Christopher Marlowe (In Our Time)

this is the BBC this podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK thanks for downloading the in our time podcast for more details about in our time and for our Terms of Use please go to BBC co uk in the prologue to the Jew of Malta Christopher Marlowe has machiavel say I can't religion but a childish toy and hold there is no sin but ignorant birds of the air will tell of murders past I am ashamed to hear such foolish many will talk of title to a crown what right had Caesar to the empire might first made kings and laws were then most sure when like the Draco's they were written blood by the age of 29 Marlow was a brilliant scholar a popular playwright and international spy a forger a homosexual and accused of atheism is hugely ambitious characters like Tama Lane and fastest are often taken to be versions of Marlow himself by the age of 30 Marlow was dead was he assassinated by the Elizabethan state and had he lived as long as it's contemporary Shakespeare how would he have compared with me to discuss Christopher Marlowe are Jonathan bate professor of English Literature at the University of Warwick Katherine Duncan Jones senior research fellow in the English Faculty of Oxford University and Emma Smith lecturer in English at Oxford University Katherine Duncan Jones can we start with what we know of Christopher Marlowe's upbringing yes he was born in Canterbury in 1564 the same year as Shakespeare very much the same social class than straight spear his father was a shoemaker which was a bit grander more bourgeois than it sounds and active in local government active in his crafts guild and in Canterbury which is very important I think pramanas later development of Cantabria then the one thing we think of is the Archbishop of Canterbury now that was obviously highly important then and I think growing up in Canterbury probably made Marlow strongly aware from an early age of the power of the church and of religion which possibly at an early age he decided he did not want to participate in and the other thing about Canterbury is that it was full of immigrants after London there was the city with the largest number of mainly Protestant refugees from France and the Netherlands so that religion and difficulties with religion and difficulties with countries other than England were things that Marlowe have grew up a well off and there was a very good school again like Shakespeare will pursue this much later there was very good schooling and possibly even better than Stratford Grammar School and we do know that maldo attended it for at least two years and from the won a scholarship called a partial scholarship to go to Cambridge normal condition of a podcast fellowship is that you were expected to be ordained and become a clergyman something which Marlowe did not do what he thought of was the winning of that scholarship evidence of cleverness or was it one of the things that you bought or fiddled in those back I think it was evidence of heaviness I think he was talent spotted I think Marlowe was lucky early in his life in ways that traits pure appears not to have been lucky that he was talent spotted by people who could offer him patronage in the form of scholarships who would that be that's fascinating who had talents about it that I'm not absolutely sure but almost certainly somebody had probably probably a schoolmaster at Kings king's school canterbury brought him to the notice of those who administered the parker scholarships when he went to cambridge what well who his company we know about his companions and the company he kept he kept a lot of company Robert Greene the prolific playwright and poet with his long jolly red beard and heavy drinking habits Thomas nashe had sent Ron's also a rather wild young man very very lively and adventurous and slightly apt to get into trouble though Nash did work for Whitgift as his first job so was not averse to working with bishops and archbishops as Marlo appears to have been um it was a very lively group of young men who when cambridge in late fifteen ages and you could say his literary career began and didn't it almost certainly it began then possibly with his translations of Ovid almost certainly with his his earliest surviving play died queen of Carthage heavily based on virtual Jonathan bait I mentioned in the introduction the the the notion that he was a spy the first game bridge spy um can you tell us what we know about that what facts we have about that and whether it did begin at Cambridge yeah I mean there's a good deal of speculation surrounding this but Corpus Christi was his College in Cambridge and a document called the buttery book survives which is really a list of the students paying the money for for their food for their college meals and there are a number of periods where Marlowe's name is absent from the buttery book suggesting he was away from the university well that's not mysterious in itself but what then happened was when the time came for him to proceed to his degree of a degree of MA some people said don't let this man take his degree because he intends to go to reams and reams was the place in northern France where there was a Catholic seminary it was essentially the headquarters of the group who were hoping to restore England to Roman Catholicism New England felt besieged by the Roman Catholicism great Empire and the great countries of Europe kept saying they would invade it their enemies within enemies without that was exactly right and we're talking about the period here leading up to the Spanish Armada the sense that England a small reformed country a country that's broken with Rome at a time when Europe is dominated by Spain and other Catholic forces and