Shakespeare Thy Name is Marlowe by David Rhys Williams

Author:David Rhys Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Philosophical Library
Published: 2012-03-27T00:00:00+00:00

“To shallow rivers to whose falls

Melodious birds sing madrigals,

There will we make our beds of roses,

And a thousand fragrant posies.”

In Marlowe’s Passionate Shepherd to His Love, written while he was still a student at Cambridge University, we read:

“By shallow rivers to whose falls

Melodious birds sing madrigals,

And I will make thee beds of roses

And a thousand fragrant posies.”

For these and other reasons—such as boldness of style and dramatic treatment of subjects—many scholars who accept the actor as the author of the First Folio nevertheless claim that Marlowe must have had a hand in writing from one to twenty plays included in the First Folio, none of which had been published before 1593. Others were published for the first time in 1623. Again we raise the question, how could this be unless Marlowe actually did survive the date of his alleged murder? This has been a real problem for the orthodox scholars.

2. The First Folio carried an engraving of the author which the world has known as Shakespeare (Portrait 3). In 1953 a weather-beaten portrait was found when the Master’s room at Corpus Christi College was in the process of being renovated for the first time since Marlowe’s residence at the College. Because it is dated 1585 and the age given as 21 (Marlowe was 21 in 1585), and because there is inscribed a couplet which reappears in different words but with the same meaning in Shakespeare’s Pericles and again in Sonnet 73, Mr. Hoffman and others believe it is the portrait of Marlowe. At any rate the portrait now has an honored place in the main dining hall of the College and facsimiles of it are being widely circulated by the Marlowe Society of Great Britain (Portrait 4).

The bust of Shakespeare that now stands above his grave in the church at Stratford-on-Avon is not the original that stood there for more than a century, but was placed there in 1748 by John Hall, the sculptor (Portrait 2). This is a fact not in dispute.

There is ample documentary evidence that the original was a heavy mustached figure with hands resting on a bag of grain and holding no pen in the grasp of his fingers. There are several extant copies of a book, listing representative citizens of Warwickshire, published by Sir William Dugdale in 1656, in which a brief biography of Shakespeare is given, together with an engraving of the original bust that stood above his grave. This engraving (Portrait 1) is a fact not in dispute.

What resemblance does the image printed in the First Folio (Portrait 3) bear to the original bust of the Stratford Shakespeare (Portrait 1)? None whatsoever, no more than Dwight D. Eisenhower looks like Albert Schweitzer. What resemblance to the portrait recently found in Cambridge? A very striking resemblance. It is the Cambridge student with 15 to 25 years added.

3. When Marlowe’s death was rumored, most of the major contemporary poets either publicly praised and acclaimed or severely criticized and condemned him, but few ignored him. When

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