Reception

Obituary (1593-1642)

Almost 50 years passed between Marlowe’s death and the closing of the theatres by the Puritans. During this period, his plays continued to be performed, his works were paraphrased by other writers, and the dramas and Hero and Leander went into print in several editions. Marlowe’s oeuvre by no means disappeared from the Elizabethan literary scene with his murder. For the person Christopher Marlowe, it looked quite different at first glimpse. Nowadays, the events in Deptford may seem unusual or mysterious, but at a time when plague epidemics, religious wars, raids and violent riots of all kinds were part of everyday life, people suddenly died violent deaths without much thought. A letter written by Philip Henslowe in August 1593 to Edward Alleyn, who was on tour, says nothing about Marlowe.¹ By 1600 he is unlikely to have been mentioned in drama at all. Considering the importance given to playwrights and their works, this is not at all surprising. Poetry and prose, on the other hand, dealt extensively with Marlowe.

Literature

The first known literary reaction to Marlowe’s death came from George Peele. On 6 July 1593 Northumberland received the Order of the Garter. On the occasion of this ceremony, Peele wrote a congratulation in poem form, which he presented to the Earl a few days before. In the prologue of The Honour of the Garter, Peele remembers some of the deceased such as Philip Sidney, Francis Walsingham, Thomas Watson and Marlowe.

"[…] To Watson, worthy many epitaphs
For his sweet poesy, for Amyntas’ tears
And joys so well set down? And after thee
Why hie they not, unhappy in thine end,
Marley, the Muses' darling for thy verse;
Fit to write passions for the soules below,
If any wretched soules in passion speak?"²

In Peele’s case, it is unclear whether he is referring to a specific work; Marlowe’s poetry is more likely. His poem The Passionate Shepherd to his Love was very popular. Subsequently, it is primarily Hero and Leander that is associated with Marlowe. Thomas Edwards, in the Envoi to Narcissus (1595), also mentions Thomas Watson in the same breath as Marlowe.³ Edward Blount prefaced the first publication of Hero and Leander with a dedication to Thomas Walsingham in 1598, suggesting that Blount and Walsingham had attended Marlowe’s funeral.

"Sir, wee thinke not our selves discharged of the dutie wee owe to our friend, when wee have brought the breathlesse bodie to the earth: for albeit the eye there taketh his ever farwell of that beloved object, yet the impression of the man, that hath beene deare unto us, living an after life in our memory, there putteth us in mind of farther obsequies due unto the deceased. And namely of the performance of whatsoever we may judge shal make to his living credit, and to the effecting of his determinations prevented by the stroke of death. By these meditations (as by an intellectuall will) I suppose my selfe executor to the unhappily deceased author of this Poem, upon whom knowing that in his life time you bestowed many kind favours, entertaining the parts of reckoning and woorth which you found in him, with good countenance and liberall affection: I cannot but see so far into the will of him dead, that whatsoever issue of his brain should chance to come abroad, that the first breath it should take might be the gentle aire of your liking: for since his selfe had ben accustomed therunto, it woul proove more agreeable and thriving to his right children, than any other foster countenance whatsoever. At this time seeing that this unfinished Tragedy happens under my hands to be imprinted; of a double duty, the one to your selfe, the other to the deceased, I present the same to your most favourable allowance, offring my utmost selfe now and ever to bee readie, At your Worships disposing:"⁴

In the same year, two sequels to Hero and Leander appeared, one by George Chapman, the other by Henry Petowe, who did not spare praise for Marlowe.⁵ The clergyman Francis Meres first wrote about Marlowe the poet and about his biography in Palladis Tamia (1598), which will be discussed later. First of all, Marlowe ranks for him among the greats of English poetry along with Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton, William Warner, William Shakespeare and George Chapman.⁶ Moreover, he sees in Marlowe and Chapman two worthy disciples of Musaeos.

"As Muſaeus, who wrote the loue of Hero and Leander, had two excellent ſchollers, Thamaras & Hercules: ſo hath he in England two excellent Poets, imitators of him In the ſame argument and ſubiect, Chriſtopher Marlow, and George Chapman."⁷

Thomas Nashe was in deep trouble in 1597. The drama The Isle of Dogs, written with Ben Jonson, had caused a scandal. He was only able to avoid arrest because he fled to Great Yarmouth. There he wrote his last known work Nashe’s Lenten Stuff, published in 1599. Like many before him, he comes to talk about Hero and Leander.

"Let me ſee, hath any bodie in Yarmouth heard of Leander and Hero, of whome diuine Muſæus ſung, and a diuiner Muſe then him, Kit Marlow?
Twoo faithfull louers they were, as euerie apprentiſe in Paules churchyard will tell you for your loue, and ſel you for your mony:"⁸

Musaeos was one of the most important early antique authors for the Elizabethans. Nashe elevates Marlowe above this literary stature. His epyllion is not only better than Musaeos', it also continues to sell well. By "Churchyard" is meant the immediate vicinity of St. Paul’s in London, where the booksellers' stalls were located.⁹ Then follows a less romantic account of the story of Leander and Hero. Nashe’s Lenten Stuff is Nashe’s obituary of Marlowe the poet. Marlowe, the friend, he had already defended against Gabriel Harvey the years before, as will be explained below.

In 1875, J. F. F. quoted in Notes and Queries¹⁰ a stanza from John Lane’s Tom Tell-Troth’s Message And His Pens Complaint of 1600, in which he thinks he recognises an account of Marlowe’s murder.

"Wrath is the cause that men in Smith-field meete,
(Which may be called smite-field properly)
Wrath is the cause that maketh euery streete
A shambles, and a bloodie butcherie,
Where roysting ruffins quarrell for their drabs,
And for sleight causes one the other stabs."¹¹

Whether this passage is connected to Marlowe at all is questionable. If so, it would more likely point to the Hog Lane incident, i.e. Thomas Watson. It should be noted that Hog Lane is in Spitalfields and not Smithfield.

In 1600, the translation of the Pharsalia was printed. Thomas Thorpe also mentioned the author in the dedication to Edward Blount.

"[…] in the memory of that pure Elementall wit Chr. Marlow; whose ghoast or Genius is to be seene walke the Churchyard in (at the least) three or foure sheets."¹²

What exactly it means that Marlowe is now only ghosting through three or four sheets is less clear. Was Thorpe suggesting how few of Marlowe’s works were now available from booksellers or did he mean the work in which Marlowe "haunts" would only be a few pages long, which again seems to point toHero and Leander.¹³

The Newe Metamorphosis, or a Feast of Fancie, or Poeticall Legendes dates from c. 1600, with only "J. M., Gent." given as the author. For a time it was attributed to John Marston, but it is probably by Gervase Markham.¹⁴ The Newe Metamorphosis is an unprinted manuscript comprising three volumes. The mention of Marlowe in this work is known from A Study of The newe Metamorphosis written by J. M., gent, 1600 by John Henry Hobart Lyon, who provides the quotation with a reference to the original manuscript (vol. I, I.39v) and the explanation that Hero is being referred to here:

"… kynde Kit Marlowe, if death not prevent-him,
shall write her story, love such art hath lent-him,"¹⁵

The first direct mention of Marlowe in a play is in the last of the Parnassus plays. These are three dramas The Pilgrimage to Parnassus, The Return from Parnassus and The Return from Parnassus, Or the Scourge of Simony, written between 1598 and 1602 and performed at Christmas by students at St John’s College, Cambridge. The author is unknown. Only the third part went into print in 1606. The plays contain numerous allusions to England’s literary scene at the end of the 16th century. In The Return from Parnassus, Or the Scourge of Simony, Ingenioso and Judicio comment on several authors, including "Kit Marlowe".

"Ing. Christopher Marlowe.
Jud. Marlowe was happy in his buskined muse,
Alas ! unhappy in his life and end ;
Pity it is that wit so ill should dwell.
Wit lent from heaven, but vices sent from hell.
Ing. Our theatre hath lost, Pluto hath got,
A tragic penman for a dreary plot."¹⁶

Francis Meres separated the biographical aspects of Marlowe from his literary achievements. Now, for the first time, the two are mixed, with – a particular novelty – Marlowe being honoured as a playwright, not a poet.

