Burghley or the Earl of Essex, would have agreed to do this. Given that Lord Burghley had been cutting “Inteligence Network” expenses since Sir Francis Walsingham’s death in 1590,3 while Essex had been building his own network, paying for it out of his own pocket, it seems to me the choice is easy between these two men. Biographers tell us, by the way, that Essex and his close friend, the Earl of Southampton, were fond of attending plays. Presumably they would have admired the best playwright of all; the dedication of Venus and Adonis supports such conjecture.
Farey’s scenario, however, requires not only Lord Burghley making an exception in his spy network's cost-cutting policy, but also an ungrateful Marlowe shifting his allegiance to Essex, the Cecils’ political rival, and joining the Earl’s new spy team barely two years after Deptford. This seems to be an unavoidable conclusion since I believe (and so does Farey) that Marlowe probably was one Mr Le Doux that appeared under Anthony Bacon’s wing, in October 1595 at the latest, in the household of Sir John Harington at Burley, in Rutland, as tutor to his son.4
In view of all this, my proposed scenario runs smoothly from May 1593, with Essex persuading the Queen to save Marlowe’s life, and then keeping him hidden somewhere, providing him with passports and money and/or jobs until 1599. This arrangement would have included a regular courier service across the Channel, such as Essex would have organized in the Continent in order to obtain his various agents’ reports. As we know from the papers related to Le Doux and others, Anthony Bacon would have received any such reports and letters from the agents; these couriers could also have brought the MSS of new plays written by one particular agent.
The fact that no new Shakespeare plays appeared on the stage (as far as I know), between 1600 and 1603/4, suggest that this routine was suspended at the time of Essex’ Irish campaign, which started April 1599, and his ill-advised return to London in September of the same year. If my conjecture is right and unless he found another patron, as from this time Marlowe would have been job-less, money-less and courier-less, as it seems until 1604, when the next new Shakespeare plays appeared: The 2Quarto Hamlet, twice the length of the 1Q; Measure for Measure and The Moor of Venice. At this point, with a new monarch on the English throne showering favours on the friends of the executed Essex, Marlowe may have found help and protection, at least for a time.
So, what happened between the end of 1599 and November 1604, the period of Shakespeare’s sudden and unprecedented long silence? And why was it that the Bard never again wrote the sort of “happy” comedies that obtained such praise from Francis Meres in his Palladis Tamia?5 In fact, what comedies did he write after 1603?
- The sinister Measure for Measure (1604), most of which action takes place in a prison: An innocent man is sentenced to death, but in order to spare his life the prison authorities execute a common criminal in his stead.
- The Tempest (1611), a bitter tale in which a magician called Prospero shows himself to be alive when everybody thought he had been long dead. The name Prosperus in Latin is synonymous to Faustus.
- The Winter’s Tale (1611); its original title, A Winter’s Night’s Tale,6 was altered sometime after 1604. The play tells the sad story of a queen falsely accused of immorality that faked her death turning into a statue and could only come to life after sixteen years.7
No more comedies; and despite their happy endings, these three don’t raise many laughs.
So, what happened to Shakespeare in or around 1599/1600 when all his plays seem to have been swept from the boards and, it seems, as many rights as could be sold went to the publishers? And why did he not write any new plays between 1599 and 1603? And why did his merry wit become sour after 1603/1604?
We all have our pet theories, based on our own personal interpretation of the available evidence. My own opinion of what happened is a logical sequence to my Essex-as-Patron scenario. As it is another of the several theories in which Farey and I disagree, I shall leave it for some other time.
Let me just mention as an example a letter that may shed some light on the situation of penniless exiles in the Continent: On March 27, 1613, a certain Edward Eustace wrote a letter to William Trumbull that included the following comment: “I have no means to live in France more than here, except I enter into a College and become a priest."
© Isabel Gortázar, June 2011
Isabel Gortázar is an independent scholar, specializing in Shakespeare and Marlowe studies. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Marlowe Society (UK) and a founding member of the International Marlowe Society. She divides her time between London and Bilbao, Spain.
who wrote shakespeare's sonnets?emmerich devere
Notes
1Lord Burghley wrote letters dated May 21st and 28th to his son, Robert Cecil, from his sick bed. He attended the Privy Council on May 29th. Ref: Conyers Read's Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth (1960), Jonathan Cape, London. V II, p. 485. Read’s ref: Thomas Wright’s Queen Elizabeth and Her Times: A Series of Original Letters Selected From Unedited Private Correspondence (1838), London. V 2. I owe Cynthia Morgan this information, published in her essay "A New Interpretation of Sonnet 112." The Marlowe Society Research Journal, nº 7.
220th may. This daie Cristofer Marley (sic) of London, gentleman, being sent for by warrant from their Lordships, hath entered his apparance accordinglie for his indemnity therein, and is commaunded to give his daily attendaunce on their Lordships untill he shalbe lycensed to the contrary. Acts of the Privy Council. The Lambeth Palace Archives.
3Hammer, P.F.J. The Polarization of Elizabethan Politics: The Political Career of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, 1585-1597. Cambridge University Press, 1999. pp. 154-155.
4Wraight, A.D. Shakespeare, New Evidence. Ref.The Lambeth Palace Archives: The Bacon Papers.
5Meres F. Wits Treasury: A Comparative Discourse of our English Poets, with the Greek, Latin, and Italian Poets. Published in 1598.
6In 1609 a Spanish book of tales by Antonio de Eslava was published in Pamplona under the title Winter Nights. The story in The Tempest seems to be based on one of Eslava’s Winter Nights’ tales.
7The acknowledged principal source of The Winter’s Tale is Pandosto, a novel by Robert Greene (1588); however, the original title of the play suggests that Marlowe was aware of Eslava’s book. In the source story, there is no statue, the Queen dies and the King commits suicide.Emmerich Anonymous
Click here for the blog's home page and recent content.THE MARLOWE PAPERS
For my part, I find Farey’s theory improbable in the extreme, so I will explain my interpretation of the available evidence according to my sense of logic.
Farey’s research traces all Councillors absent and present at the Privy Council’s sessions on the dates when Marlowe’s fate would have been been discussed, logically between May 21st to 29th. He points out that both the Earl of Essex and Lord Burghley did not attend the Council Meetings during that period. Indeed, Lord Burghley remained at home towards the end of May on account of his gout.1
When debating the issue, presumably those Councillors present would have been aware of the consequences of their decision, and the two possible scenarios in the “dead” man’s immediate future:
A) Marlowe could be left somewhere in the Continent to fend for himself, without a legal persona and without funds, papers or travelling companions, which would have meant a slow death from exposure and starvation, or being murdered at the first crossroads for whatever money he may have had on him. This would be practically tantamount to a death sentence without any attempt at exemplarity. So, what was the Deptford charade in aid of? Whom were they trying to fool that could not have been fooled more easily and with a lot less fuss?
That said, eventually Marlowe might have learned to cope with such a situation like his late character Autolycus (or Autolykos, the lone wolf) in The Winter’s Tale. The mythological Autolycus, son of the god Hermes/Mercury, was like his father a thief and a trickster; he also had, like Pallas Athena, a helmet that made him invisible. Unless the merciful Councillors had come to his rescue, Marlowe may have had to survive, hopefully not for long, as a pickpocket and a ballad-monger.
In any case, I don’t see how in these circumstances it would have been possible for Kit to send the MSS of his new plays more or less regularly to London, as he did between 1593 and 1599.
B) The Privy Council, in their infinite mercy, decided not just to spare this atheist’s life without an exemplary punishment, but also to provide him with money, passports, and letters of introduction, so that he could travel in the Continent, find a job and send his new MSS (to whom?) in England.
Farey has suggested that Marlowe’s fate was discussed in the Privy Council; therefore, the risky decision would have been taken in the absence of at least Essex and Lord Burghley. In the recorded Acts of the Privy Council, there is no mention of Christopher Marlowe at all after May 20th, when his appearance (or attempted appearance), before the Council was recorded.2 Had the case been officially discussed during the sessions, some mention of it would have remained, though perhaps allowing a “criminal” to escape to the Continent on a State pension is not the kind of decision that the Council would leave on written record.
That said, the intervention of Coroner Danby strongly suggests that the decision to save Marlowe’s life was approved by the Queen, however reluctantly. This then might imply that the idea was privately discussed, not by the Privy Council as such, but by some individual Councillor/s who had enough influence with the Queen to persuade her to agree. As Queen Elizabeth was notoriously tight-fisted, whoever was at the head of the Marlowe-friendly conspiracy would have undertaken to keep him in funds abroad.
Once I reach this point in my reasoning, I need to think which of the two most influential men at the time, Lord Burghley or the Earl of Essex, would have agreed to do this. Given that Lord Burghley had been cutting “Inteligence Network” expenses since Sir Francis Walsingham’s death in 1590,3 while Essex had been building his own network, paying for it out of his own pocket, it seems to me the choice is easy between these two men. Biographers tell us, by the way, that Essex and his close friend, the Earl of Southampton, were fond of attending plays. Presumably they would have admired the best playwright of all; the dedication of Venus and Adonis supports such conjecture.
Farey’s scenario, however, requires not only Lord Burghley making an exception in his spy network's cost-cutting policy, but also an ungrateful Marlowe shifting his allegiance to Essex, the Cecils’ political rival, and joining the Earl’s new spy team barely two years after Deptford. This seems to be an unavoidable conclusion since I believe (and so does Farey) that Marlowe probably was one Mr Le Doux that appeared under Anthony Bacon’s wing, in October 1595 at the latest, in the household of Sir John Harington at Burley, in Rutland, as tutor to his son.4
In view of all this, my proposed scenario runs smoothly from May 1593, with Essex persuading the Queen to save Marlowe’s life, and then keeping him hidden somewhere, providing him with passports and money and/or jobs until 1599. This arrangement would have included a regular courier service across the Channel, such as Essex would have organized in the Continent in order to obtain his various agents’ reports. As we know from the papers related to Le Doux and others, Anthony Bacon would have received any such reports and letters from the agents; these couriers could also have brought the MSS of new plays written by one particular agent.
The fact that no new Shakespeare plays appeared on the stage (as far as I know), between 1600 and 1603/4, suggest that this routine was suspended at the time of Essex’ Irish campaign, which started April 1599, and his ill-advised return to London in September of the same year. If my conjecture is right and unless he found another patron, as from this time Marlowe would have been job-less, money-less and courier-less, as it seems until 1604, when the next new Shakespeare plays appeared: The 2Quarto Hamlet, twice the length of the 1Q; Measure for Measure and The Moor of Venice. At this point, with a new monarch on the English throne showering favours on the friends of the executed Essex, Marlowe may have found help and protection, at least for a time.
So, what happened between the end of 1599 and November 1604, the period of Shakespeare’s sudden and unprecedented long silence? And why was it that the Bard never again wrote the sort of “happy” comedies that obtained such praise from Francis Meres in his Palladis Tamia?5 In fact, what comedies did he write after 1603?
- The sinister Measure for Measure (1604), most of which action takes place in a prison: An innocent man is sentenced to death, but in order to spare his life the prison authorities execute a common criminal in his stead.
- The Tempest (1611), a bitter tale in which a magician called Prospero shows himself to be alive when everybody thought he had been long dead. The name Prosperus in Latin is synonymous to Faustus.
- The Winter’s Tale (1611); its original title, A Winter’s Night’s Tale,6 was altered sometime after 1604. The play tells the sad story of a queen falsely accused of immorality that faked her death turning into a statue and could only come to life after sixteen years.7
No more comedies; and despite their happy endings, these three don’t raise many laughs.
So, what happened to Shakespeare in or around 1599/1600 when all his plays seem to have been swept from the boards and, it seems, as many rights as could be sold went to the publishers? And why did he not write any new plays between 1599 and 1603? And why did his merry wit become sour after 1603/1604?
We all have our pet theories, based on our own personal interpretation of the available evidence. My own opinion of what happened is a logical sequence to my Essex-as-Patron scenario. As it is another of the several theories in which Farey and I disagree, I shall leave it for some other time.
Let me just mention as an example a letter that may shed some light on the situation of penniless exiles in the Continent: On March 27, 1613, a certain Edward Eustace wrote a letter to William Trumbull that included the following comment: “I have no means to live in France more than here, except I enter into a College and become a priest."
© Isabel Gortázar, June 2011
Isabel Gortázar is an independent scholar, specializing in Shakespeare and Marlowe studies. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Marlowe Society (UK) and a founding member of the International Marlowe Society. She divides her time between London and Bilbao, Spain.
who wrote shakespeare's sonnets?emmerich devere
Notes
1Lord Burghley wrote letters dated May 21st and 28th to his son, Robert Cecil, from his sick bed. He attended the Privy Council on May 29th. Ref: Conyers Read's Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth (1960), Jonathan Cape, London. V II, p. 485. Read’s ref: Thomas Wright’s Queen Elizabeth and Her Times: A Series of Original Letters Selected From Unedited Private Correspondence (1838), London. V 2. I owe Cynthia Morgan this information, published in her essay "A New Interpretation of Sonnet 112." The Marlowe Society Research Journal, nº 7.
220th may. This daie Cristofer Marley (sic) of London, gentleman, being sent for by warrant from their Lordships, hath entered his apparance accordinglie for his indemnity therein, and is commaunded to give his daily attendaunce on their Lordships untill he shalbe lycensed to the contrary. Acts of the Privy Council. The Lambeth Palace Archives.
3Hammer, P.F.J. The Polarization of Elizabethan Politics: The Political Career of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, 1585-1597. Cambridge University Press, 1999. pp. 154-155.
4Wraight, A.D. Shakespeare, New Evidence. Ref.The Lambeth Palace Archives: The Bacon Papers.
5Meres F. Wits Treasury: A Comparative Discourse of our English Poets, with the Greek, Latin, and Italian Poets. Published in 1598.
6In 1609 a Spanish book of tales by Antonio de Eslava was published in Pamplona under the title Winter Nights. The story in The Tempest seems to be based on one of Eslava’s Winter Nights’ tales.
7The acknowledged principal source of The Winter’s Tale is Pandosto, a novel by Robert Greene (1588); however, the original title of the play suggests that Marlowe was aware of Eslava’s book. In the source story, there is no statue, the Queen dies and the King commits suicide.Emmerich Anonymous
Click here for the blog's home page and recent content.THE MARLOWE PAPERS
Friday, May 13, 2011
Did Marlowe Die in Deptford in 1593?
Dr. Ros Barber explores whether Christopher Marlowe was really killed in Deptford in 1593.
Part 1 video; Part 2 video.
Ros Barber is the first person in the world to complete a PhD in Marlovian authorship theory. Her PhD was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK). A founding member of the International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society, she has published articles challenging the orthodox biography of Marlowe in academic books and journals, including the peer-reviewed Routledge journal Rethinking History. Her essay "Was Marlowe a Violent Man?," which was presented at the Marlowe Society of America conference in 2008, is featured in Christopher Marlowe the Craftsman (Ashgate 2010). A published poet, her latest poetry collection, Material (Anvil 2008), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was funded by Arts Council England.
Click here for her interview with former BBC World Service journalist Tim Grout-Smith on the Marlowe-as-Shakespeare theory.
Order Ros's debut novel today!
"It’s enough to strike despair into the heart of James Shapiro, author of Contested Will, as well as the hearts of all the other Shakespeare experts who refute the so-called 'authorship controversy'." (Financial Times)
Click here for the blog's home page and recent content.THE MARLOWE PAPERS Jarmusch
Part 1 video; Part 2 video.
Ros Barber is the first person in the world to complete a PhD in Marlovian authorship theory. Her PhD was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK). A founding member of the International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society, she has published articles challenging the orthodox biography of Marlowe in academic books and journals, including the peer-reviewed Routledge journal Rethinking History. Her essay "Was Marlowe a Violent Man?," which was presented at the Marlowe Society of America conference in 2008, is featured in Christopher Marlowe the Craftsman (Ashgate 2010). A published poet, her latest poetry collection, Material (Anvil 2008), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was funded by Arts Council England.
Click here for her interview with former BBC World Service journalist Tim Grout-Smith on the Marlowe-as-Shakespeare theory.
Order Ros's debut novel today!
