Clip from the 2002 documentary by Michael Rubbo
Much Ado About Something on PBS Frontline
Much Ado About Something Official Website
Much Ado About Something on Rotten Tomatoes
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Marlowe's Ghost receives mention from Independent Publisher Book Awards
Independent Publisher Book Awards
Bronze Medallist - Marlowe's Ghost, Best Regional Non-fiction, Canada (East)
(Canada is divided into two regions, East and West. Canada - East is Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic provinces.)
About The Independent Publisher Book Awards:
"The Independent Publisher Book Awards were conceived as a broad-based, unaffiliated awards program open to all members of the independent publishing industry, and are open to authors and publishers worldwide who produce books written in English and intended for the North American market. We define “independent” as 1) independently owned and operated; 2) operated by a foundation or university; or 3) longtime independents that became incorporated but operate autonomously and publish fewer than 50 titles a year."
© DARYL PINKSEN 2009
Explore the website: www.MarlowesGhost.com
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Michael Shermer in Scientific American
AUGUST 2, 2009
Skeptic's Take on the Life and Argued Works of Shakespeare
By MICHAEL SHERMER
The anti-Stratfordian skeptics are back, and this time they have a Supreme Court justice on their side. For centuries, Shakespeare skeptics have doubted the authorship of the Stratfordian Bard's literary corpus, proffering no fewer than 50 alternative candidates (Full Story . . .)
Comment in response to Mr. Shermer's August 1, 2009 article
Dear Mr. Shermer,
I agree with the vast majority of what you say in the SciAm article, especially the assertion that, “a reigning theory is presumed provisionally true and continues to hold sway unless and until a challenging theory explains the current data as well and also accounts for anomalies that the prevailing one cannot.”
There are problems with the Shakespeare theory (to use the language of science), which are readily acknowledged by stand-out scholars like Stanley Wells. The Oxford alternative may account for some of these so-called anomalies, but it can never explain the current data, and therefore has no chance of displacing Shakespeare.
Oxford’s only extant work is a collection of mediocre poems which he, apparently, had no problem with people knowing were his. On his supposed ability to write dramatic verse of the quality required, there is no proof whatsoever.
I happen to think that Christopher Marlowe wrote Shakespeare’s plays. At the moment the case is not provable, but it is the only alternative theory with a chance of being correct. In the 19th century it was a commonplace amongst the first rank of scholars to assign co-authorship of Titus Andronicus and the Henry VI trilogy – plays included in the 1623 First Folio of Shakespeare’s Plays – to Marlowe, based on stylistic similarities to Marlowe’s plays(inexplicably, these claims vanished sometime in the 20th century).
And one cannot read any of the good biographies without being told how Shakespeare began his career “emulating” or “imitating” Marlowe. This conclusion may be the case, but it is not fact. The fact here is the close similarity of Shakespeare’s work to Marlowe’s. Speculation that Shakespeare either A: collaborated with Marlowe early in his career, B: revised Marlowe’s work and claimed the revised plays as his own, C: studied Marlowe’s style and copied it, are all theories that have been proposed to explain it. A fourth alternative, possibly a more satisfactory one, is that Marlowe actually wrote some, or all, of these plays which demonstrate his influence.
This idea is, at present, only an intriguing hypothesis, but there is a symmetry to this theory that I believe persons with your background would find elegant. Perhaps not compelling, but worthy of consideration.
Regards,
Daryl Pinksen
B.Sc,B.A,M.Ed
© DARYL PINKSEN 2009
Explore the website: www.MarlowesGhost.com
I agree with the vast majority of what you say in the SciAm article, especially the assertion that, “a reigning theory is presumed provisionally true and continues to hold sway unless and until a challenging theory explains the current data as well and also accounts for anomalies that the prevailing one cannot.”
There are problems with the Shakespeare theory (to use the language of science), which are readily acknowledged by stand-out scholars like Stanley Wells. The Oxford alternative may account for some of these so-called anomalies, but it can never explain the current data, and therefore has no chance of displacing Shakespeare.
Oxford’s only extant work is a collection of mediocre poems which he, apparently, had no problem with people knowing were his. On his supposed ability to write dramatic verse of the quality required, there is no proof whatsoever.
I happen to think that Christopher Marlowe wrote Shakespeare’s plays. At the moment the case is not provable, but it is the only alternative theory with a chance of being correct. In the 19th century it was a commonplace amongst the first rank of scholars to assign co-authorship of Titus Andronicus and the Henry VI trilogy – plays included in the 1623 First Folio of Shakespeare’s Plays – to Marlowe, based on stylistic similarities to Marlowe’s plays(inexplicably, these claims vanished sometime in the 20th century).
And one cannot read any of the good biographies without being told how Shakespeare began his career “emulating” or “imitating” Marlowe. This conclusion may be the case, but it is not fact. The fact here is the close similarity of Shakespeare’s work to Marlowe’s. Speculation that Shakespeare either A: collaborated with Marlowe early in his career, B: revised Marlowe’s work and claimed the revised plays as his own, C: studied Marlowe’s style and copied it, are all theories that have been proposed to explain it. A fourth alternative, possibly a more satisfactory one, is that Marlowe actually wrote some, or all, of these plays which demonstrate his influence.
This idea is, at present, only an intriguing hypothesis, but there is a symmetry to this theory that I believe persons with your background would find elegant. Perhaps not compelling, but worthy of consideration.
Regards,
Daryl Pinksen
B.Sc,B.A,M.Ed
© DARYL PINKSEN 2009
Explore the website: www.MarlowesGhost.com
Philip Yordan: A Modern-day Shakespeare?
JUNE 11, 2009
By DARYL PINKSEN
Originally posted at The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection.
The authorship of Shakespeare’s plays has been questioned for well over a century. The cause of this skepticism depends on whom you ask: Stanley Wells attributes doubt to either snobbery or mental illness, while Jonathan Bate explains the phenomenon as a form of heresy against the worship of Shakespeare. Perhaps, but there are troubling facets of Shakespeare’s biography on which most scholars agree: while there is ample evidence of his business life, there is sparse evidence of any literary life. Filmmaker Mike Wood suggests Shakespeare’s remarkably low profile as a writer may have been the result of a "secret Catholicism" which forced him, out of fear, to keep his literary self hidden. Others speculate that the lack of evidence of a literary life tells us Shakespeare was not the writer of his plays, but instead acted as a "front" for some other writer.
In Marlowe’s Ghost, I argue that Shakespeare, as a shareholder in the theatre company that performed the plays attributed to him, used his position to act as a front for Christopher Marlowe, a writer I speculate had fled from prosecution and was in hiding. I also compare the political climate in the 1590s to Hollywood in the 1950s. Change the location and time, substitute "Atheist" for "Communist," and a close parallel becomes apparent. In the 1950s, with the Cold War ramping up, domestic Communists were branded as enemies of the state. In Marlowe’s day, with England under threat from continental Catholic Europe, those branded with Atheism – never an entirely safe position in any age – provoked the same kind of visceral hatred.
In the 1950s, dozens of writers fled Hollywood for Mexico, New York, London, Paris and Madrid, fearing imprisonment if they were subpoenaed. In 1593 London, a new law passed in Parliament – authorizing search, seizure, and torture – spurred Christopher Marlowe to warn his friend and fellow playwright Thomas Kyd to flee to Scotland. Marlowe was adamant that he would be leaving soon to go "unto the King of Scots," and he was busy making the rounds of his literary friends pressuring them to leave England as well. Of course, Hollywood Communists’ greatest fear was imprisonment; that was the least of Marlowe’s worries. He, and those of like mind, could be tortured and executed, and many were.
We now know that both Kyd and Marlowe were arrested before they had a chance to escape the repression. I argue in Marlowe’s Ghost that the May 1593 Deptford meeting between Marlowe and three associates in the English intelligence network, where it is reported that Marlowe was killed by one of these men, was actually a cover for Marlowe to escape to Scotland with the assistance of master spy Robert Poley, another of the men at the Deptford meeting. In exile, Marlowe would have continued to write – just as blacklisted Hollywood writers did in Mexico in the 1950s – but he would have needed a way to get his work into production.
Shakespeare, essentially a 16th-century producer, was perfectly positioned to bring playscripts to the company, claim them as his own, and share in the wealth from their production. The recognized anomalies of Shakespeare’s biography - plenty of evidence of a business life in the theatre, but no evidence of a literary life, save for his name on a collection of fine plays which echo the mind and work of Christopher Marlowe - could be explained with this scenario.
An interesting theory, but could Shakespeare actually have gotten away with this? I argue yes, and offer as a historical parallel the career of Oscar-winning1 screenwriter-producer Philip Yordan, active during the era of the Hollywood blacklist.
Much of our information about Yordan’s career as a screenwriter-producer comes from Bernard Gordon, a blacklisted writer employed and fronted by Yordan in the period following the HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) hearings. Despite working alongside Yordan for years, Gordon was never able to say for sure whether Yordan was a brilliant and prolific writer or a complete fraud. Studio executives had been suspicious of the origins of Yordan’s scripts during the blacklist years, and if the blacklist had not been broken, those suspicions would probably be familiar only to a small number of Hollywood insiders. In Gordon’s blacklist memoir Hollywood Exile he introduces Philip Yordan:
Yordan, whose name appears in the credits of a large and impressive body of films, was rumored to have employed uncredited writers. According to Bernard Gordon in Hollywood Exile (1999):
Gordon was aware of the rumors, and while working for Yordan as a writer was able to observe him up close for many years, helping to develop script ideas, discussing production problems like funding, locations, and casting, but he was never able to come to a decision about Yordan. Was Yordan the great writer that his screen credits lead us to believe? Did he write some of the scripts he is credited with? Did he write anything?
In an interview with Patrick McGilligan for Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist (1997), McGilligan puts it to Gordon outright:
Clearly uncomfortable answering the question (Yordan had employed Gordon while Gordon was blacklisted and had paid him well while other blacklistees’ careers were in ruins), Gordon answers:
During years of working together on films, while Yordan sold many scripts to Hollywood studios with his name on them as writer, Bernard Gordon never saw Yordan write anything. Gordon did, though, see Yordan put his name on scripts which he did not write, including his own.
Suppose now for a moment that the Hollywood blacklist had never been broken, and the label “Communist” still induced a revulsion similar to that felt toward “Atheists” in the Elizabethan period. If Bernard Gordon had never been un-blacklisted, he would never have gotten Hollywood Exile published, and would never have been interviewed by Patrick McGilligan about his experience as a blacklisted writer. As the years passed, and the studio heads’ skepticism of Yordan faded with them from memory, all that would remain of Philip Yordan would be his name on dozens of films as writer and producer.6 Those credits would be cited as unassailable proof of Yordan’s contribution to 20th-century screenwriting.