According to Thomas Dekker’s A Knights Conjuring of 1607, Marlowe spends eternity in elysium. There Geoffrey Chaucer lives in a laurel grove, where he is surrounded by other poets such as Edmund Spencer, Thomas Watson, Thomas Achelow, Thomas Kyd and the well-known actor John Bentley.¹⁷ In the papers of Robert Cecil, the eldest son of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, can be found a poem dedicated to him by Francis Verney.¹⁸ According to Marc Eccles, it was created between May 1605 and May 1608.¹⁹ This would fit with Verney’s biography, as he was in England for the last time in 1608. However, the digitalised edition of the Cecil Papers lists the poem in volume 21 (1609-1612), where it is placed among the documents dating from before 3 June 1612.

"Marlo the splendour of our worthless time
Praised his hero in a dainty rhyme,
And his Leander in a haughtier style,
The nymphs did grace him with a fawning smile."²⁰

The quotation itself is not as exciting as the question of the purpose and origin of this poem. At the time, soldiers, explorers and politicians such as Walter Raleigh also wrote poetry, yet it seems strange that Verney, before cutting all ties with his family and homeland, wrote a poem for Robert Cecil.

In Hypercritica, or a rule of judgment for writing or reading our Histories Edmund Bolton lists numerous works and authors "[…] from which we extract the most serviceable English […]", including "Marlowe his excellent fragment of Hero and Leander."²¹ Hypercritica circulated as a manuscript and was probably completed in its first form in 1621. However, it did not go to print until 1722. In this version, not only is the mention of Marlowe missing, but this entire list.²²

The first publication of Shakespeare's works in 1623 marked a turning point. Ben Jonson wrote the elegy To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author William Shakespeare for it. Marlowe is no longer the great shining light of English literature; with John Lyly and Thomas Kyd, he is now in Shakespeare’s shadow.

"That I not mixe thee ſo, my braine excuſes ; I meane with great, but diſproportion’d Muſes : For I thought my iudgement were of yeeres, I ſhould commit thee ſurely with thy peeres, And tell, how farre thou didstſt our Lily out-ſshine. Or ſorting Kid, or Marlowe’s mighty line."²³

Although Jonson is the first not to join in the admiration for Marlowe, "Marlowe’s mighty line" will become a common word when describing his style.

In 1627, Michael Drayton continued the tradition before Jonson and The Return from Parnassus in the Epistle To my most dearely-loved friend Henry Reynolds Esquire, of Poets and Poetry. Again, Marlowe is compared to Musaeos.²⁴ Finally, in 1633, Thomas Heywood summarised Marlowe’s reception in his prologue to The Jew of Malta in the 16th and 17th centuries:

"But by the best of Poets in that age
The Malta Jew had being, and was made;
And He, then, by the best of Actors play’d:
In Hero and Leander, one did gaine
A lasting memorie; in Tamberlaine,
This Jew, with others many: th' other wan
The Attribute of peerelesse, […]"²⁵

Marlowe, the poet achieved immortality with Hero and Leander, but his dramatic characters achieved fame because Edward Alleyn had portrayed them.

Heywood is no longer quite so enthusiastic in 1635 in The Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels.

"Marlo, renown’d for his rare art and wit,
Could ne’re attaine beyond the name of Kit;
Although his Hero and Leander did
Merit addition rather."²⁶

Charles Butler in 1636 takes a completely contrary view in an area that one would not necessarily associate with Marlowe. Butler was a vicar and teacher after studying at Oxford. His special interest was apiculture. Otherwise he devoted himself to philology and music, on which he wrote several treatises, including The Principles of Musik, in Singing and Setting: with the two-fold Use thereof, [Ecclesiasticall and Civil.]. Towards the end of the writing, he repeats the usual Puritan arguments against secular musicians, primarily composers of dances and ballads, blaming the poets for the general evil as much as the singers who spread their words. But there is hope, because Butler recognises a change in mood.

"But (ŧanks bee to God) đeſ‘ impur‘ Buffons (weiđer it bee đat đey ar not nou permitted, as formerly, to defil‘ đe Preſ; or đat đemſelves ar, at laſt, aſamed of đeir ſtal‘ ribaldri; or đat đe people, waxing mor‘ modeſt, will no‘ longer endur‘ it;) begin, mee ŧhinks, to wear away; and đer‘ ariſeŧ in đeir steed a better generation: our Marlows ar turned into Quarleſes. Haply đey hav‘ found mor‘, & mor‘ ſolid mirŧ and deligt in honest conceipts, and witti Urbaniti; đan in all wanton and immodeſt jeſts, or any kind‘ of obſcen‘ ſcurriliti."²⁷

Nan Cooke Carpenter thinks Butler chose Marlowe, citing Beard, as a prime example of the debauched poet and playwright. Marlowe’s reputation had already been ruined to such an extent that his works were successively no longer appreciated either. Instead of Hero and Leander, people read the religiously inspiring verses of Francis Quarles.²⁸ Another possibility would be a critique of the many musical versions of The Passionate Shepherd to his Love. The poem was a popular song lyric that was sung in various versions, which may have been a thorn in Butler’s Puritan side.

William Shakespeare

In 1597 William Shakespeare quoted directly from Marlowe for the first time. Sir Hugh Evans in The Merry Wives of Windsor (III,1) sings a song whose lyrics consist of excerpts from The Passionate Shepherd to his Love. In 1599/1600, Phoebe uses what is probably the most famous quote from Hero and Leander in As You Like It.

"Dead shepherd, now I find thy saw of might:
Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?"²⁹

But in As You Like It there are two other passages that could point to Marlowe. In Act Three, the Fool Touchstone says:

"When a man’s verses cannot be understood, nor a man’s good wit seconded with the forward child understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room. Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical."³⁰

Oliver William Foster Lodge noted in 1925,³¹ this quote is reminiscent not only of Barabas: "Infinite riches in a little roome. "³² but also of the inquest report into Marlowe’s murder, which mentions the dispute over the bill.

"Christoferus Morley locuti fuerunt & publicaverunt unus eorum alteri diversa maliciosa verba pro eo quod concordare & agreare non potuerunt circa solucionem denariorum summe vocatum le recknynge ibidem"³³

Now, "reckoning" is not a term specifically constructed for the depiction of Marlowe’s death. The word had been in use in England since the 14th century and Shakespeare used it frequently.³⁴

Later, Hero and Leander is again a theme. Rosalind looks at the story of the two lovers very soberly:

"Leander, he would have liv’d many a fair year, though Hero had turn’d nun, if it had not been for a hot midsummer night; for, good youth, des went but forth to wash him in the Hellespont, and, being taken with the cramp, was drown’d; and the foolish chroniclers of that age found it was Hero of Sestos. But these are all lies: des have des from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love."³⁵

Was Shakespeare suggesting that the enthusiasm for Marlowe’s epyllion was greatly exaggerated, or was this text, in conjunction with Touchstone’s, intended to contradict the harsh accounts of Marlowe’s death in Beard and Meres,³⁶ or do the last two quotations have nothing to do with Marlowe at all?³⁷

Biography

The Harvey-Nashe Controversy

Between 1592 and 1596, Thomas Nashe and Gabriel Harvey engaged in a literary argument that spanned several works. Marlowe was only indirectly involved in this. Nashe gave us the most personal statements about Marlowe ever. Harvey, on the other hand, paints a rather negative picture of Marlowe, which in outline anticipates the reception by the Puritans. Since this dispute was as complex as it was detailed, it will be examined in detail in a separate post.

The Puritans Have The Last Word

By the end of the 16th century, the Puritans were already on the advance. Thomas Beard, a clergyman and later headmaster to Oliver Cromwell, published The Theatre of God’s Judgements in 1597, a collection of stories showing how divine providence strikes sinners. This is the first public examination of Marlowe’s biography and Beard can claim to have founded the Marlowe mythography.