"It’s enough to strike despair into the heart of James Shapiro, author of Contested Will, as well as the hearts of all the other Shakespeare experts who refute the so-called 'authorship controversy'." (Financial Times)
Click here for the blog's home page and recent content.THE MARLOWE PAPERS Jarmusch
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Marlowe and the Privy Council
Peter Farey develops some interesting ideas arising from an email discussion he had with Anthony Kellett last December.
The story is one with which we are all very familiar. On 18 May 1593 the Privy Council issued a "warrant to Henry Maunder one of the Messengers of her Majesty's Chamber to repair to the house of Mr. Thomas Walsingham in Kent, or to any other place where he shall understand Christofer Marlow to be remaining, and by virtue hereof to apprehend and bring him to the Court in his Company. And in case of need to require aid."1
Most commentators point out that this standard wording indicates that he was not charged with any offence, and that there isn't really any implication of his being expected to resist. However, they do assume that this warrant had been issued at a meeting of the Council itself, and as a result of the members having been told of Thomas Kyd's arrest and the "vile heretical conceits" which he claimed to be Marlowe's found in his dwelling. Other than A.D. Wraight, who wrongly believed that it was the Court of Star Chamber he was to attend,2 all biographers up to and including Charles Nicholl,3 and David Riggs4 seem to have followed William Urry's5 lead in thinking that "the Court" referred to was the royal one, which it was, but had this wrongly located at Greenwich, when in fact it was at Nonsuch Palace in Surrey.6
The problem is that there is no record of there having been a meeting of the Privy Council on 18 May and, even though the court had moved from Croydon to Nonsuch before then, none of their meetings were held at Nonsuch before the afternoon of 31 May. All of their meetings over that period (16, 23, 25, 29 and the morning of 31 May) were held in the Star Chamber in Westminster Palace―which may explain Wraight's mistake.
So how is it that the warrant was issued on 18 May? The last minuted Privy Council meeting preceding that date was two days earlier (16 May) and was attended by the Archbishop of Canterbury (Whitgift), Lord Keeper (Puckering), Lord Treasurer (Burghley), Lord Derby, Lord Chamberlain (Hunsden), Lord Buckhurst, Sir John Wolley and Sir John Fortescue.7 It therefore seems likely that the decision to call Marlowe in for questioning was taken then. It would be issued to Henry Maunder, a messenger of the Queen's chamber, which as we now know was then located at Nonsuch. We also know (because of another warrant signed by him on 18 May)8 that Burghley was at Nonsuch on that date. So it seems quite likely that Burghley―or, if also there, one of the others present on 16 May―used the opportunity to issue the warrant on the Council's behalf. Whoever it was that issued it, however, they don't seem to have accorded it much urgency.
We don't know whether Marlowe actually was at Scadbury, of course, only that he might be found there and that the person signing the warrant appeared to be aware of that possibility. If it was Burghley who signed it, then this would presumably have been because Marlowe was one of his agents. However, when Marlowe turned up to report to their lordships two days later the note does refer to him as being "of London."
Where did Maunder take him on the 20th, and what happened when they got there? We have seen that the warrant was probably signed at Nonsuch, so the words "bring him to the Court" seem to indicate that this was where he was meant to go. As the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) says, the word bring "implies motion towards the place where the speaker or auditor is, or is supposed to be."
Yet once again there was apparently no meeting of the Privy Council that day, whether at Nonsuch or at Westminster. All we have is the bald statement that "being sent for by warrant from their Lordships, Christofer Marley of London, gent, hath entered his appearance accordingly for his Indemnity therein;9 and is commanded to give his daily attendance on their Lordships, until he shall be licensed to the contrary."
So what's going on? The obvious answer must be that Marlowe turned up at Nonsuch on 20 May, only to be told by some official that they weren't there right now but, given what they had said, he really should keep turning up until they were. But was he released on bail? This is undoubtedly what most biographers think,10 but it really doesn't say that. According to the OED the only definition of indemnity apparently in use at that time was "Security or protection against contingent hurt, damage, or loss." So, since the indemnity is his and not theirs, it must be saying that he has entered his appearance in the record as a protection against his being accused of having ignored their lordships' command. The word therein clearly refers to the "warrant from their Lordships" and the terms "therein."
It is reasonable to assume, I think, that Marlowe did appear (presumably at Nonsuch) each day, but there were no Privy Council meetings for him to attend. However it is of course possible that on 22 May he was told that they would be meeting at the Star Chamber on the following day, and that he should present himself there. If he did, he would have found Whitgift, Puckering, Burghley, Derby, Buckhurst and Fortescue waiting for him. From Kyd's testimony it seems that Marlowe must have admitted to them that the "vile heretical" fragment did belong to him,11 but that this is fairly easily explained away, given that it is an extract from a refutation of the anti-Trinitarian argument. Someone with Marlowe's gift for words should have had no difficulty with that.
At this point speculation must take over, however. Puckering will have already heard the more damaging aspects of Kyd's testimony, confessed under torture; Drury has also included dangerous accusations about Marlowe in his "Remembrances" and, even if the "Baines Note" itself may not yet have been delivered, there is a fair probability that Puckering already had a very good idea of the contents of that too. In particular, there is enough evidence for Marlowe to be accused of having written an article or book
on atheism which is being used for subversive purposes. We may presume that Whitgift and Puckering would insist that trial and execution are the only possibilities. In opposition, as Marlowe's probable employer for many years, Burghley is appalled. He wants him saved―not only because of Marlowe's past services to the queen, but because of his extraordinary ability with words which, if used properly, could be of enormous benefit to the state. That Marlowe may know things which Burghley would not want revealed under torture is also a possibility.
There appears to be a complete impasse. Whitgift and Puckering want him tried and executed. Burghley and Derby (himself a lover of poets and actors, and still the patron of a company of players) want him saved. As Burghley's friend, and working for him as under-treasurer and chancellor of the exchequer, Fortescue also probably goes along with him on this. But why on earth did the Council apparently agree to let him go? With the sort of information now being gathered one would have expected him to be held in custody pending the arrival of all the written testimony at least.
At this point I think that Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, may have come into the picture. As the joint author of Gorboduc, the first English play written in blank verse, and a fine poet in his own right,12 we may reasonably assume that his sympathies would have been with a fellow poet and playwright whom he cannot fail to have admired enormously, Marlowe. On the other hand, he had apparently been involved with Puckering in Drury's machinations against him. As a first cousin of the queen's mother, Anne Boleyn, Buckhurst had the Queen's ear in a way that few others could match and, as the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography puts it, "He acquired a reputation for impartiality, courage, and plain speaking since his kinship with the queen largely enabled him to avoid factions at court."
So, with Burghley's side perhaps prepared to accept exile for Marlowe but not death and Whitgift's insisting that exile wasn't enough of a deterrent, I can imagine Buckhurst suddenly saying "I think I can see a possible way out of this. Couldn't we make everyone just believe that he was dead?"
Postscript.
Marlowe would not have been released, but held incommunicado at Westminster while the plans were laid, in particular the bringing in of Thomas Walsingham to plan and organize the deception. Poley, if he could be recalled from the Netherlands in time, would supervise it on the day itself and thereafter. On 25 May, the Privy Council met again in the Star Chamber with the same six members present, checked on progress, and possibly told Marlowe of what they had decided. It was made quite clear what was expected of him if his life was to be saved and just what the penalty would be if he failed to meet the terms of the deal in any way. The possibility of an eventual pardon if he toed the line was also indicated. There apparently being no alternative―other than torture, trial and execution―he accepted.
We are told that the Baines Note was "delivered" no more than three days prior to the "sudden and fearful end of (Marlowe's) life." Exactly three days earlier would have been on the Sunday before Whitsun (i.e. 27 May) rather than "Whitsun eve" (i.e. 2 June) as the endorsement on the document, quite impossibly, also claims. But what is not clear is whether "delivered" referred to Baines's delivery of his note to Puckering or to the date it went to the Queen,13 as we know it did at some point. Assuming the latter, with Puckering having actually received it some days earlier, under the scenario described here 27 May was when he (or they) would have taken it to the Queen and informed her of the Privy Council's opinion as to what should be done about it.
On 29 May the Privy Council was attended by far more of its members than usual. Derby couldn't make it, but they were joined by Lord Admiral (Howard), Lord Chamberlain (Hunsdon), the Earl of Essex, Sir John Wolley and Sir Robert Cecil. They were told what had been decided and put in place. Nothing of this was put in writing, but at the end of the meeting Lord Chief Justice Popham was asked to join them and add his signature to those of Whitgift and Puckering on the warrant for John Penry to be executed later that same day. The deception had begun.14
© Peter Farey, 2011
Peter Farey, a founding member of the International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society, is the 2007 recipient of the Calvin & Rose G. Hoffman Prize, administered annually by The King's School in Canterbury for a "distinguished publication on Christopher Marlowe."
Notes Emmerich Anonymous film Shakespeare
1National Archive, Acts of the Privy Council, 18 May 1593. I have modernized the spelling of all quotations.
2Wraight, A. D. & Virginia Stern. 1965. In Search of Christopher Marlowe. MacDonald & Co., p.283.
3Nicholl, Charles. 2002. The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe. Vintage, p.20.
4Riggs, David. 2004. The World of Christopher Marlowe. Faber & Faber, p.331.
5Urry, William. 1988. Christopher Marlowe and Canterbury. Faber & Faber, p.81.
6First pointed out by William Honey in 1983 and repeated without acknowledgment by his fellow Marlovian A.D. Wraight in 1995; this important information had to wait for "official" acceptance ten years later in Park Honan's 2005 biography Christopher Marlowe, Poet & Spy (Oxford, p.354).
7Wraight (p.285) had precisely the same list of members being present when he appeared on 20 May, but there is no evidence supporting this, and she may have simply got the dates mixed up.
8There is the record of a payment to "Romano Cavaliere: upon a warrant signed by the Lord Treasurer dated at the Court the 18th day of May 1593, for bringing of letters in post ... to the Court at Nonsuch."
9Most transcripts give this as "herein" but it is fairly clearly "therein," as Wraight's copy of the entry itself (p.284) shows that the first letters are exactly the same as those of the word "their" in the line above it.
10Wraight (p. 284), Nicholl (p. 54), Riggs (p. 325) and Honan (p. 336) all use the word "bail" in this context.
11I am grateful to Daryl Pinksen who first explained this to me and convinced me he was right.
12In fact a good case for Buckhurst having been the author of Shakespeare's works―called The Swallow and the Crow―was presented by Sabrina Feldman PhD in last year's The Oxfordian.
13Thanks to Ros Barber for pointing out this ambiguity.
14Dave More was the first to argue that Penry's body was the one used for the faking, a suggestion accepted by most, if not all, Marlovians these days even if not all are aware of who originally made it.
Click here for the blog's home page and recent content.THE MARLOWE PAPERS
The story is one with which we are all very familiar. On 18 May 1593 the Privy Council issued a "warrant to Henry Maunder one of the Messengers of her Majesty's Chamber to repair to the house of Mr. Thomas Walsingham in Kent, or to any other place where he shall understand Christofer Marlow to be remaining, and by virtue hereof to apprehend and bring him to the Court in his Company. And in case of need to require aid."1
Most commentators point out that this standard wording indicates that he was not charged with any offence, and that there isn't really any implication of his being expected to resist. However, they do assume that this warrant had been issued at a meeting of the Council itself, and as a result of the members having been told of Thomas Kyd's arrest and the "vile heretical conceits" which he claimed to be Marlowe's found in his dwelling. Other than A.D. Wraight, who wrongly believed that it was the Court of Star Chamber he was to attend,2 all biographers up to and including Charles Nicholl,3 and David Riggs4 seem to have followed William Urry's5 lead in thinking that "the Court" referred to was the royal one, which it was, but had this wrongly located at Greenwich, when in fact it was at Nonsuch Palace in Surrey.6
The problem is that there is no record of there having been a meeting of the Privy Council on 18 May and, even though the court had moved from Croydon to Nonsuch before then, none of their meetings were held at Nonsuch before the afternoon of 31 May. All of their meetings over that period (16, 23, 25, 29 and the morning of 31 May) were held in the Star Chamber in Westminster Palace―which may explain Wraight's mistake.
So how is it that the warrant was issued on 18 May? The last minuted Privy Council meeting preceding that date was two days earlier (16 May) and was attended by the Archbishop of Canterbury (Whitgift), Lord Keeper (Puckering), Lord Treasurer (Burghley), Lord Derby, Lord Chamberlain (Hunsden), Lord Buckhurst, Sir John Wolley and Sir John Fortescue.7 It therefore seems likely that the decision to call Marlowe in for questioning was taken then. It would be issued to Henry Maunder, a messenger of the Queen's chamber, which as we now know was then located at Nonsuch. We also know (because of another warrant signed by him on 18 May)8 that Burghley was at Nonsuch on that date. So it seems quite likely that Burghley―or, if also there, one of the others present on 16 May―used the opportunity to issue the warrant on the Council's behalf. Whoever it was that issued it, however, they don't seem to have accorded it much urgency.
We don't know whether Marlowe actually was at Scadbury, of course, only that he might be found there and that the person signing the warrant appeared to be aware of that possibility. If it was Burghley who signed it, then this would presumably have been because Marlowe was one of his agents. However, when Marlowe turned up to report to their lordships two days later the note does refer to him as being "of London."
Where did Maunder take him on the 20th, and what happened when they got there? We have seen that the warrant was probably signed at Nonsuch, so the words "bring him to the Court" seem to indicate that this was where he was meant to go. As the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) says, the word bring "implies motion towards the place where the speaker or auditor is, or is supposed to be."
Yet once again there was apparently no meeting of the Privy Council that day, whether at Nonsuch or at Westminster. All we have is the bald statement that "being sent for by warrant from their Lordships, Christofer Marley of London, gent, hath entered his appearance accordingly for his Indemnity therein;9 and is commanded to give his daily attendance on their Lordships, until he shall be licensed to the contrary."
So what's going on? The obvious answer must be that Marlowe turned up at Nonsuch on 20 May, only to be told by some official that they weren't there right now but, given what they had said, he really should keep turning up until they were. But was he released on bail? This is undoubtedly what most biographers think,10 but it really doesn't say that. According to the OED the only definition of indemnity apparently in use at that time was "Security or protection against contingent hurt, damage, or loss." So, since the indemnity is his and not theirs, it must be saying that he has entered his appearance in the record as a protection against his being accused of having ignored their lordships' command. The word therein clearly refers to the "warrant from their Lordships" and the terms "therein."
It is reasonable to assume, I think, that Marlowe did appear (presumably at Nonsuch) each day, but there were no Privy Council meetings for him to attend. However it is of course possible that on 22 May he was told that they would be meeting at the Star Chamber on the following day, and that he should present himself there. If he did, he would have found Whitgift, Puckering, Burghley, Derby, Buckhurst and Fortescue waiting for him. From Kyd's testimony it seems that Marlowe must have admitted to them that the "vile heretical" fragment did belong to him,11 but that this is fairly easily explained away, given that it is an extract from a refutation of the anti-Trinitarian argument. Someone with Marlowe's gift for words should have had no difficulty with that.
At this point speculation must take over, however. Puckering will have already heard the more damaging aspects of Kyd's testimony, confessed under torture; Drury has also included dangerous accusations about Marlowe in his "Remembrances" and, even if the "Baines Note" itself may not yet have been delivered, there is a fair probability that Puckering already had a very good idea of the contents of that too. In particular, there is enough evidence for Marlowe to be accused of having written an article or book
on atheism which is being used for subversive purposes. We may presume that Whitgift and Puckering would insist that trial and execution are the only possibilities. In opposition, as Marlowe's probable employer for many years, Burghley is appalled. He wants him saved―not only because of Marlowe's past services to the queen, but because of his extraordinary ability with words which, if used properly, could be of enormous benefit to the state. That Marlowe may know things which Burghley would not want revealed under torture is also a possibility.
There appears to be a complete impasse. Whitgift and Puckering want him tried and executed. Burghley and Derby (himself a lover of poets and actors, and still the patron of a company of players) want him saved. As Burghley's friend, and working for him as under-treasurer and chancellor of the exchequer, Fortescue also probably goes along with him on this. But why on earth did the Council apparently agree to let him go? With the sort of information now being gathered one would have expected him to be held in custody pending the arrival of all the written testimony at least.