Was Philip Yordan a fraud? Bernard Gordon does not want to believe it, but this may have more to do with Yordan’s impressive capacity for secrecy – and Gordon’s gratitude – than the truth.
If Philip Yordan could get away with a deception of this magnitude in the 1950s, William Shakespeare could have gotten away with a similar deception in the 1590s.
© DARYL PINKSEN 2009
Daryl Pinksen, a regular contributor to MSC, is the author of Marlowe's Ghost: The Blacklisting of the Man Who Was Shakespeare, a recent recipient of the Independent Publisher Book Award's Bronze Medal for Best Regional Non-fiction, Canada (East).
1 Yordan was nominated for an Oscar three times, and won the award in 1954 for Best Writing, Motion Picture Story for the filmBroken Lance.
See http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0948634/awards.
2 Gordon, Bernard. Hollywood Exile: Or How I Learned to Love the Blacklist. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1999. p. xiii.
3 Gordon, 1999. p.106.
4 McGilligan, Patrick and Paul Buhle. Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. p.277.
5 McGilligan and Buhle, 1997. p.277.
6 See Philip Yordan’s IMDB profile at http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0948634/. Out of sixty-five writing credits, four are listed as “front for Ben Maddow," and two are listed as “front for Bernard Gordon." The rest are still attributed to Yordan, with no indication of any doubt.
© DARYL PINKSEN 2009
Explore the website here: www.MarlowesGhost.com
By DARYL PINKSEN
Originally posted at The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection.
The authorship of Shakespeare’s plays has been questioned for well over a century. The cause of this skepticism depends on whom you ask: Stanley Wells attributes doubt to either snobbery or mental illness, while Jonathan Bate explains the phenomenon as a form of heresy against the worship of Shakespeare. Perhaps, but there are troubling facets of Shakespeare’s biography on which most scholars agree: while there is ample evidence of his business life, there is sparse evidence of any literary life. Filmmaker Mike Wood suggests Shakespeare’s remarkably low profile as a writer may have been the result of a "secret Catholicism" which forced him, out of fear, to keep his literary self hidden. Others speculate that the lack of evidence of a literary life tells us Shakespeare was not the writer of his plays, but instead acted as a "front" for some other writer.
In Marlowe’s Ghost, I argue that Shakespeare, as a shareholder in the theatre company that performed the plays attributed to him, used his position to act as a front for Christopher Marlowe, a writer I speculate had fled from prosecution and was in hiding. I also compare the political climate in the 1590s to Hollywood in the 1950s. Change the location and time, substitute "Atheist" for "Communist," and a close parallel becomes apparent. In the 1950s, with the Cold War ramping up, domestic Communists were branded as enemies of the state. In Marlowe’s day, with England under threat from continental Catholic Europe, those branded with Atheism – never an entirely safe position in any age – provoked the same kind of visceral hatred.
In the 1950s, dozens of writers fled Hollywood for Mexico, New York, London, Paris and Madrid, fearing imprisonment if they were subpoenaed. In 1593 London, a new law passed in Parliament – authorizing search, seizure, and torture – spurred Christopher Marlowe to warn his friend and fellow playwright Thomas Kyd to flee to Scotland. Marlowe was adamant that he would be leaving soon to go "unto the King of Scots," and he was busy making the rounds of his literary friends pressuring them to leave England as well. Of course, Hollywood Communists’ greatest fear was imprisonment; that was the least of Marlowe’s worries. He, and those of like mind, could be tortured and executed, and many were.
We now know that both Kyd and Marlowe were arrested before they had a chance to escape the repression. I argue in Marlowe’s Ghost that the May 1593 Deptford meeting between Marlowe and three associates in the English intelligence network, where it is reported that Marlowe was killed by one of these men, was actually a cover for Marlowe to escape to Scotland with the assistance of master spy Robert Poley, another of the men at the Deptford meeting. In exile, Marlowe would have continued to write – just as blacklisted Hollywood writers did in Mexico in the 1950s – but he would have needed a way to get his work into production.
Shakespeare, essentially a 16th-century producer, was perfectly positioned to bring playscripts to the company, claim them as his own, and share in the wealth from their production. The recognized anomalies of Shakespeare’s biography - plenty of evidence of a business life in the theatre, but no evidence of a literary life, save for his name on a collection of fine plays which echo the mind and work of Christopher Marlowe - could be explained with this scenario.
An interesting theory, but could Shakespeare actually have gotten away with this? I argue yes, and offer as a historical parallel the career of Oscar-winning1 screenwriter-producer Philip Yordan, active during the era of the Hollywood blacklist.
Much of our information about Yordan’s career as a screenwriter-producer comes from Bernard Gordon, a blacklisted writer employed and fronted by Yordan in the period following the HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) hearings. Despite working alongside Yordan for years, Gordon was never able to say for sure whether Yordan was a brilliant and prolific writer or a complete fraud. Studio executives had been suspicious of the origins of Yordan’s scripts during the blacklist years, and if the blacklist had not been broken, those suspicions would probably be familiar only to a small number of Hollywood insiders. In Gordon’s blacklist memoir Hollywood Exile he introduces Philip Yordan:
For many years, Philip Yordan was the talk of Hollywood. Regarded by some as a fraud, by others – including important stars and directors – as a genius, he amassed an improbable number of screen credits and seemed incredibly prolific.2
Yordan, whose name appears in the credits of a large and impressive body of films, was rumored to have employed uncredited writers. According to Bernard Gordon in Hollywood Exile (1999):
From 1944 until 1960 Yordan had a unique whirlwind career in Hollywood, principally as a writer, but also as a producer. He is credited officially with fifty to sixty screenplays and productions, an output that seems inordinate. For that reason, as well as others, he is widely said to have run a script factory. Of course, the same was said about the literary output of Zola and Dumas. Personally, I know of instances when Yordan put his own name on scripts that were written by blacklisted screenwriters (including my own), but there was real justification for that.3
Gordon was aware of the rumors, and while working for Yordan as a writer was able to observe him up close for many years, helping to develop script ideas, discussing production problems like funding, locations, and casting, but he was never able to come to a decision about Yordan. Was Yordan the great writer that his screen credits lead us to believe? Did he write some of the scripts he is credited with? Did he write anything?
In an interview with Patrick McGilligan for Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist (1997), McGilligan puts it to Gordon outright:
Do you think he was once a great writer who decided to channel his energies into business and promotion? Or is he one of Hollywood’s greatest hoaxes as a writer, someone who never actually wrote?4
Clearly uncomfortable answering the question (Yordan had employed Gordon while Gordon was blacklisted and had paid him well while other blacklistees’ careers were in ruins), Gordon answers:
Look, I can’t answer that question, and I don’t want to answer that question. I don’t want to make a judgment. I consider him a friend. It’s not possible for me to say what he did during his better days. When he was writing scripts for important directors and producers, I can’t believe he was incapable of writing a good scene or a good script. He must have been. But I didn’t see it.5
During years of working together on films, while Yordan sold many scripts to Hollywood studios with his name on them as writer, Bernard Gordon never saw Yordan write anything. Gordon did, though, see Yordan put his name on scripts which he did not write, including his own.
Suppose now for a moment that the Hollywood blacklist had never been broken, and the label “Communist” still induced a revulsion similar to that felt toward “Atheists” in the Elizabethan period. If Bernard Gordon had never been un-blacklisted, he would never have gotten Hollywood Exile published, and would never have been interviewed by Patrick McGilligan about his experience as a blacklisted writer. As the years passed, and the studio heads’ skepticism of Yordan faded with them from memory, all that would remain of Philip Yordan would be his name on dozens of films as writer and producer.6 Those credits would be cited as unassailable proof of Yordan’s contribution to 20th-century screenwriting.
Was Philip Yordan a fraud? Bernard Gordon does not want to believe it, but this may have more to do with Yordan’s impressive capacity for secrecy – and Gordon’s gratitude – than the truth.
If Philip Yordan could get away with a deception of this magnitude in the 1950s, William Shakespeare could have gotten away with a similar deception in the 1590s.
© DARYL PINKSEN 2009
Daryl Pinksen, a regular contributor to MSC, is the author of Marlowe's Ghost: The Blacklisting of the Man Who Was Shakespeare, a recent recipient of the Independent Publisher Book Award's Bronze Medal for Best Regional Non-fiction, Canada (East).
1 Yordan was nominated for an Oscar three times, and won the award in 1954 for Best Writing, Motion Picture Story for the filmBroken Lance.
See http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0948634/awards.
2 Gordon, Bernard. Hollywood Exile: Or How I Learned to Love the Blacklist. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1999. p. xiii.
3 Gordon, 1999. p.106.
4 McGilligan, Patrick and Paul Buhle. Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. p.277.
5 McGilligan and Buhle, 1997. p.277.
6 See Philip Yordan’s IMDB profile at http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0948634/. Out of sixty-five writing credits, four are listed as “front for Ben Maddow," and two are listed as “front for Bernard Gordon." The rest are still attributed to Yordan, with no indication of any doubt.
© DARYL PINKSEN 2009
Explore the website here: www.MarlowesGhost.com
"Shake-scene," and Shattering the Shakespeare Myth.
e decide what to believe? My answer is that we must ask ourselves would Edward Alleyn have assumed that Greene was referring to him in the "Shake-scene" reference. Given the similarity to the 1590 insult, and the fact that Alleyn had spoken the "tyger's hart" line on stage, how could he have assumed that the insult was not aimed at him? If Alleyn assumed that he was the "Shake-scene" being insulted (again) by Greene, then we must assume that he was "Shake-scene" as well.
Here is why the debate is not academic: if we were to assume that "Shake-scene" was Edward Alleyn, then Shakespeare--the writer Shakespeare, would not exist before Marlowe's disappearance in 1593. Beyond that, it would link Christopher Marlowe to Edward Alleyn's performance of Henry VI, a play which scholars have long noted sounds like a deliberate emulation of Marlowe's style by Shakespeare. The line between the works of Marlowe and Shakespeare is already blurred; replace Shakespeare with Edward Alleyn as the "Shake-scene," and the line is effectively erased.
© DARYL PINKSEN 2008
Explore the website: www.MarlowesGhost.com
Here is why the debate is not academic: if we were to assume that "Shake-scene" was Edward Alleyn, then Shakespeare--the writer Shakespeare, would not exist before Marlowe's disappearance in 1593. Beyond that, it would link Christopher Marlowe to Edward Alleyn's performance of Henry VI, a play which scholars have long noted sounds like a deliberate emulation of Marlowe's style by Shakespeare. The line between the works of Marlowe and Shakespeare is already blurred; replace Shakespeare with Edward Alleyn as the "Shake-scene," and the line is effectively erased.
