Page 113-180 Shakespeare - The Marlowe Studies

Shakespeare’sGhostWilliam Shakespeare

CHRONOLOGY[W]e will both our judgments joinIn censure of his seeming—Hamlet(3.2.85–86)1564 April 25: William Shakespeare christened in Stratford1582 John Whitgift, Bishop of Worchester, waives the marriage bannsfor Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway1585 Shakespeare’s twins christened1585-94 Shakespeare’s Lost Years1593 June 1-10: Spy Robert Poley, on official business for the queen,disappears for ten days, possibly assisting Marlowe to fleeJune 12: Venus and Adonis appears under Shakespeare’s name?1593-98 Marlowe in exile in Italy writing comedies1594 The Rape of Lucrece published under Shakespeare’s nameDr. Lopez, Elizabeth’s Jewish physician, executed as a spyThe Comedy of Errors performed at Grays Inn in LondonFirst mention of Shakespeare as a member of the LordChamberlain’s Men1595-97 Several Shakespearean plays published anonymously, includingTitus Andronicus, Richard II, and Richard III1598 Love’s Labor’s Lost, first play published under Shakespeare’s nameGeorge Carey succeeds as patron to the Lord Chamberlain’s Men1599 Marlowe’s works are revived and he possibly returns from ItalyArchbishop Whitgift orders Marlowe’s books burnedThe Globe Theatre opens and As You Like It debuts with atribute to Marlowe and his “death” in Deptford1600 Several plays registered under Shakespeare’s name1601 Richard II and the Globe actors implicated in the Essex RebellionShakespeare’s troupe temporarily banished from court1603 Queen Elizabeth dies and is succeeded by James ILord Chamberlain’s Men become the King’s MenFirst Quarto of Hamlet published1604 Archbishop Whitgift diesSecond Quarto of Hamlet published1609 May 20: Sonnets registered on anniversary of Marlowe’s arrest1616 Shakespeare dies and leaves “second best bed” to his wife1623 First Folio published114

WILL SHAKESPEARE ABSENTS HIMSELFFROM FELICITY AWHILE TO TELLMARLOWE’S STORYO God, Horatio, what a wounded nameThings standing thus unknown, shall live behind me?If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,Absent thee from felicity awhile,And in this harsh world draw thy breath in painTo tell my story.—Hamlet(5.2.340–345)The Shakespeare CompactSo likewise we will through the world be rung,And with my name shall thine be always sung.—Ovid’s Elegies (translated by Marlowe)(1.3.25–26)he Shakespeare authorship controversy features notone, but two major specters. Besides the enigma surroundingMarlowe’s meeting in Deptford and thequestion whether he was made a ghost or survived as aghostwriter, Shakespeare’s origin and development ares h rouded in mystery. Shakespeare sightings before1593 are almost as rare as Marlowe sightings after thatdate. Aside from notices of family christenings, a marriage record, and scatteredproperty and legal transactions, there is no documentary evidenceabout William of Stratford’s literary career, including his education, early115

116 Hamletacting or writing experience, and arrival in the capital. A half-dozen playslater attributed to him in the First Folio were performed on the Londonstage before he is mentioned in connection with a theater company. Thestory that he got his start on the stage by holding the reins of a horse for aplaygoer is probably as apocryphal as the tale that he left Stratford afterpoaching a nobleman’s deer. Like a stream of electrons in a vacuum tube orthe contrails of a supersonic plane, Shakespeare’s physical existence between1585 and 1594 (like Marlowe’s after 1593) can be inferred but not seen.Whatever Will’s antecedents, in The Shakespeare Company 1594–1642,Andrew Gurr presents an elegant solution to some of the vexing questionssurrounding the realignment of the English theater during the year afterMarlowe’s “death” and the sudden appearance of the first works underShakespeare’s name. Gurr, an authority on the Elizabethan stage, suggeststhat Henry Carey, the lord chamberlain (also known as Lord Hunsdon), andhis son-in-law Charles Howard, the lord admiral and patron of the Admiral’sMen, concluded a deal to divide the London theater between their respectivecompanies. As Gurr explains:A single company had been established eleven years before as the Queen’s Men,but it had lost its hegemony. Setting up two companies was a sounder policy thanhaving just one, since it gave better insurance against any future loss of the capacityto entertain royalty. London’s two leading actors, Edward Alleyn and RichardBurbage, were each allocated a company of fellow-players and a playhousebelonging to someone in their family, and each company was given a set ofalready famous plays. One secured Marlowe’s, the other Shakespeare’s. 1The Admiral’s Men would continue to play in the Rose theater south ofthe city, using works written by Marlowe prior to his reported slaying as itschief repertoire, while the newly formed Lord Chamberlain’s Men wouldperform at the Theatre north of the city, featuring the works posterity hasattributed to Shakespeare. The recent deaths of Lord Strange and the Earlof Sussex added to the urgency of consolidation. Hunsdon’s new troupe wasformed in May 1594 from remnants of Lord Strange’s Men, LordPembroke’s Men, and other companies.Overall, the London theater had fallen on hard times after the plague hadclosed the stage for most of the previous year and a half. Except for briefspells, such as the debut of Kit’s The Massacre at Paris in January 1593 andoccasional tours in the provinces, most players were out of work betweenJune 1592 and April 1594.The friendly rivalry between the two companies continued over the nextdecade, as the Chamberlain’s Men moved into their new playhouse, theGlobe, south of the city, in 1598, creating what Gurr calls “the only effectivedemocracy of its time in totalitarian England.” 2 In counterpoint, the

Shakespeare’s Ghost 117Admiral’s Men left the decaying Rose and moved to the newly built Fortuneto the north. The two impresarios, James Burbage and Philip Henslowe, rantheir respective theaters with a sympathetic but deft hand. Burbage’s sonRichard, the star of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, performed many of theleading Shakespearean roles, including Hamlet, which appear to have beencomposed with him in mind. At the Rose and later the Fortune, EdwardAlleyn, the consummate tragedian of his time and Henslowe’s son-in-law,continued to pack the house with revivals of Tamburlaine, Dr. Faustus, andThe Jew of Malta. Although Gurr doesn’t mention it, before the LordChamberlain’s Men moved into the Theatre in the winter of 1594–95,Henslowe produced Titus Andronicus, The Taming of a Shrew, and Hamlet,suggesting he already had access to the early versions of the Shakespeareanplays and the Ur-Hamlet of Kyd and/or Marlowe. Up and coming BenJonson, who would succeed as the dominant playwright in the followingdecade, started to write for both companies. Following Elizabeth’s death in1603, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (which probably first stagedShakespeare’s Hamlet) became the King’s Men under James I’s patronage,while the Admiral’s became Prince Henry’s Men, under the crown prince.Overall, the new arrangement provided London with the most sublimetheatrical experience since ancient Athens. Yet financial security and economicstability may not have been the only motives for the consolidation.The two patrons, the Lord Admiral and Lord Hunsdon, were supportingactors, if not direct participants, in Marlowe’s rescue. This web of correspondencessuggests that the two patrons (with the approval and encouragementof the Cecils) deliberately entered into the new arrangement inorder to provide a secure venue for Kit’s new works. In all likelihood, buttressedby marriage alliances among three sets of families, Carey andHoward enthusiastically entered into the new arrangement not only for thematerial advantages it conferred but also out of shared inner convictions.Similarly, in the interest of secrecy, Marlowe himself appears to have willinglysurrendered all credit for his subsequent works to William of Stratford.As privy councilors, both Carey and Howard had a history of sympathizingwith religious reform and moderating the excesses of the archbishopand the churchmen. Many of Marlowe’s early plays were performed forthe admiral’s company, and he may have served as an intelligencer for thenaval commander during the Armada campaign. Howard had served as lordchamberlain in 1583–1585 and evidently arranged for his cousin, EdmundTilney, to serve as Master of the Revels and oversee performances at courtand on the London stage. Hunsdon succeeded Howard in this post andboth men naturally would have resented John Whitgift’s heavy-handedmove to seize control over the registration and censorship of plays. Huns-

118 Hamletdon’s son, Sir George Carey, was the knight marshall with authority over theverge—the sovereign zone around the queen’s person—that played a pivotalrole in Marlowe’s murder investigation. Both Hunsdon and the admiral hadbeen accused of atheism in the dossier prepared against Marlowe and knewhow trumped up charges could assume a life of their own. In addition to theorthodox theologians on the right, they had to navigate around the Puritansand city commissioners on the left who would close down the theater altogether.“The Lord Mayor was appeased by a ban on players using city inns,”Gurr observes, explaining the compromise arrived at. “Now plays could beconfined to the two counties north and south of the city where Howardcontrolled the local magistrates.” 3 Again in 1600, when the London theaterswere closed following a crackdown by the archbishop on seditious and lewdmaterial, the Privy Council allowed only the Lord Chamberlain’s Men andthe Lord Admiral’s Men to perform, reaffirming the arrangement struck sixyears earlier.Anthony Marlowe, Kit’s kinsman, may have also played a role in thearrangement. The influential manager of the Muscovy Company signed anappeal to the Privy Council supporting construction of the new Fortunetheatre, where the Lord Admiral’s Men, Kit’s old company, intended tomove. It is possible that the elder Marlowe contributed some support to hisjunior relation, possibly even financing or defraying his expenses in selfimposedexile. Because of his ties to Deptford, Anthony Marlowe and theLord Admiral would have been especially close.In “Shakespeare’s Ghost,” we will examine the broad contours of howthese arrangements played out. Printer Richard Field and patron Southamptonwere particularly instrumental in launching the new relationship.Overall, I hesitate to call the entire phenomenon the “Shakespeare conspiracy”or “plot” because these terms have a pejorative connotation. The“Shakespeare caper,” “sting,” or “op” are too frivolous, and the “Shakespearematrix” or “shaXpeare Files” smacks of the occult. From beginningto end, the authorship question resembles nothing so much as a dramaticpartnership—and a comic one at that. I have decided to refer to it as theShakespeare Compact, which is meet, or appropriate, as the gravediggers inHamlet would say. The performative elements involved include a fakeddeath, mistaken and switched identities, baseless slanders, supernaturaleffects, and the union of high and low—patrons and poet, university wit andtalented country boy, nobles and groundlings—which echo theShakespearean comedies themselves. The mutual bonds between Marloweand Shakespeare, Hunsdon and Howard, Henslowe and Burbage, and theirsupporting cast constitute a marriage of true minds that brought happinessand blessings to a gilded but deeply flawed age and to a grateful posterity.

Shakespeare’s Ghost 1191A Mechanical SolutionIt was in the counting and plotting of the plays of Christopher Marlowe,however, that something akin to a sensation was produced among thoseactually engaged in the work. In the characteristic curves of his playsChristopher Marlowe agrees with Shakespeare as well as Shakespeareagrees with himself.—Dr. Thomas Mendenhall, “A Mechanical Solution for a LiteraryProblem”n the absence of definitive evidence—such as signedmanuscripts of the poems and plays, a secret diary, orother historical documents—the case for or against anycandidate for the authorship of Shakespeare’s worksremained open. Historians and literary critics analyzedthe circumstantial evidence and arrived at opposite conclusions.A more objective standard of determining theprovenance of disputed writings, stylometric studies, emerged early in thetwentieth century with the scientific analysis of literary works that eliminatedas much as possible personal evaluations and judgments.The story of “Shakespeare’s Literary Fingerprint” begins duringReconstruction, following the U.S. Civil War. Dr. Robert Mendenhall, aphysics professor at Ohio State University and president of the AmericanAssociation for the Advancement of Science, devised a mechanical methodto determine the author of a disputed work. By counting the number of lettersin each of the words of an author’s literary corpus—whether prose orpoetry, a letter or a novel—and plotting the total number of words of twoletters,three-letters, four-letters, etc., on a graph, a unique individual ratiocurveappears. No two people exhibit exactly the same proportion; thusgiven a sufficient number of words—ideally 100,000 or more—the realidentify of a disputed or anonymous document could be ascertained withnear certainty. Mendenhall reported his discovery in an article in Science onMay 11, 1887. “ The chief merit of the method consisted in the fact that itsapplication required no exercise of judgement,” he explained. “ . . .Characteristics might be revealed which the author could make no attempt

120 Hamletto conceal, being himself unaware of their existence . . . The conclusionsreached through its use would be independent of personal bias, the work ofone person in the study of an author being at once comparable with thework of any other.” 4During the hotly contested presidential election of Rutherford B. Hayesand James G. Blaine, he became intrigued with unsigned editorials in theNew York Herald. The articles contained a small total number of words,making the margin of error quite high, but even so, Mendenhall discoveredthat the ratio-curves matched those of Blaine’s niece, a widely read author.As the new century began, a prominent Baconian approached Mendenhall,asking him to apply his method to the Shakespeare authorship controversy.A theory originally introduced in the mid-1800s held that Sir FrancisBacon, the philosopher, essayist, and lord chancellor under James I, was thereal author of the sonnets and plays. But the Bacon hypothesis soon becamemired in the quest for secret codes, hidden ciphers, and other occult evidence.As can be seen in the books today on a code hidden in the Bible, virtuallyanything could be read into the literary entrails of the Folio, whoseobscure orthography, misplaced fonts, and other irregularities appeared tohave been composed by the clowns in Dr. Faustus or the gravediggers inHamlet. In this maddening jumble of text and type, Baconians sawKabbalistic revelations of Sir Francis’s hidden hand communicating in codewith his brother Anthony, the spymaster.Accepting the challenge, Mendenhall hired a team of young women tocount the words in the First Folio, Bacon’s Advancement of Learning andother writings, and as a control, over a million words from the writings ofother Elizabethan poets, including Marlowe, Beaumont and Fletcher, andJonson. To the disappointment of his patron, but not surprisingly to anyonewho has read Bacon’s turgid prose, Mendenhall found that Bacon’s ratiocurvewas light years apart from the author of Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet,and the other masterpieces. However, the tedious undertaking did not gofor nought. “It was in the counting and plotting of the plays of ChristopherMarlowe, however, that something akin to a sensation was produced amongthose actually engaged in the work,” Mendenhall reported in December,1901. “In the characteristic curves of his plays Christopher Marlowe agreeswith Shakespeare as well as Shakespeare agrees with himself.” 5Today’s computer technology makes stylometric studies such as thesefaster, more reliable, and more sophisticated. A recent computerized studyreplicated and corroborated Mendenhall’s original study. English researcherPeter Farey found a correlation of up to 99.98 percent between Marlowe’splays and those attributed to Shakespeare. 6 A recent stylometric study offunction words such as “but,” “and” and “the” found a distinct difference

Shakespeare’s Ghost 121between the Marlovian and Shakespearean canons. 7 However, taking probabledate of composition into account, Farey found that Marlowe’s andShakespeare’s curves progressed with age and meshed exactly. He alsolooked at the percentage of run-on lines and “feminine” endings (in whichan extra syllable is added to the regular iambic line of ten syllables) andfound “a perfectly smooth curve can be seen to pass through the two groupsof plays.” In a further development, Louis Ule, a statistician and editor of aMarlowe concordance, found that Marlowe and Shakespeare’s vocabularywere virtually indistinguishable. The rate that each canon added new words(known as hapax-legomena) to new plays differed by only 1 percent. 8 Ulealso found that the expected vocabularies among different genres (such asdramatic works, amorous poems, and moral poems) “is much the same forMarlowe as it is for Shakespeare.” 9 Several other stylometric studies havealso shown a strong correlation between individual plays by Marlowe andShakespeare. For example, Kit’s The Jew of Malta contains an average of11.74 props (e.g., swords, crowns, scepters, coins, etc.) per thousand lines,compared to an average of 11.48 for the Shakespearean tragedies as a whole,while other Elizabethan works range from 4.2 to 22. 10In writing this book, I was struck by the similarity between the use ofbiblical imagery in Hamlet and in Marlowe’s earlier plays. Turning to twostandard reference works, I compared the use of biblical references, allusions,and echoes in the writings of Marlowe and Shakespeare. The bookswere Christopher Marlowe’s Use of the Bible, edited by R. M. Cornelius, ap rofessor of English at Bryan College, and Biblical References inShakespeare's Plays, edited by Naseeb Shaheen, who has published many articleson Shakespeare in scholarly journals. These compendiums show thatboth Marlowe and Shakespeare relied primarily on the Geneva Bible (thescripture favored by the Puritans), followed by the Bishop’s Bible, and thateach made infrequent references to one of several other English bibles thatwere circulating at the time.A statistical comparison of the references reveals a striking similaritybetween the overall use of the scriptures. Both the Marlovian and theShakespearean works refer to the Gospel of Matthew more than to any otherbook in the Bible. The Book of Psalms is the second most popular bookreferred to in each canon. In fact, as the accompanying table shows, eight ofthe top ten books are the same. Revelation and the Gospel of John arereferred to more in Marlowe than in Shakespeare. One explanation for thiswould be that, after the Baines Note accusing him of blaspheming the apostleJohn, Marlowe consciously or unconsciously shied away from referringto John’s work, including Revelation, which was traditionally assigned tohim. Instead, the Shakespeare works rely more often on Mark and Proverbs.