At this point I think that Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, may have come into the picture. As the joint author of Gorboduc, the first English play written in blank verse, and a fine poet in his own right,12 we may reasonably assume that his sympathies would have been with a fellow poet and playwright whom he cannot fail to have admired enormously, Marlowe. On the other hand, he had apparently been involved with Puckering in Drury's machinations against him. As a first cousin of the queen's mother, Anne Boleyn, Buckhurst had the Queen's ear in a way that few others could match and, as the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography puts it, "He acquired a reputation for impartiality, courage, and plain speaking since his kinship with the queen largely enabled him to avoid factions at court."
So, with Burghley's side perhaps prepared to accept exile for Marlowe but not death and Whitgift's insisting that exile wasn't enough of a deterrent, I can imagine Buckhurst suddenly saying "I think I can see a possible way out of this. Couldn't we make everyone just believe that he was dead?"
Postscript.
Marlowe would not have been released, but held incommunicado at Westminster while the plans were laid, in particular the bringing in of Thomas Walsingham to plan and organize the deception. Poley, if he could be recalled from the Netherlands in time, would supervise it on the day itself and thereafter. On 25 May, the Privy Council met again in the Star Chamber with the same six members present, checked on progress, and possibly told Marlowe of what they had decided. It was made quite clear what was expected of him if his life was to be saved and just what the penalty would be if he failed to meet the terms of the deal in any way. The possibility of an eventual pardon if he toed the line was also indicated. There apparently being no alternative―other than torture, trial and execution―he accepted.
We are told that the Baines Note was "delivered" no more than three days prior to the "sudden and fearful end of (Marlowe's) life." Exactly three days earlier would have been on the Sunday before Whitsun (i.e. 27 May) rather than "Whitsun eve" (i.e. 2 June) as the endorsement on the document, quite impossibly, also claims. But what is not clear is whether "delivered" referred to Baines's delivery of his note to Puckering or to the date it went to the Queen,13 as we know it did at some point. Assuming the latter, with Puckering having actually received it some days earlier, under the scenario described here 27 May was when he (or they) would have taken it to the Queen and informed her of the Privy Council's opinion as to what should be done about it.
On 29 May the Privy Council was attended by far more of its members than usual. Derby couldn't make it, but they were joined by Lord Admiral (Howard), Lord Chamberlain (Hunsdon), the Earl of Essex, Sir John Wolley and Sir Robert Cecil. They were told what had been decided and put in place. Nothing of this was put in writing, but at the end of the meeting Lord Chief Justice Popham was asked to join them and add his signature to those of Whitgift and Puckering on the warrant for John Penry to be executed later that same day. The deception had begun.14
© Peter Farey, 2011
Peter Farey, a founding member of the International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society, is the 2007 recipient of the Calvin & Rose G. Hoffman Prize, administered annually by The King's School in Canterbury for a "distinguished publication on Christopher Marlowe."
Notes Emmerich Anonymous film Shakespeare
1National Archive, Acts of the Privy Council, 18 May 1593. I have modernized the spelling of all quotations.
2Wraight, A. D. & Virginia Stern. 1965. In Search of Christopher Marlowe. MacDonald & Co., p.283.
3Nicholl, Charles. 2002. The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe. Vintage, p.20.
4Riggs, David. 2004. The World of Christopher Marlowe. Faber & Faber, p.331.
5Urry, William. 1988. Christopher Marlowe and Canterbury. Faber & Faber, p.81.
6First pointed out by William Honey in 1983 and repeated without acknowledgment by his fellow Marlovian A.D. Wraight in 1995; this important information had to wait for "official" acceptance ten years later in Park Honan's 2005 biography Christopher Marlowe, Poet & Spy (Oxford, p.354).
7Wraight (p.285) had precisely the same list of members being present when he appeared on 20 May, but there is no evidence supporting this, and she may have simply got the dates mixed up.
8There is the record of a payment to "Romano Cavaliere: upon a warrant signed by the Lord Treasurer dated at the Court the 18th day of May 1593, for bringing of letters in post ... to the Court at Nonsuch."
9Most transcripts give this as "herein" but it is fairly clearly "therein," as Wraight's copy of the entry itself (p.284) shows that the first letters are exactly the same as those of the word "their" in the line above it.
10Wraight (p. 284), Nicholl (p. 54), Riggs (p. 325) and Honan (p. 336) all use the word "bail" in this context.
11I am grateful to Daryl Pinksen who first explained this to me and convinced me he was right.
12In fact a good case for Buckhurst having been the author of Shakespeare's works―called The Swallow and the Crow―was presented by Sabrina Feldman PhD in last year's The Oxfordian.
13Thanks to Ros Barber for pointing out this ambiguity.
14Dave More was the first to argue that Penry's body was the one used for the faking, a suggestion accepted by most, if not all, Marlovians these days even if not all are aware of who originally made it.
Click here for the blog's home page and recent content.THE MARLOWE PAPERS
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Marlowe's Sexuality by Isabel Gortázar
As all scholars who have studied Christopher Marlowe’s life and troubles know, the Note delivered by the informer Richard Baines to the authorities sometime in May 1593 contained eighteen accusations of which all but two referred to rather colourful heretical opinions, allegedly manifested by Marlowe in public. The two exceptions accused Marlowe of saying that 1): he had as good right to Coin as the Queen of England; and 2): that they that love not Tobacco and Boies are fools.
We have no way of knowing whether Marlowe had ever said any such things, but his alleged plans for coining, denounced by Baines and investigated in January 1592, must have been nonsense, because Kit was not punished for it. As for charges of immoral behaviour, they seem to have been standard procedure in famous prosecutions for “heresy” in all times and all religions, so those Boies were probably nonsense as well.
But, while the world is prepared to accept that Marlowe was no forger of coins, the Boies have stuck. In the not-so-distant past, when homosexuality was a crime punishable by imprisonment, Baines's accusation went a long way to destroy Marlowe’s reputation; in these days when “gay” is “cool," some scholars seem to think that arguing against Marlowe’s alleged homosexuality is a sign of old-fashioned morality.
I am personally not interested in Marlowe’s sexual proclivities except as they are relevant to my investigation of his life and work. Trying to “read” his real meaning in some apparently equivocal texts may be a way to obtain valuable information about what was happening to him. So, yes, I think it is important to find out whether Marlowe, alias Shake-speare, was gay or not, regardless of moral fashions.
Both Tamburlaine and Faustus, the two Marlovian characters with whom Kit was identified by his contemporaries, were heterosexual. However, after his name had been vilified to suit political interests, his sexuality was scrutinized on the basis of Baines's Note and on the fact that he had presented homosexual characters on the stage.
Meanwhile Stratfordians have managed to look at their man’s plays and sonnets, without feeling the need to declare their author to be gay. As I believe that Marlowe wrote the Shakespearian Canon, I have looked at those works for further information.
Marlowe wrote about gods and kings falling for good-looking boys. Likewise, there are a couple of Shakespearian characters, both of whom are called Antonio, who fall for younger men. As I suspect that Marlowe was an agent of the Earl of Essex between 1593 and 1599, and as the homosexual Bacon brothers were also working for the Earl during those years, it may be that these two Antonios refer to Anthony Bacon.
Let's have a look at the two characters.
- Twelfth Night: A kind sailor named Antonio rescues Viola’s twin brother, Sebastian, from a shipwreck. Antonio becomes infatuated with the boy and recklessly gives him his purse so he may spend freely while he, Antonio, goes about his business. Sebastian is certainly not gay; he is grateful to Antonio for his kindness but he falls in love with Olivia and marries her before the end of the play.
- The Merchant of Venice: The relationship between another infatuated Antonio and the heterosexual Bassanio is practically the same. Foolishly, Antonio will place his life at risk in order to give to Bassanio the money he wants to woo Portia. Bassanio is very fond of Antonio, but he is in love with the girl and will marry her. In the source story, Il Pecorone, by Giovanni Fiorentino, (1558), the names are different and the doting benefactor is presented clearly as a “father” figure.
Although I found a Bassani family in Padua, one of whose members was called Antonio Bassanio of all things, the name Bassanio might derive from the basanite stone or lapis lydius, which, like the touchstone, serves to identify precious metals. (For definitions of these stones, see footnote, below).
This possible interpretation would fit with the name given in The Merchant of Venice to the young man who manages to choose the valuable metal casket despite misleading clues. As the name of Touchstone in As You Like It is one of the clearer references to Marlowe in the Canon, we might be justified in surmising that Bassanio/ Touchstone may be a reference to Marlowe as well.
At the risk of sounding frivolous, since my information is based on the unreliable Internet, I cannot resist passing on a curious anecdote: In the same article, where the basanite or lapis lydius is described as “A black flinty jasper used for estimating the purity of precious metal alloys" (so a good name for Bassanio), we are told not to confuse the basanite with the bassanite, which is “a saline evaporite, consisting of calcium sulphate, found at Vesuvius." And here the plot thickens because, in the same entry, we are alerted to the fact that the anagram of bassanite is Sebastian.
I leave it to my readers to decide what kind of spooky coincidence is this. That said, if the bassanite (as opposed to the basanite), was only discovered and given its name in the 20th Century (see footnote), we need to forget the bassanite altogether in this exercise and assume either that the basanite was spelt in the usual random way of those days, or that both the Sebastian anagram and the name Bassanio, with its double s, are a complete fluke. Quite frankly, I dare not express an opinion on the matter.
But whatever we think of the names, we have here the repeated pattern of a kind, homosexual man helping a boy whom he evidently fancies, and providing him with money; this boy who is in some sort of trouble, accepts the help and the money but he clearly likes women.
Then we have Sonnet 20, with what seem to me clues in the same direction. My choice of Anthony Bacon for the role (he was eight years older than Marlowe) is based in the known fact that he was a homosexual and that, if indeed Marlowe was Essex’ agent, Anthony, acting on behalf of their mutual boss, would have provided him with money, papers and general “help” in his secret life. Marlowe would have been grateful for all this kindness, which may explain not only the sonnet, but also the friendly outcome of the difficult relationship between the boys and their Antonios in both plays.
Here is Sonnet 20:
A woman's face with nature's own hand painted,
Hast thou the master mistress of my passion,
A woman's gentle heart but not acquainted
With shifting change as is false women's fashion,
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling:
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth,
A man in hue all hues in his controlling,
Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created,
Till nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she pricked thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.
This is the kindest rejection of a dear friend’s advances in the history of unrequited love. Here is what I read:
“You are as good-looking and gentle as a woman, and more loyal. In fact, you should have been a woman, but, when she was creating you, Nature lost her head (“fell a-doting”) adding one thing (a phallus) to your wonderful person. By this addition, which is nothing to my purpose, Nature me of thee defeated; in other words, she deprived me of you. As you were provided with a phallus to give women pleasure ("she pricked thee out for women's pleasure"), I will have your love but the use of “it” must be their treasure.”
The word love here must be understood in Elizabethan, not romantic terms. In Sonnet 26 we read:
Lord of my Love, to whom in vassalage, etc.
I think this humbly apologetic sonnet may have been dedicated to Essex but that’s another story; Marlowe may have referred to any of his aristocratic patrons as Lord of my love, simply as a mark of respect and devotion.
(By the way, no earl in his right mind would have offered vassalage to any man under his monarch; the word could never be addressed to an equal. I wonder how Oxfordians explain this sonnet.)
In sum: Bassanio and Sebastian, like the author of Sonnet 20, love their benefactors, but cannot be in love with them. Sonnet 20 is telling us that, despite the beauty and virtues of a dear friend, the male organ held no attractions for Shake-speare.
© Isabel Gortázar, March 2011
Isabel Gortázar is an independent scholar, specializing in Shakespeare and Marlowe studies. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Marlowe Society (UK) and a founding member of the International Marlowe Society. She divides her time between London and Bilbao, Spain.
who wrote shakespeare's sonnets?emmerich devere
Notes
Touchstone:
a): a black siliceous stone related to flint and formerly used to test the purity of gold and silver by the streak left on the stone when rubbed by the metal.
b): a test or criterion for determining the quality or genuineness of a thing.
Basanite: A black flinty jasper used for estimating the purity of precious metal alloys.
Bassanite: “A saline evaporate consisting of calcium sulphate, found at Vesuvius. First discovered around 1906/ 1910.
The stone was given its name to honor
Francesco Bassani (1853–1916), Professor of Paleontology, University of Naples, Naples, Italy.
Click here for the blog's home page and recent content.THE MARLOWE PAPERS
We have no way of knowing whether Marlowe had ever said any such things, but his alleged plans for coining, denounced by Baines and investigated in January 1592, must have been nonsense, because Kit was not punished for it. As for charges of immoral behaviour, they seem to have been standard procedure in famous prosecutions for “heresy” in all times and all religions, so those Boies were probably nonsense as well.
But, while the world is prepared to accept that Marlowe was no forger of coins, the Boies have stuck. In the not-so-distant past, when homosexuality was a crime punishable by imprisonment, Baines's accusation went a long way to destroy Marlowe’s reputation; in these days when “gay” is “cool," some scholars seem to think that arguing against Marlowe’s alleged homosexuality is a sign of old-fashioned morality.
I am personally not interested in Marlowe’s sexual proclivities except as they are relevant to my investigation of his life and work. Trying to “read” his real meaning in some apparently equivocal texts may be a way to obtain valuable information about what was happening to him. So, yes, I think it is important to find out whether Marlowe, alias Shake-speare, was gay or not, regardless of moral fashions.
Both Tamburlaine and Faustus, the two Marlovian characters with whom Kit was identified by his contemporaries, were heterosexual. However, after his name had been vilified to suit political interests, his sexuality was scrutinized on the basis of Baines's Note and on the fact that he had presented homosexual characters on the stage.
Meanwhile Stratfordians have managed to look at their man’s plays and sonnets, without feeling the need to declare their author to be gay. As I believe that Marlowe wrote the Shakespearian Canon, I have looked at those works for further information.
Marlowe wrote about gods and kings falling for good-looking boys. Likewise, there are a couple of Shakespearian characters, both of whom are called Antonio, who fall for younger men. As I suspect that Marlowe was an agent of the Earl of Essex between 1593 and 1599, and as the homosexual Bacon brothers were also working for the Earl during those years, it may be that these two Antonios refer to Anthony Bacon.
Let's have a look at the two characters.
- Twelfth Night: A kind sailor named Antonio rescues Viola’s twin brother, Sebastian, from a shipwreck. Antonio becomes infatuated with the boy and recklessly gives him his purse so he may spend freely while he, Antonio, goes about his business. Sebastian is certainly not gay; he is grateful to Antonio for his kindness but he falls in love with Olivia and marries her before the end of the play.
- The Merchant of Venice: The relationship between another infatuated Antonio and the heterosexual Bassanio is practically the same. Foolishly, Antonio will place his life at risk in order to give to Bassanio the money he wants to woo Portia. Bassanio is very fond of Antonio, but he is in love with the girl and will marry her. In the source story, Il Pecorone, by Giovanni Fiorentino, (1558), the names are different and the doting benefactor is presented clearly as a “father” figure.
Although I found a Bassani family in Padua, one of whose members was called Antonio Bassanio of all things, the name Bassanio might derive from the basanite stone or lapis lydius, which, like the touchstone, serves to identify precious metals. (For definitions of these stones, see footnote, below).
This possible interpretation would fit with the name given in The Merchant of Venice to the young man who manages to choose the valuable metal casket despite misleading clues. As the name of Touchstone in As You Like It is one of the clearer references to Marlowe in the Canon, we might be justified in surmising that Bassanio/ Touchstone may be a reference to Marlowe as well.
At the risk of sounding frivolous, since my information is based on the unreliable Internet, I cannot resist passing on a curious anecdote: In the same article, where the basanite or lapis lydius is described as “A black flinty jasper used for estimating the purity of precious metal alloys" (so a good name for Bassanio), we are told not to confuse the basanite with the bassanite, which is “a saline evaporite, consisting of calcium sulphate, found at Vesuvius." And here the plot thickens because, in the same entry, we are alerted to the fact that the anagram of bassanite is Sebastian.
I leave it to my readers to decide what kind of spooky coincidence is this. That said, if the bassanite (as opposed to the basanite), was only discovered and given its name in the 20th Century (see footnote), we need to forget the bassanite altogether in this exercise and assume either that the basanite was spelt in the usual random way of those days, or that both the Sebastian anagram and the name Bassanio, with its double s, are a complete fluke. Quite frankly, I dare not express an opinion on the matter.