© DARYL PINKSEN 2008
Explore the website: www.MarlowesGhost.com
Errata: Corrections and Additions to Marlowe's Ghost
p.124:
Re: The sentence "But Francis Meres did not know Shakespeare personally any more than he knew Chaucer; he was simply reporting what was commonly believed." is misleading.
It is unlikely that Meres knew Shakespeare personally, but the sentence implies that this is known as fact. It is not. The sentence should be amended to, "But there is no reason to believe that Francis Meres knew Shakespeare personally any more than he knew Chaucer; he was simply reporting what was commonly believed."
pp.166 -167:
Correction: The sentence "He had even written letters to Southampton urging him to marry his own daughter." is in error. We know Lord Burghley had written letters to persons with influence over Southampton to urge him to marry, and it is entirely plausible that Burghley had put his wishes in writing to Southampton as well, but we have no direct evidence of this. Worse, 'daughter' is incorrect; it was Burghley's granddaughter whom he had arranged to marry Southampton.
p.171:
Re: The sentence " . . . no one mourns the passing of the immortal bard, the sweet swan of Avon, as happened with every other writer of the age."
The phrase 'every other writer' lacks a modifier. The sentence should be amended to '". . . no one mourns the passing of the immortal bard, the sweet swan of Avon, as happened with many other writers of the age."
© DARYL PINKSEN 2009
Explore the website at: www.MarlowesGhost.com
Re: The sentence "But Francis Meres did not know Shakespeare personally any more than he knew Chaucer; he was simply reporting what was commonly believed." is misleading.
It is unlikely that Meres knew Shakespeare personally, but the sentence implies that this is known as fact. It is not. The sentence should be amended to, "But there is no reason to believe that Francis Meres knew Shakespeare personally any more than he knew Chaucer; he was simply reporting what was commonly believed."
pp.166 -167:
Correction: The sentence "He had even written letters to Southampton urging him to marry his own daughter." is in error. We know Lord Burghley had written letters to persons with influence over Southampton to urge him to marry, and it is entirely plausible that Burghley had put his wishes in writing to Southampton as well, but we have no direct evidence of this. Worse, 'daughter' is incorrect; it was Burghley's granddaughter whom he had arranged to marry Southampton.
p.171:
Re: The sentence " . . . no one mourns the passing of the immortal bard, the sweet swan of Avon, as happened with every other writer of the age."
The phrase 'every other writer' lacks a modifier. The sentence should be amended to '". . . no one mourns the passing of the immortal bard, the sweet swan of Avon, as happened with many other writers of the age."
© DARYL PINKSEN 2009
Explore the website at: www.MarlowesGhost.com
Who was John Penry?
In the 1580s John Penry had written a series of pamphlets that challenged the authority of the Anglican church establishment. He may have also written the Marprelate tracts which vexed Archbishop Whitgift to no end. By 1589, Whitgift had had enough, and issued an order that Penry be arrested for encouraging sedition, based on the pamphlets published in Penry's name.
Penry did not wait for the authorities to find him. Instead, he fled to Scotland, just as Marlowe later informed Thomas Kyd he was planning to do. Penry stayed in Scotland for three years, returning surreptitiously in 1592. He remained at large until March 1593, when Whitgift's forces captured him. Penry remained in custody until his execution a year later.
What happened next is well known: on May 21st, 1593, the day after an arrest warrant was issued for Marlowe, Penry was convicted of sedition. On May 29th, the day before the Deptford meeting, Penry was hastily executed less than a mile from Deptford.
Marlowe's plan to go "unto the King of Scots", where Whitgift had no authority, very likely had the experience of John Penry as inspiration.
© DARYL PINKSEN 2009
Explore the website at: www.MarlowesGhost.com
Who was Robert Poley?
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2008
A question for Daryl Pinksen, author of Marlowe's Ghost
Originally posted on The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection
Carlo: Daryl, as I was reading your recent work, Marlowe's Ghost: The Blacklisting of the Man Who Was Shakespeare, I was struck by your description of Robert Poley, one of the three men who was with Marlowe the day of his alleged death. The other two were Nicholas Skeres and Ingram Frizer. Frizer was Thomas Walsingham's servant (ed. note: see 6/19 post on Walsinghams) and probably a low-level intelligence operative; Skeres, you suggest, might have been an operative in the Earl of Essex's intelligence network. And then there's Poley, someone with a very interesting intelligence background and a fairly experienced agent. Please elaborate.
Daryl: Thanks Carlo. The fact that Robert Poley was at the Deptford meeting is remarkable. It's commonplace to hear people refer to the 1593 Deptford incident as a "tavern brawl." Far from it. The four men who gathered there were, as Charles Nicholl called them, scoundrels, Marlowe included, and all four were involved in shady dealings, linked in some way to the Elizabethan underworld. But Poley's presence at the meeting makes it an exceptional event.
Marlowe, Skeres, and Frizer were lightweights, minor cogs in the Walsingham/Burghley-led intelligence machine (ed. note: see 6/23 post on Cecils). Robert Poley was in a different league entirely; in 1586 he had been instrumental in exposing the Babington Plot, which led to the execution of Queen Elizabeth's cousin, Mary Queen of Scots. In The Reckoning, Nicholl's meticulous exploration of Marlowe's demise, he tells us that in the months leading up to Deptford, Poley was engaged in high-level diplomatic liaisons between The Hague, England, and Scotland. Here's where the story takes a turn - Nicholl's research reveals that for ten days following the Deptford meeting, Poley's whereabouts are inexplicably unknown. Where was he? Nicholl has no idea, but circumstances suggest that Poley may have been in Scotland, as Marlowe's escort. Years earlier, Poley had been recommended as an agent who knew "the best ways to pass into Scotland." And Marlowe, in his last conversation with Thomas Kyd (a playwright Marlowe had once shared a room with) said he was determined to go to Scotland, and mentioned that another of his literary friends, Matthew Roydon, had already gone. Marlowe urged Kyd to join them.
If Marlowe did survive the Deptford meeting, it may have been because Robert Poley was there to help Marlowe "pass into Scotland," a safe haven for freethinkers trying to escape the religious oppression then sweeping England. Thomas Kyd should have listened to Marlowe's advice; after his arrest he was imprisoned and tortured, and died within months of his release.
© DARYL PINKSEN 2008
Explore the website: www.MarlowesGhost.com
A question for Daryl Pinksen, author of Marlowe's Ghost
Originally posted on The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection
Carlo: Daryl, as I was reading your recent work, Marlowe's Ghost: The Blacklisting of the Man Who Was Shakespeare, I was struck by your description of Robert Poley, one of the three men who was with Marlowe the day of his alleged death. The other two were Nicholas Skeres and Ingram Frizer. Frizer was Thomas Walsingham's servant (ed. note: see 6/19 post on Walsinghams) and probably a low-level intelligence operative; Skeres, you suggest, might have been an operative in the Earl of Essex's intelligence network. And then there's Poley, someone with a very interesting intelligence background and a fairly experienced agent. Please elaborate.
Daryl: Thanks Carlo. The fact that Robert Poley was at the Deptford meeting is remarkable. It's commonplace to hear people refer to the 1593 Deptford incident as a "tavern brawl." Far from it. The four men who gathered there were, as Charles Nicholl called them, scoundrels, Marlowe included, and all four were involved in shady dealings, linked in some way to the Elizabethan underworld. But Poley's presence at the meeting makes it an exceptional event.
Marlowe, Skeres, and Frizer were lightweights, minor cogs in the Walsingham/Burghley-led intelligence machine (ed. note: see 6/23 post on Cecils). Robert Poley was in a different league entirely; in 1586 he had been instrumental in exposing the Babington Plot, which led to the execution of Queen Elizabeth's cousin, Mary Queen of Scots. In The Reckoning, Nicholl's meticulous exploration of Marlowe's demise, he tells us that in the months leading up to Deptford, Poley was engaged in high-level diplomatic liaisons between The Hague, England, and Scotland. Here's where the story takes a turn - Nicholl's research reveals that for ten days following the Deptford meeting, Poley's whereabouts are inexplicably unknown. Where was he? Nicholl has no idea, but circumstances suggest that Poley may have been in Scotland, as Marlowe's escort. Years earlier, Poley had been recommended as an agent who knew "the best ways to pass into Scotland." And Marlowe, in his last conversation with Thomas Kyd (a playwright Marlowe had once shared a room with) said he was determined to go to Scotland, and mentioned that another of his literary friends, Matthew Roydon, had already gone. Marlowe urged Kyd to join them.
If Marlowe did survive the Deptford meeting, it may have been because Robert Poley was there to help Marlowe "pass into Scotland," a safe haven for freethinkers trying to escape the religious oppression then sweeping England. Thomas Kyd should have listened to Marlowe's advice; after his arrest he was imprisoned and tortured, and died within months of his release.
© DARYL PINKSEN 2008
Explore the website: www.MarlowesGhost.com
Was Shakespeare Catholic? Making sense of Will's self-concealment.
SUNDAY, MAY 10, 2009
by Daryl Pinksen
Originally posted on the Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection.
Scholars have long expressed frustration that Shakespeare left behind so few personal traces. There is plenty of evidence of a business life, but nothing concerning literary matters. Compounding their frustration, Shakespeare’s plays seem to suggest a desire to remain deliberately impersonal, to keep himself and his real opinions concealed.
Why did this particular author, the one we most want to know, choose to hide his face? The quest for an answer reminds us that “Shakespeare,” as an historical literary phenomenon, requires an explanation.
The exploration of Shakespeare’s Catholic roots has provided Michael Wood, the filmmaker behind the four-part documentary In Search of Shakespeare, with an opportunity to suggest an answer – that Shakespeare lived his life as a hidden Catholic, and the fear of drawing the attention of Protestant authorities to his forbidden beliefs necessitated a low literary profile.
The case for Shakespeare’s father John’s Catholicism is solid. Evidence from his life and more from his will leaves little doubt that he kept his loyalty to the old faith in spite of the state’s attempts to stamp it out. Shakespeare’s youth then was spent in a home that paid lip-service to the upstart Anglican religion. The textual evidence for the author’s Catholicism is less sure, but more passionately argued. Scholars have constructed opposing views with equally strong ammunition from the same texts. This is part of the frustration. The collected Shakespeare plays, though finite in number, create a near infinite space within which we interact with his creation.