122 HamletTable 3. Frequency of Biblical Allusions and Echoesin the Marlovian and Shakespearean WorksRank Marlowe Shakespeare Hamlet1. Matthew Matthew Psalms2. Psalms Psalms Genesis3. Revelation Luke Job4. John Genesis Matthew5. Luke Job Proverbs6. Isaiah Revelation I Corinthians7. Job Mark Isaiah8. Romans Romans Revelation9. Genesis Isaiah Luke10. Hebrews Proverbs EcclesiasticusThe total number of references is also comparable. Dividing Marlowe’s1037 primary biblical references or echoes into eleven groups, includingseven plays, three narrative poems, and short works (all grouped together),Professor Cornelius’s count averages out to 94.3 references per work. Thelist of 3483 biblical references in Shakespeare, divided among the thirty-nineplays indexed (including those in the First Folio, Pericles, Two NobleKinsmen, and Sir Thomas More) averages 91.7 references per play—a differenceof 3 percent. Of course, this comparison is very approximate, since thetwo editors may have selected references based on different literary criteriaand their own subjective reading of the works.In annotating Hamlet for this edition, I identified more biblical references(see Annotations), bringing the total allusions and echoes in the playto 135. According to this reckoning, Hamlet alludes to forty of the eightytwobooks in the Elizabethan era Bible, including, the Apocrypha, or justunder one half. The Psalms and Genesis with twelve references or echoeseach are tied for first, followed by Job with eleven and Matthew andProverbs with ten each. Seven of the top ten books, including Isaiah, Luke,and Revelation, are the same as those in the above table. New additionsinclude 1 Corinthians, Ecclesiasticus, and Proverbs, which is number ten onthe overall Shakespearean list, but not in the top ranks of the early Marlovianworks. Again, the overall pattern remains consistent.In comparison to Marlowe and Shakespeare, other Elizabethan playwrightsused the Bible much less frequently. Thomas Kyd’s The SpanishTragedy, a primary dramatic source for Hamlet, has only seven references,

Shakespeare’s Ghost 123while Marton’s Antonio’s Revenge, a revenge tragedy that may also havemade use of the lost Ur-Hamlet (attributed to Kyd and/or Marlowe), hasonly eight biblical correspondences, according to the experts. If this significantlylower frequency of biblical references holds up in the writings of otherplaywrights, we can tentatively conclude that the Marlovian and Shakespeareanworks refer to the Bible about ten times more often than those ofother contemporary dramatists.Finally, there is a significant overlap among the references in Marloweand Shakespeare. For example, about 20 percent of the passages in the Biblereferred to in Dido (eight out of thirty-seven) are also alluded to inShakespeare’s plays. In the first part of Tamburlaine, the percentage rises tonearly 40 percent (fifty-four out of 137 references), including fourteen outof seventeen references to the exact same passages in Matthew and ten ofseventeen in Revelation. 11 As we might expect, a profound knowledge ofholy writ fits the profile of Marlowe, who prepared for the ministry atCambridge, studied Latin and Greek, and received his M.A. in theology.There is nothing in Shakespeare’s life to suggest that he had comparablelearning or religious sophistication.Actually there is a significant difference in the use of scripture in the twocanons. In an introductory essay, Professor Cornelius marvels at Marlowe’sscrupulous use of the Bible in his works. “The treatment of judgment, whichappears in all of his plays, is quite detailed and balanced, for Marlowe refersto both pains and punishments, rewards and righteous justice. In general, heis Biblically orthodox in presenting God as sovereign with respect to themachinations of men.” 12 In contrast to Marlowe, Shakespeare, he asserts, ismuch more provocative, frequently using biblical humor and levity to makea point and even verging on flippancy! As examples, he cites The TwoGentlemen of Verona, in which Launce compares himself to Christ; TheComedy of Errors, in which even Noah’s flood could not clean the face ofNell, the greasy kitchen maid; and Much Ado About Nothing in whichwomen are claimed to be superior since men are made from dust. “None ofthese instances has a counterpart in Marlowe,” he observes. 13How can we explain this discrepancy? Like a sketch artist who composesa drawing of a missing child or adult that attempts to approximate how theperson has aged, we need only focus Marlowe’s literary light through theprism of the events in Deptford to see how it manifests differently in theguise of Shakespeare. After May 30, 1593, Marlowe wrote from the comparativefreedom and safety of exile rather than under the direct gaze of theLondon censor, which could account for the emergence of this satiricalstrain, especially in the Italian comedies. This tendency reaches its zenith inHamlet’s puns on the Lord’s Supper and the graveyard scenes.

124 HamletThe lighter theological vein accords with the general thematic changefrom the Marlovian plays, which dramatize the effects of evil, to the worksattributed to Shakespeare, which focus on the restorative powers of thegood. After Deptford, Kit appears to have transformed his inner demons andfuries into angels and benevolent elves and fairies. He continued to invokethe spirits of darkness, especially Hecate, the queen of Night, but he let herinner radiance shine. Like his namesake Merlin and his hero Ovid, author ofMetamorphoses, Kit mastered the art of transmutation, magically changingnight into day, tragedy into comedy, and revenge into an immortal meditationon the human condition.In brief, scanning Marlowe’s and Shakespeare’s literary and theologicalDNA proves a close, if not an exact, match. A variety of scientific, linguistic,and religious comparisons shows beyond a reasonable doubt that their collectedworks were composed largely by the same hand.2The Muse’s SpringsLet base-conceited wits admire vile things,Fair Phoebus lead me to the Muses’ springs.—Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis(motto from Ovid’s Amores)The First Heir of My InventionMarlowe is the greatest discoverer, the most daring pioneer, in all ourpoetic literature. Before Marlowe there was no genuine blank verse andgenuine tragedy in our language. After his arrival the way was prepared,the path made straight for Shakespeare.—Algernon Charles Swinburnes if on cue, following Christopher Marlowe’s “death”and sudden exit from the Elizabethan stage, Will Shakespearemade his literary entrance with publication ofVenus and Adonis. Composed in the same style and toneas Hero and Leander, the lyrical narrative was registeredanonymously with the Stationers’ Company on April18, 1593, about the time the first anti-alien libels were

Shakespeare’s Ghost 125posted in London. Ironically, the poem was approved by Archbishop JohnWhitgift, who oversaw publication of all printed material and whose nameappears on the registry. Anonymous authorship was not uncommon in anera when theater troupes or printers owned the rights to a play. In WilliamShakespeare: A Compact Documentary Life, Stanley Schoenbaum mentionsthe appearance of a printed copy of Venus and Adonis with Shakespeare’sname as early as June 12. 14 There is no author listed on the title page, andthe dedication page with Shakespeare’s name appears to have been insertedinto the volume after publication. This suggests that he volunteered or waschosen to take the credit for the poem in the two weeks after Marlowe’s“death” in Deptford.Dedicated to Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton, Venus andAdonis was offered as “the first heir of my invention.” Why was this youngnobleman the dedicatee? A grandson of a former lord chancellor underHenry VIII, Southampton became a ward of William Cecil, or LordBurghley, at age eight following the death of his father. In London, he livedwith Burghley and his family in Cecil House in the Strand and was broughtup like a son. Although the boy was a Catholic, when he was twelve,Burghley enrolled him at St. John’s College at Cambridge, a Puritan stronghold,where he received his master’s degree in June 1589, just two yearsafter Marlowe did. Hence their stay at the university overlapped by aboutfive years. In 1588, through Burghley’s influence, Wriothesley was admittedto Gray’s Inn, one of the inns of court or law schools. The following year hewas introduced to the queen and soon acquired a reputation as a generouspatron of literature and the arts. In the early 1590s, he accompanied Essexto France and in later years participated in military expeditions to theAzores, Cadiz, and Ireland. Southampton’s wealth, rising influence at court,and intellectual and cultural interests made him the perfect patron.In addition to Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece—another narrativepoem attributed to Shakespeare that came out in 1594—is dedicated toSouthampton. In 1605, the earl sponsored a performance of Love’s Labor’sLost in his home at which Queen Ann, the wife of James I, attended. Somecritics believe that the sonnets addressed to the Fair Young Man allude to anintensely personal relationship between Shakespeare and his patron and thatthe mysterious Mr. W. H., to whom the Sonnets are dedicated, is HenryWriothesley, with his initials reversed. However, there is no direct evidencelinking the wealthy aristocrat and the Stratford actor. According to Shakespeareanscholar A. L. Rowse, Leander, the tragic hero in Hero and Leander,is modeled on Southampton, and the earl patronized Marlowe as well asShakespeare. But again there is no evidence for such a tie or an intimate connection.

126 HamletAnother possibility, advanced by poet Ted Hughes, is that Burghleycommissioned Venus and Adonis as part of his campaign for Southamptonto marry his granddaughter, Elizabeth Vere. When Wriothesley rejected theproposed match, he explains, Cecil arranged for John Clapham, one of hissecretaries, to compose an allegorical poem, Narcissus, derived from the classicaltale, about a young man who abandons Venus, the goddess of love, forself-love, falls into a pool and drowns, and is turned into a flower.“Shakespeare’s poem, while the same campaign was still in full swing, couldwell be seen as a continuation of Clapham’s brief, almost as if it had beencommissioned for the purpose,” Hughes suggests. “It has been pointed outthat one possible explanation for the fact that this daringly erotic poem wasapproved and licensed by one of the most morally severe theological censorsof the age, Whitgift, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was that Burghley somehowauthorized it.” 15 Of course, as England’s leading poet and a governmentagent already reporting to Cecil, Kit would have been a far more likelycandidate to be tapped for the assignment than the unknown William ofStratford.A clue to the possible relationship between Shakespeare and Southamptoncomes from Dr. John Ward, a London physician, who moved toStratford in the 1660s, became vicar of the local church, and lived there fornineteen years. Curious about Shakespeare’s life, Ward reported that Shakespeare“supplied ye stage with 2 plays every year, and for yt had an allowanceso large, yt hee spent att the Rate of a 1,000£ a year as I have heard.” 16According to Ward’s diary, he met with Shakespeare’s surviving relatives,friends, and neighbors who knew him before he died in 1616, includingThomas Hart, his nephew, and a Mrs. Queeny, who is apparently JudithShakespeare, the actor’s daughter, who married Thomas Quiney and died inher late seventies.In his diary, Dr. Ward writes: “I have heart yt Mr. Shakespeare was a naturalwit, without any art at all; he frequented ye plays all his younger times,but in his elder days lived at Stratford.” 17 This description suggests that hewas natively intelligent but had little formal training (“any art at all”) andthat he worked in the London theater in early manhood (though apparentlynot as a writer) and retired in late middle age to his boyhood home.Traveling troupes of players came to Stratford periodically, and young Willmay have come under the spell of the theater at that point. In any event, itwould have been unprecedented for any poet to receive a thousand, muchless a hundred, pounds for a manuscript. The typical payment for a play wasseveral pounds at most, and a printed edition that was successful and brokeeven on sales of 500 copies would typically make a profit of £1 a year. Oncefor a special performance, the Globe theatre received 40 shillings to make

Shakespeare’s Ghost 127up for the anticipated loss at the gate. By comparison, the annual budget forthe entire Elizabethan secret service was only about £2000, and afterexpenses the archbishop of Canterbury earned £1500 a year.While Shakespearean biographers today tend to ignore Ward’s diary,Nicholas Rowe, Shakespeare’s first biographer, also reported that Southamptonbestowed £1000 on the young actor early in his career. 18 Whethergiven to Shakespeare once at the launch of his career or annually, the enormousfigure suggests a business agreement to run a theater company ratherthan write individual plays. 19 The earliest plays attributed to Shakespeare arebelieved to have been composed and performed between 1587 and 1591.The last Shakespearean plays are dated to about 1611. The First Folio containsthirty-six plays, and there are several more such as Edward III that literaryexperts now generally assign to his hand. The interval between thesetwo dates, some eighteen to twenty years, corresponds with the productionof about forty plays, or two a year.Some skeptics speculate that the fantastic payment to Shakespeare was abribe, or even blackmail, not to reveal his part in the masquerade. More likely,it was used by the novice actor or stage manager to became a shareholderin a theater company. It is unnecessary to impugn Shakespeare’s characteror attach primarily financial motives to the arrangement.Compounding the mystery, Shakespeare’s formative years are a completeblank. The first documented account of his presence in London is in late1594. The meager facts suggest that William of Stratford was employedimmediately after the events in Deptford to serve as a theatrical stand in andliterary alias for Marlowe and prior to this time had no major involvementin the world of arts and letters. Burghley, who had served as HenryWriothesley’s guardian and de facto father since early adolescence, evidentlymade the arrangements. He watched over both Southampton andMarlowe at Cambridge, where he was chancellor, and it is reasonable to concludethat they knew each other from their university days.There is simply no information about when Shakespeare first came to thecapital or became involved in the stage. Shakespeare’s dark years—a virtualcipher between 1585 and 1594—allow for many potential relationships tohave developed among the principals. The most plausible is contact betweenMarlowe and Shakespeare at the Rose or some other theatrical venue wherethe careers of the two young men—born within two months of each other—may have intersected in the late 1580s or early 1590s. In his hometown, Willis last mentioned in connection with the birth of twins, Judith and Hamnet,to him and his wife, Anne Hathaway, in 1585. Nine years later, in 1594, heis listed with Will Kempe and Richard Burbage as members of the LordChamberlain’s Men in London who received payment for a performance at

128 Hamletcourt. In the interim, Will may have served Lord Strange’s Men or the Earlof Pembroke’s Men as a prop man, stage manger, or member of the cast.The stipend he received in 1594 does not specify his services, but Kempeand Burbage were both actors.The case for Shakespeare as a budding poet and dramatist at this earlyperiod rests largely on a pun. In Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit, Robert Greenewarned dramatists not to trust actors because of their mendacity and lack oflearning. In his splenetic narrative, he singled out “an upstart Crow . . . thatwith his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is as well able tobombast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and . . . is in his owne conceitthe onely Shake-scene in a country.” 20 On the basis of the pun on“Shake-scene” and the parody of a passage in 3 Henry VI, “O tiger’s heartwrapp’d in a woman’s hide!” (1.4.137), scholars have concluded that this isthe earliest known literary reference to Shakespeare. Published in 1592, itappears to place William of Stratford as solidly employed within the Londontheater and to document the formative stage of his acting and writing career.As the chief source for The Winter’s Tale and a minor source for Troilus andCressida, Greene evidently knew young Shakespeare and, it has been suggested,even collaborated with him on Titus Andronicus, 1 and 2 Henry VI,The Comedy of Errors, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and other early works.Yet, in Christopher Marlowe and Edward Alleyn, A. D. Wraight showsconvincingly that Greene referred not to Shakespeare but to Alleyn. Starringin the title role of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, Alleyn had risen to prominenceas an actor and was known to “shake a stage,” a common term for greatactors of that time. As the manager of the Lord Admiral’s Men as well as atragedian, he employed Greene as a writer, but they had a falling out. 21 The“tiger’s heart” line is actually from The True Tragedy of Richard, Duke ofYorke, the early version of 3 Henry VI, a play that some scholars independentlyassign to Marlowe. I would also point out that two years earlier inNever Too Late, Greene had taunted Alleyn and Marlowe in similar language:“Why Roscius [Alleyn], art thou proud with Esop’s Crow, being pranct withthe glorie of others feathers? of thy selfe thou canst say nothing, and if theCobler [Marlowe, the shoemaker’s son] hath taught thee to say Ave Caesar,disdain not thy tutor.” “Ave Caesar” is a famous phrase from Edward III, aplay now widely attributed to Shakespeare! Hence, the main linchpin of thecase for young Shakespeare as an author and dramatist is very shaky indeed.It is possible that Shakespeare shared Marlowe’s idealism, passion, andeven free-thinking spirit and entered into a partnership with him for largersocial, religious, or political ends. Thomas Cartwright and Job Throkmorton,the great Puritan opponents of Archbishop Whitgift, hailed fromWarwickshire and visited Stratford. Young Will could have been inspired by