But whatever we think of the names, we have here the repeated pattern of a kind, homosexual man helping a boy whom he evidently fancies, and providing him with money; this boy who is in some sort of trouble, accepts the help and the money but he clearly likes women.
Then we have Sonnet 20, with what seem to me clues in the same direction. My choice of Anthony Bacon for the role (he was eight years older than Marlowe) is based in the known fact that he was a homosexual and that, if indeed Marlowe was Essex’ agent, Anthony, acting on behalf of their mutual boss, would have provided him with money, papers and general “help” in his secret life. Marlowe would have been grateful for all this kindness, which may explain not only the sonnet, but also the friendly outcome of the difficult relationship between the boys and their Antonios in both plays.
Here is Sonnet 20:
A woman's face with nature's own hand painted,
Hast thou the master mistress of my passion,
A woman's gentle heart but not acquainted
With shifting change as is false women's fashion,
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling:
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth,
A man in hue all hues in his controlling,
Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created,
Till nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she pricked thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.
This is the kindest rejection of a dear friend’s advances in the history of unrequited love. Here is what I read:
“You are as good-looking and gentle as a woman, and more loyal. In fact, you should have been a woman, but, when she was creating you, Nature lost her head (“fell a-doting”) adding one thing (a phallus) to your wonderful person. By this addition, which is nothing to my purpose, Nature me of thee defeated; in other words, she deprived me of you. As you were provided with a phallus to give women pleasure ("she pricked thee out for women's pleasure"), I will have your love but the use of “it” must be their treasure.”
The word love here must be understood in Elizabethan, not romantic terms. In Sonnet 26 we read:
Lord of my Love, to whom in vassalage, etc.
I think this humbly apologetic sonnet may have been dedicated to Essex but that’s another story; Marlowe may have referred to any of his aristocratic patrons as Lord of my love, simply as a mark of respect and devotion.
(By the way, no earl in his right mind would have offered vassalage to any man under his monarch; the word could never be addressed to an equal. I wonder how Oxfordians explain this sonnet.)
In sum: Bassanio and Sebastian, like the author of Sonnet 20, love their benefactors, but cannot be in love with them. Sonnet 20 is telling us that, despite the beauty and virtues of a dear friend, the male organ held no attractions for Shake-speare.
© Isabel Gortázar, March 2011
Isabel Gortázar is an independent scholar, specializing in Shakespeare and Marlowe studies. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Marlowe Society (UK) and a founding member of the International Marlowe Society. She divides her time between London and Bilbao, Spain.
who wrote shakespeare's sonnets?emmerich devere
Notes
Touchstone:
a): a black siliceous stone related to flint and formerly used to test the purity of gold and silver by the streak left on the stone when rubbed by the metal.
b): a test or criterion for determining the quality or genuineness of a thing.
Basanite: A black flinty jasper used for estimating the purity of precious metal alloys.
Bassanite: “A saline evaporate consisting of calcium sulphate, found at Vesuvius. First discovered around 1906/ 1910.
The stone was given its name to honor
Francesco Bassani (1853–1916), Professor of Paleontology, University of Naples, Naples, Italy.
Click here for the blog's home page and recent content.THE MARLOWE PAPERS
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
The Death of Christopher Marlowe?
Peter Farey presents what he believes to be the most relevant facts surrounding Marlowe's supposed death, and asks our readers seriously to consider just what conclusions they would arrive at in these circumstances, and what explanations they would have for doing so.
SCENE I
THE DATE
Wednesday 30th May 1593
THE PLACE
The home of Eleanor Bull, Deptford Strand, on the Thames about 4 miles downstream from London Bridge.
THE CAST OF CHARACTERS
Christopher Marlowe
• Born the son of a Canterbury shoemaker in February 1564. At university for six and a half years being educated to M.A. level. At 29, currently England's greatest playwright.
• Socially on familiar terms with many of the country's top aristocrats, statesmen, writers, scientists, philosophers and other thinkers.
• Occasional secret intelligence agent on behalf of the Privy Council, most probably for Lord Burghley. Possibly involved for him right now in secret matters touching the Queen's succession, a topic about which she has forbidden any discussion.
• Has apparently been staying with his friend Thomas Walsingham, close relative and former high-ranking employee of the late spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham.
• Arrested and brought to be questioned by the Privy Council ten days ago after an accusation of heresy arising from papers alleged to be his having been discovered in the home of fellow playwright Thomas Kyd. Their Lordships knew that he might be found at Thomas Walsingham's home in Kent.
• Released on condition he reports to them every day. There is no record of whether he actually did so or not.
• Far more serious accusations now with them will almost inevitably lead to his torture, trial and execution.
Robert Poley
• About ten years older than Marlowe. Cambridge educated but took no degree.
• Former agent provocateur for spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham, is known to be an expert liar, prepared to perjure himself if necessary. In 1585/6 he was apparently "placed with" Sir Francis Walsingham's daughter Frances, and "by that means ordinarily in his house." In 1590 the widowed Frances married the Earl of Essex, who joined the Privy Council three months ago.
• Poley is now regularly employed as an intelligence agent and messenger for the Privy Council, particularly Vice-Chamberlain Thomas Heneage and Lord Burghley.
• Has recently been undertaking frequent missions to Scotland and the Netherlands. Departed for The Hague on 8th May, and is on his way back from there right now with urgent and important letters for the Privy Council.
• He will delay delivering these for another nine days, however, when his warrant will (uniquely) say that he has been "on her Majesty's service" all of this time.
Nicholas Skeres
• 30 years old. Another of Sir Francis Walsingham's former agents provocateurs, and with the ability to lie with complete plausibility that this implies (and see below, concerning his duplicitous role in loan sharking).
• Had done occasional work soldiering for the Earl of Essex and as a courier for him to and from Walsingham (although, given the above, could have been planted on Essex as a spy?)
• Still calling the Earl his "lord and master" only a month ago at the Court of Star Chamber but evidence suggests that by doing this he may have offended Essex, and therefore lost the chance of further employment, at least for some time, as a result.
• The Star Chamber appearance was to do with his luring potentially wealthy men into the clutches of a predatory loan shark.
• Currently involved in similar confidence trickery with Ingram Frizer (below) in a "hustle" just coming to fruition.
Ingram Frizer
• Age 31? First heard of when he bought and resold the Angel Inn, Basingstoke, in 1589. Charles Nicholl (The Reckoning, 2002, p.27) describes him in 1593 as “a property speculator, a commodity broker, a fixer for gentlemen of worship, ... a racker of young fools.”
• Financial adviser to Thomas Walsingham, with whom Marlowe was apparently staying at the time of his Privy Council appearance. Has probably been with Walsingham since (and resulting from?) Thomas’s brief imprisonment for "outlawry," or debt, in May 1590.
• Loan shark in partnership with Skeres, currently heavily engaged in a "hustle" (the victim a young man called Drew Woodleff) from which Thomas Walsingham, whether knowingly or not, stands to benefit.
Eleanor Bull
• A distant relative of Lord Burghley and Sir Robert Cecil, via her "cousin" the late Blanche Parry, Chief Lady of the Queen's Bedchamber.
• The widow for some three years now of George Bull, sub-bailiff for the Lord of the Manor of Deptford, Christopher Browne (who was also Clerk of the Green Cloth - a sort of "internal auditor" for the Queen's household). It seems that they had no children.
• She now apparently provides (for payment) a room and refreshment for private gatherings such as this. Whether this is available to all or just to certain "intelligence service" clients is unknown.
BEHIND THE SCENES
Thomas Walsingham
• His father was a first cousin of Sir Francis, for whom he had worked until 1589.
• During that time he had been a case officer on the unmasking of the so-called Babington Plot against the Queen, with Poley (certainly) and Skeres (probably) among his operatives.
• In 1589 he inherited the family estates - including his home at Scadbury, near Chislehurst in Kent - upon the death of his elder brother Edmund. Described as "lately of London" as well as of Chislehurst when released from prison in May 1590.
• He gave up intelligence work (Sir Francis also died in 1590) and is apparently now settled into the life of a landowner and patron of the arts, although he will also be on record as residing in London (Tower Street ward) in 1595. This is probably in Sir Francis's former home in Seething Lane, now owned by Thomas’s second cousin Frances, wife of the Earl of Essex.
• Among those patronized is his friend Christopher Marlowe, whom he may have known from their "spying" days.
• Frizer is working with him as a sort of financial agent, a role which he will continue to occupy (in particular for Walsingham's wife Audrey) for many years.
Lord Burghley
• William Cecil, the Queen's right-hand man since her accession 35 years ago.
• There are two occasions in the past when he apparently got Marlowe out of a mess resulting from something Marlowe was doing on behalf of the Privy Council.
• His son Sir Robert Cecil has now joined him on the Privy Council and is helping him (also in secret) over the unmentionable "succession problem," possibly with some involvement by Marlowe.
• He tried, without success, to save the religious dissidents Barrow, Greenwood and Penry from execution, all of whom have been hanged within the past few weeks.
The Archbishop of Canterbury
• John Whitgift, in his early sixties, a leading member of the Privy Council, and the Queen's greatest (and apparent favourite) defender against threats to her position as head of the Church in England, whether it comes from Catholics, Presbyterians, Puritans or Atheists.
• Supported by fellow Council member John Puckering, fifty-year-old Keeper of the Great Seal, who is the apparent stimulus for - and recipient of - the several accusations of Marlowe's blasphemies, heresy and outspoken atheism.
• Whitgift is backed by the arguments of his leading adviser, Richard Cosin, who explains that against "a grievous crime" such as heresy, a judge has the power to proceed against the accused, even without evidence.
THE PLOT
• Marlowe, Poley, Skeres and Frizer meet here at Dame Bull's house in Deptford Strand at 10 a.m.
• They spend some time privately in their room.
• They take lunch there.
• They spend most of the afternoon strolling quietly around the garden.
• At about 6 p.m. they return to the room and take supper.
• Some time later either Poley or Skeres (presumably) emerges from the room claiming that the man they identify as Marlowe is dead, having attacked Frizer, who has fatally stabbed him in self defence.
• The blood pouring from Frizer's scalp seems to confirm their story.
THE QUESTION
Assuming these facts to be true, what would you consider the most logical explanation for the meeting of these particular people, and no others, in Deptford Strand of all places at this particular time? What possible reasons might there have been for their meeting, and what arguments are there for and against each of them?
SCENE II
THE DATE
Friday 1st June 1593
THE PLACE
Again the home of Eleanor Bull, Deptford Strand.
THE CAST OF CHARACTERS
Frizer, Poley, Skeres and maybe Eleanor Bull
(as above)
William Danby
• Coroner of the Queen’s Household, whose responsibility it is to attend inquests on violent deaths occurring within "The Verge" - the area within twelve (Tudor) miles of wherever the Queen happens to be. Deptford Strand is just within the Verge, being slightly under twelve (Tudor) miles from Nonsuch in Surrey, where the Queen is currently residing.
• For the inquest to be legal it should be run by a local county coroner and Danby, which is not in fact how this one is done. The only way in which he can legally run it on his own is if he is also a county coroner. This is in fact quite likely (his predecessor filled two such roles and Danby apparently lives only a few miles away in Woolwich, also in Kent) but no Kentish records allowing us to check this have survived, and if he is he must report it in the record of the inquest to make it legal – which he doesn’t.
• Danby studied law at Lincoln’s Inn back in the 1540s, an exact contemporary there of Thomas Walsingham’s father, and at the same time as William Cecil (Burghley) was at Grays Inn. As Queen’s Coroner, which he has been for the past four years, he must be well-known to Burghley and the rest of the Privy Council.
• It would have been Danby’s responsibility to authorize what happened to the body of John Penry - of much the same age as Marlowe - who was hanged for subversion about two miles away from Deptford on the evening before the Deptford meeting.
Nicholas Draper
• First on the list of jurors and one of only two "gentlemen" jurymen listed, so very probably the foreman of the jury.
• Jury members are usually selected by the coroner from a group of suitably qualified local men summoned by the bailiff of the hundred. Yet Draper does not come from the relevant hundred (Blackheath), but lives seven miles away in the parish right next to Chislehurst, where Thomas Walsingham lives. That they are both gentlemen therefore makes it highly likely that they already know each other.
The Rest of the Jury
• Other than Thomas Batt, yeoman, who also comes from Bromley, where Draper lives, the jury consists of men from Deptford, Greenwich and Lewisham.
• There is one other gentleman (Wolstan Randall), together with a miller, two bakers, a grocer, a carpenter, a husbandman, the yeoman (a superior grade servant) and seven others whose occupations are unknown.
THE PLOT
According to Danby’s report of the Inquest, in Leslie Hotson’s translation but stripped of most of the repetition and legalisms, this is what the witnesses claim happened behind that closed door.
THE QUESTION
Given what we now know of the background, what in your opinion would really be the most logical verdict, and why?
• It was indeed self-defence as the witnesses claimed.
They were lying, because (if you had to say what you thought really happened):
• It was a planned murder.
• It was an unplanned murder.
• It wasn't Marlowe's body, but a substitute, allowing him to escape.
© Peter Farey, March 2011
Peter Farey has been manning the Marlovian barricades on the internet for the past 13 years or so. His Marlowe Page is one of the most respected sites about Marlowe on the web. He is a founding member of the International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society.
TimesofIndia IndiaTimes Jarmusch Swinton
Click here for the blog's home page and recent content.THE MARLOWE PAPERS
SCENE I
THE DATE
Wednesday 30th May 1593
THE PLACE
The home of Eleanor Bull, Deptford Strand, on the Thames about 4 miles downstream from London Bridge.
THE CAST OF CHARACTERS
Christopher Marlowe
• Born the son of a Canterbury shoemaker in February 1564. At university for six and a half years being educated to M.A. level. At 29, currently England's greatest playwright.
• Socially on familiar terms with many of the country's top aristocrats, statesmen, writers, scientists, philosophers and other thinkers.
• Occasional secret intelligence agent on behalf of the Privy Council, most probably for Lord Burghley. Possibly involved for him right now in secret matters touching the Queen's succession, a topic about which she has forbidden any discussion.
• Has apparently been staying with his friend Thomas Walsingham, close relative and former high-ranking employee of the late spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham.
• Arrested and brought to be questioned by the Privy Council ten days ago after an accusation of heresy arising from papers alleged to be his having been discovered in the home of fellow playwright Thomas Kyd. Their Lordships knew that he might be found at Thomas Walsingham's home in Kent.
• Released on condition he reports to them every day. There is no record of whether he actually did so or not.
• Far more serious accusations now with them will almost inevitably lead to his torture, trial and execution.
Robert Poley
• About ten years older than Marlowe. Cambridge educated but took no degree.
• Former agent provocateur for spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham, is known to be an expert liar, prepared to perjure himself if necessary. In 1585/6 he was apparently "placed with" Sir Francis Walsingham's daughter Frances, and "by that means ordinarily in his house." In 1590 the widowed Frances married the Earl of Essex, who joined the Privy Council three months ago.
• Poley is now regularly employed as an intelligence agent and messenger for the Privy Council, particularly Vice-Chamberlain Thomas Heneage and Lord Burghley.
• Has recently been undertaking frequent missions to Scotland and the Netherlands. Departed for The Hague on 8th May, and is on his way back from there right now with urgent and important letters for the Privy Council.
• He will delay delivering these for another nine days, however, when his warrant will (uniquely) say that he has been "on her Majesty's service" all of this time.
Nicholas Skeres
• 30 years old. Another of Sir Francis Walsingham's former agents provocateurs, and with the ability to lie with complete plausibility that this implies (and see below, concerning his duplicitous role in loan sharking).
• Had done occasional work soldiering for the Earl of Essex and as a courier for him to and from Walsingham (although, given the above, could have been planted on Essex as a spy?)
• Still calling the Earl his "lord and master" only a month ago at the Court of Star Chamber but evidence suggests that by doing this he may have offended Essex, and therefore lost the chance of further employment, at least for some time, as a result.
• The Star Chamber appearance was to do with his luring potentially wealthy men into the clutches of a predatory loan shark.