of course Catholics are being persecuted in England there was a sense that becoming a Catholic was a form of traitor ship you know the you you speak of Cambridge spies and you know there is a sort of analogy with the 1930s that sense the fear of Catholicism then was like the fear of communism in the 20th century anyway interrupted so we need to find out you know about whether it was a spy well that's right so so people were saying don't let him proceed to his degree because he's got Catholic sympathies but then there's got as far as the Privy Council that the absolute you know top of the government system and a message came from the previous all saying do let mr. Marlowe proceed to his degree because when he went to Reims he was doing good service to her majesty and service often in that sort of document does mean spying Secret Service so the clear implication is that what Marlowe had done is he had gone to Reims not with the intention of converting to Catholicism but with the intention of spying on the Catholics though and that Lundy only say therefore it aspired you need to bring more evidence to BRR well the the evidence really comes at a later stage to do with the connections the people he was connecting go on to say there's enough to go on I think that freeze good service and the the fact that you know the the issue of whether an undergraduate is I had to get his degree or not this is not usually something that goes to the Privy Council yeah it suggests he has some friends in high places showing earlier on and so this this very clever young man plucked out of Canterbury plucked out of Cambridge obviously if somebody's talent spotted at once more he soon get it we soon getting into all sorts of trouble as the business of counterfeiting coinage which follows with a little bit later and we find him in the Netherlands now the Netherlands is is is the absolute epicenter of the religious war in Europe you remember at this time the Netherlands is under the control of Spain but the Dutch are trying to free themselves and so you've got Spanish Catholics and Dutch Protestants and England gets involved in that war and obviously there's a lot of intelligence work going on around it so Marlow appears in the Netherlands and he gets accused of counterfeiting coinage and he often seems to have got involved with these rather shady dealers loan sharks lowlife characters on but once again message comes from the Privy Council just back off don't prosecute mr. Marlow ever this which again seems to suggest he's got people protecting him and the obvious inference from that is that he is involved on the special service of Her Majesty hey comes down from Cambridge comes to London and starts the right plays I miss mr. as Catherine said it began his later career at Cambridge translated of its love poems and co-wrote Dido queen of Carthage was it a nod is it an odd choice for a man as it were picked out for a sort of greatness twice to go into the comparative villainy of writing plays in London at the time well as we've already heard about his fellows at Cambridge he's part of a circle of University widths of off people who are going from that rarefied but rather boisterous intellectual atmosphere in Cambridge to the London theatres I don't think it is that unusual but certainly the play with which he really emerges on the London stage is the play tumbler in the first part of Tamburlaine in probably in 1587 is an extraordinary play of extraordinary scope can you tell the listeners just to freshen their minds about about Tamerlan well the plot of Tamburlaine is remarkably simple Tamburlaine is a mighty ruler he's born a shepherd but won't be constrained and confined by that and the play is about his conquests his conquests through Persia through Turkey through parts of the Middle East and into Europe and it's a play which looks frequently looks as if it is going to end in tamblyn's ultimate downfall it seems to play with notions that nobody can be as ambitious as striving as resistant to any constraint as this and survive it but in fact tumbling the first part of Tamburlaine ends with tamblyn's absolute triumph it ends like a comedy he marries sonority and all seems to go well for him it was a tremendous success can you give it can you tell us how that's measured and what it meant to him at the time well one very important piece of evidence about the success of Tamburlaine is that it spawns a sequel it's the first really the first sequel place at um Blaine parts one and two are not a two-part play but they're a play plus a sequel the preface to the part two of tumblr makes it quite clear it's in response to popular demand so tumbling comes back that's a very good measure of success but there are also all kinds of ways in which the word Tamburlaine becomes a byword for for conquest for a force which can't be restrained thomas dekker calls the plague a stalking Tamburlaine uses the phrase that word stalking seems to have referred to Edward Elaine's particular perhaps rather mannered but obviously very impressive gate as as Tamburlaine there is a libel a piece of graffiti essentially against immigrants against those religious immigrants which are part of a part of Marlowe's life from his Canterbury days through to the Netherlands as Jonathan is is saying the Dutch Church in Threadneedle Street is subject to an attack by anti-immigrant writers and a long piece of prose is signed Tamburlaine so it does become a current name involved in all kinds of aspects of English culture Catherine the custom dog insurance can you tell us what apart from its success it was very gory very epic in and I saw it at Oxford actually wonderful that's a yes yes the can you tell us what was what might be thought as