Shakespeare’s Ghost 129their impassioned sermons and speeches. Over the years, Shakespeareacquired a reputation as a tight spender and quarrelsome landlord andneighbor, but these need not detract from the possibility that he had his ownyouthful visionary bent.There is also a darker possibility for the genesis of their partnership. ACatholic will signed by his father, John Shakespeare, reportedly turned uphidden in the thatch roof of the family’s cottage in Stratford in the eighteenthcentury. Knowledge of such clandestine religious practice by the anti-Catholic spymaster Walsingham in the 1580s or by the Cecils in the early1590s, may have been used against Shakespeare. As a struggling youngactor, Will could have been blackmailed into participating in the arrangementon condition that his recusant sympathies or those of his family not beexposed. His mother was also distantly related to Robert Southward, theJesuit priest who was later martyred. Further, one of the cousins in hisextended family, John Somerville, was arrested in 1583 as part of a Catholicplot to assassinate the queen. In the new book Theatre and Religion:Lancastrian Shakespeare, several leading Shakespearean scholars explore theextensive network of Catholic connections among the Shakespeare clan,Stratford, and the Jesuit underground. It is hypothesized that Will’s introductionto the stage came through the Catholic Stanleys, including Ferdinando,patron of Lord Strange’s Men (for whom Marlowe wrote). 22Though well known for mentoring young earls, princesses, and otherfuture leaders of the realm, Burghley was also a shrewd judge of character atthe low end of the social scale, and young Will may have come to his attention.In 1585, a London official wrote a letter to Cecil referring to NicholasSkeres as one of the “Masterless men and Cutpurses whose practice is torobbe Gentelmen’s Chambers and Artificers’ Shoppes in & aboutLondon.” 23 Instead of turning Skeres over to the magistrates and hangman,Burghley apparently referred him to spymaster Walsingham because of hissingular talents. In addition to his apparent participation in the BabingtonPlot, Skeres was one of the three men present at Marlowe’s “death” inDeptford. Perhaps because of stalwart performances by men such as Skeres,the lord treasurer readily agreed to employ the lowly actor from Stratford inan intelligence caper of another variety.Although stridently anti-Catholic, Burghley protected Protestant dissenters,Separatists, and freethinkers like Marlowe whenever possible.Robert Browne, who matriculated from Corpus Christi College in Cambridgeabout a decade before Marlowe, is a case in point. A member of aprominent family that was related to the Cecils, Browne was arrested andjailed on numerous occasions for publicly criticizing the Church, but eachtime he was released through Burghley’s influence. In the early seventeenth

130 Hamletcentury, his followers, known as Brownists, set sail for America and foundedthe Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Robert Browne came to be known asthe father of Congregationalism. There is no known connection betweenBrowne and Marlowe, but their ties to Corpus Christi College and Burghleywarrant further investigation. (One of Marlowe’s Canterbury neighbors,Robert Cushman, hired the Pilgrim vessel the Mayflower.)Given the enormous personal risks that playwrights like Kyd andMarlowe faced from orthodox theologians, it is likely that Shakespeare, atleast in the beginning, did not know the real identity of the author whoseworks he passed off as his own. Venus and Adonis’s dedication to Southamptonas “the first heir of my invention” punningly suggests that the volumeis the first to come out under an invented name.In addition to external ties, Venus and Adonis also shows internal evidencethat it was compiled by Marlowe. Like Hero and Leander, it is acharming fable about why human love is doomed to fail. In each case, thepoem enlarges and reshapes its classical source to embody the author’s ownphilosophy and insights.Though presumably written before Venus and Adonis, Marlowe’s poemalludes to its sequel in the opening lines (“Where Venus in her naked glorystrove / To please the careless and disdainful eyes / Of proud Adonis”[12–14]) and, like Shakespeare’s, occasionally abbreviates Adonis’s name toAdon in later references. In both poems, the beautiful youth is referred toas “rose-cheeked,” an epithet not found in the classical myths. (“Rosecheek’dAdonis hied him to the chase” [3] in Shakespeare and “RosecheekedAdonis, kept a solemn feast” [93] in Marlowe.) In comparingAdonis to Narcissus, Shakespeare describes how the self-absorbed youngman “died to kiss his shadow in the brook” (162) while Marlowe’s Leander“leapt into the water for a kiss / Of his own shadow” (74–75). In Ovid’saccount of the original Greek myth, Narcissus drowns trying to embrace hisown reflection in a pool, but there is no mention of him kissing his shadow.Curiously, Leander’s face is likened to that of a woman in both Marlowe’spoem and Shakespeare’s Sonnet 20.The passages describing the heroines’ liquid pearl tears are also parallel, 24and both poems include a description of a powerful steed that, disdaining tobe controlled, breaks its reins, stamps its hooves, and exchanges restraint forfreedom. 25 The maritime scenery in the two poems also appears to havebeen arranged by the same set designer, with numerous references to thesea, waves, coral, breaks, and other coastal images. Of course, both mythsare originally set in the Mediterranean, but Venus and Adonis’s descriptionof pursuing the deadly boar “o’er the downs” (677) suggests the southeastEnglish coastline, not Crete, the island sacred to Venus. This reference

Shakespeare’s Ghost 131would more likely come to Marlowe’s mind, who drew upon childhoodmemories of the cliffs of Dover, where his grandparents lived, than that ofShakespeare, who grew up in inland Warwickshire. (The same later holdstrue in Hamlet, whose “dreadful summit of the cliff / That beetles o’er hisbase into the sea” [1.4.76–77] is not found in Elsinore in Denmark, but inKit’s childhood haunts.)The predominant hue in each narrative poem is also the same. From theopening line of Venus and Adonis (“the sun with purple-color’d face” [1])to the bed of flowers the lovers lie on (“blue-veined violets” [125]) to thefalling of the fruit (“the mellow plum” [527]) that foreshadows their separation,the bloody injury that Adonis suffers, the “purple tears, that hiswound wept” [1054]), and his final transmutation into an anemone (“Apurple flow’r sprung up” [1168]), the Shakespearean poem clothes its starcrossedlovers in tragic indigo. In Marlowe’s tale, “the Morn . . . puts on herpurple weeds” (571–572), oblations of “wine from grapes outrung” (140)are made at Venus’s temple, the heroine’s resplendent attire has a lining of“purple silk” (10), and Hero adorns her lover with “purple ribbon wound”(590), a pun on Adonis’s wound and a presentiment of Leander’s fate.As the day bathes both sets of lovers with its life-giving rays, so the fallof darkness mirrors their parting and separation. “When they resign theiroffice, and their light, . . . / Who bids them still consort with ugly night”(1039, 1041) Shakespeare sings, while Marlowe’s lyric refrain muses, “Buthe the day’s bright-bearing car prepared / And ran before as harbinger oflight, / And with his flaring beams mocked ugly Night” (814–816). Finally,in each story, love’s complaint is compared to decay in the natural world.“Fair flowers that are not gather’d in their prime / Rot, and consume themselvesin little time” (131–132), Shakespeare sighs, while Marlowe draws thesame moral in a field of grain: “The richest corn dies if it be not reaped; /Beauty alone is lost, too warily kept” (327-328). The verses echo Marlowe’smotto and Sonnet 73: “Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by.”Compared to Shakespeare’s later plays, which lift entire lines and themesfrom Marlowe, the theft of images and ideas in Venus and Adonis is relativelylight. However, it has sufficiently vexed scholars so that they postulate thatShakespeare must have had access to a manuscript copy of Marlowe’s workbefore writing his own. As A. L. Rowse states, “The poems are full of echoesof each other, theme, arguments, phrases, whole passages.” 26 Are these similaritiesharmless examples of literary poaching, coincidence, or prophecy?Occam’s razor offers the simplest solution: the two poems were written bythe same hand.As for Venus in the poem attributed to Shakespeare, the goddess mayhave been modeled, at least in part, on Mary Sidney, the Countess of

132 HamletPembroke, one of the leading literary patrons of the Elizabethan era. Threeyears older than Kit and Will, she married the Earl of Pembroke when shewas sixteen. Contemporary accounts suggest that the Pembrokes’ marriage,though it produced an heir, was largely one of convenience, with both theaging noble, previously married and more than thirty years older than hisglamorous bride, and Mary pursuing their separate interests and dalliances.The countess, the sister of poet Sir Philip Sidney and an accomplished writerof blank verse in her own right, went on to complete her brother’s unfinishedwork after his heroic death on the battlefield against the Spanish.Marlowe wrote a glowing tribute in Latin to Mary in the introduction ofAmintae Gaudia, a posthumous book of poetry by his close friend, ThomasWatson, who died on September 26, 1592. Addressing “the Most IllustriousNoble Lady, adorned with all gifts both of mind and body,” Marlowe comparesher to a goddess “to whose immaculate embrace virtue, outraged bythe assault of barbarism and ignorance, flieth for refuge.” Could the havenpossibly refer to her intervention on his behalf in Flushing, where he wasdetained by her brother, Robert, the governor, on charges of counterfeitingearlier in the year? Likening his own “slender wealth” to the “seashore myrtleof Venus,” he promises to invoke Mary’s name as “Mistress of theMuses” in all of his own future works. Marlowe’s Edward II and severalanonymous plays attributed to him were performed by the Pembroke’sMen, her husband’s theatrical company. Mary’s son, William Herbert, is theprincipal candidate for the mysterious Mr. W. H., to whom Shakespeare’sSonnets are dedicated. Edward Blount, the publisher of the First Folio, wasMary’s trustee, and the first edition of Shakespeare’s collected works is dedicatedto William and his brother. This intricate web of connections with thecountess and her family has led some critics to conclude that she andMarlowe may have been romantically attached. 27Beside Mary Sidney and Southampton, Richard Field, the printer ofVenus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, may have been instrumental inMarlowe’s literary return under Will’s name. Field came from Stratford, asdid Shakespeare, their two fathers were acquainted, and this connection iswidely viewed by historians and critics as the missing link between Will’s lostyears and his move to London. Field served as an apprentice to ThomasVautrollier, a Huguenot refugee printer. After the man died in 1587, Fieldmarried his widow and inherited the business, which included a monopolyon publishing Ovid’s Metamorphoses, one of Marlowe’s favorite books, inboth English and Latin. He also published Holinshed, Plutarch, and manyof the other sources that were used in the composition of the Marlovian andShakespearean plays. Field also published a number of news pamphletsabout religious strife in France that Kit used as background for The Massacre

Shakespeare’s Ghost 133at Paris. In the relatively small world of writers and publishers, Field andMarlowe were no doubt acquainted.Field may also have been a member of the School of Night and metMarlowe through Ralegh’s circle. The title page of Venus and Adonis mentionsthat the book is “Imprinted by Richard Field, and are to be sold at thesigne of the white Greyhound in Paules Churchyard.” In his testimonyagainst Marlowe, Thomas Kyd implicated several other unnamed membersof the informal academy, including “some stationers in Paul’s Churchyard.”28 In his statements extracted under torture, Kyd observed that theymet under “the sign of the White Greyhound.” Since Field’s books weresold at this alehouse, it is highly probable he was one of the stationers alludedto. He also published Sir Philip Sidney’s works, tying him intoPembroke’s circle, to which Kit was related through Lord Pembroke’s actingcompany and Philip and Mary Sidney’s other brother, Robert Sidney,the governor of Flushing.Less well known is the connection between Field and Burghley. Fieldprinted Burghley’s The Copie of a Letter sent out of England to Don BernardinMendoza, Spain’s ambassador in France, along with other material relatedto the defeat of the Spanish Armada. The following year, Field wrote adedicatory letter to Burghley in a book that he printed by George Puttenhamentitled The Arte of English Poesie. It’s possible that Field printed otherdocuments for the Crown’s chief councilor, but the Armada documents arethe only ones catalogued in the British Museum. According to anotherSpanish emissary, Burghley secretly supplied poets with material for theirplays. “Evidently Feria [Spanish ambassador to England] was doing what hecould to discredit Cecil with his mistress,” explains Elizabethan historianConyers Read. “It was at this juncture that Feria protested against comediesin London which made mock of his royal master. He said that Cecil had suppliedthe authors of them with chief themes.” 29In William Cecil: The Power Behind Elizabeth, Alan Gordon Smith contendsthat Burghley orchestrated the publication of numerous “encomiumsof the new regime” in its struggle to thwart Catholic conspiracies and establisha new patriotic English identity. “Whole chapters might be filled concerningthese official and semi-official publications: from Jewel’s Apology toFoxe’s Book of Martyrs. So important was this purely literary side of the revolutionthat, in the midst of his stupendous political labours, he would constantlytake a personal hand in it himself.” In addition to drafting his ownworks such as Declaration of the Queenes Proceedings since her Reign andExecution of Justice, Burghley “had to rely, for the most part, on anonymouspens, for many of which he found regular employment.” 30 Hence, as thecenter of the Crown’s fiscal, diplomatic, and espionage web, the lord treas-

134 Hamleturer and de facto prime minister also oversaw its propaganda and literaryactivities.Even if he knew Will from Stratford, Field could have served as the intermediaryfor Burghley, whose patronage he enjoyed. In helping the elderstatesman and his son find a mouthpiece for Marlowe, he may have initiallyrecommended Will and vouched for his discretion, as well as arranged forthe publication of the first volume bearing his name. Venus and Adonis,which he printed, was already well into production when Marlowe wasarrested. The short period of time (two weeks) between the poet’s dramatic“death” and Shakespeare’s literary “birth” suggests established connectionsand a secure support network (such as Her Majesty’s secret service)already in place that could swiftly implement contingency plans.The Latin inscription on the title page of Venus and Adonis—“Viliamiretus vulgus: himi flauus Apollo /Pocula Castaliapelena minisiret aqua”—further links Marlowe and Shakespeare. In his translation of Ovid’s Elegies,Marlowe rendered the passage: “Let base-conceited wits admire vile things,Faire Phoebus led me to the Muses’ springs” (1.15.35–36). The couplet isalmost a perfect koan for the events in Deptford: “Let base conceitedArchbishop Whitgift and his cronies admire vile things, the divine light oftruth led me safely to the Muse’s springs.” Phoebus referred to Apollo, thesun god. “Vile” also echoes “vile, hereticall conceipts” which Marlowe wasaccused of holding in the Baines Note and “the notablyst and vyldist artyckelesof Athemysme” in Drury’s letter to Anthony Bacon. The pure“springs” of the Muse further contrasts the “vile” attempt by Baines to poisonthe communal well in France, as Marlowe satirized in The Jew of Malta.The subsequent lines of Marlowe’s translation of Ovid (first published in1598) are even more revealing:About my head be quivering myrtle wound,And in sad lovers’ heads let me be found.The living, not the dead, can envy bite,For after death all men receive their right.Then though death rakes my bones in funeral fire,I’ll live, and as he pulls me down mount higher.(1.15.37–42)These lines reinforce the image that the poet’s true work will live on,even though his name has been taken from him and metaphorically burnedat the stake. The line “The living, not the dead, can envy bite” alludes toThomas Kyd’s beseeching letter to Sir John Puckering, the lord keeper, afterthe events in Deptford, when he made further allegations of heresy againstMarlowe and closed with the Latin proverb: “Quia mortui non mordent,” or

Shakespeare’s Ghost 135“The dead do not bite.” 31 There is another allusion to vileness in Sonnet121: “’Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed, / When not to be receivesreproach of being.” “Mount higher” in the last line is a characteristicMarlovian image for Tamburlaine, the Duke of Guise, and his other aspiringanti-heroes.Finally, the dedication of Venus and Adonis promises the Earl ofSouthampton a “graver labor” in the future, a pun of greater things to comefrom the grave of the “dead” poet. The word play and black humor—reminiscentof Mercutio’s dying pun in Romeo and Juliet, “Ask for me to-morrow,and you shall find me a grave man” (3.1.97–98)—are comic touchesworthy of the future author of Hamlet. 32Little Latin and Less GreekWell, let me see—oh, I’ve got it—you can do Hamlet’s soliloquy. . . The first chance we got, the duke he had some show bills printed;and after that, for two or three days as we floated along, the raft was amost uncommon lively place, for there warn’t nothing but sword-fightingand rehearsing . . . All of us but Jim took the canoe and went downthere to see if there was any chance in that place for our show.—Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finnnlike the anti-Stratfordians, I do not think that WillShakespeare was uneducated. They point to a lack ofuniformity in the spelling of his name as proof of hispoor literacy, but in an era before standardized spelling,grammar, and punctuation, the variations are not qualitativelydifferent than those of Marlowe. While there isno evidence that Shakespeare attended grammarschool, there is also none to the contrary. And by modern standards, localschooling was very rigorous and demanding. Through a schoolmaster’s collectionof books or a private library such as that of Richard Field, Shakespearecould have acquired a sound basic education in Stratford or at somepoint during the lost years. Even granted that he may have been a naturalwit, as Dr. Ward reports, he would still have needed to acquire the specializedknowledge of theology, law, medicine, and other disciplines that permeatesthe plays. That, too, could have been obtained through diligent selfstudyand perseverance. So on this basis alone, I would not dismiss him asthe author of the works attributed to his name.After all, another rustic, barefoot boy, Abraham Lincoln, Shakespeare’s

136 Hamletgreatest successor as a prose stylist, left school after only three years, andthereafter gained his education by reading in the fields or by candlelight,borrowing books, and polishing his rough-hewn jottings. In Lincoln’s case,physical evidence for his authorship includes original manuscript papers anddrafts, as well as contemporary accounts of the Gettysburg Address andSecond Inaugural speech—generally recognized as his most Shakespeareanoratories. According to his son, Robert, Lincoln always carried an edition ofShakespeare’s plays, including Macbeth, his favorite, with him in the WhiteHouse. His wry sense of humor, pacifist inclinations combined with a talentfor military strategy, and unswerving devotion to the cause of liberty strikea Marlovian refrain. And ironically, John Wilkes Booth, a Shakespeareanactor, assassinated him while attending a play at a Washington theater.As a Warwickshire country boy navigating the Avon like an EnglishHuck Finn, then, Shakespeare could have developed a native genius andenlarged his “little Latine and lesse Greeke,” in Ben Jonson’s words,through some as yet unknown agency. And like Twain’s protagonist, Willcould have been intuitively bright, honest, and intellectually curious. I recoilat those who put Shakespeare down to build up their own candidate andassume that only an aristocrat could have written the canon. Hugh Trevor-Roper, the Elizabethan historian, dismisses Shakespeare as “a common oaf”who could not possibly have written the plays. 33 If Shakespeare were illiterate,as some handwriting experts attest, he could still have been a born storyteller,like Homer, one of the ancient Celtic bards, or Garrison Keillortoday. Many Shakespeare biographers speculate that he worked as a schoolmasterfor a Catholic family in Lancashire and is the William Shakeshaftereferred to in a contemporary will.In the course of researching and editing this volume, I seriously entertainedthe possibility that Shakespeare, the native genius, wrote not only hisown work but Marlowe’s! In the early 1800s, as we saw, the Monthly Reviewfirst proposed that since the works attributed to the two playwrights were sosimilar, Shakespeare must have adopted Marlowe as his pen name beforeperforming and dramatizing plays in his own right. According to this scenario,Marlowe was such a valuable intelligencer that the Walsinghams orCecils provided him with a literary cover to carry out his assignments. WithSouthampton and Richard Field orchestrating arrangements, Will Shakespeare,a young, self-educated poet, was selected to pass off his earliest worksunder Marlowe’s name. In this way, Marlowe’s “legend,” or spurious biography,gained him wider entrée into courts, manor houses, and literarysalons in Scotland, France, and other venues. According to this theory, afterMarlowe died, accidentally or on purpose, in Deptford in 1593, Shakespearecontinued publishing under his own name, and no one was the wiser.