The author’s intimate knowledge of religious matters, including the history and practice of the Catholic Church, hints to Wood and others that the author was a devout Catholic. But we must take into consideration that the author was a Renaissance polymath of the highest degree. Those who forget this fact waste time speculating, for example, that demonstrated expertise in legal matters means the author worked in a law office – or that he was Francis Bacon. Likewise, an easy familiarity with courtly matters, and a broad acquaintance with continental Europe and its politics, tells others the author was the Earl of Oxford. A handful of knowing references to leathercraft leads scholars like Jonathan Bate to imagine the poet’s youth spent as the son of a glover.1
After outlining Shakespeare’s family’s Catholic roots and some contemporary accounts of Catholics persecuted by the state, Wood, in his companion book Shakespeare (2003), reveals why Shakespeare’s supposed Catholic faith is so important:
But could the author’s private Catholic beliefs have really produced a life-long fear resulting in deliberate literary self-concealment? As often when discussing Shakespeare in his world, we can look for a comparison to Shakespeare’s contemporary Ben Jonson. A player for the Admiral’s Men, Jonson made his playwrighting debut as a contributor to the 1597 Isle of Dogs, a seditious play which landed him in jail. A year later, Jonson was back in jail for killing a fellow player, Gabriel Spencer, in an illegal duel. Jonson escaped hanging for his crime because of a legal loophole, the ancient “right of clergy,” which allowed those fluent in Latin to get a second chance. Instead, Jonson forfeited all his possessions.
Here is where the Jonson comparison becomes relevant. While in prison, Jonson actually converted to Catholicism and remained openly Catholic for twelve years.3 And even though he stopped practicing his faith in 1610, it is widely believed that he returned to Catholicism later in life.4
This is curious. Shakespeare, we are asked to believe, was so fearful of his “hidden” Catholic beliefs being outted that it led to a life-long “deliberate act of self-concealment.” Jonson, by contrast, while trying to build a reputation, chose to become an open Catholic. What impact did Jonson’s conversion have on his career? It did not slow him down for an instant. Upon release from prison in 1598 he effected a comeback with Every Man Out of His Humour, a hit for Shakespeare’s Lord Chamberlain’s Men. His career continued on an upward trajectory culminating in 1616 when King James I named Jonson the first de-facto poet laureate by granting him an annual pension of 100 marks.5
Scholars are quick to point to Ben Jonson when needing an example of another playwright who began as a player, or one who had not gone to the university. They should also remember Jonson when considering the theory that Shakespeare’s remarkable literary self-concealment was the outcome of hidden Catholic beliefs. Ben Jonson, minor actor, ex-con son of a bricklayer, was not impeded in his writing career by his open Catholic beliefs. Can we really be expected to believe that the author of the Shakespeare plays was paralyzed with fear into a literary life lived under cover because of hidden Catholic beliefs?
In light of Jonson’s experience, it appears that Wood may be exaggerating the danger of Catholicism in 1590s England. Simply being Catholic was not an act of treason. It was only when those Catholics declared their Protestant monarch illegitimate that treason was charged against them.
Perhaps Shakespeare was just more cautious than Jonson? We know Shakespeare was not the shy and retiring type; witness his pursuit of a coat of arms, padded with spurious embellishments, and his huge Stratford home. And living in London as an actor/shareholder with a theater company that performed at court could not be considered “low-profile.”
If Shakespeare did hold private Catholic beliefs, he would not have needed to live his literary life in fear. He did not need to avoid recording personal remembrances – letters, dedications, encomia, prefaces; all he needed to do was avoid making anti-establishment statements in them.
Still, the fact remains that the author of the Shakespeare plays, whoever he was, did employ a policy of literary self-concealment. The answer to why he chose to do so lies elsewhere.
Daryl Pinksen
Daryl Pinksen, a regular contributor to MSC, is the author of Marlowe's Ghost: The Blacklisting of the Man Who Was Shakespeare, a recent recipient of the Independent Publisher Book Award's Bronze Medal for Best Regional Non-fiction, Canada (East).
1Bate, Jonathan. 2002. "Scenes from the Birth of a Myth and the Death of a Dramatist." In Shakespeare’s Face. Stephanie Nolen. Canada: Alfred A. Knopf. p.122.
2Wood, Michael. 2003. Shakespeare. New York: Perseus Books Group. p.27.
3Harp, Richard, and Stewart, Stanley, eds. 2000. The Cambridge Companion to Ben Jonson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. xiv.
4Van Den Berg, Sara. 2000. "True Relation: the Life and Career of Ben Jonson." In The Cambridge Companion to Ben Jonson. Richard Harp and Stanley Stewart eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p.10.
5Marcus, Leah. 2000. "Jonson and the Court." In The Cambridge Companion to Ben Jonson. Richard Harp and Stanley Stewart eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p.36.
© DARYL PINKSEN 2009
Explore the website: www.MarlowesGhost.com
by Daryl Pinksen
Originally posted on the Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection.
Scholars have long expressed frustration that Shakespeare left behind so few personal traces. There is plenty of evidence of a business life, but nothing concerning literary matters. Compounding their frustration, Shakespeare’s plays seem to suggest a desire to remain deliberately impersonal, to keep himself and his real opinions concealed.
Why did this particular author, the one we most want to know, choose to hide his face? The quest for an answer reminds us that “Shakespeare,” as an historical literary phenomenon, requires an explanation.
The exploration of Shakespeare’s Catholic roots has provided Michael Wood, the filmmaker behind the four-part documentary In Search of Shakespeare, with an opportunity to suggest an answer – that Shakespeare lived his life as a hidden Catholic, and the fear of drawing the attention of Protestant authorities to his forbidden beliefs necessitated a low literary profile.
The case for Shakespeare’s father John’s Catholicism is solid. Evidence from his life and more from his will leaves little doubt that he kept his loyalty to the old faith in spite of the state’s attempts to stamp it out. Shakespeare’s youth then was spent in a home that paid lip-service to the upstart Anglican religion. The textual evidence for the author’s Catholicism is less sure, but more passionately argued. Scholars have constructed opposing views with equally strong ammunition from the same texts. This is part of the frustration. The collected Shakespeare plays, though finite in number, create a near infinite space within which we interact with his creation.
The author’s intimate knowledge of religious matters, including the history and practice of the Catholic Church, hints to Wood and others that the author was a devout Catholic. But we must take into consideration that the author was a Renaissance polymath of the highest degree. Those who forget this fact waste time speculating, for example, that demonstrated expertise in legal matters means the author worked in a law office – or that he was Francis Bacon. Likewise, an easy familiarity with courtly matters, and a broad acquaintance with continental Europe and its politics, tells others the author was the Earl of Oxford. A handful of knowing references to leathercraft leads scholars like Jonathan Bate to imagine the poet’s youth spent as the son of a glover.1
After outlining Shakespeare’s family’s Catholic roots and some contemporary accounts of Catholics persecuted by the state, Wood, in his companion book Shakespeare (2003), reveals why Shakespeare’s supposed Catholic faith is so important:
Such hints might tend to suggest that the absence of personal revelation in his works, which has so exercised his modern readers, and fuelled the fantasies of the conspiracy theorists, is no accident but a deliberate act of self-concealment on his part. This would make complete sense in someone of his background, whose family religion was defined by the law as treason, and whose father was pursued by the government’s bounty hunters and thought police.2
But could the author’s private Catholic beliefs have really produced a life-long fear resulting in deliberate literary self-concealment? As often when discussing Shakespeare in his world, we can look for a comparison to Shakespeare’s contemporary Ben Jonson. A player for the Admiral’s Men, Jonson made his playwrighting debut as a contributor to the 1597 Isle of Dogs, a seditious play which landed him in jail. A year later, Jonson was back in jail for killing a fellow player, Gabriel Spencer, in an illegal duel. Jonson escaped hanging for his crime because of a legal loophole, the ancient “right of clergy,” which allowed those fluent in Latin to get a second chance. Instead, Jonson forfeited all his possessions.
Here is where the Jonson comparison becomes relevant. While in prison, Jonson actually converted to Catholicism and remained openly Catholic for twelve years.3 And even though he stopped practicing his faith in 1610, it is widely believed that he returned to Catholicism later in life.4
This is curious. Shakespeare, we are asked to believe, was so fearful of his “hidden” Catholic beliefs being outted that it led to a life-long “deliberate act of self-concealment.” Jonson, by contrast, while trying to build a reputation, chose to become an open Catholic. What impact did Jonson’s conversion have on his career? It did not slow him down for an instant. Upon release from prison in 1598 he effected a comeback with Every Man Out of His Humour, a hit for Shakespeare’s Lord Chamberlain’s Men. His career continued on an upward trajectory culminating in 1616 when King James I named Jonson the first de-facto poet laureate by granting him an annual pension of 100 marks.5
Scholars are quick to point to Ben Jonson when needing an example of another playwright who began as a player, or one who had not gone to the university. They should also remember Jonson when considering the theory that Shakespeare’s remarkable literary self-concealment was the outcome of hidden Catholic beliefs. Ben Jonson, minor actor, ex-con son of a bricklayer, was not impeded in his writing career by his open Catholic beliefs. Can we really be expected to believe that the author of the Shakespeare plays was paralyzed with fear into a literary life lived under cover because of hidden Catholic beliefs?
In light of Jonson’s experience, it appears that Wood may be exaggerating the danger of Catholicism in 1590s England. Simply being Catholic was not an act of treason. It was only when those Catholics declared their Protestant monarch illegitimate that treason was charged against them.
Perhaps Shakespeare was just more cautious than Jonson? We know Shakespeare was not the shy and retiring type; witness his pursuit of a coat of arms, padded with spurious embellishments, and his huge Stratford home. And living in London as an actor/shareholder with a theater company that performed at court could not be considered “low-profile.”
If Shakespeare did hold private Catholic beliefs, he would not have needed to live his literary life in fear. He did not need to avoid recording personal remembrances – letters, dedications, encomia, prefaces; all he needed to do was avoid making anti-establishment statements in them.
Still, the fact remains that the author of the Shakespeare plays, whoever he was, did employ a policy of literary self-concealment. The answer to why he chose to do so lies elsewhere.
Daryl Pinksen
Daryl Pinksen, a regular contributor to MSC, is the author of Marlowe's Ghost: The Blacklisting of the Man Who Was Shakespeare, a recent recipient of the Independent Publisher Book Award's Bronze Medal for Best Regional Non-fiction, Canada (East).
1Bate, Jonathan. 2002. "Scenes from the Birth of a Myth and the Death of a Dramatist." In Shakespeare’s Face. Stephanie Nolen. Canada: Alfred A. Knopf. p.122.
2Wood, Michael. 2003. Shakespeare. New York: Perseus Books Group. p.27.