• Currently involved in similar confidence trickery with Ingram Frizer (below) in a "hustle" just coming to fruition.
Ingram Frizer
• Age 31? First heard of when he bought and resold the Angel Inn, Basingstoke, in 1589. Charles Nicholl (The Reckoning, 2002, p.27) describes him in 1593 as “a property speculator, a commodity broker, a fixer for gentlemen of worship, ... a racker of young fools.”
• Financial adviser to Thomas Walsingham, with whom Marlowe was apparently staying at the time of his Privy Council appearance. Has probably been with Walsingham since (and resulting from?) Thomas’s brief imprisonment for "outlawry," or debt, in May 1590.
• Loan shark in partnership with Skeres, currently heavily engaged in a "hustle" (the victim a young man called Drew Woodleff) from which Thomas Walsingham, whether knowingly or not, stands to benefit.
Eleanor Bull
• A distant relative of Lord Burghley and Sir Robert Cecil, via her "cousin" the late Blanche Parry, Chief Lady of the Queen's Bedchamber.
• The widow for some three years now of George Bull, sub-bailiff for the Lord of the Manor of Deptford, Christopher Browne (who was also Clerk of the Green Cloth - a sort of "internal auditor" for the Queen's household). It seems that they had no children.
• She now apparently provides (for payment) a room and refreshment for private gatherings such as this. Whether this is available to all or just to certain "intelligence service" clients is unknown.
BEHIND THE SCENES
Thomas Walsingham
• His father was a first cousin of Sir Francis, for whom he had worked until 1589.
• During that time he had been a case officer on the unmasking of the so-called Babington Plot against the Queen, with Poley (certainly) and Skeres (probably) among his operatives.
• In 1589 he inherited the family estates - including his home at Scadbury, near Chislehurst in Kent - upon the death of his elder brother Edmund. Described as "lately of London" as well as of Chislehurst when released from prison in May 1590.
• He gave up intelligence work (Sir Francis also died in 1590) and is apparently now settled into the life of a landowner and patron of the arts, although he will also be on record as residing in London (Tower Street ward) in 1595. This is probably in Sir Francis's former home in Seething Lane, now owned by Thomas’s second cousin Frances, wife of the Earl of Essex.
• Among those patronized is his friend Christopher Marlowe, whom he may have known from their "spying" days.
• Frizer is working with him as a sort of financial agent, a role which he will continue to occupy (in particular for Walsingham's wife Audrey) for many years.
Lord Burghley
• William Cecil, the Queen's right-hand man since her accession 35 years ago.
• There are two occasions in the past when he apparently got Marlowe out of a mess resulting from something Marlowe was doing on behalf of the Privy Council.
• His son Sir Robert Cecil has now joined him on the Privy Council and is helping him (also in secret) over the unmentionable "succession problem," possibly with some involvement by Marlowe.
• He tried, without success, to save the religious dissidents Barrow, Greenwood and Penry from execution, all of whom have been hanged within the past few weeks.
The Archbishop of Canterbury
• John Whitgift, in his early sixties, a leading member of the Privy Council, and the Queen's greatest (and apparent favourite) defender against threats to her position as head of the Church in England, whether it comes from Catholics, Presbyterians, Puritans or Atheists.
• Supported by fellow Council member John Puckering, fifty-year-old Keeper of the Great Seal, who is the apparent stimulus for - and recipient of - the several accusations of Marlowe's blasphemies, heresy and outspoken atheism.
• Whitgift is backed by the arguments of his leading adviser, Richard Cosin, who explains that against "a grievous crime" such as heresy, a judge has the power to proceed against the accused, even without evidence.
THE PLOT
• Marlowe, Poley, Skeres and Frizer meet here at Dame Bull's house in Deptford Strand at 10 a.m.
• They spend some time privately in their room.
• They take lunch there.
• They spend most of the afternoon strolling quietly around the garden.
• At about 6 p.m. they return to the room and take supper.
• Some time later either Poley or Skeres (presumably) emerges from the room claiming that the man they identify as Marlowe is dead, having attacked Frizer, who has fatally stabbed him in self defence.
• The blood pouring from Frizer's scalp seems to confirm their story.
THE QUESTION
Assuming these facts to be true, what would you consider the most logical explanation for the meeting of these particular people, and no others, in Deptford Strand of all places at this particular time? What possible reasons might there have been for their meeting, and what arguments are there for and against each of them?
SCENE II
THE DATE
Friday 1st June 1593
THE PLACE
Again the home of Eleanor Bull, Deptford Strand.
THE CAST OF CHARACTERS
Frizer, Poley, Skeres and maybe Eleanor Bull
(as above)
William Danby
• Coroner of the Queen’s Household, whose responsibility it is to attend inquests on violent deaths occurring within "The Verge" - the area within twelve (Tudor) miles of wherever the Queen happens to be. Deptford Strand is just within the Verge, being slightly under twelve (Tudor) miles from Nonsuch in Surrey, where the Queen is currently residing.
• For the inquest to be legal it should be run by a local county coroner and Danby, which is not in fact how this one is done. The only way in which he can legally run it on his own is if he is also a county coroner. This is in fact quite likely (his predecessor filled two such roles and Danby apparently lives only a few miles away in Woolwich, also in Kent) but no Kentish records allowing us to check this have survived, and if he is he must report it in the record of the inquest to make it legal – which he doesn’t.
• Danby studied law at Lincoln’s Inn back in the 1540s, an exact contemporary there of Thomas Walsingham’s father, and at the same time as William Cecil (Burghley) was at Grays Inn. As Queen’s Coroner, which he has been for the past four years, he must be well-known to Burghley and the rest of the Privy Council.
• It would have been Danby’s responsibility to authorize what happened to the body of John Penry - of much the same age as Marlowe - who was hanged for subversion about two miles away from Deptford on the evening before the Deptford meeting.
Nicholas Draper
• First on the list of jurors and one of only two "gentlemen" jurymen listed, so very probably the foreman of the jury.
• Jury members are usually selected by the coroner from a group of suitably qualified local men summoned by the bailiff of the hundred. Yet Draper does not come from the relevant hundred (Blackheath), but lives seven miles away in the parish right next to Chislehurst, where Thomas Walsingham lives. That they are both gentlemen therefore makes it highly likely that they already know each other.
The Rest of the Jury
• Other than Thomas Batt, yeoman, who also comes from Bromley, where Draper lives, the jury consists of men from Deptford, Greenwich and Lewisham.
• There is one other gentleman (Wolstan Randall), together with a miller, two bakers, a grocer, a carpenter, a husbandman, the yeoman (a superior grade servant) and seven others whose occupations are unknown.
THE PLOT
According to Danby’s report of the Inquest, in Leslie Hotson’s translation but stripped of most of the repetition and legalisms, this is what the witnesses claim happened behind that closed door.
After supper Ingram Frizer and Christopher Morley uttered one to the other divers malicious words for the reason that they could not agree about the payment of the sum of pence, that is le recknynge; and Christopher Morley then lying upon a bed, and moved with anger against Ingram Frizer upon the words spoken between them, and Ingram sitting with his back towards the bed, and with the front part of his body towards the table, and Nicholas Skeres and Robert Poley sitting on either side of him in such a manner that he in no wise could take flight; it so befell that Christopher Morley on a sudden and of his malice towards Ingram aforethought, maliciously drew Ingram’s dagger which was at his back, and with the same dagger Christopher Morley maliciously gave Ingram two wounds on his head of the length of two inches and of the depth of a quarter of an inch; whereupon Ingram, in fear of being slain, in his own defence and for the saving of his life, struggled with Christopher Morley to get back his dagger; in which affray Ingram could not get away from Christopher Morley; and Ingram, in defence of his life, with the dagger gave Christopher a mortal wound over his right eye; of which Christopher Morley instantly died.
THE QUESTION
Given what we now know of the background, what in your opinion would really be the most logical verdict, and why?
• It was indeed self-defence as the witnesses claimed.
They were lying, because (if you had to say what you thought really happened):
• It was a planned murder.
• It was an unplanned murder.
• It wasn't Marlowe's body, but a substitute, allowing him to escape.
© Peter Farey, March 2011
Peter Farey has been manning the Marlovian barricades on the internet for the past 13 years or so. His Marlowe Page is one of the most respected sites about Marlowe on the web. He is a founding member of the International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society.
TimesofIndia IndiaTimes Jarmusch Swinton
Click here for the blog's home page and recent content.THE MARLOWE PAPERS
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Marlowe-as-Shakespeare Breakout: Barber Book Deal
Congratulations to Dr. Ros Barber and her book deal with Sceptre.
I have valued Ros's major contributions to this blog over the past few years. She is also a fellow co-founder of The International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society, a group a few of us formed in 2009 in order to promote the theory that Christopher Marlowe may have authored many of the works attributed to Shakespeare.
Ros is the first person in the world to complete a PhD in Marlovian authorship theory. Her PhD was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK). She has published articles challenging the orthodox biography of Marlowe in academic books and journals, including the peer-reviewed Routledge journal Rethinking History. Her essay "Was Marlowe a Violent Man?," which was presented at the Marlowe Society of America conference in 2008, is featured in Christopher Marlowe the Craftsman (Ashgate 2010). A published poet, her latest poetry collection, Material (Anvil 2008), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was funded by Arts Council England. Emmerich Anonymous Sam Riley Marlowe
Super news, Ros!
Click here for the blog's home page and recent content.THE MARLOWE PAPERS
I have valued Ros's major contributions to this blog over the past few years. She is also a fellow co-founder of The International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society, a group a few of us formed in 2009 in order to promote the theory that Christopher Marlowe may have authored many of the works attributed to Shakespeare.
Ros is the first person in the world to complete a PhD in Marlovian authorship theory. Her PhD was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK). She has published articles challenging the orthodox biography of Marlowe in academic books and journals, including the peer-reviewed Routledge journal Rethinking History. Her essay "Was Marlowe a Violent Man?," which was presented at the Marlowe Society of America conference in 2008, is featured in Christopher Marlowe the Craftsman (Ashgate 2010). A published poet, her latest poetry collection, Material (Anvil 2008), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was funded by Arts Council England. Emmerich Anonymous Sam Riley Marlowe
Super news, Ros!
Click here for the blog's home page and recent content.THE MARLOWE PAPERS
Friday, March 18, 2011
The Case Against Oxford as Shakespeare
Peter Farey's "The Wrong Candidate," "Oxfordians and the 1604 Question," and "Questions All Oxfordians Must Answer"; Daryl Pinksen on Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, as straw man and the weak case of de Vere as Shakespeare; Donna Murphy on the many problems with the Oxford theory; Isabel Gortázar's "Nor Oxford Either!"; and Sam Blumenfeld's disqualification of de Vere as Shakespeare.Emmerich shakespeare frontman
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Questions All Oxfordians Must Answer by Peter Farey
(this post originally appeared on November 23, 2009)
In my earlier piece "Oxfordians and the 1604 Question," I showed how in dramatic verse between the 1580s and 1620s there was a steady move away from the constant repetition of the regular end-stopped iambic pentameter by the increasing use of open lines and feminine endings.
I also showed graphically how Shakespeare’s plays exhibited a change in the same direction although—if the dates used are similar to those estimated by most Shakespearean scholars—the rate with which his use of these techniques increased was even greater than that of his contemporaries. The increase was nevertheless surprisingly consistent and the correlation between the estimated latest date for when the play was written and the frequency with which either or both of these techniques was used extremely high.
I have shown these figures with an extended range, because I want to compare this chart with one based upon dates assumed by Oxfordians, and their dating necessarily starts much earlier.
In fact there is no agreed Oxfordian chronology as such, although there have been various theories and conjectures about when the plays were written. The nearest thing to a recently published one at the moment appears to be in a Wikipedia entry entitled “Chronology of Shakespeare’s Plays – Oxfordian” which is largely based upon estimates given by Charlton Ogburn in his seminal Oxfordian work, The Mysterious William Shakespeare.1 We are promised a more generally accepted one eventually, but as yet this is all we have to work with. Let’s see (below) what happens when we use the latest dates they suggest instead of those given by Elliott and Valenza.2
The reason I use the latest date in each case is that the counts of both open lines and feminine endings were obtained from the texts of plays as they have come down to us—in fact the Riverside edition—so what is needed is the nearest date we can find to the one in which the verse must have stabilized to more or less what it is today. This means that earlier versions of the plays, no matter who actually wrote them, are for these purposes quite irrelevant.
What can be seen quite clearly is that the hugely valid trend identified with orthodox dating is completely wrecked, the necessary correlation between the date and the usage rate ignored, and the need to squeeze everything in before Oxford’s death (in 1604) shamelessly evident. The difficulty Oxfordians must necessarily have in finding a chronology which avoids these problems is that it is also essential for them to provide evidence, whether internal or external, in support of each chosen date, and it seems that they have as yet found no way in which this can be done.
Even this, however, is by no means the greatest problem created for them by the increasing use of the two techniques over the years, since most Oxfordians tend to claim that almost all of Shakespeare’s plays had in fact been written by 1598.
Here I have listed all of the Shakespeare plays considered by Elliott and Valenza, and sorted them in ascending order according to the rate of their usage of open lines and feminine endings. Where appropriate, I have indicated in each case (1) if the play was included in the list of Shakespeare plays published by Francis Meres in 1598, (2) if it’s been shown not to have been in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men’s repertoire when Meres’s list was published, and/or (3) if Elliott and Valenza gave it a date after 1604.
Here then are those questions which—according to the title—I say must be answered by anyone before they have really earned the right to call themselves true Oxfordians.
1) As most Oxfordians claim that the majority of Shakespeare’s plays had been written by 1598, what explanation would you give for Meres including in his list, published that year, only those with the lowest frequency of open lines and feminine endings?
2) As the use of open lines and feminine endings is no longer of any real significance in the way plays are dated by Shakespearean scholars, what explanation would you give for all 11 plays given a "post-1604" date by Elliott and Valenza appearing among the 13 plays with the highest usage rates?
The odds against either of these things happening just by chance are so astronomical that there must be a reason for each of them. The obvious reasons are that Meres referred only to those “Shakespeare” plays which had been written and performed by then, and that the Elliott and Valenza chronology is fairly accurate. Unfortunately, neither of these options is available to Oxfordians.
So, over to you guys! Oxford wasn't Shakespeare
Peter Farey
© Peter Farey, November 2009 Emmerich Anonymous
Peter Farey has been manning the Marlovian barricades on the internet for the past 11 years. His Marlowe Page is one of the most respected sites about Marlowe on the web. He is a founding member of the International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society.
Are Oxfordians backing the wrong candidate? Click here for a fascinating analysis of how Marlowe compares with de Vere on Shakespeare authorship criteria.
Notes
1Ogburn, Charlton. The Mysterious William Shakespeare: The Man and the Myth. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1984.
2Elliott, Ward and Robert Valenza. "And Then There Were None: Winnowing the Shakespeare Claimants." Computers and the Humanities 30, 1996. pp. 191-245.
In my earlier piece "Oxfordians and the 1604 Question," I showed how in dramatic verse between the 1580s and 1620s there was a steady move away from the constant repetition of the regular end-stopped iambic pentameter by the increasing use of open lines and feminine endings.
I also showed graphically how Shakespeare’s plays exhibited a change in the same direction although—if the dates used are similar to those estimated by most Shakespearean scholars—the rate with which his use of these techniques increased was even greater than that of his contemporaries. The increase was nevertheless surprisingly consistent and the correlation between the estimated latest date for when the play was written and the frequency with which either or both of these techniques was used extremely high.
I have shown these figures with an extended range, because I want to compare this chart with one based upon dates assumed by Oxfordians, and their dating necessarily starts much earlier.In fact there is no agreed Oxfordian chronology as such, although there have been various theories and conjectures about when the plays were written. The nearest thing to a recently published one at the moment appears to be in a Wikipedia entry entitled “Chronology of Shakespeare’s Plays – Oxfordian” which is largely based upon estimates given by Charlton Ogburn in his seminal Oxfordian work, The Mysterious William Shakespeare.1 We are promised a more generally accepted one eventually, but as yet this is all we have to work with. Let’s see (below) what happens when we use the latest dates they suggest instead of those given by Elliott and Valenza.2
The reason I use the latest date in each case is that the counts of both open lines and feminine endings were obtained from the texts of plays as they have come down to us—in fact the Riverside edition—so what is needed is the nearest date we can find to the one in which the verse must have stabilized to more or less what it is today. This means that earlier versions of the plays, no matter who actually wrote them, are for these purposes quite irrelevant.