"Not inferior to any of the former in Atheisme and impietie, and equall to all in maner of punishment, was one of our own nation, of fresh and late memorie, called Marlin, by profession a scholler, brought up from his youth in the Universitie of Cambridge, but by practice a Play-maker, and a Poet of scurrilitie, who by giving too large a swinge to his owne wit, and suffering his lust to have the full reines, fell (not without just desert) to that outrage and extremitie, that he denied God and his sonne Christ, and not only in word blasphemed the Trinitie, but also (as it is credibly reported) wrote bookes against it, affirming our Savior to be but a deceiver, and Moses to be but a conjurer and seducer of the people, and the holy Bible to be but vaine and idle stories, and all religion but a device of policie. But see what a hooke the Lord put in the nostrils of the barking dogge: it so fell out, that as he purposed to stab one whom he ought a grudge unto with his dagger, the other partie perceiving, so avoided the stroke, that withall catching hold of his wrest, he stabbed his owne dagger into his owne head, in such sort, that notwithstanding all the means of surgery that could be wrought, he shortly after died thereof: the manner of his death being so terrible (for he even cursed and blasphemed to his last gaspe, and together with his breath an oath flew out of his mouth) that it was not only a manifest signe of God’s Judgement, but also an horrible and fearfull terror to all that beheld him."³⁸

While Beard has no words of praise for Marlowe’s literary work, this is the first time he is described as a playwright and poet. Beard’s description of Marlowe’s death is quite imaginative, which is understandable, after all the inquest report on the events in Deptford was not a publicly available document. The same was true of the Baines note and the letters of Thomas Kyd. Nevertheless, Beards makes the same accusations in almost the same words. Like the others, he made use of the collection of atheist stereotypes and clichés that were popular at the time when one wanted to damage someone’s reputation. Since theatre was in itself a nuisance for the Puritans, playwrights could only be wanton fellows. Beard was not alone in this opinion. His conception of Marlowe must have been in keeping with the spirit of the times, for the mythography was uncritically adopted and enriched by Francis Meres the following year. A trend that continues into the present.

In literary terms, as already explained, Meres ranked Marlowe among England’s most important poets. Biographically, he not only drew two unusual comparisons, he also added several facets to Beard.

"As Iodelle, a French tragical poet being an Epicure, and an Atheiſt, made a pitifull end: ſo our tragicall poet Marlow for his Epicuriſme and Atheiſme had a tragicall death; you may read of this Marlow more at large in the Theatre of Gods iudgements, in the 25. chapter entreating of Epicures and Atheiſts."³⁹

It was here that Marlowe was first associated with Epicureanism. The French writer Étienne Jodelle wrote, among other things, a drama about Dido. That seems to be the only thing in common with Marlowe. Apart from a brief mention in the early 19th century that devout Catholics would have called Jodelle an atheist, Meres' details about Jodelle are not traceable. Thus, he died impoverished of natural causes – which could be called "tragic", but was not unusual at the time. To this day I have not found an explanation as to why Meres associated Marlowe with Jodelle and where he got the latter’s adventurous description of his life. This is exactly the case with the following quotation.

As the poet Lycophron was ſhot to deathby a certain riual of his: ſo Chriſtopher Mar|low was ſtabd to death by a bawdy Ser|uingman, a riuall of his in his lewde loue."⁴⁰

Virtually nothing is known about Lycophron, a writer of tragedies that have not survived, certainly no resemblance to Marlowe’s biography. Interestingly, Meres is almost always quoted as soon as the reception of Marlowe and his atheism are discussed, but never are these strange references to Jodelle and Lycophron looked at in more detail. Finally, Meres adds another curiosity to Beard’s fantastical account of Marlowe’s death. Marlowe’s murderer was a servant who was his rival in love matters.

After these fabulous accounts, William Vaughan surprises us in 1600 in The Golden Grove with astonishing realism by the standards of the time.

"Not inferiorer to these was one Christopher Marlow by profession a play-maker, who, as it is reported, about 7. yeeres a-goe wrote a booke against the Trinitie: but see the effects of Gods iustice; it so hapned, that at Detford, a litle village about three miles distant from London, as he meant to stab with his ponyard one named In∣gram, that had inuited him thither to a feast, and was then playing at tables, he quickly perceyuing it, so auoyded the thrust, that withall drawing out his dag∣ger for his defence, hee stabd this Mar∣low into the eye, in such sort, that his braines comming out at the daggers point, hee shortlie after dyed. Thus did God, the true executioner of di∣uine iustice, worke the ende of impi∣ous Atheists."⁴¹

Vaughan was unusually well informed, which probably had to do with his family connections. His stepmother’s half-brother had married Dorothy Devereux, Essex’s sister and second wife of Henry Percy.⁴²

Edmond Rudierde published an abridged version of Beard’s The Theatre of God’s Judgements in 1618 under the title The Thunderbolt of God’s Wrath against Hard-hearted and Stiffe-necked Sinners. Marlowe’s end is even more drastically portrayed than Beard’s and should serve as a warning to all poets, playwrights and actors. The only relevant information is the mention of Marlowe’s studies at Cambridge.⁴³

The English poet Henry Oxinden (1609-1670) describes how dangerous reading Marlowe could be. In his commonplace books, he noted several conversations with his neighbour Simon Aldrich († 1655), who had begun studying at Cambridge in 1593 and then pursued an ecclesiastical career. The first book is in the manuscript collection of the British Library⁴⁴ , a second, which may have been written around 1650, ten years after the first, and includes copies from the older book, is in the possession of the Folger Library.⁴⁵ Oxinden’s library contained several of Marlowe’s works. He annotated them and copied passages from them. For 20 February 1640 Oxinden noted:

"He said that Marlo who wrot Hero & Leander was an Atheist & had writ a booke against the Scripture; how that it was all one man’s making, & would have printed it but could not be suffered. He was the son of a shomaker in Cant. He said hee was an excellent scholler & made excellent verses in Lattin & died aged about 30; he was stabd in the head with a dagger & dyed swearing."⁴⁶

The discovery of the epitaph for Sir Roger Manwood and its attribution are partly due to Oxinden’s notes, but that Marlowe’s Latin verses received special attention is new. That would apply much more to Thomas Watson. Aldrich’s remark about Marlowe’s atheism would not have attracted much attention, especially because he said shortly afterwards that Walter Raleigh would also have been an atheist, at least in his younger years, had Oxinden not recorded another of Aldrich’s narratives on 22 February.

"M^r Ald sayd that m^r Fineux of Douer was an Atheist & that hee would go out at midnight into a wood, & fall down uppon his knees & pray heartily that the Deuil would come, that he might see him (for hee did not belieue that there was a Deuil) M^r Ald: sayd that hee was a verie good scholler, but would neuer haue aboue one booke at a time, & when hee was perfect in it, hee would sell it away & buy another: he learnd all Marlo by heart & diuer other bookes: Marlo made him an Atheist. This Fineaux was faine to make a speech uppon The foole hath said in his heart there is no God, to get his degree. Fineaux would say Galen sayd that man was of more excellent composition then a beast & thereby could speake; but affirmeth that his soule dyed with his body, & as we remember nothing before wee were borne, so we shall remember nothing after wee are dead."⁴⁷

The identity of Mr Fineux is mysterious. Mark Eccles was able to identify two candidates: Thomas Fineux (1574-1627) came to Corpus Christ College, Cambridge, in 1587. His younger brother John matriculated at Trinity College around 1593.⁴⁸ Over the years Thomas⁴⁹ prevailed over John.⁵⁰ Aldrich did not say that Fineux had known Marlowe personally, he had only read a great deal of him. According to this account, Fineux must not have been a student at Cambridge either, although that is an obvious assumption. In any case, Thomas Fineux would have had little printed reading material, since none of Marlowe’s works were available in book form before 1590. There would have been more choice for John Fineux. Taking into account his unusual space and financial management regarding books, perhaps he had not actually read everything by Marlowe. Doctor Faustus would be the obvious choice, but it was probably not available to him during his time at Cambridge, as the first surviving print is from 1604.

Conclusion

Apart from Thomas Nashe, we do not know who among the authors represented here had known Marlowe during his lifetime. The use of the nickname "Kit" does not necessarily indicate a personal acquaintance. Nashe used it frequently, but so did Markham, Jonson, Heywood and the anonymous author of The Return from Parnassus. The abundance of references from almost five decades nevertheless contain certain commonalities.

1. Marlowe has been dead since 6 July 1593 at the latest. Marlowe’s death is clearly referred to a total of 14 times (ten times among the literati, four times among the Puritans).
2. Marlowe’s death was tragic. The definition ranges from personal loss, to literary loss, to a terrifying example in religious terms.
3. Marlowe had a certain reputation in matters of faith. Meres, Oxinden/Aldrich and the author of The Return from Parnassus separated the rumours about Marlowe from his achievement as a writer. Harvey and the Puritans did not. What exactly this reputation looked like and what was true about it remains speculative. Marlowe seems to have been considered unorthodox, in the worst Elizabethan sense atheistic.
4. Marlowe’s private life was not particularly noteworthy. Although Meres reports that Marlowe and his murderer fought over the same mistress, but Meres pretty sure meant a woman, because otherwise he would have mentioned it. In fact, it seems unlikely that the Puritans would not have been fiery about it if they had ever heard of what they saw as an unnatural relationship.
5. Marlowe had an outstanding reputation as a poet. Works for the stage played almost no role in the years after his death. If Marlowe’s poetry is not praised in general, it is in the context of Hero and Leander.