3Harp, Richard, and Stewart, Stanley, eds. 2000. The Cambridge Companion to Ben Jonson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. xiv.
4Van Den Berg, Sara. 2000. "True Relation: the Life and Career of Ben Jonson." In The Cambridge Companion to Ben Jonson. Richard Harp and Stanley Stewart eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p.10.
5Marcus, Leah. 2000. "Jonson and the Court." In The Cambridge Companion to Ben Jonson. Richard Harp and Stanley Stewart eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p.36.
© DARYL PINKSEN 2009
Explore the website: www.MarlowesGhost.com
Jonathan Bate on "The Rape of Lucrece" and Clopton Bridge
SATURDAY, APRIL 18, 2009
by Daryl Pinksen
Originally posted on The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection.
In Shakespeare’s Face (2002), a book about the Sanders Shakespeare portrait, Jonathan Bate addresses the relatively modern phenomenon of doubting Shakespeare’s authorship in a chapter titled, “Scenes from the Birth of a Myth and the Death of a Dramatist.” He outlines a compelling case with plenty of evidence that the Stratford man, William Shakespeare, was the London actor and theater company shareholder Shakespeare: his name appears on the title pages of printed editions of the plays, contemporaries mention him as the author of those same plays, the First Folio unequivocally assigns authorship to Shakespeare of Stratford, and Ben Jonson and others reinforce the claims on the title page. These are all strong points in Shakespeare’s favour. But in his zeal, in one instance at least, Bate has reached too far.
Bate reports he is convinced only a poet born and bred in Stratford could have written “The Rape of Lucrece," a 1594 poem attributed to Shakespeare and dedicated to the Earl of Southampton. Bate proceeds to roll out what he suggests is incontrovertible evidence to that effect. It has to do with a specific metaphor the poet uses of the turbulent movement of water through the arch of a stone bridge. The poet describes powerful eddies which send the water doubling back on itself, re-entering the arch it has just passed through.
Bate suggests to the reader that the only place where an Elizabethan poet could have observed this phenomenon was in Stratford-upon-Avon. He bases this argument on an observation made by Robert Nye in his 1998 novel The Late Mr. Shakespeare. During his research Nye travelled to Stratford and noticed something extraordinary when he paused on the centuries-old Clopton Bridge to watch the floodwaters pass underneath. Bate explains:
Sometimes it takes a creative eye to identify the fingerprint [of Shakespeare’s background]. Thus the novelist Robert Nye in The Late Mr. Shakespeare, a biographical “faction” of 1998, draws attention to a particularly watery detail:
Bate then implies that Nye’s comparison is "proof" that only a Stratford-bred poet could have witnessed the phenomenon described in “The Rape of Lucrece.” Bate concludes with this challenge:
Next time you meet members of the anti-Will brigade, ask them on how many occasions their candidate stood on the eighteenth arch of Clopton Bridge in Stratford-upon-Avon and watched the eddying movement of the water. 2
I wondered if there were places other than Clopton Bridge where a young Elizabethan poet might have seen the eddying phenomenon described in “The Rape of Lucrece." A second glance at the passage reveals a key descriptor – the poet speaks of a "tide" which is responsible for the eddy effect. Granted, “tide” could have referred to a flood of the Stratford river – at the time “tide” was more generally applied to any strong current – but perhaps the poet meant it in its more specific sense.
Among rivers, the Thames in London is remarkable for being affected by dramatic tides – up to five meters high – creating strong currents upstream and down. Today a system of dams and modern bridges has mostly tamed the violent effects of the tides, so Mr. Nye could not have seen the same Thames that 16th century Londoners saw. If he had, he would have walked across the most famous landmark of Elizabethan London, Old London Bridge, with its tightly spaced stone arches.
I wondered what effect the untamed tidal currents had as they passed under Old London Bridge. A quick internet search led me to Thamesfestival.org, which provided the following description:
Work began on the first stone London Bridge in 1176 under the direction of Peter of Colechurch. The bridge opened in 1199 and survived for over six hundred years. It was a wonder of the medieval world and an icon for the city. Almost three hundred metres long, it had nineteen arches of widths varying from five to ten metres. Its piers sat on boat-shaped platforms (called starlings) that were exposed at low tide. As such, the whole bridge structure acted as a kind of dam, blocking 85% of the river’s width. The rush of water through narrow gaps between the starlings created a waterfall effect with treacherous eddies and currents.Passing between these by wherry, known as ‘shooting the bridge’ was extremely dangerous and there was a popular saying: “wise men walk over London Bridge and only fools pass under it." 3
The writer of “Lucrece” was familiar with a place where strong tides flowed through arches and produced powerful eddy currents. Unlike the Avon river under Clopton Bridge, which would have created eddies only when the river was in flood, the poet could have seen this same phenomenon at Old London Bridge on any given day, the result of actual tides.
Finally, if the only readers able to recognize the poet’s eddy description in “Lucrece” were those raised within walking distance of Clopton Bridge in Stratford, it would lose much of its power. But if the poet knew that the phenomenom was familiar to every citizen of London, it would have made it an especially effective metaphor, one tailor-made for a London audience for whom the poem was written.
Daryl Pinksen
1 Bate, Jonathan, “Scenes from the Birth of a Myth and the Death of a Dramatist,” p. 103-125. Nolen, Stephanie with Jonathan Bate, Tarnya Cooper, Marjorie Garber, Andrew Gurr, Alexander Leggatt, Robert Tittler, and Stanley Wells. 2002. Shakespeare’s Face. Canada: Alfred A. Knopf. p.122-23.
2 Bate, 2002, p.123.
3 Seen at Thamesfestival.org page 6, accessed April 10, 2009.
Daryl Pinksen, a regular contributor to MSC, is the author of Marlowe's Ghost: The Blacklisting of the Man Who Was Shakespeare.
© DARYL PINKSEN 2009
Explore the website here: www.MarlowesGhost.com
by Daryl Pinksen
Originally posted on The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection.
In Shakespeare’s Face (2002), a book about the Sanders Shakespeare portrait, Jonathan Bate addresses the relatively modern phenomenon of doubting Shakespeare’s authorship in a chapter titled, “Scenes from the Birth of a Myth and the Death of a Dramatist.” He outlines a compelling case with plenty of evidence that the Stratford man, William Shakespeare, was the London actor and theater company shareholder Shakespeare: his name appears on the title pages of printed editions of the plays, contemporaries mention him as the author of those same plays, the First Folio unequivocally assigns authorship to Shakespeare of Stratford, and Ben Jonson and others reinforce the claims on the title page. These are all strong points in Shakespeare’s favour. But in his zeal, in one instance at least, Bate has reached too far.
Bate reports he is convinced only a poet born and bred in Stratford could have written “The Rape of Lucrece," a 1594 poem attributed to Shakespeare and dedicated to the Earl of Southampton. Bate proceeds to roll out what he suggests is incontrovertible evidence to that effect. It has to do with a specific metaphor the poet uses of the turbulent movement of water through the arch of a stone bridge. The poet describes powerful eddies which send the water doubling back on itself, re-entering the arch it has just passed through.
Bate suggests to the reader that the only place where an Elizabethan poet could have observed this phenomenon was in Stratford-upon-Avon. He bases this argument on an observation made by Robert Nye in his 1998 novel The Late Mr. Shakespeare. During his research Nye travelled to Stratford and noticed something extraordinary when he paused on the centuries-old Clopton Bridge to watch the floodwaters pass underneath. Bate explains:
Sometimes it takes a creative eye to identify the fingerprint [of Shakespeare’s background]. Thus the novelist Robert Nye in The Late Mr. Shakespeare, a biographical “faction” of 1998, draws attention to a particularly watery detail:
"If you stand on the eighteenth arch of Clopton Bridge (the one nearest the point where the road goes to London), and if you watch the River Avon below when it is in flood, you will see a curious thing that Shakespeare saw.
The force of the current under the adjoining arches, coupled with the curve there is at that strait in the riverbank, produces a very queer and swirling eddy.
What happens is that the bounding water is forced back through the arch in an exactly contrary direction.
I have seen sticks and straws, which I have just watched swirling downstream through the arch, brought back again as swiftly against the flood.
The boy Will saw this too. Here’s how he describes it:
As through an arch the violent roaring tide
Outruns the eye that doth behold his haste,
Yet in the eddy boundeth in his pride
Back to the strait that forc’d him on so fast,
In rage sent out, recall’d in rage, being past:
Even so his sighs, his sorrows, make a saw,
To push grief on and back the same grief draw.
That’s from The Rape of Lucrece, lines 1667-73. How many times must he have watched it, perhaps with tears in his bright eyes?" 1
Bate then implies that Nye’s comparison is "proof" that only a Stratford-bred poet could have witnessed the phenomenon described in “The Rape of Lucrece.” Bate concludes with this challenge:
Next time you meet members of the anti-Will brigade, ask them on how many occasions their candidate stood on the eighteenth arch of Clopton Bridge in Stratford-upon-Avon and watched the eddying movement of the water. 2
I wondered if there were places other than Clopton Bridge where a young Elizabethan poet might have seen the eddying phenomenon described in “The Rape of Lucrece." A second glance at the passage reveals a key descriptor – the poet speaks of a "tide" which is responsible for the eddy effect. Granted, “tide” could have referred to a flood of the Stratford river – at the time “tide” was more generally applied to any strong current – but perhaps the poet meant it in its more specific sense.
Among rivers, the Thames in London is remarkable for being affected by dramatic tides – up to five meters high – creating strong currents upstream and down. Today a system of dams and modern bridges has mostly tamed the violent effects of the tides, so Mr. Nye could not have seen the same Thames that 16th century Londoners saw. If he had, he would have walked across the most famous landmark of Elizabethan London, Old London Bridge, with its tightly spaced stone arches.
I wondered what effect the untamed tidal currents had as they passed under Old London Bridge. A quick internet search led me to Thamesfestival.org, which provided the following description:
Work began on the first stone London Bridge in 1176 under the direction of Peter of Colechurch. The bridge opened in 1199 and survived for over six hundred years. It was a wonder of the medieval world and an icon for the city. Almost three hundred metres long, it had nineteen arches of widths varying from five to ten metres. Its piers sat on boat-shaped platforms (called starlings) that were exposed at low tide. As such, the whole bridge structure acted as a kind of dam, blocking 85% of the river’s width. The rush of water through narrow gaps between the starlings created a waterfall effect with treacherous eddies and currents.Passing between these by wherry, known as ‘shooting the bridge’ was extremely dangerous and there was a popular saying: “wise men walk over London Bridge and only fools pass under it." 3
The writer of “Lucrece” was familiar with a place where strong tides flowed through arches and produced powerful eddy currents. Unlike the Avon river under Clopton Bridge, which would have created eddies only when the river was in flood, the poet could have seen this same phenomenon at Old London Bridge on any given day, the result of actual tides.