What can be seen quite clearly is that the hugely valid trend identified with orthodox dating is completely wrecked, the necessary correlation between the date and the usage rate ignored, and the need to squeeze everything in before Oxford’s death (in 1604) shamelessly evident. The difficulty Oxfordians must necessarily have in finding a chronology which avoids these problems is that it is also essential for them to provide evidence, whether internal or external, in support of each chosen date, and it seems that they have as yet found no way in which this can be done.Even this, however, is by no means the greatest problem created for them by the increasing use of the two techniques over the years, since most Oxfordians tend to claim that almost all of Shakespeare’s plays had in fact been written by 1598.
Here I have listed all of the Shakespeare plays considered by Elliott and Valenza, and sorted them in ascending order according to the rate of their usage of open lines and feminine endings. Where appropriate, I have indicated in each case (1) if the play was included in the list of Shakespeare plays published by Francis Meres in 1598, (2) if it’s been shown not to have been in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men’s repertoire when Meres’s list was published, and/or (3) if Elliott and Valenza gave it a date after 1604.
Here then are those questions which—according to the title—I say must be answered by anyone before they have really earned the right to call themselves true Oxfordians.
1) As most Oxfordians claim that the majority of Shakespeare’s plays had been written by 1598, what explanation would you give for Meres including in his list, published that year, only those with the lowest frequency of open lines and feminine endings?
2) As the use of open lines and feminine endings is no longer of any real significance in the way plays are dated by Shakespearean scholars, what explanation would you give for all 11 plays given a "post-1604" date by Elliott and Valenza appearing among the 13 plays with the highest usage rates?
The odds against either of these things happening just by chance are so astronomical that there must be a reason for each of them. The obvious reasons are that Meres referred only to those “Shakespeare” plays which had been written and performed by then, and that the Elliott and Valenza chronology is fairly accurate. Unfortunately, neither of these options is available to Oxfordians.
So, over to you guys! Oxford wasn't Shakespeare
Peter Farey
© Peter Farey, November 2009 Emmerich Anonymous
Peter Farey has been manning the Marlovian barricades on the internet for the past 11 years. His Marlowe Page is one of the most respected sites about Marlowe on the web. He is a founding member of the International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society.
Are Oxfordians backing the wrong candidate? Click here for a fascinating analysis of how Marlowe compares with de Vere on Shakespeare authorship criteria.
Notes
1Ogburn, Charlton. The Mysterious William Shakespeare: The Man and the Myth. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1984.
2Elliott, Ward and Robert Valenza. "And Then There Were None: Winnowing the Shakespeare Claimants." Computers and the Humanities 30, 1996. pp. 191-245.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
How Did Marlowe Learn Spanish? by Isabel Gortázar
The first scene of The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, such as was published in 1598, with the introduction of Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, may be telling us why Shakespeare chose to inspire his Falstaff - one of his wittiest, best beloved characters - in a Kentish1 Lord accused of heresy2 and immorality,3 eventually burned at the stake by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1417. From the Knights Templar to Giordano Bruno, accusations of heresy were often accompanied by accusations of immorality; neither Sir John nor Kit Marlowe were exceptions to this rule.
Henry IV Part One (1HIV) is generally believed to have been written in 1596, and it may be relevant that also in 1596, after the death of Lord Hunsdon on July 23, William Brooke, Lord Cobham, was appointed Lord Chamberlain. The new Lord Chamberlain seems to have been no friend of the players for some unknown reason,4 but he died in March 1597 and on February 25, 1598, 1HIV - Falstaff included - was entered into the Stationer’s Register prior to publication the same year. Also in that year, Thomas Creed printed The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, an anonymous play5 that however had been licensed for publication since May 14, 1594.
Evidence points to 1586 for the date of composition of Famous Victories. We do know that Derrick, the clown character, was originally played by Richard Tarlton, the Queen’s favourite jester who died on September 3, 1588, and we also know from Tarlton’s Jests 6 that the play was performed in London some months before March 1588. The presumption that William Shakespeare was the author of 1HIV has, naturally, prevented scholars from accepting that Famous Victories could have been written by the same man; in 1586-8 William Shakespeare was nowhere on the theatrical or literary scene.
In his book The Case for Shakespeare’s Authorship of The Famous Victories, Professor Seymour M. Pitcher,7 while agreeing on 1586 as the probable date of composition of the original play, argues that Kit Marlowe could not be its author because the play contains comic scenes.8 My own view of Famous Victories is that Marlowe is dropping hints like hailstones, at least in the revised version that includes Oldcastle.
The play introduces Sir John in the very first scene, line 15. Immediately the stage direction changes Oldcastle’s name to Iockey, a diminutive of John. However, there may be other reasons for this nickname. The Jockey is one of the figures in the French pack of cards that circulated in Europe from the late fifteenth century. The Jockey card, which is understood to derive from the Fool in the Tarot pack, has no value in itself but is used to suit the interest of the player. Likewise, the Oldcastle character in the revised play doesn’t seem to fill any special role that might justify its addition. As to why Marlowe would turn Sir John into Jockey Falstaff, we might find the answer in Saxo Grammaticus's Amblett9 and its offspring, Hamlet, two characters that choose the role of Fool for self-protection.
According to the opening stage direction, the action of this first scene takes place on the Eve of St John the Baptist, 1410, so seven years before Sir John was burnt at the stake. And here is an uncanny coincidence: 1586 + 7 = 1593. Needless to say, if the date of the action were meant to be a clue, it would have been added after 1593; in Stow’s Chronicles we read that “Upon the eve of St John the Baptist (1410) the King’s son (was) in Eastcheap…”10
Pitcher makes a convincing case that the character of Oldcastle was not present in the original version, and also that the play shows internal evidence of having been revised, perhaps more than once. It may be that the character of Oldcastle was introduced at the time when the play was licensed for publication in 1594, and that he was part of the new (possibly meaning “revised”), harey v mentioned in Henslowe’s Diary as being performed several times by the Admiral’s Men in 1595 and 1596.
Contrary to Stratfordian theory, the main point of the revision of Famous Victories introducing Sir John might have been to strengthen a connection between the heretic Oldcastle and the Clown Falstaff, in which case it could be the very reason for Lord Cobham’s hostility. For what it’s worth, Cobham’s son and heir, Henry Brooke, is understood to have been an enemy of the Earl of Essex.11 In any case, the Stratfordian proposal that the name of Oldcastle was changed to Falstaff to please the Brookes does not explain why in The Merry Wives of Windsor, the author gives the names of “Ford” and “Brooke” to a foolishly jealous husband.
As I have said, Sir John Oldcastle is introduced to us in scene 1:
Hen.5: But sirs, I marvel that sir John Old-castle comes not away: Sounds!
See where he comes.
(Enters Jockey).12
How now Jockey, what news with thee?
Jockey: Faith my Lord, such news as passeth! For the Towne of Deptford is risen with hue and crie after your man, which parted from us the last night and has set upon, and hath robed a poor Carrier.
Hen.5:
Sownes! The villain that was wont to spy out our booties.
Jock.
I my Lord; even the very same.
Since one contemporary anti-Lollard song referred to Sir John as “a robber,”13 these lines could be read to say that the thief who has escaped from Deptford, the villain that was wont to spy (our booties), is even the very same as Sir John.14 A parallelism is hereby created between Jockey Oldcastle and Christopher Marlowe, a heretic and a spy that had escaped from Deptford.
Immediately after this exchange, three commoners arrive on the scene, one of which is called John Cobler.15 Scenes 7 and 10 take place outside his house, and we are introduced to Mrs Cobler, a shrewish, quick-witted woman (one is tempted to surmise that her Christian name is Katherine).16 Since the Queen’s Men had been performing in Faversham in 1586, 1588 and 1591, the author may well have had recent occasion to be reminded of Mrs Cobbler’s lashing tongue.
Later, scenes 16 and 17 raise an important matter of language. In scene 16, in the battlefield in France, John Cobler and his companions are told that they must speak French if they want to save their lives. John shows his knowledge of French with the words: Commodevales, Monsieur? On another part of the battlefield, in scene 17, a French soldier who has taken Derrick prisoner calls him villiago.
These words provide us with some interesting information. It would seem that the author had either been in contact with Spaniards, perhaps in the Netherlands, at any time before he wrote this play, or these two scenes were added later.
The word Comodevales seems to be a corruption of the Spanish salutation: Como le va? (How are you doing?). The French alternative would be: Comment allez vous? The word villiago appears to be a mixed corruption of two Spanish words: bellaco and villano. Shakespeare uses villago in 2 Henry VI (IV, 8, 42), possibly written in 1591.17
Notwithstanding the fact that we are supposed to be in the battlefields of France (hence the obvious Monsieur), these verbal exchanges place the author either in Spain or in Flanders. So we must face the question as to where and when did Marlowe, or indeed young Shakespeare, hear the common salutation ¿Cómo le va? as well as the familiar bellaco. It seems that the word bellaco was a favourite insult among the Spanish soldiers in Flanders, but it would also have been used everywhere in Spain.
Here is a short digression about the historical background and relevant dates: In October/November 1585, The Earl of Leicester had been appointed Commander-in-Chief of Her Majesty’s Forces in the Netherlands following a treaty signed between the Queen and Count Maurice of Nassau,18 by which the English were to provide support of troops and money to the rebels, against Spain. To guarantee this agreement, the English would have the government (and revenues) of two towns, Flushing and Brill. Sir Philip Sidney, Secretary Walsingham’s son-in-law, was appointed Governor of Flushing and Sir Thomas Cecil, eldest son of Lord Burghley, was appointed Governor of Brill.
By this treaty the Queen was actively declaring unprovoked war on Spain, allegedly in the cause of religious freedom, a freedom that was far from existing in her own country. Philip II was of course outraged, and started preparing for retaliation.
Sidney arrived in Flushing in late November, and in December Leicester travelled to The Hague. On September 22, 1586, in the Battle of Zuphten, the Spanish troops, led by Alexander Farnese, Prince of Parma, confronted the allied English and Dutch forces, led by the Earl of Leicester. Sir Philip Sidney was wounded and died twenty-six days later. The Earl of Essex, Leicester’s stepson, was also present. Within the next four years Leicester and Sir Francis Walsingham were also dead and Essex had married Sidney’s widow, Lady Frances Walsingham.
This is the (broad) historical background that brings us to 1591/2 and Marlowe’s intriguing visit to Flushing, where Robert Sidney had succeeded his brother Philip as Governor.
So, had Kit Marlowe been sent on some errand either to Flanders or to Spain, between 1586 and 1591?
One thing is clear, these pseudo-words, comparteve and villiago, must have been heard, either by him or whoever repeated them to him, as they would not have appeared in any written text.
Then, on February 26, 1592, approximately one month after Marlowe had been sent back from Flushing accused of forging English coins,19 The Lord Stranges Men gave the first performance of The Jew of Malta. It seems Kit’s command of Spanish had greatly improved by now if we are to judge by Barabas’s comments: Hermoso el placer de los dineros (“Wonderful is the pleasure of monies”)20 and: Bueno para todos mi ganado no era21 (which might be oddly translated as “My earnings were not good for everyone,” or – absurdly - “My cattle was not good for everyone”). Neither of these phrases is good Spanish, not even good sixteenth-century Spanish, particularly when you read them in the first (1633) edition of The Jew, where the abominable spelling may have been due to an unclear MS. Nevertheless, Barabas’s comments are a far cry from comodevales.
This suggests that sometime between composition of Famous Victories and 1591/2, Marlowe had been among Spaniards long enough to improve his knowledge of the language. There is also Ithamore’s preference for the Spanish wine of Rivadavia: Rivo Castiliano!,22 later claimed by Prince Hal, who quotes Ithamore when he cries: Rivo, says the drunkard! (IHIV II, 4, 109).23
While a short visit to Spain may explain the Ribadavia, had Marlowe been Arbella Stuart’s “Morley,”24“ a lengthy absence between 1586 and 1591 seems impossible. Alternatively, given the imperfect syntax of Barabas’s phrases, he may have been improving his Spanish by reading.
Sarah Gristwood,25 describing Arbella’s life at Hardwick Old Hall in the early 1590s, writes: “Here Arbella studied Hebrew and Spanish, reading Virgil and Plutarch as well as the Bible.”
And it so happens that the Bibliotheca Hispanica, by Richard Percyvall and Dr D'Oylie, was published in 1591; it contained a grammar with dictionaries in Spanish, English and Latin.26 And although that does not explain where the author of Famous Victories heard the words commodevales and villiago in 1586, it seems that by 1591 he had the necessary tools to make progress in the language.
Perhaps thanks to Bibliotheca Hispanica Marlowe was later able to read Jorge de Montemayor’s Diana Enamorada,27 the main source for The Two Gentlemen of Verona.28
Which I find reassuring; we are used to the idea that William Shakespeare obtained “the gift of tongues” directly from the Holy Ghost, but I’d rather not be tempted to imagine that Marlowe had been similarly blessed.
© Isabel Gortázar, February 2011
Isabel Gortázar is an independent scholar, specializing in Shakespeare and Marlowe studies. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Marlowe Society (UK) and a founding member of the International Marlowe Society. She divides her time between London and Bilbao, Spain.
Notes
1Though born in Herefordshire, Sir John had married in 1408 the heiress of the Cobham estates, which made him one of the most important landlords in Kent.
2Sir John was a Lollard, a follower of John Wycliffe’s doctrine.
3For the controversy on Sir John’s character, see Bullough, Geoffrey. 1966. Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare. Vol. 4, pgs. 168-171.
4Bullough. Op. cit. Vol. 4, pg 171.
5The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth: Containing the Honourable Batell of Agin-court: As it was plaide by the Queenes Majesties Players. LONDON - Printed by Thomas Creede, 1598.6Tarlton’s Jests and News Out of Purgatory. Ed. Halliwell-Phillips, pg 24.
7Pitcher, Seymour M. The Case for Shakespeare’s Authorship of The Famous Victories. Alvin Redman: London, 1962.
8On the subject of Marlowe and Comedy, see Ros Barber's "Marlowe and Comedy."
9The story of Amblett occupies part of the third and fourth books of Grammaticus's Gesta Danorum (c.1185).
10Stow, John. 1580. The Chronicles of England, from Brute until this present year of Christ. pg. 573. Ref Pitcher: Op. cit. pg. 200.
11Bullough. Op.cit. Vol. 4, pg 156.
12 I.e., Oldcastle.
13Bullough; Op. cit. Vol. 4, pg 169.
14Modern editions give this line as Ay, my Lord, even the very same. I am quoting from a facsimile of the original 1598 edition.
15John Marlowe was a cobbler.
16Marlowe’s mother’s maiden name was Katherine.
17A third word, Comparteve, used by Derrick also in scene 17 has no obvious explanation.
18Count Maurice was the second living son of the assassinated (July, 1584) William the Silent, Prince of Orange.
19Robert Sidney’s letter was dated January 26, but documents from the Continent were usually dated according to the Gregorian calendar year, so Marlowe might have left Flushing on January 16.
20Jew of Malta (II, 1, 67).
21Jew of Malta (II, 1, 39).
22Jew of Malta (IV, 446): Hey, Rivo Castiliano! A man’s a man!
23Rivo is probably a reference to a white wine of Ribadavia, in Galicia, Spain, mentioned also by Cervantes. The word riva, derives from the Latin ripa, riverside.
24“One Morley” was, on and off, tutor to Arbella Stuart from approx. 1587 until September 1592. During the time that Marlowe was in Flushing, Arbella had been staying in London.
25Gristwood, Sarah. 2003. Arbella: England’s Lost Queen. Bantam: 2003, pg.120.
26Percyvall, Richard. Bibliotheca hispanica. Containing a grammar, with a dictionarie in Spanish, English, and Latine gathered out of divers good Authors: very profitable for the studious of the Spanish toong [...] Imprinted at London by John Jackson for Richard Watkins, 1591.
27Published in Valencia in 1559. Although the author was Portuguese, the text was written in Spanish. The first English translation appeared in 1598 and there was a French translation, (1578, 1587). Ref: Boullough. Op. cit. Vol. 1, pg. 206.