Christopher Marlowe was clearly not a marginal figure in the cultural life of the late 16th century, standing in the shadow of subsequent greats. Even for people who had little contact with his circles and his work, he was no stranger. Marlowe clearly left his mark – in literature, in life and in the perception of his contemporaries.

In 1642, the Puritans had won and Parliament ordered the closing of the theatres. They were not reopened until 1660 by Charles II. For the reception of Christopher Marlowe and his work, these 18 years mark a caesura, if not a fracture, which should be overcome very slowly.

From The Restoration To Romanticism

During the Restoration, only one of Marlowe’s dramas returned to English stages. On 26 May 1662, Samuel Pepy attended a performance of Doctor Faustus with his wife at the Red Bull. It was the version that was printed in 1663. At the performance there were more new scenes with hints of the content of The Jew of Malta. Pepy was not very impressed by the theatre evening. When William Mountford’s The Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, with the Humours of Harlequin and Scaramouch was performed at Dorset Garden in 1686, it marked the end of what little of Marlowe was left in the theatre. By 1671, all of Marlowe’s plays appeared only in the catalogues of booksellers.⁵¹ Nevertheless, Marlowe too was one of the Elizabethan-Jacobean authors to whom the new generation of playwrights referred.⁵² He was by no means forgotten. Edward Phillips, a nephew of John Milton, did attribute the authorship of Tamburlaine 1 and Tamburlaine 2 to the poet Thomas Newton in 1675 in Theatrum poetarum, but he dedicated an extensive entry to Marlowe himself.

"Christopher Marlow, a kind of a second Shakesphear (whose contemporary he was) not only because like him he rose from an Actor to be a maker of Plays, though inferiour both in Fame and Merit; but also because in his begun Poem of Hero and Leander, he seems to have a resemblance of that clean and unsophisticated Wit, which is natural to that incomparable Poet;"⁵³

Marlowe had now finally been placed in Shakepeare’s shadow. Hero and Leander was still considered the outstanding masterpiece. The mention of Thomas Nashe as coauthor of Dido, Queen of Carthage deserves special attention. Mythographically new was the claim that Marlowe was an actor. It will be repeated continuously over the next decades. Phillips kept a very low profile regarding Marlowe’s murder. Anthony Wood took a completely different approach in his Athenae Oxonienses. It actually contains biographies of all the authors and bishops who studied at Oxford. In his biography of Thomas Newton, Wood corrected Edward Phillip’s statement concerning the authorship of the Tamburlaine plays and went into a detailed excursus on the life and work of Marlowe, who had studied at Cambridge. Wood referred to Thomas Beard’s Theatre of Gods Judgments, which he also cited as a source, and Francis Meres Palladis Tamia. He also adopted Francis Kirkman’s claim on the title page of his printing of Lust’s Dominion, which names Marlowe as the author of the drama.⁵⁴ Short and accurate, except for the mention of the authorship of Lust’s Dominion, is the information on Marlowe in Gerard Langbaine’s An account of the English dramatick poets.⁵⁵ John Aubrey did not dedicate a separate entry to Marlowe in Brief Lives but nevertheless knew something about his passing, confusing Marlowe with the actor Gabriel Spenser, for Aubrey wrote about Ben Jonson:

"He killed Mr. … Marlow, the poet, on Bunhill, comeing from the Gren-Curtain play-house."⁵⁶

Ben Jonson killed Gabriel Spenser in 1598 in a duel allegedly initiated by Spenser in Hoxton Fields, Shoreditch. John Aubrey died in 1697. The manuscript of Brief Lives was published in part in 1813, and almost in full in 1898. A critical and complete edition was only published in 2015.

Towards the end of the 17th century until the first decades of the 18th century, there was little interest in Marlowe. Biographically, the accounts of the Puritans from before the Restoration were embellished a little. The canon of works was largely in agreement.

The playwright and bookseller Robert Dodsley had managed to acquire close to seven hundred early editions of plays, which he made available to the public for the first time in several volumes in 1744. This was the first compilation of early dramas in English history.⁵⁷ Included was Edward II, and in the second edition of 1780 the new editor Isaac Reed also added The Jew of Malta.⁵⁸

In 1748, Bishop Thomas Tanner included a short biography of Marlowe in hisBibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica. In it, he reported for the first time of a Dido edition that was supposed to contain an elegy by Thomas Nashe on the dead Marlowe.⁵⁹ To date, this elegy has not been found.

With John Berkenhout, a bad habit began that would cause Marlowe scholars many more headaches: The forgery. He printed a letter from George Peele to Marlowe in his Biographia Literaria in 1777. This forgery was so clumsy that it was recognised as such immediately after publication. That would not always be so easy in the future.

Things got exciting at the beginning of the 1780s. Thomas Warton first criticised the Puritans for their narrow view of Marlowe in The History of English Poetry in 1781.

"His [Marlowes] scepticism, whatever it might be, was construed by the prejudiced and peevish puritans into absolute atheism : and they took pains to represent the unfortunate catastrophe of his untimely death, as an immediate judgment from heaven upon his execrable impiety."⁶⁰

Shortly afterwards, Joseph Ritson replied:

"I have a great respect for Marlow as an ingenious poet, but I have a much higher regard for truth and justice; and will therefor take the liberty to produce the strongest (if not the whole) proof that now remains of his diabolical tenets, and debauched morals; and if you, Mr. Warton, still choose to think him innocent of the charge, I shall be very glad to see him thoroughly white-washed in your next edition."⁶¹

And the first publication of the Baines note followed. From now on, Marlowe was rejected not for his work but for his supposed lifestyle. A person who had led such a life as was assumed of him was not at all capable of creating valuable artistic works. Literary interested people were partly of a different opinion. Men such as Isaac Reed, Edmond Malone and David Garrick included Marlowe’s plays in their private libraries, but did not bother with a wide acceptance of the author.⁶²

Thomas Dermody

The Pursuit of Patronage by the Irishman Thomas Dermody occupies an absolutely unique position in the reception of Marlowe at the time. The epistle of 1800 is for long sections the lament of a poet who lacks a real patron. Famous poets and painters such as Chatterton, Caravaggio, Milton, Dante and others are used to show where it ends when the arts are not appreciated and promoted.

"Has not, while wilder’d in the bow’ry grove,
Oft sigh’d: "Come, live with me, and be my love"?
Yet, oh! be love transform’d to deadly hate,
As freezes memory at Marlow’s fate:
Disastrous bard! by too much passion warm’d,
His fervid breast a menial beauty charm’d;
Nor, vers’d in arts deceitful woman knows,
Saw he the prospect of his future woes.
Vain the soft plaint, that sordid breast to fire
With warmth refin’d or elegant desire;
Vain his melodious magic, to impart
Affections foreign to th' unfeeling heart;
In guardless ecstacy’s delicious glow,
He sinks beneath a vassal murd’rers blow.
O’er his dread fate my kindred spirit stands
Smit with commutual wound, and Pity wrings her hands.
Ah! had some genial ray of bounty shone
On talents that but lack’d its aid alone,
Had some soft pennon of protection spread
Its eider plumage o’er that hapless head,
What emanations of the beauteous mind
Had deck’d thy works, the marvel of mankind:
Snatch’d from low-thoughted Care thy stooping soul,
And plac’d thee radiant on Fame’s deathless roll;
Where still anneal’d, thy own unequall’d strain
Shall crown’d by sensibility remain!"⁶³

What is extraordinary is not only the unqualified admiration Dermody expresses, but above all his identification with Marlowe for the first time. In Dermody, Marlowe is not a morally depraved atheist, he is a passionate poet with soft tones and magical melody whose verses are remembered in idyllic seclusion. The reader cannot help but wonder: is this the author of Tamburlaine, The Jew of Malta or The Massacre at Paris? Can one find in Marlowe’s plays words crowned with sentimentality that open up unknown sensations to a callous heart? To sigh verses of a Scytian conqueror, a vengeful Jew or a power-mad nobleman to one’s beloved in a grove overgrown with plants would probably have ended in the same failure two hundred years ago as it does today. It is therefore not the playwright but the poet who arouses Dermody’s enthusiasm. In The Passionate Shepherd to his Love, the first line of which is also quoted directly, Dermody sees things that one hardly discovers in the dramas. Consequently, he finds himself not in the playwright who sends Tamburlaine out to conquer the world, has Barabas poison his own daughter, makes Faustus despair of God and Mortimer the desire for power, but in the poet who watches the shepherds in a tranquil May landscape to the song of the birds with his mistress. Another uniqueness, because if one spoke of Marlowe’s work at the time, it was almost exclusively his dramatic oeuvre that was meant.