Finally, if the only readers able to recognize the poet’s eddy description in “Lucrece” were those raised within walking distance of Clopton Bridge in Stratford, it would lose much of its power. But if the poet knew that the phenomenom was familiar to every citizen of London, it would have made it an especially effective metaphor, one tailor-made for a London audience for whom the poem was written.
Daryl Pinksen
1 Bate, Jonathan, “Scenes from the Birth of a Myth and the Death of a Dramatist,” p. 103-125. Nolen, Stephanie with Jonathan Bate, Tarnya Cooper, Marjorie Garber, Andrew Gurr, Alexander Leggatt, Robert Tittler, and Stanley Wells. 2002. Shakespeare’s Face. Canada: Alfred A. Knopf. p.122-23.
2 Bate, 2002, p.123.
3 Seen at Thamesfestival.org page 6, accessed April 10, 2009.
Daryl Pinksen, a regular contributor to MSC, is the author of Marlowe's Ghost: The Blacklisting of the Man Who Was Shakespeare.
© DARYL PINKSEN 2009
Explore the website here: www.MarlowesGhost.com
Marlowe, Shakespeare and the Style Issue
MONDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2008
a question for Daryl Pinksen, author of Marlowe's Ghost
Originally posted on The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection.
Carlo: Daryl, what do you say to those who argue that Marlowe's style differs from Shakespeare's? Thus, the argument goes, Marlowe could not have authored the plays we attribute to Shakespeare.
Daryl: Thanks, Carlo. They do have a point, the mature Shakespeare style does differ substantially from Marlowe's, but here's the rub: the early Shakespeare style also differs substantially from the mature Shakespeare style. As a result, comparing Marlowe's style to the mature Shakespeare tells us little. Here is what we need to ask: are the styles of late Marlowe plays and early Shakespeare plays similar enough to suggest that they could have been written by the same person?
Many people don't realize that until the 1960's, it was common for scholars to argue that Marlowe co-authored early Shakespeare plays. As far back as 1886, scholar A.W. Verity said, "Among the plays assigned to Shakespeare there are four of which it is practically certain that Marlowe was a part author; they are of course, Henry VI, parts I, II and III, and Titus Andronicus." To many scholars' ears, early Shakespeare simply sounded too much like Marlowe to ignore. Assigning early Shakespeare plays wholesale to Marlowe was unacceptable, so they compromised by speculating that the early plays had been co-written by the two men. But things have changed since then. In the last several decades, these claims have nearly vanished from the literature.
Nonetheless, a survey of scholarship on Shakespeare and Marlowe dating back over a century confirms that the styles of the two bodies of work are closely related. Take this 2002 quote from a giant of Shakespearean scholarship, Harold Bloom, who said, "Marlowe . . . was Shakespeare's starting point, curiously difficult for the young Shakespeare to exorcise completely," adding, "that means the strongest writer known to us served a seven-year apprenticeship to Christopher Marlowe." So why is it that we continue to hear how different their styles are? I have a theory. . .
In undergraduate English programs, students read Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth -- the mature Shakespeare masterpieces. If they are required to read a Marlowe play, it will likely be Dr. Faustus, the play most associated with Marlowe. Marlowe does not fare well in the comparison. The instructor will then guide students through a "compare and contrast" of the two playwrights' styles. Even the dullest student will easily see the differences between Shakespeare masterpieces and early Marlowe. For many students of English literature this will end their study of Shakespeare's contemporaries, and they will depart with the firm, albeit superficial, conviction that the styles of Marlowe and Shakespeare are markedly different, and dismiss anyone who suggests otherwise.
A more honest approach might lead to a very different conclusion. Dr. Faustus was written before 1588, when Marlowe was in his early 20's. Hamlet and Lear were written after 1600, when Marlowe would have been in his mid to late 30's. A fair comparison would examine plays written closer to the same time. If students were to begin their studies with an early Shakespeare play, like Richard II, and then read a late Marlowe play, like Edward II, plays separated by only a handful of years, they would find it hard to believe that they were written by different playwrights. Or imagine instead if students were to begin their Shakespeare studies by reading Hamlet (1600) followed immediately by Titus Andronicus (pre-1594). They might find it hard to reconcile the two plays as the product of a single author. Yet most accept that these two plays were written by the same person because we quite reasonably make allowances for writers to grow over a long career.
When we eliminate the variable of time, the styles of the Marlowe and Shakespeare plays are indistinguishable. Placed in chronological order, the plays suggest the continuous evolution of a single writer, the blacklisted accused heretic, Christopher Marlowe.
Visit the website here: www.MarlowesGhost.com
© DARYL PINKSEN 2008
a question for Daryl Pinksen, author of Marlowe's Ghost
Originally posted on The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection.
Carlo: Daryl, what do you say to those who argue that Marlowe's style differs from Shakespeare's? Thus, the argument goes, Marlowe could not have authored the plays we attribute to Shakespeare.
Daryl: Thanks, Carlo. They do have a point, the mature Shakespeare style does differ substantially from Marlowe's, but here's the rub: the early Shakespeare style also differs substantially from the mature Shakespeare style. As a result, comparing Marlowe's style to the mature Shakespeare tells us little. Here is what we need to ask: are the styles of late Marlowe plays and early Shakespeare plays similar enough to suggest that they could have been written by the same person?
Many people don't realize that until the 1960's, it was common for scholars to argue that Marlowe co-authored early Shakespeare plays. As far back as 1886, scholar A.W. Verity said, "Among the plays assigned to Shakespeare there are four of which it is practically certain that Marlowe was a part author; they are of course, Henry VI, parts I, II and III, and Titus Andronicus." To many scholars' ears, early Shakespeare simply sounded too much like Marlowe to ignore. Assigning early Shakespeare plays wholesale to Marlowe was unacceptable, so they compromised by speculating that the early plays had been co-written by the two men. But things have changed since then. In the last several decades, these claims have nearly vanished from the literature.
Nonetheless, a survey of scholarship on Shakespeare and Marlowe dating back over a century confirms that the styles of the two bodies of work are closely related. Take this 2002 quote from a giant of Shakespearean scholarship, Harold Bloom, who said, "Marlowe . . . was Shakespeare's starting point, curiously difficult for the young Shakespeare to exorcise completely," adding, "that means the strongest writer known to us served a seven-year apprenticeship to Christopher Marlowe." So why is it that we continue to hear how different their styles are? I have a theory. . .
In undergraduate English programs, students read Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth -- the mature Shakespeare masterpieces. If they are required to read a Marlowe play, it will likely be Dr. Faustus, the play most associated with Marlowe. Marlowe does not fare well in the comparison. The instructor will then guide students through a "compare and contrast" of the two playwrights' styles. Even the dullest student will easily see the differences between Shakespeare masterpieces and early Marlowe. For many students of English literature this will end their study of Shakespeare's contemporaries, and they will depart with the firm, albeit superficial, conviction that the styles of Marlowe and Shakespeare are markedly different, and dismiss anyone who suggests otherwise.
A more honest approach might lead to a very different conclusion. Dr. Faustus was written before 1588, when Marlowe was in his early 20's. Hamlet and Lear were written after 1600, when Marlowe would have been in his mid to late 30's. A fair comparison would examine plays written closer to the same time. If students were to begin their studies with an early Shakespeare play, like Richard II, and then read a late Marlowe play, like Edward II, plays separated by only a handful of years, they would find it hard to believe that they were written by different playwrights. Or imagine instead if students were to begin their Shakespeare studies by reading Hamlet (1600) followed immediately by Titus Andronicus (pre-1594). They might find it hard to reconcile the two plays as the product of a single author. Yet most accept that these two plays were written by the same person because we quite reasonably make allowances for writers to grow over a long career.
When we eliminate the variable of time, the styles of the Marlowe and Shakespeare plays are indistinguishable. Placed in chronological order, the plays suggest the continuous evolution of a single writer, the blacklisted accused heretic, Christopher Marlowe.
Visit the website here: www.MarlowesGhost.com
© DARYL PINKSEN 2008
On Edward DeVere
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2008
a question for Daryl Pinksen, author of Marlowe's Ghost
Originally posted on The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection.
Carlo: Daryl, in your extensive research that went into writing Marlowe's Ghost,certainly you formulated some opinions regarding Edward de Vere, 17th earl of Oxford. What do you make of the theory that de Vere authored the works we attribute to Shakespeare, clearly the most popular of the alternate authorship theories?
Daryl: You're right,Carlo, Edward de Vere is by far the most popular of the alternative Shakespeare candidates, but he wasn't the first. In the 19th century Francis Bacon was the go-to-guy, but that movement seems to have exhausted itself due to its heavy reliance on cryptography, an approach that's been largely discredited. The mantle then settled on the Oxford movement, which gained prominence in the first half of the 20th century and still holds sway. The Marlowe movement, latecomers to the party, didn't get off the ground until Calvin Hoffman's 1955 The Murder of the Man Who was "Shakespeare", so we had some catching up to do. As you would expect, I believe that Marlowe will eventually replace Oxford as the focal point of Shakespeare skepticism. Here's why.
The Oxford claim is based on his education, extensive travel, access to (and participation in) court intrigue; all weaknesses in the Stratford case. Add to this the fact that he was spoken of as a poet and playwright in contemporary documents, who, like many other aristocrats, kept some of his work hidden from the braying masses. He was also credited with having a countenance that "shakes speares," a military metaphor stretching back to Greek hoplite warfare. To their credit, the Oxford case relies much less on cryptography than the Bacon claim. Instead, books about Oxford's claim to Shakespeare's works point to a vast number of similarities between Oxford's biography and events in the Shakespeare plays and sonnets.
But the problem with mining the Shakespeare canon for biographical linkages to Oxford, or any other candidate for that matter, is the extraordinary breadth of the author's creation. The complete works of Shakespeare comprise an entire world of experience. Stephen Greenblatt and Michael Wood have written exhaustively about the biographical connections in the works to the Stratford man; the many instances of Warwickshire words, family and place names, the references to gloves, leather goods and epaulettes, references to grain and harvesting, loans and debt, the actor's life, the agony of separation from family, the death of Hamnet, the complex relationship with Anne, etc. It all sounds incontrovertible. But read Brenda James's book on Sir Henry Neville, or any of the various books promoting de Vere, and you are presented with equally compelling cases employing the same general argument.