28Two Gentlemen of Verona, first published in 1623, is one of the plays mentioned by Francis Meres in Palladis Tamia (1598).
Henry IV Part One (1HIV) is generally believed to have been written in 1596, and it may be relevant that also in 1596, after the death of Lord Hunsdon on July 23, William Brooke, Lord Cobham, was appointed Lord Chamberlain. The new Lord Chamberlain seems to have been no friend of the players for some unknown reason,4 but he died in March 1597 and on February 25, 1598, 1HIV - Falstaff included - was entered into the Stationer’s Register prior to publication the same year. Also in that year, Thomas Creed printed The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, an anonymous play5 that however had been licensed for publication since May 14, 1594.
Evidence points to 1586 for the date of composition of Famous Victories. We do know that Derrick, the clown character, was originally played by Richard Tarlton, the Queen’s favourite jester who died on September 3, 1588, and we also know from Tarlton’s Jests 6 that the play was performed in London some months before March 1588. The presumption that William Shakespeare was the author of 1HIV has, naturally, prevented scholars from accepting that Famous Victories could have been written by the same man; in 1586-8 William Shakespeare was nowhere on the theatrical or literary scene.
In his book The Case for Shakespeare’s Authorship of The Famous Victories, Professor Seymour M. Pitcher,7 while agreeing on 1586 as the probable date of composition of the original play, argues that Kit Marlowe could not be its author because the play contains comic scenes.8 My own view of Famous Victories is that Marlowe is dropping hints like hailstones, at least in the revised version that includes Oldcastle.
The play introduces Sir John in the very first scene, line 15. Immediately the stage direction changes Oldcastle’s name to Iockey, a diminutive of John. However, there may be other reasons for this nickname. The Jockey is one of the figures in the French pack of cards that circulated in Europe from the late fifteenth century. The Jockey card, which is understood to derive from the Fool in the Tarot pack, has no value in itself but is used to suit the interest of the player. Likewise, the Oldcastle character in the revised play doesn’t seem to fill any special role that might justify its addition. As to why Marlowe would turn Sir John into Jockey Falstaff, we might find the answer in Saxo Grammaticus's Amblett9 and its offspring, Hamlet, two characters that choose the role of Fool for self-protection.
According to the opening stage direction, the action of this first scene takes place on the Eve of St John the Baptist, 1410, so seven years before Sir John was burnt at the stake. And here is an uncanny coincidence: 1586 + 7 = 1593. Needless to say, if the date of the action were meant to be a clue, it would have been added after 1593; in Stow’s Chronicles we read that “Upon the eve of St John the Baptist (1410) the King’s son (was) in Eastcheap…”10
Pitcher makes a convincing case that the character of Oldcastle was not present in the original version, and also that the play shows internal evidence of having been revised, perhaps more than once. It may be that the character of Oldcastle was introduced at the time when the play was licensed for publication in 1594, and that he was part of the new (possibly meaning “revised”), harey v mentioned in Henslowe’s Diary as being performed several times by the Admiral’s Men in 1595 and 1596.
Contrary to Stratfordian theory, the main point of the revision of Famous Victories introducing Sir John might have been to strengthen a connection between the heretic Oldcastle and the Clown Falstaff, in which case it could be the very reason for Lord Cobham’s hostility. For what it’s worth, Cobham’s son and heir, Henry Brooke, is understood to have been an enemy of the Earl of Essex.11 In any case, the Stratfordian proposal that the name of Oldcastle was changed to Falstaff to please the Brookes does not explain why in The Merry Wives of Windsor, the author gives the names of “Ford” and “Brooke” to a foolishly jealous husband.
As I have said, Sir John Oldcastle is introduced to us in scene 1:
Hen.5: But sirs, I marvel that sir John Old-castle comes not away: Sounds!
See where he comes.
(Enters Jockey).12
How now Jockey, what news with thee?
Jockey: Faith my Lord, such news as passeth! For the Towne of Deptford is risen with hue and crie after your man, which parted from us the last night and has set upon, and hath robed a poor Carrier.
Hen.5:
Sownes! The villain that was wont to spy out our booties.
Jock.
I my Lord; even the very same.
Since one contemporary anti-Lollard song referred to Sir John as “a robber,”13 these lines could be read to say that the thief who has escaped from Deptford, the villain that was wont to spy (our booties), is even the very same as Sir John.14 A parallelism is hereby created between Jockey Oldcastle and Christopher Marlowe, a heretic and a spy that had escaped from Deptford.
Immediately after this exchange, three commoners arrive on the scene, one of which is called John Cobler.15 Scenes 7 and 10 take place outside his house, and we are introduced to Mrs Cobler, a shrewish, quick-witted woman (one is tempted to surmise that her Christian name is Katherine).16 Since the Queen’s Men had been performing in Faversham in 1586, 1588 and 1591, the author may well have had recent occasion to be reminded of Mrs Cobbler’s lashing tongue.
Later, scenes 16 and 17 raise an important matter of language. In scene 16, in the battlefield in France, John Cobler and his companions are told that they must speak French if they want to save their lives. John shows his knowledge of French with the words: Commodevales, Monsieur? On another part of the battlefield, in scene 17, a French soldier who has taken Derrick prisoner calls him villiago.
These words provide us with some interesting information. It would seem that the author had either been in contact with Spaniards, perhaps in the Netherlands, at any time before he wrote this play, or these two scenes were added later.
The word Comodevales seems to be a corruption of the Spanish salutation: Como le va? (How are you doing?). The French alternative would be: Comment allez vous? The word villiago appears to be a mixed corruption of two Spanish words: bellaco and villano. Shakespeare uses villago in 2 Henry VI (IV, 8, 42), possibly written in 1591.17
Notwithstanding the fact that we are supposed to be in the battlefields of France (hence the obvious Monsieur), these verbal exchanges place the author either in Spain or in Flanders. So we must face the question as to where and when did Marlowe, or indeed young Shakespeare, hear the common salutation ¿Cómo le va? as well as the familiar bellaco. It seems that the word bellaco was a favourite insult among the Spanish soldiers in Flanders, but it would also have been used everywhere in Spain.
Here is a short digression about the historical background and relevant dates: In October/November 1585, The Earl of Leicester had been appointed Commander-in-Chief of Her Majesty’s Forces in the Netherlands following a treaty signed between the Queen and Count Maurice of Nassau,18 by which the English were to provide support of troops and money to the rebels, against Spain. To guarantee this agreement, the English would have the government (and revenues) of two towns, Flushing and Brill. Sir Philip Sidney, Secretary Walsingham’s son-in-law, was appointed Governor of Flushing and Sir Thomas Cecil, eldest son of Lord Burghley, was appointed Governor of Brill.
By this treaty the Queen was actively declaring unprovoked war on Spain, allegedly in the cause of religious freedom, a freedom that was far from existing in her own country. Philip II was of course outraged, and started preparing for retaliation.
Sidney arrived in Flushing in late November, and in December Leicester travelled to The Hague. On September 22, 1586, in the Battle of Zuphten, the Spanish troops, led by Alexander Farnese, Prince of Parma, confronted the allied English and Dutch forces, led by the Earl of Leicester. Sir Philip Sidney was wounded and died twenty-six days later. The Earl of Essex, Leicester’s stepson, was also present. Within the next four years Leicester and Sir Francis Walsingham were also dead and Essex had married Sidney’s widow, Lady Frances Walsingham.
This is the (broad) historical background that brings us to 1591/2 and Marlowe’s intriguing visit to Flushing, where Robert Sidney had succeeded his brother Philip as Governor.
So, had Kit Marlowe been sent on some errand either to Flanders or to Spain, between 1586 and 1591?
One thing is clear, these pseudo-words, comparteve and villiago, must have been heard, either by him or whoever repeated them to him, as they would not have appeared in any written text.
Then, on February 26, 1592, approximately one month after Marlowe had been sent back from Flushing accused of forging English coins,19 The Lord Stranges Men gave the first performance of The Jew of Malta. It seems Kit’s command of Spanish had greatly improved by now if we are to judge by Barabas’s comments: Hermoso el placer de los dineros (“Wonderful is the pleasure of monies”)20 and: Bueno para todos mi ganado no era21 (which might be oddly translated as “My earnings were not good for everyone,” or – absurdly - “My cattle was not good for everyone”). Neither of these phrases is good Spanish, not even good sixteenth-century Spanish, particularly when you read them in the first (1633) edition of The Jew, where the abominable spelling may have been due to an unclear MS. Nevertheless, Barabas’s comments are a far cry from comodevales.
This suggests that sometime between composition of Famous Victories and 1591/2, Marlowe had been among Spaniards long enough to improve his knowledge of the language. There is also Ithamore’s preference for the Spanish wine of Rivadavia: Rivo Castiliano!,22 later claimed by Prince Hal, who quotes Ithamore when he cries: Rivo, says the drunkard! (IHIV II, 4, 109).23
While a short visit to Spain may explain the Ribadavia, had Marlowe been Arbella Stuart’s “Morley,”24“ a lengthy absence between 1586 and 1591 seems impossible. Alternatively, given the imperfect syntax of Barabas’s phrases, he may have been improving his Spanish by reading.
Sarah Gristwood,25 describing Arbella’s life at Hardwick Old Hall in the early 1590s, writes: “Here Arbella studied Hebrew and Spanish, reading Virgil and Plutarch as well as the Bible.”
And it so happens that the Bibliotheca Hispanica, by Richard Percyvall and Dr D'Oylie, was published in 1591; it contained a grammar with dictionaries in Spanish, English and Latin.26 And although that does not explain where the author of Famous Victories heard the words commodevales and villiago in 1586, it seems that by 1591 he had the necessary tools to make progress in the language.
Perhaps thanks to Bibliotheca Hispanica Marlowe was later able to read Jorge de Montemayor’s Diana Enamorada,27 the main source for The Two Gentlemen of Verona.28
Which I find reassuring; we are used to the idea that William Shakespeare obtained “the gift of tongues” directly from the Holy Ghost, but I’d rather not be tempted to imagine that Marlowe had been similarly blessed.
© Isabel Gortázar, February 2011
Isabel Gortázar is an independent scholar, specializing in Shakespeare and Marlowe studies. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Marlowe Society (UK) and a founding member of the International Marlowe Society. She divides her time between London and Bilbao, Spain.
Notes
1Though born in Herefordshire, Sir John had married in 1408 the heiress of the Cobham estates, which made him one of the most important landlords in Kent.
2Sir John was a Lollard, a follower of John Wycliffe’s doctrine.
3For the controversy on Sir John’s character, see Bullough, Geoffrey. 1966. Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare. Vol. 4, pgs. 168-171.
4Bullough. Op. cit. Vol. 4, pg 171.
5The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth: Containing the Honourable Batell of Agin-court: As it was plaide by the Queenes Majesties Players. LONDON - Printed by Thomas Creede, 1598.6Tarlton’s Jests and News Out of Purgatory. Ed. Halliwell-Phillips, pg 24.
7Pitcher, Seymour M. The Case for Shakespeare’s Authorship of The Famous Victories. Alvin Redman: London, 1962.
8On the subject of Marlowe and Comedy, see Ros Barber's "Marlowe and Comedy."
9The story of Amblett occupies part of the third and fourth books of Grammaticus's Gesta Danorum (c.1185).
10Stow, John. 1580. The Chronicles of England, from Brute until this present year of Christ. pg. 573. Ref Pitcher: Op. cit. pg. 200.
11Bullough. Op.cit. Vol. 4, pg 156.
12 I.e., Oldcastle.
13Bullough; Op. cit. Vol. 4, pg 169.
14Modern editions give this line as Ay, my Lord, even the very same. I am quoting from a facsimile of the original 1598 edition.
15John Marlowe was a cobbler.
16Marlowe’s mother’s maiden name was Katherine.
17A third word, Comparteve, used by Derrick also in scene 17 has no obvious explanation.
18Count Maurice was the second living son of the assassinated (July, 1584) William the Silent, Prince of Orange.
19Robert Sidney’s letter was dated January 26, but documents from the Continent were usually dated according to the Gregorian calendar year, so Marlowe might have left Flushing on January 16.
20Jew of Malta (II, 1, 67).
21Jew of Malta (II, 1, 39).
22Jew of Malta (IV, 446): Hey, Rivo Castiliano! A man’s a man!
23Rivo is probably a reference to a white wine of Ribadavia, in Galicia, Spain, mentioned also by Cervantes. The word riva, derives from the Latin ripa, riverside.
24“One Morley” was, on and off, tutor to Arbella Stuart from approx. 1587 until September 1592. During the time that Marlowe was in Flushing, Arbella had been staying in London.
25Gristwood, Sarah. 2003. Arbella: England’s Lost Queen. Bantam: 2003, pg.120.
26Percyvall, Richard. Bibliotheca hispanica. Containing a grammar, with a dictionarie in Spanish, English, and Latine gathered out of divers good Authors: very profitable for the studious of the Spanish toong [...] Imprinted at London by John Jackson for Richard Watkins, 1591.
27Published in Valencia in 1559. Although the author was Portuguese, the text was written in Spanish. The first English translation appeared in 1598 and there was a French translation, (1578, 1587). Ref: Boullough. Op. cit. Vol. 1, pg. 206.
28Two Gentlemen of Verona, first published in 1623, is one of the plays mentioned by Francis Meres in Palladis Tamia (1598).
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
The Well-Wishing Adventurer: A Personal Interpretation of the Title Page of Shake-speare's Sonnets, Part 2 by Isabel Gortázar
SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS
Never before Imprinted:
By G. Eld for T.T. 1609
TO.THE.ONLY.BEGETTER. OF.
THESE. INSVING. SONNETS.
Mr W.H. ALL. HAPPINESS.
AND. THAT. ETERNITIE.
PROMISED.
BY.
OVR. EVER.LIVING. POET.
WISHETH.
THE. WELL.WISHING.
ADVENTURER. IN.
SETTING.
FORTH.
T.T.
As I said in my previous chapter, Our Ever-Living Poet, I must now propose and interpretation for the second part of the Dedication: Who is the well-wishing adventurer, setting forth?
The coincidence of dates, as well as the word adventurer, makes it inevitable to consider the facts related to The Treasurer and Company of Adventurers and Planters of the City of London for the First Colony of Virginia.
This elaborate title distinguished between two types of people involved in the “Virginia Company”: Adventurers and Planters. The term Adventurers was used for the stockholders, the entrepreneurs, who rarely went to the Colony but followed the progress of their investment from London. The term Planters referred to the men who actually went to Virginia as settlers, and for this they received a share in stock. They included craftsmen, artisans and gentlemen, as well as their women and children.
As I said, the coincidence of dates in 1609 is interesting. The sonnets were entered into the Stationers' Register on May 20 (and published by Thorpe the same year).1 The Second Charter of the Virginia Company was signed by King James three days later on May 23, and the Flagship The Sea Venture2 sailed towards America ten days later, on June 2, together with eight other vessels.
A digression: The Sea Venture was wrecked in Bermuda on July 28, four days after the fleet was hit by a storm. In September 1610 a ship arrived in England bringing a detailed report written by one William Strachey, with the title: A True Reportory of the Wracke. This document, written as a private letter to an unidentified lady, was dated July 15, 1610 but was not published until 1625, so it is unlikely that anyone not connected to the Company of Adventurers (or with the lady in question) would have been able to read it. Orthodox scholars have observed the similarities between Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Strachey’s document; I entirely agree that such similarities exist, in my opinion beyond reasonable doubt of simple coincidence. Moreover, I think that another report (anonymous), published by the company in 1610, also found its way into the play. However, this is matter for another essay.
But how could all this transoceanic business have anything to do with Shake-speares Sonnets? In any case, if the well-wishing adventurer were connected with this particular “venture," he would be someone who had shares in the company, not necessarily someone who was setting forth on his way to America.
So, who WISHETH what to whom? As T.T. is the author of the Dedication, he should be the well-wishing adventurer, setting forth; also, the Dedication is unambiguously addressed to Mr WH. Therefore, leaving aside elaborate conjectures as to possible hidden meanings, and considering only the syntactic/grammatical point of view, it seems that Thomas Thorpe is the adventurer who wisheth all those nice things to Mr WH. Thus:
THE. WELL.WISHING.ADVENTURER, THOMAS THORPE,
(IN. SETTING. FORTH.)