Romanticism

Romanticism was the time of admiration for Shakespeare, little of which initially rubbed off on Marlowe. In 1808 Charles Lamb published the Specimens of English Dramtatic Poets. They contained excerpts from over seventy plays, including Tamburlaine 1, Tamburlaine 2, Edward II, The Jew of Malta and Doctor Faustus. All the playwrights Lamb cited he considered in the shadow of Shakespeare, whose name became a advertising medium for other writers of the Elizabethan-Jacobean period. The passages in Lamb’s book were not encouraged to look at Marlowe’s biography differently. On the contrary, they reinforced the impression that the late 18th century had had of him. While Lamb knew about Marlowe’s "scandalous" life, he let slip that the characters Marlowe created did not necessarily show his own self. By comparing it to Milton’s Satan and Richardson’s Robert Lovelace, which had been portrayed so demonically only to trigger a moral rethink in the audience, he made a sympathetic consideration of Marlowe’s works possible, despite his way of life.⁶⁴ Moreover, when the Specimens of English Dramtatic Poets appeared, the distance from anything that gave the appearance of neoclassicism grew. An unorthodox artist was not only desirable, it was even demanded over time. The era of Percy B. Shelley and Lord Byron was more able to accept the Marlowe that the century before had rejected. Lamb alone would not have furthered Marlowe’s popularity, but another work also appeared in 1808: Goethe’s Faust. Eine Tragödie. The fact that even before Goethe’s masterpiece, the same subject had been dealt with in an English play, unknown to most English people, did not pass them by without leaving a trace. It took some time, but in 1816 Charles Wentworth Dilke had Doctor Faustus printed again for the first time since 1663 as part of the Old English Plays, and it was read. The following year Byron was forced to refute the accusation that he had used Marlowe’s play for Manfred. It was thanks to William Oxberry and his inexpensive 22 volumes of The New English Drama that, from 1821, all of Marlowe’s dramas were available to an audience outside of wealthy literary critics and successful book collectors. Nevertheless, the general interest was in William Shakespeare. The engagement with Marlowe remained a fringe event, prompting one man to commit an unusual act.

In August 1819, an anonymous review of Nathan Drake’s Shakespeare and his Times appeared in the Monthly Review. The author proposed a hitherto unknown perspective on the biography of Shakespeare and Marlowe.

"There is however something very enigmatic about this Christopher Marlowe. Of his birth-place and early years nothing is known: but just at the time when Shakspeare left Stratford, he appears on the London boards as a distinguished actor, and an admirable play-wright […] in 1592, an improbable story was circulated, that Marlowe had been assassinated with his own sword, which attracted no judicial inquiry; and Shakspeare became immediately the same distinguished actor, the same admirable play-wright, that Marlowe had been just before. Can Christopher Marlowe have been a nome de guerre assumed for a time by Shakspeare?"⁶⁵

The same author referred to his theory again over a year later.⁶⁶ In the meantime, the identity of the author is known. This is the man who in 1820 defended the existence of Christopher Marlowe in a letter to the editor of The Monthly Magazine, the rival journal of the Monthly Review.⁶⁷ William Taylor was prone to such jokes. He published opposing views in competing papers in order to initiate a public debate. In this case, he wanted to draw attention to Marlowe, of whose biography little was known and who was in danger of being forgotten in the general Shakespearean enthusiasm. Taylor, himself not a great admirer of Shakespeare, was keen on a more comprehensive study of English Renaissance literature. Maybe his hoax actually did some good. Some time later, James Broughton discovered Marlowe’s entry in the burial register in Deptford.⁶⁸ Taylor referred to this discovery in 1824 and revoked his "theory" of Marlowe’s non-existence.⁶⁹

As in literary criticism, there was also a turn in the audience away from the glorification of classical virtues towards enthusiasm for outsiders and villains. Readers empathised with the creature from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and theatres enticed audiences with Richard Cumberland’s The Jew or Shakespeare’s Othello and Richard III. This trend had its roots in a conscious rebellion against conservative politics and clerical narrow-mindedness that refused to acknowledge individualism in both art and politics.⁷⁰ Whether it was this mood or other reasons that led to a performance of The Jew of Malta can no longer be said. In any case, the play was given at Dury Lane on 24 April 1818 with Edmund Kean in the title role. Marlowe thus returned to the stage – albeit for only twelve performances and in a rather disfigured form. Nevertheless, with this performance and Oxberry’s single editions, Marlowe was introduced to more people than it had been since Elizabethan-Jacobean theatre.

In his 1820 Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, William Hazlitt paid tribute to the early English playwrights in a hitherto uncharacteristic manner. English theatre of the late 16th century was generally regarded as formally incorrect and philosophically placative, with only Shakespeare admitted as a laudable exception. Hazlitt disagreed and also paid tribute to Shakespeare’s contemporaries. He considered Doctor Faustus to be Marlowe’s masterpiece, but overall was full of praise for the playwright:

"There is a lust of power in his writings, a hunger and thirst after unrighteousness, a glow of the imagination, unhallowed by any thing but its own energies. His thoughts burn within him like a furnace with bickering flames : or throwing out black smoke and mists, that hide the dawn of genius, or like a poisonous mineral, corrode the heart."⁷¹

The first complete edition of Marlowe’s œuvre probably appeared in 1826. (The three-volume edition still contained Lust’s Dominion, but lacked the epitaph for Sir Roger Manwood and the dedication in Amyntae Gaudia). The editor George Robinson went a step further than Hazlitt in not attaching much importance to the accusations that had once been made against Marlowe:

"He has been equally the subject of high panegyric, and the sport of scurrilous abuse, esteemed for his verse and hated for his life – the favorite of the learned and witty, and the horror of the precise and religious. The praise applies to his intellectual and the census to his moral character; what the latter really was may be difficult at this time to determine with accuracy, although the accusations are not of a nature to be entitled to any great weight."⁷²

And Robinson thought nothing of the Baines note at all: "Its extravagance and absurdity however render it totally unworthy of credit;"⁷³

Open-minded literary critics, changes in the London theatre world and economic reorientations among publishers were instrumental in making Marlowe respectable towards the end of the Romantic period.

19th Century

In the Victorian era, Marlowe underwent a radical transformation from the reviled outsider on the fringes of literary history to its much-vaunted hero. No other author of the Renaissance was to experience anything similar in 19th century England.⁷⁴

Once the study of Marlowe’s work was no longer unseemly, some set about exploring his biography in more detail. For centuries, literary critics and encyclopaedias had spread rumours and copied the mistakes of their predecessors wholesale. In the meantime, the fantastical descriptions of the playwright’s death in particular aroused doubts. This is where James Broughton pioneered. He discovered Marlowe’s entry in the Deptford death register in 1820, explained why it was unlikely that Marlowe had been an actor and seriously questioned the credibility of the Puritans' accounts.⁷⁵ Then came John Payne Collier, a zealous researcher, but unfortunately also an equally zealous forger, who ruthlessly manipulated everything that could be of use to his theories and, if necessary, did not shy away from his own fabrications, which he passed off as authentic documents. This practice casts a shadow over almost all of his discoveries, including those that are unlikely to be faked like the Massacre leaf. He was considered England’s most active and respected literary historian until the late 1850s, when his manipulations became known and his work was publicly challenged. It should not go unmentioned that he had indeed set new standards for English theatre history. He was one of the first to view Shakespeare in the context of his contemporaries such as Robert Greene, John Lyly, George Peele, Thomas Nashe and, above all, Marlowe. In addition, Collier drew attention to their literary merits outside the theatre. Thanks to him, theatre history, which had not begun with Shakespeare as an exception, began to be viewed in a linear way. His forgeries, however, were not recognised for years and continued to be propagated long after their discovery. Collier’s former companion and later opponent Alexander Dyce, who in the mid-19th century presented a three-volume edition of Marlowe’s works for which Collier had provided him with material, was partly responsible for this through no fault of his own. After all, Dyce discovered the entry of Marlowe’s baptism in the church register of Canterbury. And with the 1850 edition of his works, he marked the point from which the educated, respectable class of English society could view Marlowe without taking offence at his person.⁷⁶

While ever new results from Collier’s craft room excited the scientific community, a group around Leigh Hunt sought their own way to Marlowe. In 1837, Richard Henry Horne’s one-act play The Death of Marlowe was published, making a romantic out of the title character and deliberately bucking the trend to recast Marlowe in such a way that he was allowed to become accessible to the masses. In his dedication to Leigh Hunt, Horne clearly took a stand. His drama would by no means need the esteem "[…] of the 'Useful Knowledge' class: neither does it appear to claim the practice notice of a Whig Government, […]".⁷⁷ Leigh Hunt himself considered Marlowe one of the great poets of the English Renaissance.