Rodney Bolt's tongue-in-cheek biography of Christopher Marlowe, History Play, brilliantly illustrated the folly of relying solely on this approach. Bolt lists Canterbury references in the Shakespeare canon; names, words, family names, places, as evidence of Marlowe's authorship of the plays. He applies the loose rules of Shakespearean (and Oxfordian) biography instead to Marlowe and constructs an equally convincing case. But Bolt never lets his reader forget where he stands - he's playing with the Shakespeare canon. It's a devastating indictment of New Historicism-based biographical reaching.
The case for Shakespeare is weak, but the case for Oxford is even weaker. Oxford made no attempt to hide the fact that he wrote poetry and plays from his peers. Accounts make him seem quite proud, and yet the writing that has survived in his name (the work of a mature, educated man) is clearly that of an amateur. Yet Oxfordians would have us believe that at the same time he allowed middling poesy to circulate in his name, he deliberately withheld his name from benign works of pure genius. To what end? This is a “dead in its tracks” argument. There is no getting past it.
Marlowe, on the other hand, wrote plays and poetry in the years preceding the 1593 Deptford incident which are indistinguishable from the early Shakespeare works. This is the consensus of more than a century of mainstream scholarship. If William Shakespeare did act as a front for some writer who needed to hide, admittedly a big if, there really is only one credible candidate - Christopher Marlowe.
© DARYL PINKSEN 2008
Explore the website: www.MarlowesGhost.com
a question for Daryl Pinksen, author of Marlowe's Ghost
Originally posted on The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection.
Carlo: Daryl, in your extensive research that went into writing Marlowe's Ghost,certainly you formulated some opinions regarding Edward de Vere, 17th earl of Oxford. What do you make of the theory that de Vere authored the works we attribute to Shakespeare, clearly the most popular of the alternate authorship theories?
Daryl: You're right,Carlo, Edward de Vere is by far the most popular of the alternative Shakespeare candidates, but he wasn't the first. In the 19th century Francis Bacon was the go-to-guy, but that movement seems to have exhausted itself due to its heavy reliance on cryptography, an approach that's been largely discredited. The mantle then settled on the Oxford movement, which gained prominence in the first half of the 20th century and still holds sway. The Marlowe movement, latecomers to the party, didn't get off the ground until Calvin Hoffman's 1955 The Murder of the Man Who was "Shakespeare", so we had some catching up to do. As you would expect, I believe that Marlowe will eventually replace Oxford as the focal point of Shakespeare skepticism. Here's why.
The Oxford claim is based on his education, extensive travel, access to (and participation in) court intrigue; all weaknesses in the Stratford case. Add to this the fact that he was spoken of as a poet and playwright in contemporary documents, who, like many other aristocrats, kept some of his work hidden from the braying masses. He was also credited with having a countenance that "shakes speares," a military metaphor stretching back to Greek hoplite warfare. To their credit, the Oxford case relies much less on cryptography than the Bacon claim. Instead, books about Oxford's claim to Shakespeare's works point to a vast number of similarities between Oxford's biography and events in the Shakespeare plays and sonnets.
But the problem with mining the Shakespeare canon for biographical linkages to Oxford, or any other candidate for that matter, is the extraordinary breadth of the author's creation. The complete works of Shakespeare comprise an entire world of experience. Stephen Greenblatt and Michael Wood have written exhaustively about the biographical connections in the works to the Stratford man; the many instances of Warwickshire words, family and place names, the references to gloves, leather goods and epaulettes, references to grain and harvesting, loans and debt, the actor's life, the agony of separation from family, the death of Hamnet, the complex relationship with Anne, etc. It all sounds incontrovertible. But read Brenda James's book on Sir Henry Neville, or any of the various books promoting de Vere, and you are presented with equally compelling cases employing the same general argument.
Rodney Bolt's tongue-in-cheek biography of Christopher Marlowe, History Play, brilliantly illustrated the folly of relying solely on this approach. Bolt lists Canterbury references in the Shakespeare canon; names, words, family names, places, as evidence of Marlowe's authorship of the plays. He applies the loose rules of Shakespearean (and Oxfordian) biography instead to Marlowe and constructs an equally convincing case. But Bolt never lets his reader forget where he stands - he's playing with the Shakespeare canon. It's a devastating indictment of New Historicism-based biographical reaching.
The case for Shakespeare is weak, but the case for Oxford is even weaker. Oxford made no attempt to hide the fact that he wrote poetry and plays from his peers. Accounts make him seem quite proud, and yet the writing that has survived in his name (the work of a mature, educated man) is clearly that of an amateur. Yet Oxfordians would have us believe that at the same time he allowed middling poesy to circulate in his name, he deliberately withheld his name from benign works of pure genius. To what end? This is a “dead in its tracks” argument. There is no getting past it.
Marlowe, on the other hand, wrote plays and poetry in the years preceding the 1593 Deptford incident which are indistinguishable from the early Shakespeare works. This is the consensus of more than a century of mainstream scholarship. If William Shakespeare did act as a front for some writer who needed to hide, admittedly a big if, there really is only one credible candidate - Christopher Marlowe.
© DARYL PINKSEN 2008
Explore the website: www.MarlowesGhost.com
The Poetry of Edward DeVere, the 17th Earl of Oxford
JULY 2, 2009
In a comment left on The Clyde Fitch Report for an article titled "Heretic’s Foundation VI: Supreme Court Pricks Shakespeare Bubble" (Friday, June 26, 2009), Oxford defender Howard Schumann provides a list of reasons why Marlowe could not have written Shakespeare.
I was particularly amused by this assertion:
This is a fair challenge - one that's easily countered with a review of the literature of Marlowe's influence on the works of Shakespeare - but a legitimate point of debate nonetheless. While the argument may be valid, however, the source of the challenge is not.
Mr. Schumann, as a proponent of the Oxfordian case, has missed the irony of his claim. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was a commonly held view of mainstream scholarship that Marlowe was a part author, and sometimes the primary author, of much of the early Shakespeare canon. And while nowadays the story has shifted, so that Shakespeare is regarded to have begun his career imitating Marlowe's style, both explanations are based on the undeniable similarity of the two bodies of work.
And what of Oxford? Does his work remind us of the works of Shakespeare? Not even close. Here is a sample, as posted on www.Oxford-Shakespeare.com:
This is an earnest effort, but betrays a rather clumsy execution. One can see why Oxford's poetry is not part of the syllabus of our English literature instruction.
Whether Marlowe's style is similar enough to the early Shakespeare works to warrant a claim to their authorship is a matter of contention, but there is no question that the work attributed to the Earl of Oxford is that of an amateur.
The irony continues:
Schumann and his fellow Oxfordians contend that Oxford chose to hide behind a "front" because of his noble status. Supposedly there was some shame for a nobleman to allow the public to think he was a poet of unparalleled genius. But it is precisely because of his noble status that these forgettable poems - poems Oxford evidently was pleased to have circulate in his name - survive.
If these poems had been written by the son of a glover, or a cobbler, they would most likely have been consigned to the dustbin of literary history.
If you are in doubt about the Oxford claim, please go to the source and read the "poetry" of Edward de Vere for yourself.
© DARYL PINKSEN 2009
Explore the website: www.MarlowesGhost.com
In a comment left on The Clyde Fitch Report for an article titled "Heretic’s Foundation VI: Supreme Court Pricks Shakespeare Bubble" (Friday, June 26, 2009), Oxford defender Howard Schumann provides a list of reasons why Marlowe could not have written Shakespeare.
I was particularly amused by this assertion:
2. Marlowe is so distinctive a poet and dramatist that it is hard to believe he could have also been Shakespeare.
This is a fair challenge - one that's easily countered with a review of the literature of Marlowe's influence on the works of Shakespeare - but a legitimate point of debate nonetheless. While the argument may be valid, however, the source of the challenge is not.
Mr. Schumann, as a proponent of the Oxfordian case, has missed the irony of his claim. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was a commonly held view of mainstream scholarship that Marlowe was a part author, and sometimes the primary author, of much of the early Shakespeare canon. And while nowadays the story has shifted, so that Shakespeare is regarded to have begun his career imitating Marlowe's style, both explanations are based on the undeniable similarity of the two bodies of work.
And what of Oxford? Does his work remind us of the works of Shakespeare? Not even close. Here is a sample, as posted on www.Oxford-Shakespeare.com:
1.The Earl of Oxford to the Reader.
The labouring man that tills the fertile soil
And reaps the harvest fruit hath not indeed
The gain, but pain, and if for all his toil
He gets the straw, the lord will have the seed.
The manchet fine falls not unto his share,
On coarsest cheat his hungry stomach feeds.
The landlord doth possess the finest fare;
He pulls the flowers, the other plucks but weeds.
The mason poor, that builds the lordly halls,
Dwells not in them, they are for high degree;
His cottage is compact in paper walls,
And not with brick or stone as others be.
The idle drone that labours not at all
Sucks up the sweet of honey from the bee.
Who worketh most, to their share least doth fall;
With due desert reward will never be.
The swiftest hare unto the mastiff slow
Ofttimes doth fall to him as for a prey;
The greyhound thereby doth miss his game we know
For which he made such speedy haste away.
So he that takes the pain to pen the book
Reaps not the gifts of goodly golden Muse,
But those gain that who on the work shall look,
And from the sour the sweet by skill doth choose.
For he that beats the bush the bird not gets,
But who sits still and holdeth fast the nets.
This is an earnest effort, but betrays a rather clumsy execution. One can see why Oxford's poetry is not part of the syllabus of our English literature instruction.
Whether Marlowe's style is similar enough to the early Shakespeare works to warrant a claim to their authorship is a matter of contention, but there is no question that the work attributed to the Earl of Oxford is that of an amateur.
The irony continues:
Schumann and his fellow Oxfordians contend that Oxford chose to hide behind a "front" because of his noble status. Supposedly there was some shame for a nobleman to allow the public to think he was a poet of unparalleled genius. But it is precisely because of his noble status that these forgettable poems - poems Oxford evidently was pleased to have circulate in his name - survive.
If these poems had been written by the son of a glover, or a cobbler, they would most likely have been consigned to the dustbin of literary history.
If you are in doubt about the Oxford claim, please go to the source and read the "poetry" of Edward de Vere for yourself.