WISHETH TO. Mr W.H.
(THE.ONLY.BEGETTER. OF.THESE. INSVING. SONNETS.)
ALL. HAPPINESS.AND. THAT. ETERNITIE.
PROMISED. BY. OVR. EVER.LIVING. POET.
Perhaps the way to understand the second part of Thorpe’s Dedication is to simply set our minds back to 1609: The Virginia Company, with its jargon of adventurers and planters, would probably have been the talk of the town for months, so that the word adventurer could have become the trendy adjective to be applied familiarly to anyone embarking (no pun intended) in a (daring) commercial enterprise.
If Pembroke’s reaction was such as may perhaps be inferred by the withdrawal of the volume,3 it is possible that Thorpe saw the publication of Shake-speares Sonnets as a daring adventure. The reference to an adventurer, meaning an investor or an entrepreneur, such as a publisher, may have been clear to Thorpe’s contemporaries if not to us.
In his letter to Blount, on the publication of Marlowe’s Lucan, in 1600, Thorpe already used a convoluted, sarcastic and somewhat cryptic language to complain about the negative behaviour of some prospective patrons. It seems that Thorpe had been expecting one of Blount’s former patrons (in the circle of your Patronage), to take an interest in Marlowe’s work (the First Book of Lucan in this case). As books in those days were dedicated to aristocrats, I think we may assume that such was Thorpe’s intention, as his letter to Blount indicates; it also suggests that his eventual decision to dedicate the volume to Blount was due to the evasive and discourteous behaviour of one or more of such patrons.
Whether Thorpe’s letter is referring to Southampton, Pembroke or Thomas Walsingham, we will probably never know. But what we might infer from its content is that by 1600, the year the Lucan was published, Marlowe’s name had become too embarrassing socially and/or too dangerous politically, so that his former friends among the nobility may have been wishing to distance themselves from it as much as possible.
Which raises the question as to whether perhaps the use of the hyphenated name for Shakespeare happened to be in some way indicative of the changing value of Marlowe-shares, or Marlowe-prospects, over the years.
If this were the case, we might wish to consider the fact that although some printers, such as Valentine Simmes and Richard Field, and some publishers, such as Edward Blount and Matthew Law, were more or less consistent in the form they spelt the name, there seems to be no repetitive pattern in the choice of any one form of spelling which might be attributed to simple inertia or automatic repetition on the part of printers and/or publishers.
A sort of pattern emerges, however, when we consider the dates.4 During 1598/1599, when the name of Shakespeare appears in the plays for the first time, the hyphenated form is used in about half of the non-anonymous Shakespeare Quartos published in those two years. The percentage drops to zero for the thirteen Quartos of plays published between 1600 and 1602; not a hyphen in sight, except for the poem, The Turtle and the Phoenix, printed by Richard Field for Edward Blount in 1601. Within those years, the disgrace and execution of the Earl of Essex would have left Marlowe lost in the continent, without a patron and without a job; so what did he do to survive, and was it something so questionable that his London friends turned their backs on him?
The percentage in the hyphenation goes back to an approximate 50% between 1603 (so after the Queen’s death) and 1607, and, in 1608 it raises to an unprecedented 100% for the three Quartos published that year, including 1Q King Lear. Then, in 1609 Shake-speares Sonnets was the only volume to appear with the hyphenated name against 1Q Pericles and 1Q Troilus and Cressida, which bore the full name, plus an anonymous 3Q Romeo and Juliet.5
Does this basic schedule for the use of the hyphenated name tell us anything? I honestly don’t know, but the figures I have just quoted may give us food for thought. (A proper analysis of a hypothetical, date-based pattern would exceed the scope of this essay.)
So let’s go back to the sonnets. By the expression the well-wishing adventurer, Thorpe might be referring both to his own adventure in publishing a book of sonnets by Marlowe (that EVER LIVING POET combined with the name Shake-speare was a give-away), and to the Adventurers in the Virginia Company, the list of whom was headed by the Earls of Southampton and Pembroke (whose initials, by the way, happen to be HW and WH, respectively).
But leaving aside all the uncanny coincidences, if the Mr WH of the seventeen sonnets was William Herbert after all, Thorpe’s good wishes were perhaps no less appropriate for being cryptically worded. And if the publisher had already been offended nine years earlier by the evasive and impolite treatment of some of Marlowe’s former patrons, that may have tempted him to write his equivocal Dedication to one of them.
So let me re-interpret:
TO THE ONLY BEGETTER OF THESE INSVING (seventeen) SONNETS: Mr WH. (Master William Herbert)
ALL HAPPINESS AND THAT ETERNITIE (immortality)
PROMISED (to Master William Herbert, in the said sonnets)
BY OVR EVER LIVING POET (Christopher Marlowe).
WISHETH THE WELL WISHING ADVENTURER (Thomas Thorpe), IN SETTING FORTH (launching this book).
© Isabel Gortázar, January 2011
Isabel Gortázar is an independent scholar, specializing in Shakespeare and Marlowe studies. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Marlowe Society (UK) and a founding member of the International Marlowe Society. She divides her time between London and Bilbao, Spain.
who wrote shakespeare's sonnets?emmerichdevere
Notes
1I cannot seriously consider the date, May 20 - the date of Marlowe's arrest - to be anything but an uncanny coincidence.
2A colleague has argued that Marlowe went to America in The Sea Venture. See: Gamble, C. Shake-speare’s Voyage to America. (Capella Archive, 2006).
3Shortly after publication, Thorpe’s volume disappeared from circulation; in 1640 one John Benson used all but eight of the sonnets as the basis for a badly compiled book called Poems: Written by Will Shake-speare. Gent., which included poems by other people. Thorpe’s Quarto texts were not properly published again until 1709. Ref: Booth, Stephen: Shake-speare’s Sonnets (Yale NB, 2000).
4I wish to thank Ros Barber for sharing with me her detailed chart, in reference to the publication of Shakespeare’s Quartos and Octavos. 5Printed by John Windet for John Smithewick. As an example of the apparent randomness in the publishing pattern: In 1622, two Quartos of Romeo and Juliet, both printed by William Standby also for John Smethwicke, appeared, one anonymous, the other with the author’s name hyphenated.Emmerich Rylance Anonymous Shakespeare
Never before Imprinted:
By G. Eld for T.T. 1609
TO.THE.ONLY.BEGETTER. OF.
THESE. INSVING. SONNETS.
Mr W.H. ALL. HAPPINESS.
AND. THAT. ETERNITIE.
PROMISED.
BY.
OVR. EVER.LIVING. POET.
WISHETH.
THE. WELL.WISHING.
ADVENTURER. IN.
SETTING.
FORTH.
T.T.
As I said in my previous chapter, Our Ever-Living Poet, I must now propose and interpretation for the second part of the Dedication: Who is the well-wishing adventurer, setting forth?
The coincidence of dates, as well as the word adventurer, makes it inevitable to consider the facts related to The Treasurer and Company of Adventurers and Planters of the City of London for the First Colony of Virginia.
This elaborate title distinguished between two types of people involved in the “Virginia Company”: Adventurers and Planters. The term Adventurers was used for the stockholders, the entrepreneurs, who rarely went to the Colony but followed the progress of their investment from London. The term Planters referred to the men who actually went to Virginia as settlers, and for this they received a share in stock. They included craftsmen, artisans and gentlemen, as well as their women and children.
As I said, the coincidence of dates in 1609 is interesting. The sonnets were entered into the Stationers' Register on May 20 (and published by Thorpe the same year).1 The Second Charter of the Virginia Company was signed by King James three days later on May 23, and the Flagship The Sea Venture2 sailed towards America ten days later, on June 2, together with eight other vessels.
A digression: The Sea Venture was wrecked in Bermuda on July 28, four days after the fleet was hit by a storm. In September 1610 a ship arrived in England bringing a detailed report written by one William Strachey, with the title: A True Reportory of the Wracke. This document, written as a private letter to an unidentified lady, was dated July 15, 1610 but was not published until 1625, so it is unlikely that anyone not connected to the Company of Adventurers (or with the lady in question) would have been able to read it. Orthodox scholars have observed the similarities between Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Strachey’s document; I entirely agree that such similarities exist, in my opinion beyond reasonable doubt of simple coincidence. Moreover, I think that another report (anonymous), published by the company in 1610, also found its way into the play. However, this is matter for another essay.
But how could all this transoceanic business have anything to do with Shake-speares Sonnets? In any case, if the well-wishing adventurer were connected with this particular “venture," he would be someone who had shares in the company, not necessarily someone who was setting forth on his way to America.
So, who WISHETH what to whom? As T.T. is the author of the Dedication, he should be the well-wishing adventurer, setting forth; also, the Dedication is unambiguously addressed to Mr WH. Therefore, leaving aside elaborate conjectures as to possible hidden meanings, and considering only the syntactic/grammatical point of view, it seems that Thomas Thorpe is the adventurer who wisheth all those nice things to Mr WH. Thus:
THE. WELL.WISHING.ADVENTURER, THOMAS THORPE,
(IN. SETTING. FORTH.)
WISHETH TO. Mr W.H.
(THE.ONLY.BEGETTER. OF.THESE. INSVING. SONNETS.)
ALL. HAPPINESS.AND. THAT. ETERNITIE.
PROMISED. BY. OVR. EVER.LIVING. POET.
Perhaps the way to understand the second part of Thorpe’s Dedication is to simply set our minds back to 1609: The Virginia Company, with its jargon of adventurers and planters, would probably have been the talk of the town for months, so that the word adventurer could have become the trendy adjective to be applied familiarly to anyone embarking (no pun intended) in a (daring) commercial enterprise.
If Pembroke’s reaction was such as may perhaps be inferred by the withdrawal of the volume,3 it is possible that Thorpe saw the publication of Shake-speares Sonnets as a daring adventure. The reference to an adventurer, meaning an investor or an entrepreneur, such as a publisher, may have been clear to Thorpe’s contemporaries if not to us.
In his letter to Blount, on the publication of Marlowe’s Lucan, in 1600, Thorpe already used a convoluted, sarcastic and somewhat cryptic language to complain about the negative behaviour of some prospective patrons. It seems that Thorpe had been expecting one of Blount’s former patrons (in the circle of your Patronage), to take an interest in Marlowe’s work (the First Book of Lucan in this case). As books in those days were dedicated to aristocrats, I think we may assume that such was Thorpe’s intention, as his letter to Blount indicates; it also suggests that his eventual decision to dedicate the volume to Blount was due to the evasive and discourteous behaviour of one or more of such patrons.
Whether Thorpe’s letter is referring to Southampton, Pembroke or Thomas Walsingham, we will probably never know. But what we might infer from its content is that by 1600, the year the Lucan was published, Marlowe’s name had become too embarrassing socially and/or too dangerous politically, so that his former friends among the nobility may have been wishing to distance themselves from it as much as possible.
Which raises the question as to whether perhaps the use of the hyphenated name for Shakespeare happened to be in some way indicative of the changing value of Marlowe-shares, or Marlowe-prospects, over the years.
If this were the case, we might wish to consider the fact that although some printers, such as Valentine Simmes and Richard Field, and some publishers, such as Edward Blount and Matthew Law, were more or less consistent in the form they spelt the name, there seems to be no repetitive pattern in the choice of any one form of spelling which might be attributed to simple inertia or automatic repetition on the part of printers and/or publishers.
A sort of pattern emerges, however, when we consider the dates.4 During 1598/1599, when the name of Shakespeare appears in the plays for the first time, the hyphenated form is used in about half of the non-anonymous Shakespeare Quartos published in those two years. The percentage drops to zero for the thirteen Quartos of plays published between 1600 and 1602; not a hyphen in sight, except for the poem, The Turtle and the Phoenix, printed by Richard Field for Edward Blount in 1601. Within those years, the disgrace and execution of the Earl of Essex would have left Marlowe lost in the continent, without a patron and without a job; so what did he do to survive, and was it something so questionable that his London friends turned their backs on him?
The percentage in the hyphenation goes back to an approximate 50% between 1603 (so after the Queen’s death) and 1607, and, in 1608 it raises to an unprecedented 100% for the three Quartos published that year, including 1Q King Lear. Then, in 1609 Shake-speares Sonnets was the only volume to appear with the hyphenated name against 1Q Pericles and 1Q Troilus and Cressida, which bore the full name, plus an anonymous 3Q Romeo and Juliet.5
Does this basic schedule for the use of the hyphenated name tell us anything? I honestly don’t know, but the figures I have just quoted may give us food for thought. (A proper analysis of a hypothetical, date-based pattern would exceed the scope of this essay.)
So let’s go back to the sonnets. By the expression the well-wishing adventurer, Thorpe might be referring both to his own adventure in publishing a book of sonnets by Marlowe (that EVER LIVING POET combined with the name Shake-speare was a give-away), and to the Adventurers in the Virginia Company, the list of whom was headed by the Earls of Southampton and Pembroke (whose initials, by the way, happen to be HW and WH, respectively).
But leaving aside all the uncanny coincidences, if the Mr WH of the seventeen sonnets was William Herbert after all, Thorpe’s good wishes were perhaps no less appropriate for being cryptically worded. And if the publisher had already been offended nine years earlier by the evasive and impolite treatment of some of Marlowe’s former patrons, that may have tempted him to write his equivocal Dedication to one of them.
So let me re-interpret:
TO THE ONLY BEGETTER OF THESE INSVING (seventeen) SONNETS: Mr WH. (Master William Herbert)
ALL HAPPINESS AND THAT ETERNITIE (immortality)
PROMISED (to Master William Herbert, in the said sonnets)
BY OVR EVER LIVING POET (Christopher Marlowe).
WISHETH THE WELL WISHING ADVENTURER (Thomas Thorpe), IN SETTING FORTH (launching this book).
© Isabel Gortázar, January 2011
Isabel Gortázar is an independent scholar, specializing in Shakespeare and Marlowe studies. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Marlowe Society (UK) and a founding member of the International Marlowe Society. She divides her time between London and Bilbao, Spain.
who wrote shakespeare's sonnets?emmerichdevere
Notes
1I cannot seriously consider the date, May 20 - the date of Marlowe's arrest - to be anything but an uncanny coincidence.
2A colleague has argued that Marlowe went to America in The Sea Venture. See: Gamble, C. Shake-speare’s Voyage to America. (Capella Archive, 2006).
3Shortly after publication, Thorpe’s volume disappeared from circulation; in 1640 one John Benson used all but eight of the sonnets as the basis for a badly compiled book called Poems: Written by Will Shake-speare. Gent., which included poems by other people. Thorpe’s Quarto texts were not properly published again until 1709. Ref: Booth, Stephen: Shake-speare’s Sonnets (Yale NB, 2000).
4I wish to thank Ros Barber for sharing with me her detailed chart, in reference to the publication of Shakespeare’s Quartos and Octavos. 5Printed by John Windet for John Smithewick. As an example of the apparent randomness in the publishing pattern: In 1622, two Quartos of Romeo and Juliet, both printed by William Standby also for John Smethwicke, appeared, one anonymous, the other with the author’s name hyphenated.Emmerich Rylance Anonymous Shakespeare
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Was Marlowe Shakespeare? Ros Barber Interviewed
Ros Barber is the first person in the world to complete a PhD in Marlovian authorship theory. Her PhD was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK). Her first degree was in Biological Sciences. A founding member of the International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society, she has published articles challenging the orthodox biography of Marlowe in academic books and journals, including the peer-reviewed Routledge journal Rethinking History. Her essay "Was Marlowe a Violent Man?," which was presented at the Marlowe Society of America conference in 2008, is featured in Christopher Marlowe the Craftsman (Ashgate 2010). A published poet, her latest poetry collection, Material (Anvil 2008), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was funded by Arts Council England.
Click here for Ros's exclusive article for MSC, "Stanley Wells and the Cobbe Portrait," one of this blog's most popular posts.
Order Ros's debut novel today!
"It’s enough to strike despair into the heart of James Shapiro, author of Contested Will, as well as the hearts of all the other Shakespeare experts who refute the so-called 'authorship controversy'." (Financial Times)
Click here for the blog's home page and recent content.THE MARLOWE PAPERS
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