"Here's Nothing Writ": Scribe, Script, and Circumscription in Marlowe's Plays

Abstract

Although Marlowe has been justifiably praised for the dramatic force of his characters' spoken discourse, another dimension of his drama which raises larger questions of power has received less attention the trope of writing and unwriting. Patterns of intertextual reference, texts "deconstructing" or undoing other texts, and authors asserting competing authority recur throughout Marlowe's plays. This drama of the word is played out in Tamburlaine with special reference to the Koran and the conqueror's map of the world; in Faustus, with reference to the Eucharistic testament and the sorcerer's "deed of gift" to Lucifer. In Edward II a letter serves as the material embodiment of the concept of cohntertext as counterplot. In all these instances, the act of writing or signing conveys, not just a struggle between contending characters, but a struggle for mastery of stage and text between the playwright and his inscribed characters.