Christopher Marlowe is often sited as the real Shakespeare, a problematic assertion given that he would’ve been forced to write a number of plays after he was dead, giving new meaning to the term “ghost writer”. But I would like to add to the assertion that “Marlowe is NOT Shakespeare!” that I also believe he did not die as they claim that he did. Marlowe is a fascinating character of debauchery and misbehavior, intrigue and mystery, and undeniable genius. As a writer, he was a maverick and risk-taker, having begun the ascendance of the theatrical play as one of the heights of Elizabethan literature with his play Tamburlaine the Great, about the historical figure who rose from shepherd boy to monarch. This play, and its sequel, Tamburlaine the Great Part II, were among the very first English plays to be written in blank verse, meaning there is a very definite connection between the style of writing established by Marlowe and the later work of Shakespeare. It is probable that for a few years, Kit Marlowe was a member of the Gray’s Inn group along with Sir Francis Bacon and several other suspicious literary luminaries like Sir Walter Raleigh and possibly Ben Jonson. (I have to admit at this point that if I am wrong about the Stratford guy and he did write the plays, then he was a member of this group as well, because it was not closed to commoners, only to stupid people. The Stratford guy was in no way stupid or a villain, no matter what you may believe about the authorship question.) But here is where the link to Shakespeare’s plays and poetry both begins and ends. Yes, Kit Marlowe was a capable enough author to have written such sublime plays. He has all the individual skills to make up the whole. But if you read his masterwork, The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, you will see that the voice, the unique literary style of the work is simply not by the same author. Although Shakespeare revisits some of the same themes that Marlowe used in his plays, his manner of development, handling of character, style of humor, and underlying conviction in the existence of God are all different and opposed to Marlowe’s. Marlowe is NOT Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s works have more in common with Bacon’s than Marlowe’s. And I have already said that, “Shakespeare is NOT Bacon… or eggs either.” And if I said it, it must be so. (Don’t throw eggs and tomatoes at your computer screen when you read this. Just call me stupid and vain in the comments like everybody else does.)
And an even more compelling reason to those of you who don’t obsess over reading Shakespeare and Marlowe and Ben Jonson is that, at the time Shakespeare’s plays were probably written, Kit Marlowe was busy either being stone cold dead, or, having faked his death, was busy being a secret agent for Queen Elizabeth.
And why would a goofball like me think that Christopher Marlowe cunningly faked his own death and went into his own thrilling quest to be like James Bond more than 300 years before Ian Fleming? Well, because I know how to read and am not generally bright enough not to believe what others have written about him and his connections to world of spying in Elizabethan times.
These authors have brought out the fact that Marlowe’s frequent absences from college and later public obligations coincide with things like the mysterious tutor called “Morley” who tutored Arbella, niece of Mary Queen of Scots, and a potential successor to Queen Elizabeth, in 1589. He was also arrested in the Netherlands for allegedly counterfeiting coins related to the activities of seditious Catholics. He was brought back to England to be dealt with by Lord Treasurer Burghley, the closest adviser to Queen Elizabeth, and was then not so much punished as let off the hook and even rewarded monetarily. Still think he was not a spy? Well, his demise probably came about through his relationship with Lord Francis Walsingham and his friendship with Walsingham’s son. You see, Walsingham was Elizabeth’s “M”, leader of her spies and intelligence units. After Walsingham died, there was deep concern that no one was still able to protect Marlowe from possible consequences of being both a homosexual and an atheist. (Being gay was obviously not as serious a sin as atheism for which torture and death penalties lay in wait.) It was possible that rival spies and nefarious forces could kidnap Marlowe and get information out of him that the Queen needed to be kept secret.
