Robert Sawyer

The Twenty-First Century: “Trauma, Drama, Conspiracy”

“Trauma, Drama, and Conspiracy,” begins with the publication of Katherine Duncan-Jones’ biography of Shakespeare. Although she was composing the book prior to 2001, its publication in the exact same year as 9/11 participated in a dismantling of all binaries, both political and literary, and also helped to alter the simple dual take on the pair as much as the attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11 and the London bombings on 7/7 unsettled our notions of “good” and “evil.” Using Trauma Theory as a starting point for my conclusions about the twenty-first century, I show how the relationship of Shakespeare and Marlowe has been upended and re-shaped by current historical and aesthetic pressures. I also show how the climate of conspiracy theories birthed after 9/1, as well as the more recent notion of “belief echoes,” has led to an outbreak of new versions of the old, anti-Stratfordian fever in numerous printed works.

The Nineteenth Century: “The Space(s) of the Critical Rivalry in London”

“The Space(s) of the Critical Rivalry in London” examines the nineteenth-century versions of the relationship, beginning with Charles Lamb’s assessment of Shakespeare and Marlowe in his 1808 Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, which “although delivered with little critical commentary, is heavily influenced by his own critical judgment.” The chapter then shows how William Hazlitt’s engagement with Edmund Kean set the two rivals in relief by comparing their staged dramas at Drury Lane. Kean’s performance of one central role from each of the writers—Barabbas in Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta and Shylock from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice—helps to further complicate the distinction between the dramatists in the nineteenth century. The space of the printed reviews and public lectures of William Hazlitt aimed at the so-called “public sphere” of Jurgun Habermas is both complicated and conflicted during nineteenth-century London.

Locating the Earliest “Critics”

“Locating the Earliest ‘Critics’” employs current theories of spatial production by such writers as Henri Lefebvre to examine the space of the early stage, and how this setting impacted the relationship between the playwrights and their audiences, as well as any dynamic connections among them. I borrow next from Foucault’s notion of convenientia and aemulato, as well as other important rhetorical terms of the early modern period such as exemplum and similitude. I apply his notion of “resemblance” in general to the Marlowe/Shakespeare connection, for as he reminds us, a dynamic relation between similar objects—or for my argument, similar writers—represents “a sort of natural twinship existing in things” that emulate one another. More specifically, I suggest that Marlowe and Shakespeare are critically constructed more in terms of opposites or parallels rather than with objective comparisons.

The Twentieth Century: “Formalization, Polarization, and Fictionalization”

“Formalization, Polarization, and Fictionalization,” opens with A.C. Swinburne’s interpretation of the playwrights serving as a bridge from late Victorian assessments to T.S. Eliot’s early- twentieth-century criticism. I next consider formalist readings of the two writers, particularly those of Caroline Spurgeon, before considering the more contextualized interpretations of Una Ellis-Fermor. Following a focus on mid-century critiques by critics such as Irving Ribner, who was heavily influenced by the polemics of the Cold War, the chapter concludes with an examination of fictional and cinematic representations of the connection toward the latter part of the twentieth century, including novels by Anthony Burgess, films such as Shakespeare in Love, and plays like Peter Whelan’s School of Night.

The Seventeenth Century: “Collaboration, Co-Authorship, and the Death of the Author(s)”

Using the debate over the “collaborative” process of early modern authors and actors offered up by G.E. Bentley, Jeffrey Masten, Brian Vickers, and others, Chap. 3, “Collaboration, Co-Authorship and the Death of the Author(s),” considers how this artistic tension impacted both Shakespeare and Marlowe, not only in their own works, but also in the references made to them by the anonymous author(s) of the “Parnassus Trilogy,” as well as by Michael Drayton and Ben Jonson. I also consider the self-positioning of the latter critics in relation to Marlowe and Shakespeare as “Authors,” as well as their rhetorical structuring of the Marlowe/Shakespeare relationship in order to articulate and validate their own critical positions.

Introduction: “The Rivals of My Watch”

The “Introduction” chapter first declares what my book will not be, since the title may suggest different things to different readers. My book is not a detailed examination of the biographical character of either Marlowe or Shakespeare. Nor is it another futile attempt to show that Marlowe single-handedly actually wrote some of Shakespeare’s plays. Nor will it focus solely on the working and playing conditions of the early modern theatrical scene. What it will examine is the link between Shakespeare and Marlowe as it has been portrayed in biographical and critical forms from the first mention of the two by their contemporaries in the 1590s, through the most recent revisions of the association in post-9/11 biographies. I demonstrate how historical, aesthetical, and personal pressures continually shape the view of the literary association between the two playwrights. As early as Robert Greene’s alleged attack on the “upstart crow,” and continuing through the early 21st-century renderings of the two dramatists, critics persist in reading the pair through a lens that refracts the relationship as much as it reflects their own individual literary and historical contexts.

The Long Eighteenth Century: “Limbs Torn Asunder, Borrowing the Bones, and Identifying the Corpus”

The connections between Marlowe and Shakespeare in the long eighteenth century comprise Chap. 4, entitled “Limbs Torn Asunder, Borrowing the Bones, and Identifying the Corpus.” The period from 1660 to 1800 marks a new phase in the interpretation of the relationship. Instead of being disturbed or anxious, these dramatists such as Aphra Behn, were far more practical in their engagement, daring enough to perform a type of literary grave robbing as they borrowed the limbs, bones, and sometimes the whole skeletal form of the two predecessors; they then re-animated them to create their own body of work, including adaptations, alterations, and appropriations. Later in the century, critics such as Milton’s nephew Edward Phillips worked to reassemble the corpuses of the two early modern writers.