"If ever there was a born poet, Marlowe was one. He perceived things in their spiritual as well material relations, and impressed them with a corresponding felicity. Rather, he stuck them as with something sweet and glowing that rushes by; – perfumes from a censer, – glances of a love and beauty. And he could accumulate images into as deliberate and lofty grandeur."⁷⁸

Hunt is not interested in who Marlowe was, but what he was: a true poet committed only to his work. Not what, how he said it came to the fore to the point that Hunt forgot about the atrocities, brutality and horror that take place in Marlowe’s dramas. For him, Marlowe represented a romantic rebel, whom he contrasted with an age that replaced man with the machine and paid homage to utilitarianism. His Marlowe, reminiscent of the fictional figure of Horne, instead of being adapted to the present, was to oppose it. Hunt fell on deaf ears among the Victorians. They kept trying to make Marlowe acceptable. Until then, the study of the Renaissance had been a pastime of the educated, upper class. In the meantime, however, the opinion prevailed that the occupation with one’s own language and literature should also be open to the middle class and working class to a certain extent, because certain social developments were expected from it. Of course, not everything that was available or known about in English was suitable for general reading, so pre-selections were made. This mix of biographical miscellany coupled with excerpts from the works did not serve to increase the knowledge of those who already knew who Marlowe was, but offered just enough information to signal a certain knowledge without having actually read anything by him. In the abundance of reference works, handbooks and guides that now appeared, what was revealed of Marlowe was what each editor thought opportune, resulting a different image of Marlowe in each book. The only consensus was that Marlowe had to be morally adapted. For this reason, Doctor Faustus received a great deal of attention, as the play could be presented as a lesson in Christian morality in keeping with the spirit of the time.⁷⁹

Accompanying the establishment of their own literary history, the Victorians attempted to develop literary theories. This was initially linked to a growing enthusiasm among the English for German writers and philosophers. It had not always been like that. German idealism in particular had not fallen on fertile ground with the practice-oriented English for a long time.⁸⁰ Now it became the basis of a theory that first found application to the English Romantics. Their political and religious views were now negligible compared to their artistic aspirations. Atheism and excess were seen as symptoms of the poet’s individual artistic struggle. The search for transcendental values became a highly moral endeavour, regardless of how immoral a particular artist had been. The excesses of Byron or the atheism of Shelley were seen as a kind of necessity in their agonistic pursuit of beauty, truth and transcendence. As long as even the most perverse behaviour served this goal, it was acceptable as part of an essentially moral concept.⁸¹ Subsequently, Elizabethan-Jacobean literature experienced the same kind of consideration. Their representatives became forerunners of Romanticism, none of whom seemed to correspond to the behaviour of the English Romantics as much as Marlowe. He suddenly achieved a new status, thanks in large part to the literary historian Edward Dowden. Heavily influenced by the German idealists Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, he saw in the literary works of the Elizabethan age the foundation for an all-encompassing cultural unity. This theory is based on philosophical considerations, not on scientific facts – this should never be ignored in the following. In 1888 Dowden published in Transcripts and Studies an essay that had already appeared in the Fortnightly Review in January 1870. In it, he noted:

"Shakspere and Marlowe, the two foremost men of the Elizabethan artistic movement, remind us in not a few particulars of the two foremost men of the artistic movement in Germany eighty or ninety years ago, Goethe and Schiller."⁸²

He was not concerned with stylistic or thematic similarities, but with the positions of Goethe and Schiller within a literary system, as Dowden specifies: "[…] Marlowe be the Schiller – the subjective poet, the idealist, as Shakspere is the Goethe, objective and naturalistic, of Elizabethan art […]"⁸³ and came to the conclusion: "But Marlowe like Schiller, seems to have lived in and for his art. His poetry was no episode in his life, but his very life itself."⁸⁴

Before we turn to Dowden’s insight and its consequences, let’s take a look at a counter-model that was popular at the time. Hippolyte Adolphe Taine’s multi-volume Histoire de la littérature anglaise had already appeared in 1863/64. The English translation did not appear until 1871 and enjoyed great popularity.⁸⁵ Unlike Dowden, Taine was a positivist, which did not prevent him from negating all science in the engagement with Marlowe. For Taine, the artist is not a disconnected individual who creates works at random in seclusion, for the individual is determined by three factors: race (ancestry), milieu (environment) and moment (stage of development). About Marlowe, Taine knew to report:

"Celui-ci était un esprit déréglé, débordé, outrageusement véhément et audacieux, mais grandiose et sombre, avec la «véritable fureur poétique;» païen de plus, et révolté de mœurs et de doctrines."⁸⁶

Such conclusions were confirmed, for example, with a quotation from Edward II (23, 59-66) about which Taine then stated: "Pesez bien ces grandes paroles, c’est le cri du cœur, et la confession intime de Marlowe, comme aussi celle de Byron […]"⁸⁷ Here Marlowe speaks through his characters as Lord Byron did. By now, at the latest, Taine had reached the same point as Dowden. And like Dowden, he also had a nice analogy: "[…] Marlowe est à Shakspeare ce que Pérugin est à Raphaël."⁸⁸ Strictly speaking, Taine did nothing more than create a highly dubious biography of Marlowe based on rumour and misinformation in order to shed light on the plays which were themselves used to support the biography’s assumptions.⁸⁹ Dowden and Taine had opened Pandora’s box. From now on, any absurd speculation about Marlowe was possible, as long as one could somehow deduce it from reading his works. Francis Cunningham, for example, claimed that Marlowe had served as a pikeman or gun loader with the English army in the Netherlands, which explains his familiarity with military terms.⁹⁰ John Addington Symonds and Havelock Ellis established such circular relationships because they had specific concerns. Both campaigned for the decriminalisation of homosexuality, for which they sought examples in art. In Marlowe’s case, the interest was not whether and how he had rebelled against the authorities of his time, but how he could be used to demonstrate the necessity of living out individual sexuality in one’s own time.⁹¹ Step by step, they aligned Marlowe’s biography with their interpretations of his works in their publications, which for the time being did not generate much response.

With the last third of the 19th century, a romantic veil settled over Marlowe and his work, transfiguring even Tamburlaine:

"With all it’s imperfections on its head, 'Tamburlaine' remains for us a great English play, for in it are revealed in all their strange distorted splendour the romantic hopes and fancies of a poet who was filled with the spirit of a romantic age."⁹²

Christopher Marlowe enjoyed unprecedented popularity. Literary personalities such as Algernon Charles Swinburne and James Russell Lowell sang his praises. On 16 September 1891, Marlowe had achieved what would have been unthinkable just a few decades earlier: A memorial was unveiled in his honour in Canterbury. The enthusiasm for Marlowe was great, not unanimous. William John Courthope accused him of cluelessness in dramaturgy, unworldliness and lack of empathy for women’s parts.⁹³ The most prominent opposing voice belonged to George Bernard Shaw. He disliked the Elizabethans, with the exception of Shakespeare of course. In a review, he made his views on Marlowe unmistakably known:

"He is the true Elizabethan blank-verse beast, itching to frighten other people with the superstitious terrors and cruelties in which he does not himself believe, and wallowing in blood, violence, muscularity of expression and strenuous animal passion as only literary men do when they become thoroughly depraved by solitary work, sedentary cowardice, and starvation of the sympathetic centres."⁹⁴

Nor did he leave a good mark on those who were enthusiastic about Marlowe. In 1898 Shaw therefore suggested:

"Nothing short of a statue at Deptford to the benefactor of the human species who exterminated Marlowe, and the condemnation of Mr. Swinburne to spend the rest of his life in selling photographs of it to American tourists, would meet the poetic justice of the case."⁹⁵

Despite Shaw’s suggestions, by the end of the 19th century a Marlowe image had been established whose widespread appeal ensured that he would hardly disappear into obscurity. The disadvantage was that:

"For the most part, the Victorian Marlowe was a character straight out of a Byronic closet drama–an embellishment of early gossipy and vindictive accounts of a seemingly compulsive and ill-fated dramatic poet."⁹⁶

That wouldn’t be so bad per se if these ideas hadn’t persisted into the 21st century. They set the foundation for the mythography.