© DARYL PINKSEN 2009
Explore the website: www.MarlowesGhost.com
On Mendenhall and Compelling Evidence of Marlowe Authorship
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2009
by Daryl Pinksen
Originally posted on The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection
In 1887, physicist T.C. Mendenhall decided to study the word-length frequencies of writers − the frequency at which writers tended to use words of varying lengths − in a quest to find a mathematical way of proving or disproving authorship. To accomplish this he counted the numbers of one-letter, two-letter, three-letter words, etc., in a text, calculated the percentages of each word length used (the frequency), and displayed the results on a graph. He discovered that writers’ word-length frequency curves remained consistent, and more importantly, that each writer’s characteristic word-length frequency curve differed from those of other writers.1
In 1901, a wealthy Bostonian named Augustus Hemingway, having heard of Mendenhall’s work, commissioned him to carry out a comparative study of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, including Christopher Marlowe. Hemingway believed Francis Bacon wrote the works of Shakespeare, and he was convinced that Mendenhall had found a way to prove it.
Using Hemingway’s money, Mendenhall hired two women to count the words of various lengths in each of the works. They had to manually count millions of words. Unfortunately for Hemingway, the overall word-length frequencies of Bacon and Shakespeare were very different (although, to be fair, Mendenhall compared Bacon’s prose with Shakespeare’s blank verse, two genres since shown to differ markedly in word-length frequency).
Mendenhall discovered that Shakespeare used significantly more four-letter words than three-letter words. Every other English writer Mendenhall studied, including Shakespeare’s playwright contemporaries, used more three-letter words than any other length. After a while, Mendenhall and his assistants could recognize unidentified blocks of Shakespeare from the four-letter-word spike alone. But when his assistants began to count the words in the Marlowe plays, Mendenhall realized that the Shakespeare curve was not unique after all. To his surprise, the Marlowe and Shakespeare curves were nearly identical. Here is Mendenhall’s reaction to the discovery:
(In Fig. 9, word length is shown on the horizontal axis, and frequency, in number of words out of a thousand, on the vertical axis. For example, Mendenhall found that Marlowe and Shakespeare both used 2-letter words about 175 times out of a 1000, or 17.5% of the time).
Mendenhall’s study made no impact on Shakespearean scholarship, but it did energize a small number of proponents of the Marlowe theory and persuaded others that perhaps the Marlowe theory was worth further investigation.
The study sat idle for decades until Peter Farey decided to extend Mendenhall’s work.3 Farey chose a group of authors and, using electronic texts and word-counting software, performed a comparison of two large chunks of text by each writer, calculating how closely each writer agreed with him or herself. All of the writers agreed with themselves quite closely.4
Next, Farey moved on to a comparison of Shakespeare and Marlowe. Mendenhall had not noticed that authors' word-length frequency usage could change over time and genre, but Farey had discovered that the word-length frequency curves for Marlowe's earlier works differed from his later ones, and that Shakespeare's comedies differed from his non-comedies. The differences were subtle but significant. Accordingly, Farey chose to compare Marlowe's later plays with Shakespeare's histories and tragedies (since none of the Marlowe works are comedies) to eliminate the effects of time and genre. In his Marlowe-Shakespeare comparison, Farey found the agreement was statistically closer than any other writer had been with himself.5
The match between the two curves is astonishing. Farey’s method is easily reproducible, and it is accompanied by rigourous statistical analysis. As such it merits serious attention from mainstream scholarship. Like Mendenhall before him, Farey’s work has not penetrated the mainstream to any large extent. The standard scholarly explanation of the origins of Shakespeare’s style, that he began his career by imitating Marlowe, is invoked to explain why the word counts of the two respective writers are so similar. But even allowing for this, it would still require a strong coincidence for Shakespeare to obtain this degree of match with Marlowe, especially since it would have to have happened unconsciously.
My contribution to the debate was to look at the word counts of individual Shakespeare plays. Did they all look more or less alike? Using a counting method shared with me by Peter Farey, I counted the words of twenty-one Shakespeare plays, randomly chosen across the whole canon. I plotted all twenty-one curves, along with the overall average, on a single graph.
What is immediately striking is the amount of variation between individual plays. What this variation tells us is that the average curve for Shakespeare could have assumed many different shapes. There was no underlying principle forcing it to average out in this manner.6
The graph emphasizes how remarkable Mendenhall and Farey’s results actually are. The possibility that two writers, both showing variability in individual plays, could arrive at the same average curve by chance, is exceedingly small. Mendenhall and Farey’s studies provide compelling evidence for a Marlowe authorship of the Shakespeare plays.
1 Mendenhall, T. C. 1887. The Characteristic Curves of Composition. Science Vol 9: 237–49.
2 Mendenhall, T. C. 1901. A Mechanical Solution of a Literary Problem. The Popular Science Monthly Vol LX: 97–105.
3 Peter Farey’s Marlowe Page http://www2.prestel.co.uk/rey/chap8.htm#note1
4 Peter Farey’s Marlowe Page http://www2.prestel.co.uk/rey/appx3a.htm
5 Peter Farey’s Marlowe Page http://www2.prestel.co.uk/rey/appx4a.htm
6 Pinksen, Daryl. 2008. Marlowe’s Ghost: The Blacklisting of the Man Who Was Shakespeare. Bloomington, IN: iUniverse. (p. 55)
© DARYL PINKSEN 2009
Explore the website: www.MarlowesGhost.com
by Daryl Pinksen
Originally posted on The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection
In 1887, physicist T.C. Mendenhall decided to study the word-length frequencies of writers − the frequency at which writers tended to use words of varying lengths − in a quest to find a mathematical way of proving or disproving authorship. To accomplish this he counted the numbers of one-letter, two-letter, three-letter words, etc., in a text, calculated the percentages of each word length used (the frequency), and displayed the results on a graph. He discovered that writers’ word-length frequency curves remained consistent, and more importantly, that each writer’s characteristic word-length frequency curve differed from those of other writers.1
In 1901, a wealthy Bostonian named Augustus Hemingway, having heard of Mendenhall’s work, commissioned him to carry out a comparative study of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, including Christopher Marlowe. Hemingway believed Francis Bacon wrote the works of Shakespeare, and he was convinced that Mendenhall had found a way to prove it.
Using Hemingway’s money, Mendenhall hired two women to count the words of various lengths in each of the works. They had to manually count millions of words. Unfortunately for Hemingway, the overall word-length frequencies of Bacon and Shakespeare were very different (although, to be fair, Mendenhall compared Bacon’s prose with Shakespeare’s blank verse, two genres since shown to differ markedly in word-length frequency).
Mendenhall discovered that Shakespeare used significantly more four-letter words than three-letter words. Every other English writer Mendenhall studied, including Shakespeare’s playwright contemporaries, used more three-letter words than any other length. After a while, Mendenhall and his assistants could recognize unidentified blocks of Shakespeare from the four-letter-word spike alone. But when his assistants began to count the words in the Marlowe plays, Mendenhall realized that the Shakespeare curve was not unique after all. To his surprise, the Marlowe and Shakespeare curves were nearly identical. Here is Mendenhall’s reaction to the discovery:
“It was in the counting and plotting of the plays of Christopher Marlowe, however, that something akin to a sensation was produced among those actually engaged in the work. Here was a man to whom it has always been acknowledged, Shakespeare was deeply indebted; one of whom able critics have declared that he ‘might have written the plays of Shakespeare.’ … Even this did not lessen the interest with which it was discovered that in the characteristic curve of his plays Christopher Marlowe agrees with Shakespeare about as well as Shakespeare agrees with himself, as is shown in Fig.9” 2
(In Fig. 9, word length is shown on the horizontal axis, and frequency, in number of words out of a thousand, on the vertical axis. For example, Mendenhall found that Marlowe and Shakespeare both used 2-letter words about 175 times out of a 1000, or 17.5% of the time).
Mendenhall’s study made no impact on Shakespearean scholarship, but it did energize a small number of proponents of the Marlowe theory and persuaded others that perhaps the Marlowe theory was worth further investigation.
The study sat idle for decades until Peter Farey decided to extend Mendenhall’s work.3 Farey chose a group of authors and, using electronic texts and word-counting software, performed a comparison of two large chunks of text by each writer, calculating how closely each writer agreed with him or herself. All of the writers agreed with themselves quite closely.4
Next, Farey moved on to a comparison of Shakespeare and Marlowe. Mendenhall had not noticed that authors' word-length frequency usage could change over time and genre, but Farey had discovered that the word-length frequency curves for Marlowe's earlier works differed from his later ones, and that Shakespeare's comedies differed from his non-comedies. The differences were subtle but significant. Accordingly, Farey chose to compare Marlowe's later plays with Shakespeare's histories and tragedies (since none of the Marlowe works are comedies) to eliminate the effects of time and genre. In his Marlowe-Shakespeare comparison, Farey found the agreement was statistically closer than any other writer had been with himself.5
The match between the two curves is astonishing. Farey’s method is easily reproducible, and it is accompanied by rigourous statistical analysis. As such it merits serious attention from mainstream scholarship. Like Mendenhall before him, Farey’s work has not penetrated the mainstream to any large extent. The standard scholarly explanation of the origins of Shakespeare’s style, that he began his career by imitating Marlowe, is invoked to explain why the word counts of the two respective writers are so similar. But even allowing for this, it would still require a strong coincidence for Shakespeare to obtain this degree of match with Marlowe, especially since it would have to have happened unconsciously.
My contribution to the debate was to look at the word counts of individual Shakespeare plays. Did they all look more or less alike? Using a counting method shared with me by Peter Farey, I counted the words of twenty-one Shakespeare plays, randomly chosen across the whole canon. I plotted all twenty-one curves, along with the overall average, on a single graph.
What is immediately striking is the amount of variation between individual plays. What this variation tells us is that the average curve for Shakespeare could have assumed many different shapes. There was no underlying principle forcing it to average out in this manner.6
The graph emphasizes how remarkable Mendenhall and Farey’s results actually are. The possibility that two writers, both showing variability in individual plays, could arrive at the same average curve by chance, is exceedingly small. Mendenhall and Farey’s studies provide compelling evidence for a Marlowe authorship of the Shakespeare plays.
1 Mendenhall, T. C. 1887. The Characteristic Curves of Composition. Science Vol 9: 237–49.
2 Mendenhall, T. C. 1901. A Mechanical Solution of a Literary Problem. The Popular Science Monthly Vol LX: 97–105.
3 Peter Farey’s Marlowe Page http://www2.prestel.co.uk/rey/chap8.htm#note1
4 Peter Farey’s Marlowe Page http://www2.prestel.co.uk/rey/appx3a.htm
5 Peter Farey’s Marlowe Page http://www2.prestel.co.uk/rey/appx4a.htm
6 Pinksen, Daryl. 2008. Marlowe’s Ghost: The Blacklisting of the Man Who Was Shakespeare. Bloomington, IN: iUniverse. (p. 55)
© DARYL PINKSEN 2009
Explore the website: www.MarlowesGhost.com
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