Shakespeare’s Ghost 137While theoretically possible, it is more likely that Will Shakespeare’s fortelay in his abilities as an actor, artistic director, stage manager, or entrepreneurrather than in his skill as a poet or playwright. As a principal shareholder,he may have brought to the Globe, Fortune, and other Londonstages the kind of “mighty” presence that Marlowe, Kyd, and Jonsonbrought to the written page. In fact, the success of the Shakespearean playsin the mid 1590s and early 1600s may owe as much to his organizing geniusas to the scripts. Will’s ability to help negotiate shrewd business deals (forwhich literacy was essential), harmonize outsize egos such as the Burbages(James, the original entrepreneur, who built the Theatre; Richard, his son,the actor; and Cuthbert, the other son, who built the Globe) and Marlowehimself (even at a distance), and avoid the lash of the censor, the scorn ofArchbishop Whitgift, and the peevishness of the queen may have requiredskills of heroic proportions. Shakespeare may largely have been responsiblefor keeping together the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (later known as theKing’s Men under King James) for twenty years—the Golden Age of theEnglish stage—through plagues, rebellions, scandals at court, and personalmelodramas surrounding his cast, printers, and high-strung chief playmaker.Given the amount of time that he was away from his family in Stratford, acase can be made that Will Shakespeare deserves to be enshrined in the theatricalbook of martyrs as a result of his selfless service to a higher literaryand spiritual cause.As we will see in the next section when analyzing Hamlet, there is goodreason to believe that Kit and Will enjoyed an excellent working relationship.Though he may not have been formally educated or skilled in writing,Shakespeare as a “natural wit” probably served as a sounding board for thepoet’s dramatic conceptions and stage characterizations, contributinginsights, imagery, and improvisations that may have found their way into theplayscripts as well as on the stage. Until more evidence is forthcoming, I feelit is justified to consider their partnership a creative collaboration and retainWilliam Shakespeare’s name as co-author.Will’s crankiness, petty suits, youthful poaching, marital spats, and legendarytippling at the Mermaid Inn may be no more indicative of his truecharacter than Marlowe’s infractions. As Charles Nicholl observes, “On thebasis of Marlowe’s police record—perhaps known to the coroner, perhapsnot—we can say that he had twice been involved in violent clashes, in public,though in neither case can we be sure that he was the aggressor, and inneither case was he subsequently charged with any crime.” 34In a litigious age, Shakespeare’s peccadilloes, like Marlowe’s indiscretions,can be viewed as little more than isolated instances that do not necessarilyoutweigh their positive character traits or ability to carry out their pro-

138 Hamletfessional duties. It was common in that era for a gentleman to have up to adozen lawsuits pending at any moment. Over time, as their partnershipstrengthened, Shakespeare evidently became Marlowe’s willing alter ego,faithfully carrying out essential practical tasks to bring the poet’s immortalverse to the stage and to gain them a chance at posterity. As we shall see,Hamlet appears to portray their relationship in this light.3Hand in HandThe young Shakespeare must have heard the music of Marlowe’s mightyline for the first time when he came to London . . . without Marlowe,there would never have been the Will Shakespeare whom we know.—Thomas Marc Parrott, William Shakespeare: A HandbookThe Place of Death and Sorry Execution[T]he Duke himself in personComes this way to the melancholy vale,The place of [death] and sorry execution—The Comedy of Errors(5.1.119–121)n 1594, following the plague that had closed publicentertainments for most of the previous two years, theLondon theaters reopened. After Lord Strange’s suddendeath that summer, the Lord Chamberlain’s Menreplaced Lord Strange’s company. The Comedy ofErrors, possibly the earliest production of a Shakespeareanplay, took place at Gray’s Inn in London onDecember 28, 1594. “[T]here was a great Presence of Lords, Ladies, andworshipful Personages, that did expect some notable Performance at thattime,” explains the Gerta Grayorum, a contemporary account. Those inattendance included “the Right Honourable Lord Keeper, the Earls ofShrewsbury, Cumberland, Northumberland, Southampton, and Essex, theLords Buckhurst, Windsor, Mountjoy, Sheffield, Compton, Rich, Burleygh,Mounteagle, and the Lord Thomas Howard; Sir Thomas Henage, SirRobert Cecill; with a great number of Knights, Ladies, and very worshipful

Shakespeare’s Ghost 139Personages.” 35The inns of court, the law schools in London, included many prominentPuritan sympathizers such as Nicholas Fuller, who defended the four divinesbrought to trial by the archbishop of Canterbury in the Star Chamber trialin 1591, and Henry Finch, who spoke in Parliament against Whitgift’s billto suppress religious dissent in 1593. Gray’s Inn, in particular, is associatedwith many of the key figures in the Marlowe saga. William Cecil studiedthere, as did his son, Robert, and old classmate William Danby, the queen’scoroner. It was also Francis Walsingham’s legal alma mater. The presence ofBurghley, his son Robert Cecil, Southampton (Shakespeare’s new patron),and Henage (a crony of Burghley on the Privy Council) at The Comedy ofErrors suggests that the debut of Shakespeare as a dramatist was organizedby the same powerful men who helped stage Marlowe’s “death” in Deptfordand arranged for the publication of Venus and Adonis. The presence of Essexand Northumberland (the Wizard Earl and associate of Ralegh and theSchool of Night) further indicates the audience’s free-thinking sympathies,as both of these men were accused of atheism in the Remembrances againstRichard Cholemley.Conspicuous by their absence are the queen and Archbishop Whitgift.Their closest ally present is Thomas Egerton, the lord keeper and formerattorney general who had been active in the persecution of dissidents, andBuckhurst, an instigator of the investigation of Marlowe. As the first personmentioned in the account, Egerton represents the Crown and Buckhurst, asecclesiastical high commissioner, the Church. Hence, the tenor of the performancewill inevitably find its way back to Whitehall and Lambeth, and theplay is performed not without risk.What, then, did this assembled audience see? On the surface, The Comedyof Errors is a domestic comedy about marital infidelity based on a tale byPlautus, the Roman dramatist. The play opens with the Duke of Ephesusnotifying Egeon, a Syracuse merchant, that since all foreign commerce isbanned he will face the death penalty unless he pays a huge ransom. Egeonexplains that he has been searching for his wife and one of his infant twinsons who were lost in a shipwreck twenty-three years earlier. The other son,Antipholus, at age eighteen, had set out looking for his lost brother.Accompanying him was Dromio, a servant whose twin also disappeared inthe calamity. The Duke listens sympathetically to Egeon’s tale about searchingfor his lost family and gives the prisoner the rest of the day to come upwith the money.The main plot revolves around Adriana, a suspicious housewife, who ismarried to Antipholus of Epheus, the lost twin. She locks him out of thehouse when she thinks he is having an affair with another woman. In reali-

140 Hamletty, her husband is not straying. But, accused by his wife of being bewitchedby the devil and in need of exorcism, he goes off to dine with a courtesan.As Adriana’s fears and inability to listen mount, she terrorizes her guests andservants, further increasing the level of anxiety in the household and community.The misunderstandings quickly spiral out of control as the two pairsof masters and servants individually come into contact and constantly mistakeeach another’s identities. In the end, Emilia, the abbess in whose prioryAntipholus of Syracuse seeks asylum, peacefully settles the dispute by explainingto Adriana that her unwarranted suspicions and petty jealousieshave driven her husband away. Emilia herself turns out to be the lost wife ofEgeon. Misunderstandings are cleared up, estranged and lost relatives arereunified, and domestic felicity is restored at a feast of celebration.Over the years, literary critics have commented on the religious tone ofThe Comedy of Errors, especially its being set in Syracuse, the city visited bySt. Paul and mentioned in his letters to the Ephesians. But beyond being aliturgical homily on the virtues of trust and honest communication betweenspouses, some critics view the play as fundamentally a parody of the religiouscrisis created by Archbishop Whitgift and Queen Elizabeth. As Donna B.Hamilton, an English professor at the University of Maryland, shows inShakespeare and the Politics of Protestant England:For Errors, the components that furnish the key connecting links between itsPlautine plot and the contemporary church-stage controversies include theEphesus setting, female characters whose parts are crossed with the protestanttopoi for the church, slapstick comic routines that rework the conformist-nonconformistcontests over who would be insiders and who outsiders in the church,and a domestic plot that represents the conflicts that fears of unfaithfulness (inmarriage or in church politics) spark. 36In this play, the ancient Roman setting and plot is refashioned into anincisive commentary on contemporary issues of religious authority and obedience.The shipwreck in the opening of the performance, Hamilton suggests,echoes a famous metaphor that John Foxe, author of Acts andMonuments (the Book of Martyrs, second only in popularity to the Bible inElizabethan times), used in a letter to John Whitgift warning him to take acourse of moderation toward religious dissent. Adriana’s authoritarian andpeevish nature reflects that of Queen Elizabeth; her husband, Antipholus ofEphesus, mirrors the outrage of the upright but unjustifiably malignedPuritans; and Antipholus of Syracuse, the foreigner, by default representsnonconformists (Separatists, Jews, and atheists), who are entirely excludedfrom the social discourse.Connecting the play directly to the great parliamentary debate of 1593

Shakespeare’s Ghost 141that preceded Marlowe’s arrest, Hamilton argues that “Adriana’s situationas one in which contamination appears to have occurred, but has not, parodiesand challenges the conformist rhetoric that discredited presbyteriansand puritans by referring to them as ‘Antichristian’ and dangerous.” 37 “Inthe world outside the play,” she continues, “exclusion policies were themainstay of the careers of Whitgift and Bancroft, who promulgated theirplatform in part by associating nonconformity with popery, labeling it‘[A]nti-christian.’” 38 Adriana “uses the same style of demonizing” used onthe Puritans by the archbishop; the bishop of London; Richard Hooker,author of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity who had called for the burning ofheretics; and Richard Cosin, the Church’s Parliamentary spokesman. 39In the play’s puns, pranks, and slapstick routines, moreover, Hamiltonsees Shakespeare’s “rearticulation, and literalisation, of the Marprelate rhetoric.By way of that reconfiguration, Errors reinstates this forbidden language,and in the very venue—the theatre—from which it had, in 1589,been officially banished.” 40 Beneath Shakespeare’s “comic violence,” shesees a satire on authoritarian church doctrines and the archbishop’s campaignof “unremitting and arbitrary violence.” She shows that the play’stheme of equality and language of brotherhood derives from the Marprelatetracts. “Shakespeare reconstituted the contested term ‘brother’ so that theemphasis is not on divisiveness or difference,” she writes, “but on difference(Syracusan and Ephesian) that is ultimately subsumed and overridden bysameness. In this case, brotherhood is not a problem, but the solution.” 41At the end of the play, while joking about who should enter the church first,the Dromios decide: “We came into the world like brother and brother; /And now let’s go hand in hand, not one before another” (5.1.425–426).Although Hamilton does not mention Marlowe in connection with theplay or deal with the authorship controversy in her book, in The Comedy ofErrors Egeon, the shipwrecked foreigner facing “the place of [death] andsorry execution” by virtue of his alien customs and beliefs, may representMarlowe. His lost wife, the wise Abbess Emilie, symbolizes the true churchthat welcomes and embraces all people and beliefs. “The Abbess recognizesthat all those present and in contention are actually one family—her family,”observes Hamilton, “and . . . at the end of the play, she takes all of them(including the insider Ephesians and the outsider Syracusans) with her intothe church.” In a parody of religious controversies, the play “deflates thethreat that conformists understood the puritan challenge to represent, andargues that a more tolerant attitude toward nonconformists can fosterunity.” 42The Comedy of Errors illuminates the critical issues of Church and Stateconfronting England in the latter part of Elizabeth’s reign and the paranoid

142 Hamletand xenophobic environment in which Marlowe, like Egean, was caught.For an accused heretic who has just entered the Cecilian witness protectionprogram and changed his identity, The Comedy of Errors is a tolerant, forgiving,and remarkably Christian work.The Troublesome ReignTo none will we sell, to none deny or delay, right or justice.—Magna Carta, 1215istories were the third major dramatic form on theElizabethan stage after tragedies and comedies.Marlowe’s Edward II introduced the genre along withthe early Shakespearean plays dealing with the HundredYears War and the War of the Roses. King John isusually dated to the early 1590s, but there is no indicationof when it was first performed, and it did not seepublication until the First Folio. King John followed closely on the heels ofan anonymous work with a similar title, The Troublesome Raigne of KingJohn. The latter was published in 1591 by Thomas Orwin (the printerfavored by Archbishop Whitgift) and performed by the Queen’s Men.Though both plays treat the same subject, their approach is opposite. Wherethe version performed at court glamorizes the virtues of authority and obedience,King John celebrates liberty and defiance. As Donna Hamiltonobserves, “Shakespeare’s revisions of The Troublesome Raigne, most ofwhich occur without significant disturbance to the story-line, involve thesystematic excising of one set of values and the replacing of those values withanother set.” 43Where the authorized version emphasizes the divinely ordained right ofmonarchs and the prerogatives of officials, the Shakespearean focuses on thelaw and individual rights. In fact, as Hamilton points out, the two plays mirrorthe great parliamentary debate between James Morice and RichardCosin in 1593. In the Commons, Morice compared King John’s struggle topreserve the throne from papists and to govern according to law with theeffort to defeat Archbishop Whitgift’s suppression of religious dissent and topreserve hallowed rights of privacy and liberty of speech. Morice and otherPuritan defenders repeatedly invoked the Magna Carta, which was introducedunder John’s reign, as the foundation for English liberty and the cornerstoneof its constitutional monarchy.The Troublesome Raigne reflects Whitgift’s and Elizabeth’s view that the

Shakespeare’s Ghost 143Church, the Crown, and the lords formed the three pillars of the realm. Incontrast, as Hamilton shows, “Shakespeare also dropped the reference inThe Troublesome Raigne to the idea that the clergy comprise one of the threeestates, an idea that the bishops were anxious to defend and that those interestedin mixed government, including the presbyterians, were determined toundermine.” 44 She shows that the Shakespearean works broadly adoptedMartin Marprelate’s revised model of government in which the three estateswere the king, lords, and Commons and that King John’s language echoesthe sentiments of Marprelate and John Penry, the Separatist divine who wasexecuted the day before Marlowe’s fateful encounter in Deptford.A close reading, Hamilton concludes, makes it difficult to accept theShakespearean version as an apology for Tudor rule, as it is often viewed bycritics. Through subtle omissions of material related to obedience andrepression and the addition of new scenes, he managed “to ventriloquise thearguments used in defence of the religious nonconformists, including theargument that in some cases authority figures themselves are to blame.” 45In the end, the historical King John, one of England’s most despisedmonarchs, was forced to give in and sign the Magna Carta. King John’s finalportrait of the king’s reign shifts the focus away from royal prerogatives tothe inherent ability of the common people to govern themselves justly withoutthe undue interference of rulers and ecclesiastics—a sentiment bestexpressed up until now in the poems and plays of Marlowe and, as we shallsee in the next section, significantly developed in Hamlet.Base Contagious CloudsYet herein will I imitate the sun,Who doth permit the base contagious cloudsTo smother up his beauty from the world,That when he please again to be himself,Being wanted, he may be more wond’red atBy breaking through the foul and ugly mistsOf vapors that did seem to strangle him.—1 Henry IV(1.2.197–203)Shakespeare’s subconscious mind was drenched in Marlowe, and fromfirst to last threw up a rain-bow spray.—A. L. Rowse, Christopher Marlowe: His Life and Works

