Shakespeare and Marlowe: Re-Writing the Relationship

Abstract

Like the Chorus in Marlowe's prologue to Doctor Faustus, let me begin by stating what this essay is not. This paper is not a detailed examination of the biographical character of either Marlowe or Shakespeare. Nor is it yet another attempt to show that Marlowe coauthored or, more conspiratorially, actually wrote some of Shakespeare's plays. Nor will it focus on the working and playing conditions of the early modern theatrical scene. What it will explore is the relationship between Shakespeare and Marlowe as it has been portrayed in biographical and fictional forms. More specifically, my essay considers the connection between Shakespeare and Marlowe, particularly as critics have portrayed them in the twentieth century. I will begin with A.C. Swinburne and T.S. Eliot, then move to Irving Ribner's 1964 essay and Anthony Burgess's works, before considering the film Shakespeare in Love (1999). I will conclude my survey with Katherine Duncan-Jones's Ungentle Shakespeare (2001) as a marker for the end of the century's work on the two playwrights. Such an overview should show the dominance of these textual renderings and also demonstrate how the last hundred years have affected our vision as well as our version of the two writers' relationship. Commenting on the aesthetics of reception, Hans Robert Jauss suggests that such an examination will allow us to 'conceive the meaning and form' of these various works in the 'historical unfolding of [their] understanding'.1 Ultimately, I hope to demonstrate how