A Shakespeare Lecture – Part 2

The lecture I attended the other day ended with a bit on Christopher Marlowe, the greatest and most interesting Shakespearean influence out there. Basically, you can argue that if Marlowe was not stabbed in the eye and killed over a bar tab back in 1593 (right when Shakespeare was getting started), we would be discussing him as much, if not more, as Shakespeare. There would be Marlowe festivals, tee shirts, symposiums, and coffee mugs all over the place, without question, because the guy was doing exactly what Shakespeare did, only slightly earlier, and with shortened duration (that kind of thing tends to happen when you die).

Marlow was apparently the theater rock star in his day, well-regarded and idolized because of his popular and oft-performed plays. Like Shakespeare, he took what was before him and transformed it into something new and better. For example, he either invented or popularized blank verse, which was a giant step forward in that it created plays using language that sounded like we sound, that felt natural and “right” as opposed to stilted and false. Blank verse was a new tool, one of many, crafted and used by Marlowe (and subsequently, Shakespeare), fueling the fire that was the Golden Age of English Theater.

But…the lecture wasn’t just a huge love-fest for Marlowe and company. It was noted that for all of Marlow’s greatness, he was in a way one-dimensional and not nearly as varied as our favorite Bard or, as the lecturer said, not quite as flexible. You don’t see the range and variety of voice in his works (for example, Marlowe’s lead character in his Jew of Malta as compared to Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. The former is simply an evil dude, through and through, while the later is something so much more nuanced).

However, as mentioned earlier, Marlowe was just getting started so who’s to say that he wouldn't hone his art like Shakespeare did? Why wouldn’t he develop and evolve? Given his great start, to what heights could this development have reached? Also, to wonder out loud some more, it’s impossible not to consider that if Marlow had lived and prospered then we would have had two great writers, writing contemporarily, perhaps in competition even, like a Lennon-and-McCartney sort of thing, an idea which is almost too awesome to consider (As a side note here, please don’t say that these two people were the same, i.e., that Marlowe wrote Shakespeare’s plays. He didn’t, or rather, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that he did. You might as well say Queen Elizabeth wrote Shakespeare's plays. There’s as much evidence there as in the Marlowe case).