to knew about it in terms of the writing the writing is extraordinarily good it's particularly powerful blank first Tamburlaine speaks quite a lot of speeches forty fifty lines long and they're absolutely mesmerizing if they're well performed should I say something about the plant first perhaps should just to remind listeners all of whom I'm sure know the plant versus - Tom - Tom - Tom - Tom - Tom as in was this the face that launched a thousand ships though that's from another Marlow play and one of the things that if Marlowe wrote Tamblyn and we have no direct contemporary evidence that he wrote Chamberlain but I'm inclined to believe that he's the main author of it um that is remarkable in the verse of Tamburlaine is that blank verse is not rhymed it goes in that five foot rhythm but he builds up most tremendous patterns with repeated words and repeated names like that the woman who whom Tamburlaine loves and marries at the end of Part pot 1 and who dies beginning part 2 is an opera T where Tamburlaine tries to stop her dying with a long long speech which keeps having the line to entertain Divine's and aqua tea to entertain Divine's and aqua tea to entertain Divine's and awkward is there's no rhyme but there are wonderful patterns of repetition which are absolutely mesmerizing Aman waits for those repetitions to come wonderful for actors to speak wonderful volumes as to hear I think the other thing what's amazing about his language is is how exotic it must have sounded he he loved exotic names I mean tambourines three sons are called awesome caseinate Achilles and three Dumas and Tamburlaine he's always getting out a Mac by Jonathan enormity in quite plain math and he looks at places like you know trebizond and Samarkand and it's a wonderful moment when one of his his general says and we'll do this and then we'll ride in triumph through Persepolis and turbulences and ride in triumph through Persepolis is it not passing brave to be a king and ride in triumph through Persepolis Tamblyn sometimes always seems like a child the way he delights in this extraordinary thing ah I'm just a shepherd and yet I'm gonna be king of the world and the these exotic names are a key part of that but one of the things emma smith he wants to be king of the world when he dies he says i'm and shall I die and this unconquered unconquered shall I on this on Congress repeats well certainly there are some parts of the world Tamplin calls for a map just before his death and that's what prompts that line shall I die on this I'll conquer it the map is very important in in tumblin it's long been known that Marlowe uses ortelius is famous Atlas which is call very tellingly theorem orbiter Arum the theater of the world so there's something theatrically about mapping and that Lass's in this period and Tamburlaine is is animating those paper maps and and and owning them somehow appropriating them so even though he dies on this note of what has not been conquered i think the overwhelming of cumulative sense partly through those exotic place names and they have an epic quality the listing of names the piling up of names I think that the stress of the play is on what has been achieved not on what has been on that element of failure before we go on with the life come look at one to two more players with warning detail Catherine Duncan Jones the Jew of Malta that was first performed at the Rose Theatre around 1588 289 could you outline me for the plot of that for us yes this probably also had Edward Allen whom emma has mentioned as the chief actor it's a very complicated plot plot which I will only summarize very superficially the central figure is Barnabas the Jew who would have been played by Edward Allen in that first production and it's concerns a Malta which has been fought over by three different groups the Turks the Christians and the Jews and at the beginning of the play Barabbas who is the wealthiest merchant in Malta probably the richest man in Malta is as he sees it understand had be deeply wronged because all his money is taken away to pay tribute to keep the Turks at bay and the rest of the play unfolds with Barabbas taking complicated and savage revenge on the people who have wronged him though he also suffers the other as Tamburlaine I mentioned this savage tyrant and Conqueror has this one softer thing his adoration of sonority Barabbas has this one softer thing his daughter Abigail whom he adores but who becomes a Christian and in the end is killed and Barabbas loses both his money and his daughter in the middle parts of the play and comes up with a wonderful but not another wonderful plan first line just to show more local very when he various the blank first line because he does it so rarely it's extraordinary powerful he's got this wonderful line oh girl oh gold Oh beauty oh my bliss and then the station richness hugs money birds the daughter the money the daughter the money and the money he does of course get back he plans horrible revenge both on the Christians and then when the Turks to come to power on the Turks he acquires a very dodgy Turkish servant and Confederate ather more whom he thought he talent spots and builds up as his favorite in the end whereas Tamburlaine apparently dies of old age but sitting on his chariot and Barnabas like Arthur Marlowe here villains gets his comeuppance and is in the end tricked by the very nasty equisetum governor of Malta who seems no better in any way than either the Jewish or the Islamic characters and is dropped by trick into a boiling cauldron and dies horribly is there well thank you book in the morning we have to make sure is there any sense in which we can we're reaching for two very it's perhaps to contemporary thing to do to of