So, when Lord Burghley tortured Marlowe’s friend and sometime roommate, Thomas Kyd, into naming Marlowe a heretic and sending men out with a warrant to arrest Marlowe, Kit’s other friend, Thomas Walsingham probably warned Marlowe. The bar fight that supposedly ended Marlowe’s life was witnessed by two friends of his, Nicholas Skeres and Robert Poley, both provably con men and professional liars. The knife that stabbed him in the forehead above his right eye was wielded by Ingram Fizer, another of Marlowe’s disreputable friends, allegedly over an unpaid debt. Fizer, of course, though he freely admitted killing Marlowe, was acquitted of the murder. And the coroner’s report is suspect. Rules of investigation were not followed, and the body was never independently identified by someone other than the three friends at the scene of the crime. And the body was hastily buried before anyone else could get a close look at it.
I am not only telling you that I believe Christopher “Kit” Marlowe was NOT Shakespeare… or eggs either (though that joke doesn’t really work here), but I believe he didn’t die the way it has been reported to us by history. And why do I believe these things? Because I think the story of Christopher Marlowe is a really great story, and it exists as a story whether it is historically true or not.
We Are All Gonna Die
I hope you listened to Joe. Not just the first part, then got bored and disgusted and turned on Fox News. I hope you listened all the way to the end and heard the hopeful things he says there. He is a very good video essayist who uses real science to reason with you about questions that are really about life and death. One way we may be going to die as a species is through climate change and global warming. The dire predictions we get from climate scientists, whom nobody seems to take seriously, are becoming increasingly alarming. If we are too stuck in our own little kingdoms and don’t look the castle windows at the weather outside, we are not only going to have our parades rained on, it will be acid rain, and the parade marchers will get boiled on the hoof as they march.
Those of us who put too much faith in the Trump Train, burning its beautiful clean coal, are going down to the bottom when we get to the canyon bridge and the train roars off the tracks. Just ask Paul Manafort after his trial ends, or Jeff Sessions after Trump fires him to make racist sausages out of him to serve at an I-Love-Putin Picnic, what the ride has been like on the Trump Tongue Express.
But, of course, the Pumpkinhead in Chief is not the only reason we have no money and no jobs and are going to be roasted to death in a polluted world. There is also the little matter of Trillions of Dollars in Debt that was racked up to make the rich richer and people like me foot the bill.
I know you may be suspicious of an interview conducted on RT which is an arm of Russian propaganda in the USA. But I should point out, if you like Trump, you like Russia already, and both of these journalists, Chris Hedges and David Cay Johnston, are not afraid to tell the unvarnished truth. That means the mainstream media is uncomfortable about putting them on the air, and those who want to stir up trouble find it easiest to do that by simply allowing access to researched facts and basic truths we are reluctant to hear.
If you don’t believe in the predictions offered by science, it is bound to be because of one of two different things. Either you see the science and follow how the results of computer models become overwhelmingly dire, disgusting you with a total lack of optimistic outcomes, or you reject science in favor of the oil companies’ rose-colored fairy-tale outlooks where unicorns will consume CO2 clouds and fart out benevolent rainbows. From where I stand now, broke and old and ill, it doesn’t matter much to me. In the short time frames we are looking at for global-warming Armageddon, I will undoubtedly reach the end of my natural life. I probably won’t be around for the horrific-suffering part of how this all is going to end.
I know if you haven’t turned away from this heat-death-of-the-planet idea already, you are probably pretty depressed by this point in the essay. I know I am. It does not bode well for my children and any future grandchildren. But I will leave you with the reminder that we are human beings. And human beings are complex and able to solve large complex problems. We put men on the moon. (Or we did the even harder job of faking it and not letting the secret be discovered for fifty years, complete with space-travel debris on the moon that you can take photographs of from earth with a really good telescope.) So, just maybe this massive terrifyingly horrible problem can yet be solved in the nick of time. I do believe in the good that can be found in mankind. But I also see the corruption and evil. So hopefully Mark Twain’s final hope for mankind, that this time when God drowns us, there will be no Ark, will be thwarted. Believe me, I have no wish to die a horrible death. But I am a pessimist after all.
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Filed under angry rant, battling depression, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, horror writing, Liberal ideas, pessimism
Tagged as climate change, conspiracy theory, pessimism