144 Hamletext to Hamlet, Falstaff is the best known and mostbeloved character in Shakespeare’s plays. Historically,the jocular knight errant in the Henry IV plays and theMerry Wives of Windsor is based on the life of Sir JohnOldcastle, Lord Cobham, an early Protestant martyraccused of heresy who died at the stake in the early fifteenthcentury. In Elizabethan England, Oldcastle waswell known through Holinshed’s Chronicles, Stowe’s Annales, and TheFamous Victories of Henry V, an anonymous play that many critics attributeto Christopher Marlowe. John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments includes a woodcutdepicting Oldcastle enduring his “cruell Martyrdom,” bound to a pyreof faggots and raising his voice to heaven amidst the curling flames.Early performances of 1 Henry IV used Oldcastle’s name in the script.But it was soon changed to Falstaff, a name echoing a Lollard insurrectionthat Oldcastle led after breaking out of the Tower of London. Originally aterm of derision like “Puritan,” the appellation “Lollard” was given to followersof John Wycliffe, who first translated the Bible into English in thelate fourteenth century. Although suppressed, the Lollards elicited widespreadsympathy among the lower classes. By Elizabethan times, they hadcome to be seen as forerunners of the Protestant Reformation.Best known for his forays at the alehouse, his wenching, and other worldlypursuits, Falstaff is widely regarded as one of Shakespeare’s most originalcreations, but his personality derives from another historical figure. In herbook Radical Religion from Shakespeare to Milton, Kristen Poole, an Englishprofessor at the University of Delaware, makes a convincing case thatFalstaff is largely based on Martin Marprelate. In the essay “The Puritan inthe Alehouse: Falstaff and the Drama of Martin Marprelate,” Poole contendsthat the Henriad (as the three parts of Henry IV and Henry V areknown) continues the irreverent attack on the Church of England thatMartin launched six or seven years earlier. “Dramatizing the historical personaof Oldcastle, a renowned reformist leader, Shakespeare followed thepattern that the anti-Martinists had established for representing religiousdissent. In the process, Falstaff assumes the characteristics of MartinMarprelate himself, reproducing Martin’s irreverence for established authorityand bringing the dynamics of religious controversy into a burgeoningsphere of public print culture.” 46In a lively discussion of the Marprelate affair, Poole shows that ArchbishopWhitgift’s attempt to silence the scathing satirist and sponsor anti-Martin performances on stage only fueled the mayhem and spirit of disobedienceto authority that Martin’s pamphlets sparked. In addition to keepingMartin’s spirit alive in Falstaff’s oversize personality, the Shakespearean play

Shakespeare’s Ghost 145mimics the dialogue of the Marprelate debate in selected passages. Pooleshows that the humorous patter among the fat knight, young Prince Hal,Doll, Mistress Quickly, and Pistol frequently alludes to, echoes, or puns onthe Martin/anti-Martin controversy. For example, the name of the humorouscharacter Pistol puns on “The Epistle,” the first of the Marprelate tracts.In 1 Henry IV, Falstaff quotes scripture twenty-six times, and his idiomrecreates that of Puritans of the Elizabethan era. “Within the Henriad, Falstaffassumes a voice and role similar to that of Martin Marprelate, becominga swelling carnival force that threatens to consume Hal’s ‘princely privilege,’”Poole concludes. “The ever ‘glutted, gorg’d, and full’ Falstaff virtuallyembodies the removal of social, hierarchal boundaries: Falstaff becomesthe community which can, through jest, ingest its leaders. His rotund,expansive figure, emblematic of carnivalesque festivity, potentially signifiesabsorption and loss of social distinction. Like Martin, Falstaff thus challengesthe very hierarchies that constitute the structure of church andstate.” 47On the surface, the Shakespearean treatment appears to be making funof dissenters, but Falstaff’s endearing buffoonery and self-deprecation, likeMartin’s, ultimately win the audience’s allegiance and heart. 48 AlthoughPoole does not address the authorship controversy, the Marprelate affairbroadly set in motion the events culminating in the final suppression of religiousdissent; the executions of the Separatists Barrow, Greenwood, andPenry; and the arrest of dramatist Christopher Marlowe.Following Kit’s “death,” The Comedy of Errors, King John, and the HenryIV cycle continue the dialogue about issues of Church and State that havebeen banned from the pulpit, Parliament, and the stage. Their veiled explorationof religious taboos illustrates the continuity among Tamburlaine, Dr.Faustus and the early Shakespearean plays, a theme that gives way to the passionand exuberance of the Italian comedies but which returns, like a vengefulghost, in Hamlet and the later tragedies.

146 Hamlet4My Outcast StateWhen in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyesI all alone beweep my outcast state,And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,And look upon myself and curse my fate—Shakespeare, Sonnet 29itus Andronicus, the first Shakespearean tragedy, isderived from the classical tale of Philomel, a womanwho is raped and has her tongue cut out and handschopped off so she cannot identify her attackers.Rendered dumb, Lavinia, the ravished heroine in theShakespearean play, nevertheless manages to implicateher assailants by pointing to the story of Philomel in acopy of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and writing their names in the sand with astaff. As critics point out, Queen Tamora, the villainess, bears a strikingresemblance to Queen Elizabeth, while I would add that Aaron, her darkMoorish lover, echoes John Whitgift, whom she termed her “little blackhusband.” Note Aaron was the name of the high priest in Israel, an officethat Martin Marprelate and other religious reformers accused the archbishopof Canterbury of aspiring to. Attacked by his enemies and rendereddumb like Philomel (who is mentioned in Amintae Gandia and in EdwardIII), Kit can only speak obliquely through clever allusions and the fabric ofhis art. Yet like Titus and his ravished daughter, he fashions “a tongue tospeak” truth to power (3.1.145). From now on, puns, jests, and other subtleword play and theatrical devices will be the means he will use to maintainhis identity, keep his spirit high, and work to create a more just, tolerantworld. Through verbal alchemy, Marlowe after “dying” in Deptford andbecoming a literary ghost will wield his literary rapier, or shake his sword orspear, under the guise of Will Shakespeare, whose name coincidentally punson this image. Self-imposed banishment from the kingdom of arts and lettersconstitutes a tragic fall. But like Aeneas’s exile in the Aeneid (one of hisfavorite subjects and a later theme in Hamlet), it promises the start of a newlife and the founding of a new republic in which libertas—the ancient Latinideal of personal freedom—and the will of the governed prevail.

Shakespeare’s Ghost 147Beyond the AlpsAlbeit the world think Machevill is dead,Yet was his soul but flown beyond the Alps;And now the Guise is dead, is come from FranceTo view this land and frolic with his friends.To some perhaps my name is odious,But such as love me, guard me from their tongues;And let them know that I am Machevill,And weigh not men, and therefore not men’s words.Admired I am of those that hate me most:Though some speak openly against my books,Yet will they read me, and thereby attainTo Peter’s chair; and when they cast me off,Are poisoned by my climbing followers.I count religion but a childish toy,And hold there is no sin but ignorance.Birds of the air will tell of murders past?I am ashamed to hear such fooleries:....................................................................But whither am I bound? I come not, I,To read a lecture here in Britain,But to present the tragedy of a Jew—The Jew of Malta(Prologue 1–30)n addition to many references to exile and banishmentin the Shakespearean sonnets and plays, one of thestrongest indications of Marlowe’s survival is in theprologue to The Jew of Malta. Though originally composedin the early 1590s, the play was not publisheduntil 1633, when the prologue may have been addedor revised. (The play was registered at the Stationers’Company in 1594, but if it was printed, no copies survived.) Machevill refersto Machiavelli, the author of The Prince, the Renaissance handbook on statecraft,and was one of the nicknames by which Marlowe was known. TheGuise refers to the Duke of Guise, the mastermind of the St. Bartholemew’sDay Massacre, chief persecutor of Protestants in France, but generically toall bigots and torturers such as Archbishop Whitgift, Topcliffe, and theiracolytes.In the prologue, Marlowe confirms that his troubles stemmed from

148 Hamletheresy (“I count religion but a childish toy”), but muses that rumors of hisdeath (“birds of the air will tell of murders past”) are false. Coincidentally,Archbishop Whitgift, the Guise in the passage, once used a similar phrase inhis famous sermon to the queen: “Thou shalt not speak evil of the prince ofthy people; no, not in thy secret chamber (that is, in thy heart): for the birdsof the air will bewray thee.” 49According to this reading, the poet fled beyond the Alps to Italy, wherehe lived and wrote in exile for several years, before returning—like the wanderingJew he had become—incognito to England. The early Shakespeareancomedies, including The Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlemen of Verona,and The Merchant of Venice, take place in Italy, and many readers have beenpuzzled at how the London actor could have accumulated such an intimateknowledge of the Italian peninsula and its customs. 50 Altogether, thirteen ofthe Shakespearean plays—more than one in three—are set in Italy or ancientRome, and The Tempest takes place following a voyage from Naples. Recentscholarship suggests that the author need not necessarily have traveled toItaly. Richard Field’s publications alone provided much of the basic sourcematerial for the plays. But the local coloring, the perfect dialect, and othernuances have led other critics to conclude William of Stratford must havetraveled there. Instead, according to our perspective, Marlowe did.It is likely that, after Marlowe completed his urgent task in summer1593, the Cecils advised him to go to Italy or some other distant locationuntil matters cooled off. From Scotland, the Netherlands, France, or someother first stop, Marlowe evidently made his way across the Alps to Italy, theheart of Renaissance science, art, and religion. As an intelligencer or courier,Marlowe was not necessarily involved in military espionage or the unsavoryactivities we associate with clandestine operatives today. “[S]o-called‘spies,’” as historian P. M. Handover, an authority on the Cecils’ continentalintelligence network, reminds us, were “the equivalent of modern newspapercorrespondents and consular reports.” 51 Aside from pertinent militaryand diplomatic information and news regarding royal births, deaths, andweddings, William and Robert Cecil were primarily interested in economicand mercantile data. Marlowe’s familial association with the MuscovyCompany would have prepared him for this task as well as possibly given hima commercial cover.Contrary to the critical view that Kit wrote exclusively tragedies and histories,Tamburlaine originally had comic scenes that have not survived, andDr. Faustus’s use of clowns and puckish humor is the prototype for theShakespearean plays. From his temporary place of exile, Marlowe could havesent manuscripts of his comedies back to England via diplomatic courier, visitingcountrymen, or Italians bound for London. A Midsummer Night’s

Shakespeare’s Ghost 149Dream may have followed this route. According to some critics, it was firstperformed on January 26, 1595, for the wedding of Elizabeth Vere,Burghley’s granddaughter, and William Stanley, the sixth earl of Derby, whohad succeeded his late brother, Lord Strange, Marlowe’s patron. Previously,Elizabeth had been engaged to Southampton, but he refused to tie the knot(as some of the Shakespearean sonnets may allude to).The comedies from this period include The Taming of the Shrew, a portrayalof the war between the sexes that opens with a staged performancerelating to the identity of Christopher Sly; The Two Gentlemen of Verona, aromance about courtship set in the city of the same name; and Love’s Labor’sLost, a satirical play set in Navarre about young courtiers who forsake theirvow to shun women following the arrival of a visiting princess and her retinue.Romeo and Juliet, the exception to this light-hearted pattern, recountsthe tragic love between two young people caught in the midst of a familyfeud. In its imagery and staging, especially the famous balcony scene, theplay draws heavily on The Jew of Malta. In Marlowe’s earlier work, Abigailis “scarce fourteen years of age” (1.2.378), the same as Juliet. When sheappears on the upper balcony of the stage, her father Barabas cries out:But stay, what star shines yonder in the east?The loadstar of my life, if Abigail.(2.1.41–42)“When Shakespeare copies this picture, he brightens it, in accordancewith the more youthful and ardent mood of Romeo,” Harry Levin, thegreat Shakespearean critic at Harvard, explains: 52But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.(2.2.2–3)While there are well documented Italian sources for the play, Marlowemay have based Juliet’s character partially on Arbella Stuart, the youngEnglish heiress he may have have tutored in London and fallen in love with.Marlowe was evidently dismissed from his post because of a clash with Bessof Hardwick, Arbella’s strong-willed grandmother, or for reasons of state,Burghley assigned him elsewhere. The infatuation or attachment may havebeen strong and persisted over the years. During the Stuart era, as plots stillswirled around her, Arbella was imprisoned after attempting to elope.Echoing Romeo and Juliet’s most famous line in her own verse, Arbellalamented about her parted lover: “My friend! my friend! where art thou?” 53

150 Hamlet(Curiously, in the same verse, she also mentions “Round hall and hamlet,”a possible echo of Hamlet playing at the Globe. Like her mentor andadmired dramatist, she writes in iambic pentameter.) Like Abelard andHeloise, the legendary medieval French lovers, Arbella’s separation from hertutor in the arts of love and poetry may have foreshadowed the madness andtragic death that lay ahead.Another cloud from the past that could have drifted onto Marlowe’sserene Mediterranean horizon was the Lopez affair. Dr. Lopez, the physicianto Queen Elizabeth, was executed for treason in June 1594 for his supposedpart in a conspiracy to kill the monarch. According to most historians,Lopez, a leader of the Jewish and Marrano (Christian convert) communityin England, was innocent of the charges brought against him. Through amixture of naivete and ambition, he became embroiled with Spanish spiesand double-agents, who had been compromised, if not originally commissioned,by the English secret service. In brief, Lopez fell victim to the continuingpower struggle between the Earl of Essex and Robert Cecil. In theend, both factions ended up sacrificing the poor doctor, for Machiavellianreasons of policy, though Elizabeth herself wanted to spare his life.As the drama unfolded at court and became the talk of the town,Henslowe revived The Jew of Malta on stage at the Rose theatre. It quicklybecame the hit of the season, fanning popular sentiment against Dr. Lopezbecause of its stereotypical representations of Jews. As many critics haveobserved, Marlowe’s play is a subtle satire on anti-Semitism, not an attackon Judaism. But this was “caviary to the general” (2.2.401) as PrinceHamlet lamented on the fickleness of the groundlings. Marlowe actuallyrefers respectfully to Lopez and to the Jewish community in England in Dr.Faustus and The Jew of Malta. 54 From a historical perspective, it was the lastact in the spectacle that had consumed England for a year and a half, fromArchbishop Whitgift’s campaign in Parliament to suppress nonconformity tothe Marlowe affair and an abortive effort to charge Ralegh with heresy.When news of the Jewish doctor’s fate reached him in exile, the poet wasundoubtedly sad and disillusioned. Not only had Lopez been sacrificed onthe altar of English bigotry and intolerance, but the Cecils and Essex,Marlowe’s erstwhile supporters, had declined to save the poor man, or heedthe pleas for mercy by his wife and nine children. To add insult to injury,Marlowe’s own play had been used as propaganda to fan the flames of religioushatred. Against this backdrop, a tragic replay of the John Penry frameup and execution, Marlowe appears to have refashioned a traditional Italiantale into a new play with a Jewish motif, The Merchant of Venice. Though ithas also been widely criticized for its usurious depiction of Shylock,Merchant presents an essentially humanistic view of Jews in a country from

152 HamletAmbitious NaturallyAll women are ambitious naturally—Marlowe, Hero and Leander(428)MARINA: Proclaim that I can sing, weave, sew, and dance,With other virtues, which I’ll keep from boast,And will undertake all these to teach.I doubt not but this populous city willYield many scholars.—Pericles(4.6.183–87)f a woman in Shakespeare’s day had had Shakespeare’sgenius,” writes Virginia Woolf in A Room of Her Own,“I venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so manypoems without signing them, was often a woman. Itwas a woman who made the ballads and the folk songs,crooning them to her children, beguiling her spinningwith them, or the length of a midwinter’s night.” 57 Inthe seventy-five years since Virginia Woolf introduced Judith, Shakespeare’simaginary sister, there have been seismic shifts in Elizabethan scholarshipthat strengthen a feminist reading of the Shakespearean canon. Multiculturalstudies have recently added new insights and avenues of inquiry in respectto sexual identity, gender, and cross-dressing, which appears in many of theplays.Feminist literary criticism has questioned whether Shakespeare, theprovincial Stratford resident who described no books in his will and famouslyleft his second-best bed to his wife, Anne Hathaway, could have composedthe sublime plays celebrating female learning. Neither Susanna nor JudithShakespeare, the actor’s daughters, could read. Susanna signed her marriagecertificate with an X. Nor have any personal books or correspondencebesides business documents been located.“How could you have girls mature in your household while you werewriting Romeo and Juliet and Portia’s lines and them not to learn theseparts, not to learn to read and write and take the lines of Juliet and Portiaand these wonderful women?” asks John Baker in the PBS documentaryMuch Ado About Something. “Miranda is educated at her father’s elbow.” 58In Shakespeare’s defense, it might be countered that relatively few women