our time which is nothing to do what we're talking about ready but now people have said Marlo is in some sense writing about the sort of person he was in these massive figures you would you say that about Barabbas as well as of Tamlyn well it's a very tempting it's a very tempting theory it's a very tempting way to read Marlowe's plays if he is writing about himself he's creating serially ambivalent or even negative self portraits these are but these are characters with enormous ingenuity and often a rather theatrical ingenuity they do figure playwriting in certain ways that are ways in which tumbling sets up dramatic situations there's a very famous sequence where the change of colors the change of the colors of the flags signals the impending doom of his opposition so there are very theatrical elements to these to these characters but there are very ambivalent figures it's tempting though to see them as images of this aspirant so socially and intellectually and morally perhaps aspirant figure male himself Johnson Batum Catherines mentioned that that the that the three figures the Christian figure the Turkic figure and the Jewish figure equally without virtue in many ways but is there any sense in which because this is a question that is really which the Barabbas is more mainly treated is there any anti-semitic sense in it well yeah I mean there's no doubt there's a there's a strong element of anti-semitic prejudice in this play I mean the the stereotype of the Jew the association of the Jew with with money with greed is is that I don't think anybody can deny that but as Katherine says the extraordinary thing about this play is the way that the Christians are no better and many ways are worse than the Jews I mean Barabbas I caught in Barabbas because of because of the Riven is he's not a usurer in the way that [ __ ] in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice is he's an honest merchant he's he's got his wealth by honest means but then the fact that he is wealthy is exploited by Fanaa see the governor and you began the program by quoting the prologue to the play spoken in the voice of Machiavelli Machiavelli who argues that religion is just a device for political control if you then ask for question who is the Machiavellian character in this play who is following the the precepts of Machiavelli's The Prince the the primary answer to that question is for nazy the governor rather than paragon of virtue the Christian exactly yeah so you know there is a there's a clear influence on Shakespeare's much into Venice and I were talking about Shakespeare a little bit later but but the the thing the two plays do seem to have in common is is the sense that the the Christians come across as no better than the Jews and in Marlowe's case it's inevitable that people should have tied that in with opinions he seems to have expressed that are dismissive of all religions there be a powerful figure obviously very Tamburlaine and and Barabbas I'm sorry my princess and fast at this fastest we haven't we're not going to talk about much or not at all but before we move away from a place to the life edward ii emma smith is of a different order can you just again brief briefly give us a little summing up of that and then and then let's try to find out why it's so different well ed with a second is a history play it's Marlo's entry into that the genre which is extremely popular in the 1590s which we now associate most with shakespeare and edward ii is the story of a week a week king edward whose weakness is exemplified in his preference for what what editors and critics have tended euphemistically to call his favorite Gaveston his lover Gaveston and the his consequent neglect of his political his public duties and as a result of this one of his more aspirant noblemen Mortimer me Mortimer is the aspirant figure who won't be constrained I think in this play rather than the title character Mortimer in in league in in in a sexual liaison with Edwards Queen Isabel tries to to take power in fact Edward is deposed he's he's horribly murdered but Mortimer too gets his comeuppance and the play ends with the coronation the world that the the accession of Edwards son the young Edward the third who immediately takes steps to have his mother imprisoned and to punish those wrongdoers so it's a story about political shifts but their political shifts shown very much through private and sort of personal relationships that's what Marlow does very strongly to the Chronicle history he gets from Raphael Holland shed from the prose history second edition 1587 a very recent book from Allah what he does with the story of edward ii he gets from that is to errata size it really to a rata size the relationship between between Edward and Gaveston and to make that crucial the play opens with a letter from Edward to Galveston and also to a rata size the relation between Mortimer and Isabella which is much less obvious in the source how plain that Catherine doctor how prime would it have been to the audience seeing the play then that this this was a strong homosexual relationship I not sure how plain it would have been at all I think the audience might have been very familiar with the idea of same-sex relationships but it does seem as if in some ways the problem with the relationship between Edward and Gaveston is a problem that is shown in many plays the period that here is a monarch who who values personal relationships above his as it were official relationships with his nobles and his advisers by whom he should be guided and instead is even as a young newly acceded King wanting to have lots of fun and games with this young man that he grew up with it's absolutely true as Emma says the relationship is