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Writing Marlowe as Writing Shakespeare: The Marlowe Papers
Ros Barber
For the last three years I have been writing the fictional autobiography of Christopher Marlowe, following the idea that in order to escape potentially fatal charges of atheism, he faked his own death, fled to the continent, and continued to write under the name William Shakespeare. This verse novel, consisting of some 50,000 words of blank verse in the first person, is nearing completion.
The majority of this paper consists of a presentation of an extract of the creative work, but I want to address briefly the issue of the usefulness of a Creative Writing PhD. In Fiction for the Purposes of History, Richard Slotkin proposes that we might write historical fictions as a kind of thought-experiment, to test historical hypotheses. As an academic taboo, the Shakespeare Authorship Question has never been the subject of serious academic research, and I was only able to research it under the auspices of Creative Writing PhD. Though Im aware the outcome may prove alarming to the vast majority of scholars and Shakespeare lovers who are, quite naturally, embedded in the traditional Stratfordian paradigm, this research has proved extremely fruitful. The resulting published papers will, I hope, awaken academic interest in the Authorship Question and go some way towards beginning to dismantle the research taboo that has prevented scholars benefiting from the insights available when we adopt an alternative interpretive paradigm. My purpose here is not to defend the hypothesis that Marlowe was Shakespeare, but to contribute to the defence of the Creative Writing PhD with an example of how creative research might have practical investigative applications, and profound consequences.
My primary purpose here, however, is to air the creative output of my PhD for the first time. The extract of The Marlowe Papers that Im presenting comes from an incident within Marlowes accepted biography, but demonstrates the challenges of adopting a paradigm in which Marlowes death will be staged. Research into Marlowes reputation for violence revealed it was created through biographers reading his life through the lens of a violent death; thus, if the inquest document was a cover up for escape, we must accommodate the possibility of a relatively peaceable Marlowe. Since this is the Marlowe that will, in the future, write Romeo and Juliet and King Lear, I have also included echoes of those works in this scene, demonstrating the process by which creative seeds may be sown. But the most interesting aspect of this piece, for me, was the considerable technical challenge of writing a fight scene in iambic pentameter. I gave myself permission to revert to free verse or prose if necessary (since some of the plays do) but in the end found the energy of the scene sprang directly out of the tension created by attempting to contain high emotion in a regular five-foot line.
It is September 16th 1589, and we are about to witness the incident known to Marlowes biographers as the Hog Lane affray. We know from the legal documents pertaining to William Bradleys killing that he was very likely to have been the aggressor, and that Marlowes friend Tom Watson took over from Marlowe part-way through the duel. The rest is fiction.
Note: the poem is not included here, since distribution on the web would constitute publication. The Marlowe Papers is due to be published by Anvil in late 2010 or early 2011. See www.rosbarber.info for updates.
Bibliography
ADDIN EN.REFLIST Barber, Rosalind. "Exploring Biographical Fictions: The Role of Imagination in Reading and Writing Narrative." Rethinking History 14, no. 2 (2010).
. "Shakespeare Authorship Doubt in 1593." Critical Survey 21, no. 2 (2009).
Slotkin, Richard. "Fiction for the Purposes of History." Rethinking History 9, no. 2 (2005): 221 - 36.
ADDIN EN.CITE Slotkin200579797917Slotkin, RichardFiction for the Purposes of HistoryRethinking HistoryRethinking History221 - 2369220051364-2529 %[ May 21, 2007http://www.informaworld.com/10.1080/13642520500149152 Richard Slotkin, "Fiction for the Purposes of History," Rethinking History 9, no. 2 (2005).
ADDIN EN.CITE Barber200921121121117Barber, RosalindShakespeare Authorship Doubt in 1593Critical SurveyCritical Survey2122009Summer 2009Barber201041841841817Barber, RosalindExploring Biographical Fictions: The Role of Imagination in Reading and Writing NarrativeRethinking HistoryRethinking History1422010Spring 2010Rosalind Barber, "Shakespeare Authorship Doubt in 1593," Critical Survey 21, no. 2 (2009), Rosalind Barber, "Exploring Biographical Fictions: The Role of Imagination in Reading and Writing Narrative," Rethinking History 14, no. 2 (2010).
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