Shakespeare’s Ghost 153in that era, especially in small towns and villages like Stratford, were literate.Though female poets such as Mary Sidney, Arbella Stuart, and QueenElizabeth were of the nobility, primary schools offered education to girls aswell as boys, and there were even female schoolteachers. According toBaker, the only surviving copy of the first printing of Venus and Adonis wasowned by Frances Wolfreston. 58 A middle-class woman who lived from1607 to 1676, she would have been a little girl when Antony and Cleopatra,The Tempest, Cymbeline, and other late Shakespearean plays were composed.Her library of plays, poetry, and other works was auctioned in London inthe nineteenth century.In Shakespeare’s Division of Experience, Marilyn French observes, “Morethan any other poet, Shakespeare breathed life into his female characters andgave body to the principle they are supposed to represent.” 59 Contrastingmasculine and feminine genres, she contends that tragedy, with its emphasison hierarchy, power, and rationality, is primarily male in its orientation, whilecomedy, with its focus on communality, language, and intuition, is female.“Shakespeare was a powerful supporter of certain ‘feminine’ values,” sheconcludes. “. . . He never settled for the received idea even in the area [sex]where it most deeply implanted itself . . . He never stopped searching for away to reintegrate human experience.” 60Many of the leading Shakespearean heroines, including Juliet, Portia,Beatrice, and Rosalind, appear in the Italianate plays, evidently composed inexile. The southern Mediterranean climate and environment would haveexerted an overall moderating influence on the poet. The milder weather,calmer waters, and lighter diet in Tuscany, Venice, and Padua may havehelped to soothe, at least temporarily, Marlowe’s regrets over losing hisname and celebrity and contributed to a lighter, more expansive tone to hiswriting. Compared to the English, Italians were more passionate, verbal,and progressive in matters relating to the sexes, and these qualities comethrough in the comedies and romances of this period. Living in CatholicItaly may also have softened his strident view of Catholics.One of the main literary arguments against Marlowe as author of theShakespearean works is that the plays of which his authorship is certain—alltragedies—are overwhelmingly masculine and his female characters underdeveloped.In fact, so this argument goes, Zenocrate, Imogene, Abigail,Dido, and the other women in his plays are portrayed as little more than sexobjects who know or are kept in their “place.” In Marlowe and the Politicsof Elizabethan Theatre, Simon Shepherd challenges this view, showing thatbeneath a veneer of conformity and obedience, Marlowe’s approach to sexuality,including his depiction of both men and women, was as subversive ashis theological and political views. In Tamburlaine, for example, “Far from

154 Hamletcollapsing into ‘female’ hysteria, Zenocrate takes on the role of Presenter, arole that was traditionally the male narrative voice of truth against the mimesisof emotion.” 61 Similarly, in Dido Queen of Carthage, Shepherd explains,the queen takes the “‘male’ part of wooer, the powerful woman dressing aman as she wants to see him, choosing to transfer her tokens of allegiancefrom one man to another.” In the original Aeneid, Virgil “has her breakdown with emotion, verbally defeated,” while in Marlowe’s play “it is Didowho has the fullness of speech, the male is silent.” 62 Noting similar constructionsin The Jew of Malta, The Massacre at Paris, and Edward II, he concludes,“Marlowe’s texts, then, could be said to explore the construction ofgender difference in representation and to problematise it. Expectationsabout ‘feminine’ speech and emotionalism are questioned, assumed valuesrejected. At moments the privileged male gaze, which oversees the differentiationof gender, has its power and pleasure unsettled.” 63In a related issue, gay and lesbian critics have contributed to the discourseon sex and gender, pointing out that Marlowe’s rumored homosexualityor bisexuality could help explain the sexual ambivalence of plays publishedunder Shakespeare’s name. “If Marlowe did escape [and go on towrite as Shakespeare],” contends Carolyn Gage, a lesbian playwright, “itwould explain . . . the playful gender-bending that appears in so many of theplays, especially the comedies. It would explain the sonnets about separation,and if Marlowe was indeed gay, it would explain the sonnets about gaylove.” 64 In an era when homosexuality was a capital offense, his portrait ofthe love between Edward II and Gaveston clearly suggests that it was morethan platonic. Some critics even go so far as to see a veiled allusion to thisbond with King James of Scotland and his male favorite. Similarly, Marlowe’sdepictions of Jove and Ganymede and other same-sex liaisons inpoems and plays show a clear attempt to push the boundaries of social discourseon sexual preferences and practices. As a whole, however, gay criticsare as divided about Marlowe’s and Shakespeare’s sexuality as straight ones.Because of a possible allusion to the Essex rebellion (see below), somecritics question whether Hamlet was ever performed on the London stageduring the Elizabethan or Stuart eras. For one of the earliest English performancesof the play, I like to imagine that it took place at Ladies’ Hall, aprivate academy for young noblewomen in Deptford. The play-within-theplayin Hamlet features a traveling actress, evidently from Italy, performingthe role of the Player Queen, a daring innovation in an era when all femaleparts were customarily performed by men or boys on stage. The ladies of theschool in Deptford performed Cupid’s Banishment, a masque for QueenAnne in 1617. In their address, the young women acknowledged the sovereign’s“gracious favour” and begged her indulgence:

Pardon, yon glorious company, you stars of women!And let the silent rhetorick of that gracious lookThat works a league betwixt the state of heartVouchsafe to shine upon our childish sports.We profess no stage, no Helicon—Our muse is homespun, our action is our own.Thou, bright goddess, with thy sweet smile grace allOur Nymphs, Occasion, and our Ladies’ hall. 65Shakespeare’s Ghost 155There is something both poignant and sublime about this group ofyoung women composing and putting on their own productions in sight ofthe royal palace in Greenwich and the reputed burial plot of England’sgreatest dramatist in St. Nicholas’s churchyard.5Bonfires for My OverthrowNow will the Christian miscreants be glad,Ringing with joy their superstitious bellsAnd making bonfires for my overthrow.—Tamburlaine(3.3.326–28)It is a fault, I confess, to suffer lewd ballads and books touching manners.But it were a greater fault to suffer books and libels, disturbing thepeace of the church, and defacing true religion.—John Whitgift, The Defense of the Answer to the Admonitionith the defeat of the Puritans, the execution of theSeparatist leaders, and the drawing and quartering ofCatholic priests, Archbishop Whitgift had finallyimposed religious obedience and uniformity throughoutEngland in 1593. Marlowe had escaped the stake,but not the reckoning of the almighty. As far as the primatewas concerned, the poet’s worm-eaten corpse wasnow lying in an unmarked grave and his soul was enduring the ceaseless tormentsof hell.The years between 1594 and 1597 brought famine, disease, and starva-

156 Hamlettion throughout England as heavy rains fell and the harvests failed. Duringthis period following his “death,” Marlowe’s presence was not entirely gonefrom the English stage and drawing room. Dr. Faustus was performed twenty-fourtimes at the Rose from 1594 to 1597, and several early, unauthorizededitions of his translation of Ovid’s Elegies may have circulated. But inthe absence of the incendiary playmaker, the theater largely quieted downfor several years. The new man of the hour on the London stage, Shakespearehad not openly defied authority. The queen enjoyed the commandingmajesty and lyrical beauty of his verse and frequently invited his troupe,the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, to play at court. With the death of HenryCarey, Lord Hunsdon in 1596, patronage of the company had passed to hisson, George. As knight marshall overseeing the verge, the twelve-mile judicialradius of the queen’s person, young Carey had an impressive record ofmilitary service to the Crown, but he was rumored to be a member of theSchool of Night. From the archbishop’s point of view, he would need to bewatched, especially after the queen named him lord chamberlain two yearslater.With each advancing year, the question of who would succeed Elizabethgrew more urgent, with baseless rumors and rumblings of disquiet spreadingthrough court and Commons. The archbishop’s old adversary, Burghley,had finally gone to his eternal reward, but his hunchback son, Robert, continuedas principal secretary and, like his father, had recently been named asthe master of the Court of Wards, which put him in a position to influencedomestic affairs. The Earl of Essex continued to be his main rival, vying forthe queen’s allegiance. Why Elizabeth always forgave the tantrums and disobedienceof her latest favorite was an unfathomable mystery. But then, hecommanded the support of Southampton and other powerful nobles.As the new century approached, the London poets and scribblers, thelightning rods of public dissatisfaction, had fallen out with one another. Thewar of words pitted Gabriel Harvey and Thomas Nashe, two of the UniversityWits whom the archbishop had employed in the campaign against Marprelate,as antagonists. Harvey had referred to Marlowe in some of his earlierworks, and Nashe’s name had appeared as the junior co-author or editorof Kit’s Dido Queen of Carthage. To the prelate’s mortification, theobject of their feud was Andrew Perne, the late vice-chancellor at CambridgeUniversity and mentor of the archbishop himself. In 1589, Pernedied suddenly over dinner at Lambeth Palace in London “without amoment for repentance,” as Elizabethan historian Patrick Collinson notes(and, we might add, like Elder Hamlet!). 66 Indeed, there was much torepent for. Not only had he cravenly capitulated during Queen Mary’s reignand embraced Catholicism to save his own skin and high position, but at the

Shakespeare’s Ghost 157request of Marian bishops he dug up the body of two Strasbourg Protestantdivines and had them publicly burned at the stake. Later, under Elizabeth,Perne was restored as vice-chancellor and presided yet a third time over thereformers’ ashes, restoring them to favor in a memorial service. The endresult of the Harvey-Nashe clash was that Perne’s bones (and, indirectly,skeletons in Whitgift’s closet) were dug up and raked over the printed coals.In a separate incident, Nashe and Ben Jonson were arrested on suspicionof writing Isle of Dogs and imprisoned in the Marshalsea for several monthsalong with two actors in 1597. No copy of the anonymous play has survived,but it is believed to have attacked Lord Cobham, the lord chamberlain, whohad received preferment over George Carey, the patron of the Shakespeareanacting troupe, and soon they found themselves in the custody of RichardTopcliffe, the rackmaster. The Privy Council took the matter so seriouslythat they closed all the theaters down for several months. Nashe later wasforced into hiding and lived as a fugitive from summer 1597 until January1599. The Isle of Dogs was the notorious “no man’s land” in the Thamesbetween the queen’s palace at Greenwich and Deptford. It is not knownwhether the play alluded to Marlowe’s fate.In a crackdown on unauthorized performances, common players or minstrelsother than those “belonging to any Baron of this Realme, or any otherhonorable Personage of greater Degree” were deemed “Rogues Vagabondesand Sturdy Beggers” and ordered “stripped naked from the middleupwardes and shall be openly whipped until his or her body be bloudye” andsent from parish to parish to confess their disobedience. Dangerous actorswere subject to banishment and, if they returned without lawful license orwarrant, “Death as in case of Felony.” 67Meanwhile, the renewed threat of a Spanish invasion turned Londoninto an armed camp, as thousands of volunteers flocked to London and surroundingareas to drill and take defensive measures. In this turbulent atmosphere,the archbishop put his heel down on the printed word as well as thestage. On June 1, 1599, with Richard Bancroft, the bishop of London,Whitgift issued a series of “commandments,” confiscating all “unseemlysatires and epigrams.” Over the years, Whitgift had often complained that“many lewd light books and ballads fly abroad.” 68 In a large bonfire in theStationers’ Court y a rd three days later, the prelates publicly burn e dMarlowe’s translation of Ovid’s Elegies, as many of Nashe’s and Harvey’swritings as could be located, and selected writings of Hall, Marston,Middleton, and Davies. Altogether, thousands of books and pamphlets wereconsigned to the flames. 69The queen finally named George Carey, Nashe’s patron, lord chamberlainwhen Cobham died suddenly, but Carey could no longer protect the

158 Hamletsatirist from the wrath of the archbishop. In the aftermath of this repression,as in Thomas Kyd’s case, Nashe lost his patronage and within two years wasdead at age thirty-three. Under Queen Mary, the bonfires of Smithfield,where legions of Protestants were martyred, became a byword for herbloody reign. Under Elizabeth’s and Whitgift’s rule, the bonfires of lovepoetry and other literature created an indelible stain.No Reckoning Made[I]t strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room.—As You Like It(3.3.14–15)No reck’ning made, but sent to my accountWith all my imperfections on my head—Hamlet(1.5.82–83)s You Like It, one of the most delightful of theShakespearean comedies, is believed by historians tohave debuted at the new Globe theatre in Southwark inthe autumn of 1599, only a few months after ArchbishopWhitgift ordered the burning of Marlowe’s elegies,Nashes’ satires, and other “wanton” material.Virtually all scholars agree that it includes a daring referenceto Marlowe’s “murder”:When a man’s verses cannot be understood, nor a man’s good wit seconded withthe forward child, understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoningin a little room. Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical.(3.3.12–16)The passage, spoken by Touchstone, the wise fool, refers to Marlowe’s“death” over the reckoning, or bill, in Deptford on May 30, 1593. The passageinvokes Marlowe’s celebrated line, “Infinite riches in a little room”(1.1.37), in The Jew of Malta, which has a multiplicity of meanings, includingBarabas’s vast wealth, the confines of the Elizabethan stage, and humanity’sspiritual and mental constitution. 70 The lines can be interpreted tomean 1) that being silenced as a poet deadens the soul and is a fate worsethan death and/or 2) persecution and censorship wound the spirit more

Shakespeare’s Ghost 159truly than a knifing (real or faked) in Deptford. The word “wit” alludes toWhitgift and prefigures its appearance in the revelatory passage in Hamlet,where it is boldly coupled with “gifts.”In another scene in the play, Marlowe is addressed directly, and the secondline of the couplet quotes another famous line in Hero and Leander:“Dead shepherd, now I find your [thy] saw of might, / “Who ever lov’d,that lov’d not at first sight?” (AYLI 3.5.81–82, H&L 176). Later in As YouLike It, Rosalind makes another allusion to the poem Marlowe was workingon at the time of his reported demise:Leander, he would have liv’d many a fair year though Hero had turn’d nun, if ithad not been for a hot midsummer night; for, good youth, he went but forth towash him in the Hellespont, and being taken with the cramp was drown’d; andthe foolish chroniclers of that age found it was—Hero of Sestos. But these are alllies: men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not forlove.(4.1.100–108)In Marlowe’s poem, Hero and Leander meet during a riotous festival ofVenus and Adonis during which poets “Compile sharp satires” (127). Thisreference in As You Like It may glance at the Harvey-Nash feud, as well aslink Kit with the first published Shakespearean work, Venus and Adonis.“[M]idsummer night” further echoes A Midsummer Night’s Dream, theShakespearean fairy tale romance that shares the comic tone of the mythicdalliances in Marlowe’s poem. By disputing the identity of the drowned manand characterizing the official history of the time as lies and calumnies, AsYou Like It may be calling into question the official version of ChristopherMarlowe’s “death.” As we shall see in the next section, Hamlet appears tohave similar allusions.In a fourth possible reference to Marlowe, Rosalind remarks, “The poorworld is almost six thousand years old, and in all this time there was not anyman died in his own person, videlicet, in a love-cause” (4.1.94–97). Thisechoes the Baines Note in which Marlowe is accused of flouting biblicalorthodoxy by proclaiming “That the Indians and many Authors of Antiquitei[have] assuredly written of above 16 thouwsande yeeres agone, wherAdam is proved to have lyved within 6 thowsande yeeres.” 71 Finally,Touchstone provocatively compares himself in a pun to Ovid (the Romanpoet Marlowe translated and whose elegies were burned in the streets ofLondon), who was living in exile: “I am here with thee and thy goats as themost capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the Goths” (3.3.7–9).As You Like It was registered at the Stationers’ Company in 1600 andmarked “to be staied,” suggesting that the poet or his publisher may have

Shakespeare’s Ghost 161The reference to Marlowe’s “reckoning” in As You Like It is just one ofa cluster of reckonings that appears at this time. Exhibit B is EdwardBlount’s tribute to Thomas Walsingham, Marlowe’s patron, which appearedin the form of a dedication to the poet’s Hero and Leander. As we saw,Marlowe began writing the poem in early 1593 while staying at Walsingham’sestate in Scadbury and was interrupted by the summons from thePrivy Council. Now five years later, Blount, a publisher and friend of boththe poet and his patron, pens a dedication in the first edition of the work in1598. It is worth quoting in full (emphasis mine):To the Right Worshipful SIR THOMAS WALSINGHAM, KNIGHTSir, we think not ourselves discharged of the duty we owe to our friend whenwe have brought the breathless body to the earth; for, albeit the eye theretaketh his ever-farewell of that beloved object, yet the impression of the manthat hath been dear unto us, living an after-life in our memory, there puttethus in mind of farther obsequies due unto the deceased; and namely the performanceof whatsoever we may judge shall make to his living credit and tothe effecting of his determinations prevented by the stroke of death.By these meditations (as by an intellectual will) I suppose myself executor tothe unhappily deceased author of this poem; upon whom knowing that in his lifetimeyou bestowed many kind favours, entertaining the parts of reckoning andworth which you found in him with good countenance and liberal affection, Icannot but see so far into the will of him dead, that whatsoever issue of his brainshould chance to come abroad, that the first breath it should take might be thegentle air of your liking; for since his self had been accustomed thereunto, itwould prove more agreeable and thriving to his right children than any otherfoster countenance whatsoever. At this time seeing that this unfinished tragedyhappens under my hands to be imprinted, of a double duty, the one to yourself,the other to the deceased, offering my utmost self now and ever to be ready atyour worship’s disposing.EDWARD BLOUNT 76Phrases such as “the performance of whatsoever we may judge shall maketo his living credit” and “entertaining the parts of reckoning and worth”imply that the Deptford episode was staged and that Walsingham directedor played a role in it. Note the possible allusion to Kit’s eye injury, part ofthe official cover story and the immediate cause of death in the coroner’sreport. Indeed, the whole passage has a tongue-in-cheek quality aboutMarlowe’s “after-life.” The contrast between the poet’s “right children” andoffspring of “foster countenance” appears to refer to writings publishedunder Marlowe’s own name and to those published under Shakespeare’s.There may be several other possible uses of the word in connection withMarlowe (see Appendix A) that form a cluster of reckonings. Using theword “reckoning” in connection with Marlowe’s death appears to have been