strongly errata sized but what other characters his his barons and Nobles who disapprove of it would say about the relationship doesn't actually say oh gosh we've got a screaming puffed off roar King as it were or words to that effect what they object to is the fact that Gaveston is the long social status and he's bracing the Kings time rather as in some later plays by Shakespeare Falstaff is wasting the time of the Prince of Wales so Gaveston is wasting the time of a king and drawing or by attention that should be given to his counsel but at the same time in terms of this the sort of visual representation within the play it's pretty clear at the end of the play as to what what Marlowe is getting at because of the way in which edward ii is murdered that is to say a red-hot Poker is brought on stage he's pressed down onto a table and the poker is inserted of his fundament I apologize for saying that that on Radio 4 but you know it is not no lines in the plays say that will the illicit red hole insured would know that but oddly enough there isn't a line but the stage took plane the same thing which is called for the red hot spit yeah I think the stage direction does make it clear that the red hot spit is brought on and certainly every time I in the play it's been pretty clear what's going on I think that's absolutely right because the play has been has been obviously very naturally adopted as a gay play and as a piece of absolutely revolting sadistic gay bashing as it were bashing is too mild a word for that murder but it you see what I mean there isn't actually a line in the play that indicates it was not simply being smothered having already been tortured and in various ways and mocked and deprived of well I'm convinced you know the Marlowe is a great visual writer of course our problem is that we don't have the you know we have no record of the play visually as it was first performed we only have the words but it's always important to remember with a Marlowe or a Shakespeare play that the words are only part of the story the visual stage images are crucial I'm sure that's right that that's great spectacular images I was thinking about the apartment Amber Tamblyn where Champlain has imprisoned the king of the Turks badges earth he has badges I stood in a cage which uses as a footstool in in part two in a scene which was seems to have been spectacularly popular Tamburlaine is drawn in a chariot pulled by conquered Kings pulling ropes with their teeth these are amazing staged images like the cauldron in which Bravo's Falls we know that henslowe invested in a probably was rather an expensive stage prop in order to be able to make that the coup de toute or at the end of the Jew of Malta we know that there is a cauldron for the Jew among the props of the Lord Admirals men so clearly some investment is being made in these spectacles which is an important counter to the idea of the mighty line the linguistic path right now father mr. Poe want to talk a little bit about Shakespeare and wahla and then go for this death murder assassination whatever it might have been Catherine Duncan Jones it was it was born they were born in the same year as you said at the beginning and as or see us at the beginning of the program coming from similar enough backgrounds until the age of about 16 when is it was Shakespeare filled after we do not know where and Marlowe peeled off to Cambridge 16 or 17 they came to London they might have come to London at the same time do we know anything about the companionship knowing each other um we don't know as much as we would like Marlo is the only contemporary writer to whom Shakespeare clearly alludes and from whom he quotes a line very very clearly as you like it wait wait so line from here only under which is still a sort of cliche whoever loved that loved not at first sight I think they must have known each other I can't think that they didn't I think we've mentioned that Marlowe was talent spotted him is in a way privileged from an early age and had this peculiarly strong relationship with the Privy Council at an early age when already men stood at Cambridge Shakespeare doesn't appear at of Android early patronage but he was something that Mallya wasn't he was an actor Marlowe was a scholar and a playwright Speer was an actor and a playwright and as an actor it seems to me highly likely that Marlowe encountered him as an actor even if not initially as a playwright I think then probably didn't know each other in the late 15 ages and was but can you tell us what Shakespeare might have owed to Marlowe as a writer well there's some wonderful interaction between them in the early 1590s if we were to take edward ii we can see ways in which malas edward ii draws on Shakespeare's Henry the six plays but also influences shakespeare's richard ii so there's there's an inter plane I think it's it's important that maybe contrary to that popular view say we get in a film like Shakespeare and love a very attractive view of Marlowe as the more experienced more suave and sophisticated sort of guide to Shakespeare I think instead of that model we should think of one weathers there's much more interplay at this point of rather intense not quite collaboration in that we don't think they'd ever write a play together but the way in which their their themes and they're writing intersects is a form of collaboration like that I have read in preparing for this with whether these are just claims over valid they are that Marlow's line became as adopted by Shakespeare Marlowe grappled with the idea of soliloquy before Shakespeare did or anything in those two things Jonathan yeah I think I mean I think I mean my and Catherine talked about earlier about Marlowe's just extraordinary