20th Century

The flourishing of mythographic constructs was partly due to the fact that really little was known about Marlowe’s life. Many of the relevant documents were still undiscovered at the time. This created room for unusual speculation. In the form of a fictional narrative, Wilbur Gleason Zeigler wrote in It Was Marlowe how the latter continued to write plays under the pseudonym William Shakespeare after his faked murder in Deptford.⁹⁷ A few years earlier, the American physicist Thomas Corwin Mendenhall had published his investigations into stylometry, a method of analysis with which he tried to determine the authorship of a text.⁹⁸ Mendenhall focused on the frequency of word lengths and concluded that Marlowe agreed with Shakespeare as well as Shakespeare agreed with himself,⁹⁹ which led the physicist to wonder if Marlowe had not written Shakespeare’s works.¹⁰⁰ After that, voices were indeed raised – not always with reference to Mendenhall – insisting on Marlowe’s recognition as the author of Shakespeare’s œuvre.¹⁰¹ They fell silent (for the time being) when Leslie Hotson found the coroner’s report on Marlowe’s murder in 1925.¹⁰² This episode can be considered symptomatic, for the scholarly neglect of the previous century was followed by one of serious engagement paired with excesses of drama-based biographism. In 1910, the first edition of Marlowe’s works was published in the original orthography,¹⁰³ Marc Eccles¹⁰⁴ illuminated Marlowe’s life in London, and Frederick Samuel Boas¹⁰⁵ published the first comprehensive biography. W. W. Greg’s¹⁰⁶ comparison of both versions of Doctor Faustus is still considered a reference work. In addition, the newness, rebelliousness, scepticism seen in Marlowe since Dowden continued to fascinate and fuelled the theory that Marlowe had consciously or unconsciously expressed his character and ideas through his dramatic characters. Such a Marlowe, the idealised subversive artist, could be the model in literature for Stephen Dedalus in Joyce A Portrait of the Artist as a young Man,¹⁰⁷ On the other hand, numerous literary scholars¹⁰⁸ also followed this romantic approach, whose attitude Paul Kocher condensed in his statement: "Marlowe really had only one great theme: himself. "¹⁰⁹ This is the serious problem of Marlowe’s reception over the last 120 years. Hippolyte Taine had fabricated something about Marlowe to make it fit with his theories: Scientifically completely irrelevant. With someone like Paul Kocher, the situation is completely different. His contributions to Marlowe’s possible sources alone are invaluable. Authoritative discoveries often went hand in hand with unrestrained subjectivism. In the 1940s, a rethink began with Roy Battenhouse. Marlowe’s heroes fitted very well into their period of origin and their creator was not a revolutionary free thinker.¹¹⁰ After Doctor Faustus in particular was reconsidered from this orthodox point of view,¹¹¹ Douglas Cole¹¹² extended it to all of Marlowe’s dramas. The overemphasis on the biographical aspect was countered by the maxim: "[…] biography and criticism are separate arts."¹¹³ A symbiosis of the different approaches was represented by David Bevington, for whom Marlowe’s plays were based on traditional, Christian moralities, but were given a hitherto unknown ambiguity that constituted what was new about Marlowe.¹¹⁴ This approach was followed by Charles Masinton¹¹⁵ , but also by John P. Cutts, who examines Marlowe’s hero from the psychological side, but refuses to draw conclusions about the author’s character.¹¹⁶ In all these years, Doctor Faustus was the work to which critics paid the most attention.

In the second half of the 20th century, interest in Marlowe’s lyrical works led to his rediscovery as a poet.¹¹⁷ His translatorial activity, especially in Lucan’s Pharsalia, was also reassessed.¹¹⁸ Biographically, two aspects were of interest: His alleged activity for the secret service and his sexual orientation. The Cold War allowed Marlowe to be stylised as a patriotic spy who had once fought against Catholicism, as the free world now had to do against communism.¹¹⁹ However, word did not get around everywhere. Congressman Joe Starnes from Alabama asked at a hearing whether the aforementioned Marlowe was a communist.¹²⁰ In general, people on the other side of the Atlantic did not always know what to make of him. In 1954, Marilyn Pauline Novak did screen tests for Columbia Pictures, which led to a film contract. The suggested stage name for the new actress was "Kit Marlowe". Although she made her career as Kim Novak, her role in the TV series Falcon Crest was later given the name Kit Marlowe.¹²¹

In 1952, a student at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge found a portrait of an unknown 16th century man. The college administration had it restored and hung up. Three years later, Calvin Hoffman’s The Murder of the Man Who was Shakespeare was published. Because the Privy Council wanted to turn Marlowe in, he fled to the continent after faking his own death. There he continued to write busily and sent the manuscripts to England, where a William Shakespeare acted as a straw man for the publications.¹²² Hoffman wanted his work to be understood neither as a joke like Taylor¹²³, nor as fiction like Zeigler¹²⁴, but as a serious paper. In it, he noted that the engraving Martin Droeshout had made of William Shakespeare in 1623 for the First Folio edition bears a resemblance to the Cambridge portrait, and since Marlowe was actually Shakespeare, this portrait shows Christopher Marlowe in his younger years.¹²⁵ Now two scurrilities happened that are also symptomatic. Hoffman’s publication, of all things, made Marlowe interesting for the German-speaking world, for Der Spiegel devoted an article of several pages to his work.¹²⁶ Although it has never been proven that the Cambridge portrait was related to Marlowe, and Hoffman’s Marlowe-was-Shakespeare thesis has not been appreciated by established scientists, many of them were and are convinced that the Cambridge portrait shows Marlowe. This means that any absurd claim about Marlowe is far more interesting than a scientific discovery. For example, I am not aware of any article by Der Spiegel on the occasion of A. B. Wernham’s¹²⁷ discovery of the letter about Marlowe’s arrest in Vlissingen. No matter how far-fetched the claim, if it is liked, it is unhesitatingly integrated into the Marlowe picture even by scientists. These two phenomena are characteristic of the subsequent reception of Marlowe.

In 1964, Marlowe’s four-hundredth birthday was celebrated rather modestly in England and ignored altogether in the rest of Europe.¹²⁸ Three years later, homosexuality was legalised in Britain and censorship was abolished soon after. This permitted new artistic possibilities of presentation, but above all socio-politically necessary changes. In the course of this, a mystery befell Marlowe.¹²⁹ He became homosexual. No documents were discovered for this purpose, no fundamental knowledge was gained, no circumstantial evidence was found that had not been known before. It just happened to him. Edward II became the focus of interest. According to Derek Jarman¹³⁰ , the drama even had the honour of being chosen by him for a movie adaptation in 1991. He did this to demonstrate his own view of society’s treatment of homosexuality,¹³¹ not to enlighten about Marlowe’s alleged sexual orientation. That’s exactly how the film was understood, though. Even more, it was interpreted as if the author of the drama had been one of the first brave champions for the acceptance of same-sex love. Of course, this was not all Jarman’s "merit". The audience looked at Marlowe and his works, or rather the one work, from the zeitgeist of the 1990s. Marlowe was taken out of his time and transformed to help deal with a present conflict. Stephen Orgel was right when he observed: "[…] in short, homosexuality is our problem, not Marlowe’s."¹³² In fact, we should be more concerned about the need for fictional as well as real people to heroically stand up for what should be a given than to speculate about Marlowe’s private life. By the end of the 19th century, circular relationships between Marlowe’s biography and his oeuvre had been introduced by critics. A hundred years later, because they were in line with the fashion at the time, they were not only adopted, but downright encouraged. What was known from fiction found its way into scientific literature.