162 Hamleta code word among the Elizabethan literati that, like the password atElsinore, gained you admittance to the castle of understanding, as the newcentury approached and Elizabeth’s reign drew to a close. 77 Since the coroner’sreport was under lock and seal, it would appear that someone withinside information, probably Robert Cecil, leaked its findings to the poet.As You Like It, Julius Caesar (about the murder of a sitting monarch byhis own most trusted associates), and Hamlet mirror the anxiety and discontentthat spread through English society in the twilight of Elizabeth’sreign. As James Shapiro, a professor of literature at Columbia University,notes in Rival Playwrights: Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Jonson, theShakespearean plays are obsessed with Marlowe in the late 1590s followingcompletion of the early histories and the Italian comedies: “Shakespeareseems to be very much aware of what Marlowe is up to and chooses to charta parallel course, virtually stalking his rival.” 78 Several other plays from thisperiod, including Henry V, The Merchant of Venice, and The Merry Wives ofWindsor, borrow themes, characters, and lines from Marlowe’s early works.The Passionate Shepherd is repeatedly echoed, and material from Tamburlaine,The Jew of Malta, and Dr. Faustus finds its way into these works. Theexpropriation, or recreation, of Marlowe’s writings, Shapiro explains, culminatesin Hamlet.Perhaps the most provocative use of “reckoning” or its variants is inShakespeare's Sonnet 136, in which the poet openly proclaims that he is“Will”:If thy soul check thee that I come so near,Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy Will,And will, thy soul knows, is admitted there;Thus far for love my love-suit, sweet, fulfill.Will will fulfill the treasure of thy love,Ay, fill it full with wills, and my will one.In things of great receipt with ease we proveAmong a number one is reckon’d none:Then in the number let me pass untold,Thou in thy store’s account I one must be,For nothing hold me, so it please thee holdThat nothing me, a something sweet to thee.Make but my name thy love, and love that still,And then thou lovest me, for my name is Will.(1-14)Since “will” was an Elizabethan word for lust, critics make much of thepoem’s erotic word play. However, it would also seem to refer to deeperconcerns related to the poet’s name, identity, and “untold” passing.

Shakespeare’s Ghost 163Pistol HimPistol him, pistol him!—Twelfth Night(2.5.37)ollowing the death of James Morice, the voice of consciencein Parliament, a cowed House of Commonsmet only once between 1597 and the accession of KingJames in 1603. Though largely suppressed, the campaignfor religious liberty reemerged following the trialof John Darrell, a Puritan divine, who appeared beforethe ecclesiastical High Commission in 1598. He wascharged with performing exorcisms, a practice observed by Catholicism butprohibited by the Church of England. After his conviction, Darrell defendedhimself in manuscripts smuggled out of the Tower and printed illegallyin the Netherlands, provoking another round in the conformity and censorshipcrises that had lain dormant since the Marprelate tracts a decade earlierand the parliamentary debate of 1593.Fearful of being caught up in the dragnet, poets and dramatists rushedinto print to demonstrate their loyalty to the Church. Anthony Mundaywrote several plays extolling religious obedience. Even John Dee, the venerablemagus whose own magical practices made Darrell’s exorcisms looklike child’s play, felt obliged to write A letter, containing a most briefe dis -course apologeticall . . . for the lawfull, and christian course, of the philsophicallstudies and exercises. Dee’s transparent missive, dedicated to Whitgift, proclaimedhis devotion to Elizabeth and steadfastly denied any connectionwith witchcraft.Amid this controversy, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night debuted about 1601or 1602. Like The Comedy of Errors, it is a light-hearted comedy, whose onlyapparent connection with religion is its ridicule of Malvolio, who assumesthe stock portrait of a zealous Puritan. Though widely regarded as a harmlessspoof, Twelfth Night is every bit as subversive as its predecessor.Revolving around a household headed by Olivia, a lady “whose reclusivityand passivity are among her chief characteristics,” as Donna Hamilton showsin Shakespeare and the Politics of Protestant England, the play explores theissues surrounding the Darrell controversy.“During the late 1590s, Whitgift and Bancroft’s strategy for containingopposition in the church was the twofold strategy of extending toleration toall moderate puritans,” she explains, “while at the same time pursuing with

164 Hamletparticular vengeance only religious extremists, the latter of whom they couldthen isolate rhetorically for the purpose of representing all nonconformity asdangerous fanaticism.” 79 In the play, Sir Andrew Aguecheek’s stridentattacks on Malvolio, including “Pistol him, pistol him,” resurrect the “epistle”idiom associated with Martin Marprelate. Toby charges Marvolio withbeing possessed by the devil and in need of exorcism, which Hamilton considersa link to John Darrell’s case. “The link is best made not by way of similarities,however, but by way of difference, for Darrell was the exorcist notthe one possessed. By reconstituting the exorcism so that now it is the superstructurethat performs the ‘magic’ of exorcism, as opposed to the basestructure, Shakespeare manages a parodic reversal. His displacing the activityof exorcism on to the officials, and in a way that changes exorcism into ametaphor, provides the means for demystifying the officially sanctionedaction that had been taken against nonconformists.” 80 As in the Darrell’sunderground missives, Twelfth Night refers to the urine of the possessed, theecclesiastical court is mocked (in a scene in which Malvolio is confined to adark room and interrogated by the fool Feste), and letters falsely attributed(to Olivia) are misconstrued as authoritative.From the overall construction of the plot to the characterizations andcomic dialogue (which comes dangerously close at times to parodying theNew Testament), Hamilton concludes, Twelfth Night mocks the forcedunion of Church and State and presents an eloquent plea for reconciliation.In the final scene, “Shakespeare brings Malvolio face to face with Olivia andrepresents the great lady as willing to make amends. Explaining that she isnot the one who perpetrated the fraud against him, Olivia assures Malvoliothat ‘when we know the grounds and authors of it, / Thou shalt be boththe plaintiff and the judge / Of thine own cause’” [5.1.353–355]. 81Darrell’s clandestine publications may be linked to those of Marlowe.The first edition of Marlowe’s translation of Ovid’s Elegies, was printed “AtMiddleborough” in 1592. The site turns out to be not the sleepy Englishfishing village of the same name, but Middelburg, the capital of Zeeland, aDutch province noted for its beehive of printers. Material banned by thecensor, including Puritan tracts, some of the Martin Marprelate literature,and Separatist works, was printed here, given a false imprint, and smuggledback into England. Though more racy than rebellious, Marlowe’s book, aswe have seen, was high on Archbishop Whitgift’s list of “unseemly” volumesconsigned to the flames.In a recent essay, “At Middleborough: Some Reflections on Marlowe’sVisit to the Low Countries in 1592,” Charles Nicholl notes that the DutchMiddelburg was located contiguous to Flushing, where Marlowe and Baineswere roommates until they fell out. Though the connection with the near-

Shakespeare’s Ghost 165by printers remains a conjecture, the proximity “would provide anotheraspect to Marlowe’s undercover work in the Low Countries: an involvementin clandestine printing.” 82 In Christopher Marlowe and Richard Baines, RoyKendall further suggests that a book against the Trinity that Kit allegedlywrote was published here. Following the Deptford events, several contemporariesmentioned that he had written such a tract, but if so it has not survived.It should also be noted that in 1591, shortly before Marlowe’s arrival,Robert Sidney, governor of Flushing, seized three thousand copies ofSeparatist Henry Barrow’s books and had them burned. Arthur Billet, ayoung scholar about Kit’s age involved in the clandestine printing of this literaturein Middelburg, was apprehended by Sidney, returned to England,and turned over to Archbishop Whitgift.The Middlebourgh link could help explain why Whitgift put Marlowe’sbooks on his index. The sudden appearance of proscribed publications byDarrell, the imprisoned Puritan exorcist, may have triggered unpleasantassociations with Marlowe and occasioned the archbishop to burn himposthumously, just as his mentor, Andrew Perne, dug up and roasted thebones of two Protestant divines.Whitgift’s bonfire proved to be his last hurrah. Consolidating his powerafter his father’s death and being named principal secretary to the queen,Robert Cecil quietly maneuvered to have Richard Bancroft, who preachedat Cambridge when he was a student, named bishop of London in order tomoderate the archbishop’s power. Through Bancroft, Cecil gained controland influence over the printing and publishing trade. Together, they evensanctioned the printing of Catholic discourses in a successful attempt todivide ordinary English Catholics from Jesuit priests and superiors stationedabroad.Of course, it is not known whether any relationship continued betweenMarlowe and Cecil after Burghley’s death. Though every bit as shrewd as hisfather, Secretary Cecil prided himself in his personal loyalty and steadfastness.“[M]y manner is not to fly [from] men in difficulties,” he once stated.And on another occasion, he added, “I have never had made myself so baseas to have betrayed my friend, where my allegiance had not been in balance.”83 Through the Merchant Adventurers trading company in Middelburgthat he patronized, Cecil almost certainly would have known ifMarlowe were engaged in clandestine printing. “[F]rom my tender years Ihave been greedy of literature, and a lover of literary men,” Cecil oncewrote, suggesting that he took an interest in poets and playwrights. 84Renowned for their leading contribution to Elizabethan architecture andpatronage of music, the Cecils’ devotion to the arts has often been overlookedamid all their other accomplishments. Among the writers they pat-

166 Hamletronized was John Lyly, one of the University Wits and a probable associateof Marlowe. A new study of the Cecils as patron of the arts concludes thattheir household was “the nearest thing to a humanist salon that sixteenthcenturyEngland possessed, and a university in itself.” 85In addition to quietly taking control over publishing, Robert Cecil mayhave also consolidated his authority over the stage in the early years of thenew century before the queen and archbishop passed away. Sir George Bucktook over de facto control of the Revels office from his uncle, EdmundTilney. As master of the Revels, Tilney was in charge not only of entertainmentsfor the queen and court, but also broadly relations with the Londonstage, including the censorship of plays. He had originally been appointedin 1577, probably through the influence of his cousin Lord Howard ofEffingham (later the lord admiral and patron of Marlowe’s troupe) andBurghley. Buck enjoyed a close relationship with Robert Cecil, carrying confidentialdispatches for him to Middelburg in 1601. If Kit returned toEngland toward the end of the century and stepped up his theatrical production,it is likely that Buck, with a possible nod from Cecil, would havebeen sympathetic to his scripts. Whether or not he turned a blind eye totheir topical punning (satirized by Prince Hamlet as “tropical” [3.2.229]),provocative allusions, and other subversive subtexts, the Shakespearean playstake on a harder edge as Elizabeth’s reign ends and James’s begins.Drama ran deeply in the Cecil family blood. After Elizabeth ascended tothe throne in 1558, William Cecil delivered patriotic, anti-Catholic speechesto players in hostels and taverns to drum up support for the Act ofUniformity. This Polonius-like charge to actors continued until his death. Inone case before the Star Chamber in 1596, records show that “The LordTreasurer would haue those that make the playes to make a comedie hereof,& to acte it with these names.” 86 At Theobalds, the Cecils’ countrymanor twelve miles from London, a play was staged on several occasionsbefore the queen that dramatized Burghley’s desire to retire and be succeededby his son, who was disguised as a hermit. (Though Elizabeth joinedin the merriment and prepared a comic charter to be read in the performances,she did not heed his message; she never allowed the elder Cecil toleave office and delayed promoting the younger Cecil for several years afterhe assumed responsibilities for the post.) Robert evidently wrote the dramas—realplays-within-the-play—himself or had them commissioned. Somecritics think that these episodes are alluded to in The Tempest and thatProspero, the wise old magician who wishes to retire to his cell like the hermitin the Cecilian productions, was based loosely on Burghley. 87Not one to be upstaged, the Earl of Essex followed his rival Cecil’splaylet with one of his own, which was performed before the queen on the

Shakespeare’s Ghost 167anniversary of her accession. In this performance, largely composed byFrancis Bacon, Essex played himself and engaged in debate with an old hermit,a secretary of state, and a soldier, each of whom tried to convince himto abandon love of his royal mistress to attain his station in life. As anotherplay-within-the-play—and one obviously satirizing the Cecils—it prefiguredan even more dramatic, real life performance involving many of the principalsin Marlowe’s career as well as the Globe players and a Shakespeareanplay.The Late InnovationWhen the vilest of all indignities are done unto me, doth religion enforceme to sue? Cannot princes err? Cannot subjects receive wrong? Is anearthly power infinite?—Robert Devereux, Earl of Essexs the new century arrived, the queen turned sixty-eight,A rchbishop Whitgift sixty-nine, and Marlowe andShakespeare would turn thirty-seven. Amid complaintsof civic disorders, the Privy Council limited playhousesin London to Richard Burbage’s new Globe andEdward Alleyn’s new Fortune theatres and productionswere curtailed to twice a week. Much Ado AboutNothing, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and The Merchant of Venice were allpublished in 1600, as well as England’s Helicon, an anthology of verse,including Marlowe’s The Passionate Shepherd to His Love. As England’s Irishcampaign floundered, several military deserters were executed as an exampleto others, and in York two Catholic priests were hanged. Several printerswere locked up for printing Essex’s Apology, and Whitgift prohibited theprinting of portraits or likenesses of anyone except the queen. Elizabethreceived two Moorish ambassadors from the Barbary coast and welcomedthe Russian ambassador, who presented her with a pair of breeding sables.In Scotland, James narrowly avoided an assassination attempt, and in ahand-to-hand struggle with the king, two conspirators died of their wounds.On the domestic front, the bishop of Exeter petitioned the ecclesiasticalHigh Commission to deal with a breakdown of law and order in his dioceseand punish atheists and blasphemers who baptized a cat, administered communionto a dead horse, and married a goose and a gander.In the drama surrounding Elizabeth’s long reign, the final act climaxedwith the Essex Rebellion. For nearly a half century, the queen had navigat-

168 Hamleted her ship of state through treacherous waters (the Spanish Armada), hiddenshoals (marriage suits pressed by the crowned heads of Europe), andinternal rot and disrepair (repression of religious dissent). As her final voyageapproached, the stately vessel was wracked with mutiny from some of itshighest-ranking officers.In an ironic spin of Fortune’s wheel, many of the dramatis personae inthe Marlowe saga converged and made their swan song on the Elizabethanpolitical stage in the cold month of February 1601. The deaths of FrancisWalsingham, Lord Burghley, James Morice, Thomas Kyd, Anthony Bacon,and Thomas Hooker substantially diminished the cast. Besides the queenand Essex in the lead roles, Archbishop Whitgift, Robert Cecil, ThomasEgerton, Francis Bacon, Sir Robert Sidney, and Southampton played supportingparts, the Globe actors provided the chorus, and James VI, ArbellaStuart, Shakespeare, and Marlowe’s ghost made their presence felt likeblack-clad Kabuki moving invisibly in the background. The story of theEssex rebellion deserves to be described in detail, if only to demonstrate thatthe arrangement involving Marlowe and Shakespeare remained largely intactafter Burghley died and, surviving perhaps its greatest challenge, continuedinto the reign of James I.The true motive of the Earl of Essex, the focus of the conspiracy, is stilldebated by historians four hundred years later. Did he seek only to protectthe queen from corrupt advisors and ensure a smooth succession for KingJames of Scotland as he insisted, or did he intend to depose Elizabeth andproclaim himself king, as his opponents charged? In either case, the basicfacts are uncontested.For over a decade, Essex, the brilliant but erratic courtier, had beenElizabeth’s court favorite. Despite frequent outbursts, he enjoyed a meteoricrise and was showered with honors and preferments. In 1598, after oneheated scene in the Privy Council when he rashly turned his back on thequeen and started to draw his sword, she boxed his ears. FollowingBurghley’s death, the queen relied heavily on Robert Cecil, Essex’s old rival,who constantly outmaneuvered him at court. Ralegh, another of the earl’sopponents, had rehabilitated himself and once again commanded thequeen’s palace guard. Warned by his elders to show Elizabeth more obedience,Essex replied that he could not do so “as a slave,” proclaiming that“Princes may err and subjects receive wrong . . . but I will show constancyin suffering.” 88As commander of English forces in Ireland, Essex disobeyed Elizabethand concluded a humiliating treaty with the Irish rebels. Fearful of beingeclipsed by Ralegh, Robert Cecil, and other rivals back home, he halted themilitary campaign and hastened back to England against the monarch’s

Shakespeare’s Ghost 169instructions in September 1599. His principal advisor, Southampton (towhom Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece had been dedicated),accompanied him, along with a small band of swordsmen. Galloping nonstop,Essex made straight for the palace at Nonsuch and burst into thequeen’s bedchamber unannounced. The queen had never allowed a maninto her bedroom and was aghast to be accosted partially dressed, withouther wig, and devoid of make up. Fearing a coup, she humored her youngcourtier, promising to meet him in a proper setting. Later that day, whenthey met, Essex proved inarticulate and confused, and Elizabeth treated himwith royal disdain. Ultimately, she placed him under house arrest, where heslid into sickness and despair over the next eight months. A hearing beforea royal commission finally convened in June 1600. Sensing a change in thepolitical winds, Francis Bacon, Essex’s former major domo and spy handler,turned vehemently against his lord and master. Among the other stony faceson the commission, only Archbishop Whitgift showed Essex the slightestconsideration, offering his former student a cushion to sit on as if to softenthe impending blow. As expected, the councilors deferred his fate to thepleasure of the queen. For his tacit support of the brash young courtier,Whitgift earned the queen’s rebuke. Their estrangement weighed heavily,and “the good olde Archbishop came sometimes home much grieued andperplexed.” 89Elizabeth eventually set Essex at liberty, but banished him at court andstripped him of his titles. Over the years, he had served as member of thePrivy Council, master of the ordnance, and master of the queen’s horse andwon high military posts, and he lost all of this. But the most devastatingpunishment was loss of the royal lease on revenues from the import of sweetwines. Despite his tearful pleadings and show of contrition, Elizabethrefused to renew the lucrative monopoly she had bestowed upon him inbygone days and kept the custom duties for herself. In a letter to the queen,Essex begged her to change her mind, complaining that he had become alaughing stock: “The frantic libeller writes of me what he lists; they print meand make me speak to the world, and shortly they will play me upon thestage.” 90 In the face of financial ruin, Essex and his alter ego, Southampton,who was also living beyond his means and had been briefly jailed in theTower and banished from court by Elizabeth because she disapproved of hismarriage, conspired to provide England with fresh blood. They communicatedsecretly with James in Scotland, rallied disaffected northern earls andWelsh gentry, and inveighed against Cecil, Ralegh, and other perceived enemiesat court. The earl’s London residence, Essex House, assumed the air ofan armed camp, attracting ambitious nobles, disgruntled ex-army officers,and Puritan ministers to preach to the multitude gathered there.