gift for the blank verse five beat line which becomes the the the basic medium of writing in Shakespeare and this there's no doubt that that Shakespeare learns that from Marla and the the art of writing long speeches and of these moments of soliloquy moments where characters start talking to themselves and to the audience and you can you can really sort of trace the development of that in in in Shakespeare going back to Marla and for instance we would see if you look at an early Jake spit play like Titus Andronicus is his first tragedy there's a very very clear influence on the villain of that play the scheming villain more called Aaron I'm clearly influenced by by the Jew of mortor visa there's a speech that is almost like a rewriting of the passage where the Jew of Malta and his friend if the more are delighting in their villainy sort of outdoing each other in villainy and the thing about these villains is that they often get the most dynamic verse and are the most charismatic characters so the idea that the villain Aaron in that earlier play than thinking forward to rich the third to Iago in Othello to Edmund in King Lear that idea of the charismatic villain speaking dazzling verse I think that's one of the main things Shakespeare gets from now I'll move on to the towards the death now the so he can assume he's leading a imagined it again I keep referring back here about the low life he he must have moved you know that was a you ever know life muscle maybe an out or we know that the Jataka life was the other side the river outside the city boundaries in an area of prostitutes of previous me all that's other stuff so he's around there and he still being protected in some way and but he's taking a lot of risks isn't the can we just outline how he came almost go-fast fall to the last to pause the last day of his life Oh could I just mentioned something before the last day of his life I'm sorry it's about Marlowe and traits build the connect yeah they whether or not they knew each other in eighth 1580s thereby yoked together in the autumn of 1592 the last autumn as it turned out of Marla's life when they were both attacked in a book called greens grouse worth of weight and they were paired and they may both they both squat angry about this attack Marla was attacked as an atheist and a Machiavelli and so much for this theme of the convergence of Marlow with his villain heroes and Shakespeare was attacked as an upstart writer and actor who thought he could do anything they both in my I believe reposted Shakespeare reposted by writing Venus and Adonis sternness to show what a wonderful rich classical poem he could write untainted by the theater Marlowe were posted by writing hero and Leander which he didn't live to complete but I do believe they were yoked and in the last eight months of Marla's life were actually connected in the both of personal and away we should just take you through the events here it really begins with the thing Emma talked about earlier the and the the the libel pinned up on the church associated with the Dutch refugees that was signed Tamburlaine but the authorities were worried there were going to be riots to do with immigrants they were also worried about Catholic plots they were worried about atheism Machiavellianism and so on they start rounding suspects up they they go to Marla's rooms and arrest his roommate another dramatist called Thomas Kyd under top under torture Kidd then reveals that a piece of paper found in their rooms that contained a number of scandalous allegations was written by Marlowe rather than by him allegations along the lines of Jesus had a homosexual relationship with John the Evangelist moseys was nothing but a conjurer the famous one all who love not tobacco and boys are fools so Marlowe is is clearly suspected of having very dangerous opinions then a spy called Richard Baines hands in a document with the same kind of allegations so malas arrested on May the 20th but he's bailed but has to report daily to the authorities ten days later he's in a room in Deptford with three characters Ingram Fraser Robert Puli William skiers characters associated with the Secret Service very dodgy characters we don't exactly know why they went there but in the course of the day there's some kind of a quarrel at the end of which Marlowe is stabbed above the eye with Frye Rises 12 penny dagger it goes in to a depth of 2 inches above his eyes straight into his brains he dies there's an inquest Fraser gets off on the grounds of self-defense so the big question we then have is was this actually an assassination or was it just I'm just some kind of fight I'm I take this to your point when when the charges whatever had he's had his influential friends deserted him at this stage him and was he really up against it because he seems as as it's been pointed out again and again in this program it was in trouble he got plucked out he got me saved and looked after he doesn't seem to be being looked after at the moment any more does he that's that's quite true mean the the John picking up or puckering who is the person to whom the person on the Privy Council to whom these who is handling these these allegations and these problems in in London doesn't seem to be protecting malice it does seem as if those the those patrons those figures around him have deserted him yet he was doing mr. Thomas Walsingham and scary he does appear to have had a very faithful patron in in Walsingham with whom he seems to been staying Yankel at the court well I think it did I mean the really striking thing is that when Bane's brought on this these allegations these were actually shown to Queen Elizabeth herself and Bane says at the end of his note that these vile