"Marlowe, the transgressive atheistical sodomitical alien-besotted overreacher, consistently unmasks forms of oedipal desire in order to show both the ubiquity and the iniquity of a repressive regime and to hint that the best life, and the truest or deepest relation to the problem of agency, will consist in casting it off."¹³³

Drama-based biographism and subjectivism¹³⁴ experienced a boom. Lukas Erne used the appropriate term "mythography" for this.¹³⁵ Just as science became enthusiastic about the Cambridge portrait, it did so for Christopher Marlowe, the spying James Dean of the sixteenth century, who fought against the injustices of this world as a gay superhero. The advantage of this Marlowe construct was its trendiness. Marlowe received a popularity boost, as he did in late Victorianism. The four-hundredth anniversary of his death received greater recognition than his birthday in 1964. There were numerous performances and on 30 May 1993 (10 days too early) a plaque was unveiled at the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury by Ian McKellen.¹³⁶

21st Century

With the dawn of a new millennium, enthusiasm for Marlowe’s "novelistic" biography faded. Analogously, scientific interest in Edward II declined in order to once again focus more on Doctor Faustus. In addition, new topics such as Marlowe’s connection to his contemporaries apart from Shakespeare and his place in theatre history have come to the foreground.¹³⁷ The road to a fact-based discussion of Marlowe is nonetheless a long one,¹³⁸ one that holds many stumbling stones:

"It is altogether human trait to wish to find the writers we admire exemplifying the ethical and ideological values we admire. The problem of course, occurs when we allow our wishes to distort reality. With Marlowe because of the paucity of indisputable data as to his beliefs the risk of misreading from various ideological viewpoints is especially great."¹³⁹

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1. Bowsher (2000)↩︎
2. Greene and Peele (1861), 584↩︎
3. Lucie-Smith (1965)↩︎
4. Marlowe (1986), 188↩︎
5. Petowe (1598)↩︎
6. Meres (1598)↩︎
7. Meres (1598), 282r↩︎
8. Nashe (1883/84), 262↩︎
9. Marlowe (1986)↩︎
10. F. (1875)↩︎
11. Lane (1600), 32↩︎
12. Marlowe (1986), 93↩︎
13. Downie (2018)↩︎
14. Gervase (Jervis) Markham (1568-1637) was a soldier in the Netherlands and Ireland. His interests were wide-ranging. He was involved in forestry and agriculture, published a cookbook (The English Huswife) and is said to have introduced purebred Arabians to England for the first time. He was also a poet and translator. ↩︎
15. Lyon (1919), 62↩︎
16. s.n. (1905), 15↩︎
17. Dekker (2015)↩︎
18. Sir Francis Verney (1584-1615) came from his distinguished English family. After losing a legal dispute with his stepmother in 1597, he spent the next few years travelling. In 1608 he returned to England briefly, only to leave it for good. He became one of the commanders of the Tunisian fleet and a successful barbarian pirate. In 1610, a rumour arose in his homeland that he had converted to Islam, which caused a great excitement. He was a galley slave for two years before being ransomed by an English Jesuit. In exchange for his freedom, Verney converted to Catholicism. He spent his last years as a soldier in Sicily. ↩︎
19. Eccles (1982)↩︎
20. Owen (1970), 372↩︎
21. Haslewood (1815), 247↩︎
22. Haslewood (1815)↩︎
23. Shakespeare (1623), A3↩︎
24. Drayton (1961)↩︎
25. The Prologue to the Stage at the Cocke-pit. 2-8↩︎
26. Heywood (1635), 206↩︎
27. C. Butler (1636), 132↩︎
28. Carpenter (1953)↩︎
29. As You Like It. III,5,82-83↩︎
30. As You Like It. III,3,14-15↩︎
31. Lodge (14.05.1925)↩︎
32. The Jew of Malta. I,1,37↩︎
33. PRO C 260/174, no. 27↩︎
34. Simpson (2009)↩︎
35. As You Like It. IV,1↩︎
36. Nicholl (2002)↩︎
37. Holdsworth (1982)↩︎
38. Beard (1597), 149↩︎
39. Meres (1598), 286v↩︎
40. Meres (1598), 286v-287r↩︎
41. Vaughan (1600), s.p.↩︎
42. Nicholl (2002)↩︎
43. Rudierde (1618)↩︎
44. British Library. Add MS 28012↩︎
45. Eccles (1935)↩︎
46. Eccles (1935),↩︎
47. Kendall (2003), 352↩︎
48. Eccles (1935)↩︎
49. Eccles (1935); Boas (1940); Urry (1988); Nicholl (2002); Kendall (2003)↩︎
50. Kuriyama (2002); Honan (2005)↩︎
51. MacLure (1998)↩︎
52. Munro (2009)↩︎
53. Phillips (1675), 24↩︎
54. Wood (1691-92)↩︎
55. Langbaine (1691)↩︎
56. Aubrey (1898), 13↩︎
57. Dabbs (1991)↩︎
58. MacLure (1998)↩︎
59. Brooke (1922)↩︎
60. Warton (1824), 264↩︎
61. Ritson (1782), 40↩︎
62. Dabbs (1991)↩︎
63. Dermody (1807), 49-50↩︎
64. Lamb (1808)↩︎
65. William Taylor (1819), 361-362↩︎
66. William Taylor (1820a)↩︎
67. William Taylor (1820b)↩︎
68. Chandler (1994)↩︎
69. William Taylor (1824)↩︎
70. M. Butler (1996); Dabbs (1991)↩︎
71. Hazlitt (1821), 56-57↩︎
72. Marlowe (1826), iii↩︎
73. Marlowe (1826), viii↩︎
74. Dabbs (1991)↩︎
75. Broughton (1830)↩︎
76. Dabbs (1991)↩︎
77. Horne (1837),iv↩︎
78. Hunt (1845), 136↩︎
79. Dabbs (1991)↩︎
80. Kielinger (1999)↩︎
81. Dabbs (1991)↩︎
82. Dowden (1888), 435↩︎
83. Dowden (1888), 436↩︎
84. Dowden (1888), 436↩︎
85. Dabbs (1991)↩︎
86. Taine (1863), 33↩︎
87. Taine (1863), 42↩︎
88. Taine (1863), 48↩︎
89. Ribner (1964)↩︎
90. Marlowe (1870)↩︎
91. Dabbs (1991)↩︎
92. s. n. (1888)↩︎
93. Courthope (1895)↩︎
94. Shaw (1906), 37↩︎
95. Shaw (1906), 415↩︎
96. Dabbs (1995)↩︎
97. Zeigler (1895)↩︎
98. Mendenhall (1887)↩︎
99. Mendenhall (1901)↩︎
100. Mendenhall (1902)↩︎
101. Watterson (18.07.1920); Webster (1923)↩︎
102. Hotson (1925)↩︎
103. Marlowe (1910)↩︎
104. Eccles (1934)↩︎
105. Boas (1940)↩︎
106. Marlowe (1968)↩︎
107. Cañadas (2006)↩︎
108. Ellis-Fermor (1927);Bradbrook (1936);Levin (1964); Rowse (1966); Bloom (1986); Greenblatt (1980); Wraight and Stern (1993)↩︎
109. Kocher (1947), 115↩︎
110. Battenhouse (1941)↩︎
111. Kirschbaum (1943); Greg (1946); Campbell (1952)↩︎
112. Cole (1962)↩︎
113. Kimborough (1964), 20↩︎
114. Bevington (1962)↩︎
115. Masinton (1969)↩︎
116. Cutts (1973)↩︎
117. Lewis (1952); Cantelupe (1963); Leiter (1966); Collins (1970); Sternfeld and Chan (1970); Woods (1970); Miller (1997)↩︎
118. Gill (1973); Shapiro (1988)↩︎
119. Breight (1993)↩︎
120. Kovel (1994)↩︎
121. Hopkins (2004)↩︎
122. Hoffman (1955)↩︎
123. William Taylor (1819); William Taylor (1820a); William Taylor (1820b); Chandler (1994)↩︎
124. Zeigler (1895)↩︎
125. Hoffman (1955)↩︎
126. s.n. (1955)↩︎
127. Wernham (1976)↩︎
128. Potter (2000)↩︎
129. Hopkins (2003)↩︎
130. Aebischer (2014)↩︎
131. Lawrence (2000)↩︎
132. Orgel (2000), 566↩︎
133. Engle (2008), 423↩︎
134. J. A. Downie calls it the "'must-have' theory of biography"(Downie (2007))↩︎
135. Erne (2005)↩︎
136. Potter (2000)↩︎
137. Logan (2010)↩︎
138. Downie (2000); Downie (2010)↩︎
139. Tucker (1995), 41↩︎

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