opinions mean the man deserves to die and Queen Elizabeth herself says prosecute the matter to the full and so some people have seen that as Elizabeth giving authority for Marlow to be assassinate what's your I saw you're gonna say so I said the dating of all these documents is so difficult that's the problem with conspiracy because the sense is that the Baines note actually the Bensons Jonathan's quoted comes to the bridge council after the death of mullahs it comes at the beginning of June while it dies in the 30th of May so it is one of those events like all good conspiracy stories particularly with the death a violent death in them that we can go on and on there are three views of it he was murdered in the way it was said there was a route the end of a drunk and a hot summer day down at Deptford in the pub had a fight it was being in brawls before we here knife went in the room other he was assassinated it was a setup he was taken down to be assassinated there's also a theory bomb camp called Calvin Hoffman that he faked his own death and came back as but what do you what your I don't I don't really believe in the assassination because I'm not sure why they hung about drinking all day if they were there to assassinate him why didn't they just get on with it and do it straight away and throw him in a river or something I mean it does the circumstances of it of the all day drinking and then the scuffle which is so predictable when for testosterone-fueled young men have been drinking all day on a warm summer warm perhaps the first warm day of the summer at the end of May I don't really go over see them is a great deal going on with Mother's relationship with Authority at that period and my in so far as I have a theory I think he may have been in debt but because he was actually on his way to leave the country and Deptford might not seem like very far from London now but it was a natural route to take before getting a boat to escape the country I mean I'm always a believer in dinner cock-ups rather than conspiracies so I've Airy much doubt there was an assassination order but on the other hand there is no doubt that these people he was with Puli in particular were very very involved with intelligence work my sense is that they that somebody somebody from the Privy Council may be Lord burly has told these people to get to see Marlow and to you know to ask some hard questions that I think they were sort of keeping tabs on him I don't think that they the actual intention was to kill him that but obviously there was a lot of anxiety about him is there any it's the last question really is there any way you could we can say had Marlo lived would his work of taken off as he were no I had Shakespeare's took off I think that's a question which is so strongly connected with the desire for Marlo not to have died and that's a desire to have had more of his work and that's why the window in Poets Corner in Westminster Abbey has query 1593 is the death day we don't we don't want to believe Marlowe's dies just like we didn't want to believe Elvis was dead of course Elvis isn't that but I think that the sense that Marlo's work it's often said if Shakespeare had died at this this point in his career that Marlowe dies in his you know all of literary history would be different our sense of Shakespeare but very different so it's a tantalizing thought that there could have been another 20 years of this Catherine it's very hard to know I wonder whether if he had lived longer and I absolutely sure the general wish that he had lived longer he might have written works that were not plays might have moved away from the theater and written more in other Natori forms I think that treats people's work even before up to and including the spring of 59 to 3 is more substantial and more varied than Marlowe's Marlowe we've got half a dozen plays and with Shakespeare I think we've got 708 and they include comedies like comedy of errors and Taming of the Shrew they're more diverse more he's more versatile than Marlowe is briefly don't lie I think just picking up on that I mean the the kind of key question is whether Marlowe would have developed gifts of comedy he he was a great tragic and historic writer and Shakespeare owed him a huge debt in that respect he doesn't seem to have been much good at comedy and in the end I think that's why Shakespeare had the edge well thank you very much I really enjoyed that that's thanks to catherine duncan jones emma smith and jonathon bait now then next week's the culmination of your vote for our greatest for lost favorite your favorite philosopher thousands have you been on the website listen to the experts cast your votes in for your favorite philosopher the vote closes at midnight tonight so I haven't made your choice it's your last chance of making it now before midnight tonight and next week we'll do a program on the winning philosopher it's about it thanks for listening we hope you've enjoyed this radio 4 podcast you can find hundreds of other programs about history science and philosophy a BBC code at UK forward slash Radio 4

Channel: BBC Podcasts

Views: 7,543

Rating: 4.8117647 out of 5

Keywords: christopher marlowe, marlowe, william shakespeare, christopher marlowe writing under pen name, doctor faustus cliffs notes, doctor faustus spark notes, dr faustus spark notes, analysis, literature review (literature subject), play, tragedy, theatre (tv genre), dr faustus, dr. faustus, doctor faustus, literature (media genre), christopher marlowe (author), thug notes, the tragical history of the life and death of doctor faustus (play), biography, mini biography

Id: U5o8ot5Z3W0

Length: 42min 19sec (2539 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 12 2018