170 HamletThe plot they developed called for Essex’s supporters to infiltrateWhitehall Palace, seize the guards, and clear the way for Essex and his shadowprivy council to meet with the queen and assume the mantle of power.Heralds would fan out through London with news of the uprising and stirup popular support. A sympathetic Parliament would be called into sessionto ratify the change and put on trial and punish former councilors who hadmisled the queen. As doubts rose about the wisdom of such a venture, theplotters decided to steel their own faltering resolve, as well as whip up publicsentiment, by staging a dramatic performance about the abdication of anEnglish monarch whose situation mirrored Elizabeth’s. For this purpose,they selected Shakespeare’s Richard II, a play about a childless king who wasdeposed by the popular Bolingbroke and later murdered. Supported by theLondon multitude, Bolingbroke went on to assume the throne as Henry IV.After the play debuted in 1595, the scenes of Richard’s deposition and murderwere censored because of their close parallel with Elizabeth’s situation.On February 6, 1601, several aristocratic associates of Essex went to theGlobe theatre and asked the Lord Chamberlain’s Men to put on a specialperformance of the play. Explaining that the benefit would be for their ownedification as well as the local citizenry, they offered to supplement the gatewith forty shillings. Hesitant about being embroiled in courtly intrigue, thetroupe explained that Richard II was no longer in their repertoire, the actorshad forgotten the lines, and an old play probably wouldn’t attract muchattention. But the stipend was sizeable and Southampton, as Shakespeare’spatron, may have sweetened the pot and pressured the company to comply.By the next afternoon, the actors had recalled their lines and gave a stalwartrendition of Richard II, probably including the excised deposition and murderscenes, before Lord Monteagle, Sir Gelli Meyrick, Sir ChristopherBlount, and other conspirators.The previous summer, the Privy Council had imprisoned Dr. JohnHayward in connection with another subversive historical text. His Historyof Henry IV was dedicated to Essex and referred to “his future greatness,”which the queen took to mean the earl’s expectation of succeeding to thethrone. Consulting Francis Bacon, she inquired whether there was sufficientcause to try the good doctor for treason. When Bacon replied “for treasonsurely I find none, but for felony many,” she asked that Hayward be chargedwith theft for plagiarizing from Tacitus, the Roman playwright. 91 Suspectinga more satirical hand behind the volume, she demanded that he be put tothe rack to reveal his accomplice. To settle the authorship controversy, FrancisBacon recommended instead that Hayward be given pen and ink to continuethe narrative. It would be easy enough, he told the queen, to determinewhether the sequel equaled the literary quality of the original. At

Shakespeare’s Ghost 171Hayward’s trial, Attorney-General Coke charged that “the Doctor selecteda story 200 years old and published it last year intending the application ofit to this time.” 92 Hayward confessed to falsifying history and testified thatEssex frequently attended Shakespeare’s Richard II “himself being so oftenpresent at the playing thereof and with great applause giving countenance toit.” 93Though Elizabeth was not present at the Globe performance, as in theplay-within-the-play in Hamlet, the sovereign regarded Essex’s staging ofRichard II with shock and alarm. In emergency session later that day, heradvisors met and sent a messenger to Essex demanding he present himselfbefore the Privy Council. He demurred for reasons of his physical safety andat dawn the next morning sent heralds through the city rallying supportersto his cause. In a final effort to prevent bloodshed, a delegation of privycouncilors went to Essex House, including Lord Keeper Thomas Egerton,who carried the Great Seal of England with him, and ordered the rebels todisperse, but they were unceremoniously taken hostage. In mid-morning,Essex and several hundred armed supporters left Essex House, but insteadof proceeding to the palace, which was only lightly guarded, they headedtoward the City to augment their forces with the thousand men promisedthem by the sheriff of London.The delay gave the Crown time to rally support. As soon as he learnedof the uprising, Archbishop Whitgift dispatched a contingent of “threescoremen well armed, and appointed” across the Thames to protect the palaceand mobilized another forty armed horsemen to remain in readiness if needed.Thomas Cecil, Robert’s elder brother and the new Lord Burghley,braved the mob in the City, reading a proclamation in the queen’s namebranding the earl a traitor and promising amnesty to those who lay downtheir arms. When the sheriff’s support and the expected popular uprisingfailed to materialize, Essex retreated to his residence, where he discoveredthat the detained privy councilors, his last bargaining chip, had beenreleased. As Whitgift’s men and troops loyal to the queen from London andoutlying areas converged on Essex House with musket and cannon, the earlburned as much incriminating evidence as he could, including a pouch orlocket that he wore around his neck with secret correspondence with Jamesin Scotland. As Essex drew his sword to make his final stand, the queen’smen called a truce, allowing the women inside, including Essex’s wife andsister, to leave peacefully. Sir Robert Sidney, the former governor of Flushingwho had arrested Marlowe and sent him back to England, negotiated surrenderterms with Southampton, who came out on the roof. In exchange forthe promise of a fair trial, the conspirators capitulated. The archbishop’stroop conveyed Essex and Southampton to Lambeth and thence to the

172 HamletTower of London. After twelve hours, the rebellion was over.On February 17, Essex and Southampton were brought to trial atWestminster Hall. Lord Buckhurst, who had set the informers on Marloweeight years earlier, presided, flanked by eight judges, Attorney-General Cokeheaded up the prosecutors, and nine earls and sixteen barons served as thejury of peers. Sir Walter Ralegh commanded the security detail. In laying outhis case, Coke referred directly to the staging of Richard II at the Globe anddrew parallels between the dramatic representation and the earl’s conspiracy.Francis Bacon, also one of the prosecutors, compared his former lord toan Athenian tyrant who seized power by declaring that he was protecting thesovereign from bad counsel. Accusing him of a Machiavellian strategy in theHayward affair, Bacon said that the earl sent “only a cold formal letter to theArchbishop to call in [Hayward’s] book . . . knowing that forbidden thingsare most sought after.” 94 Southampton pled for leniency, insisting that hehad not once drawn his sword. When it was pointed out that he was seenbrandishing a pistol, he explained that he had confiscated it from a man inthe street. In his own defense, Essex delivered an eloquent defense of hisprinciples, denied any wrongdoing, and accused Robert Cecil of connivingwith Spain to deliver the crown to the Spanish Infanta. Other plotters spreadword that the secretary designed to marry the Lady Arbella and seize thethrone in her name.In the most dramatic moment of the trial, Robert Cecil, who had beenmysteriously absent, suddenly appeared to defend his good name. Turningto Essex, he declared, “For wit I give you the preeminence—you have itabundantly. For nobility, also I give you place—I am not noble; yet a gentleman:I am no swordsman—there also you have the odds; but I have innocence,conscience, truth and honesty to defend me against the scandal andsting of slanderous tongues.” 95 When Cecil denied that he was conspiringwith the Spanish, Essex called upon Sir William Knollys, his uncle, to testifyto the secretary’s treachery. But Knollys swore that Cecil mentioned theInfanta’s claim only to repudiate it. The testimony proved devastating to theearl’s defense. In an exchange that curiously paralleled the final scene inHamlet between the prince and Laertes, Robert Cecil assured Essex, hisrival, “I forgive you from the bottom of my heart,” to which the defeatedearl replied meekly, “And I, Mr. Secretary, do clearly and freely forgive youwith all my soul; because I mean to die in charity with all men.” 96After deliberating in tobacco-wreathed chambers, the peers found thetwo defendants guilty of high treason, and the lord high steward sentencedEssex and Southampton to death by hanging, disembowelment, and quartering.A few days later, Essex made a full confession. On February 25, hewas beheaded after praying for forgiveness and blessing the queen and her

Shakespeare’s Ghost 173ministers. The more gruesome penalties were waived because of his aristocraticpedigree. At the request of Robert Cecil, Southampton’s death sentencewas commuted, and he was confined to the Tower for life. Severalother key conspirators, including those who had staged the performance ofRichard II, also received the axe. Overall, the proceedings open an eeriewindow on what might have happened if Marlowe had not kept his appointmentin Deptford and stood trial for atheism, heresy, and sedition in 1593.Though it would have lacked the pomp and ceremony of Essex’s tribunal,Buckhurst (with Whitgift behind the scenes) likely would have presided overthe court of ecclesiastical High Commission, and the verdict would havebeen a foregone conclusion. Unlike the nobles, the horrendous means ofexecution probably would not have been mitigated.In the aftermath of the Essex rebellion, Shakespeare’s company remainedin disgrace. Although Elizabeth commanded them, perhaps in revengeagainst the earl, to perform before her on the eve of Essex’s execution, theywere not allowed to appear at court the following Christmas. For severalyears, the Crown did not allow any plays dealing with conspiracy or rebellionon the London stage. Having incurred the monarch’s displeasure, theGlobe players toured the provinces in self-imposed exile until her anger dissipated.The title page of Hamlet mentions that the play was performed latelyin the universities. The text may allude to the Essex rebellion in the scenewhen the traveling players arrive in Elsinore. “I think their inhibition, comesby the means of the late innovation,” Rosencrantz explains to Hamlet (2.2.316–317). Though other interpretations have been advanced, many criticshold that the “innovation” is a euphemism for the earl’s recent uprising.In an oft-quoted remark to jurist Sir William Lambarde, Queen Elizabethexclaimed shortly after the Essex rebellion, “I am Richard II, know yenot that? He that will forget God, will also forget his benefactors; thistragedy was played 40tie times in open streets and houses.” 97 Most historiansassume that she was referring to Devereux. By encouraging Puritanzealots, Separatists, and other religious malcontents, he “forgot God” andthe church, as well as his divinely sanctioned monarch. Essex was reportedto have attended Richard II many times, and at his trial he denied that hewas encouraging religious nonconformity. However, another interpretationof the queen’s remarks is that she was referring to the author of the playrather than the leader of the rebellion. Yet in Shakespeare’s case, no chargeswere ever brought, as they had been against Hayward (who wrote a proseedition that enjoyed a much smaller circulation). Except for the royal disfavorand temporary banishment of the entire acting company, Will sufferedno personal censure for his role in the affair. The fact that Southampton, hispatron, was the principal co-conspirator should have been sufficient cause

174 Hamletfor Elizabeth to order him placed into Master Topcliffe’s custody. Or didFrancis Bacon intervene again in yet another authorship controversy?Could the queen have been referring to Marlowe, as critic John Bakerasks? Certainly the phrase “He that will forget God” fits the common perceptionof Kit as an atheist and blasphemer better than the erratic earl, whowas noted for his personal piety. If so, this suggests that the queen knew orsuspected “Shakespeare’s” true identity. Yet if Marlowe was living in hidingor in foreign exile, he was beyond her reach. Of course, out of spite, Elizabethcould have closed down the Globe and denied the dramatist a venue.Her reasons for leniency are unknown.Elizabeth reportedly spared Southampton’s life because he was withoutan heir, and she didn’t want to extinguish a peerage. Whatever argumentsRobert Cecil used to convince her, Southampton had longstanding ties withthe Cecils. The convicted co-conspirator also had ties with Charles Howard,the lord admiral and Kit’s old patron, as well as Richard Field, EdwardBlount, Thomas Thorpe, and other printers and publishers associated withMarlowe. This network of relationships suggests that Wriothesley’s life mayhave been spared as much to protect his patronage of Shakespeare to thetune of £1000 annually (and thus ensure an outlet for the plays) as to continuethe earl’s hereditary line.Not long after, the Countess of Pembroke, whom Kit had once addressedas his muse, may have also intervened on the poet’s behalf. Shortlyafter James succeeded to the throne, Mary Sidney reportedly wrote a letter(now lost) to her son asking him to invite James to a performance of As YouLike It at the family manor in Wilton. Not only is this the play that lamentsMarlowe’s death, but also in her letter the countess adds that “we have theman Shakespeare with us.” 98 This raises the intriguing possibility that shewas referring to Kit the dramatist—her rumored lover—instead of, or inaddition to, Will the actor, and that Marlowe may have been living in Wiltonat the time. Rumors at court circulated that Mary invited the king to herhouse to secure a pardon for Ralegh, who had been arrested on dubiouscharges in a plot against James. A contemporary correspondent noted that“she is commended for doing her best in showing veteris vetigia flammae[‘traces of my old passion’].” 99 The quotation, from Dido’s remarks toAeneas, further suggests that the romance between the countess and theauthor of Dido Queen of Carthage may have been rekindled. Some criticsthink that the pirate scene in Hamlet was based on a similar scene in SirPhilip Sidney’s Arcadia, which was edited and completed by Mary after herbrother’s death. Elizabeth nicknamed Ralegh “the Pirate,” and in Hamlet,revised about this time, the poet may have honored his old friend and colleaguein the School of Night.

Shakespeare’s Ghost 175Thomas Walsingham, Marlowe’s patron at the time of the Deptfordaffair, and his wife also found themselves in high favor with the newmonarch. In a letter written at the end of 1603, Arbella Stuart (also temporarilyelevated under James) notes that Audrey Walsingham had permissionto wear Elizabeth’s best dresses to appear in masques on Christmas. OnNew Year’s night, she adds, the court enjoyed a play of Robin Goodfellow,a possible reference to A Midsummer Night’s Dream.The web of relationships among Kit’s past admirers and defenders duringthe interregnum, including Cecil, Southampton, Field, Blount, GeorgeCarey, the Lord Admiral, the Countess of Pembroke, the Walsinghams, andArbella Stuart, reaches into the highest political, military, artistic, and literarycircles. 100 It strongly suggests that Marlowe’s support network remainedlargely in place after Burghley died and continued into the Stuart era.The Right Harborueen Elizabeth survived for two more years after theEssex affair, finally concluding hostilities in Ireland atthe end of 1602. When the queen wouldn’t considerterms, the Irish rebels wisely submitted unconditionallyto her mercy. Elizabeth initially refused this magnanimousoffer and demanded their heads, but finallyyielded after her Privy Council begged her to makepeace and end a war that had been disastrous for both sides.As her reign ended, she pined for her onetime favorite, Essex, who inmany ways was a victim of the intractable Irish campaign and the queen’smercilessness. As she had after the execution of Mary Queen of Scots,Elizabeth fell into “a melancholy disease,” in the words of the archbishop’sbiographer, though this time she had no one to blame for signing the deathwarrant but herself. 101 London was abuzz with the tale that after an earlierlove quarrel she had given Essex a ring and promised him that he had onlyto return it to win her forgiveness. On the day of the execution, the tale continued,she was said to be anxiously waiting delivery of the love token. Fromthe Tower, so the story went, the earl gave the ring to a page boy to deliverto Lady Scrope, a friend and ally, and implored her to give it to the queen.However, the lad by mistake gave it to the wife of one of his enemies, whowithheld it from Elizabeth and later, guilt-stricken and dying, confessed herdeception. The queen then died of a broken heart.Like the setting of a majestic sun, Elizabeth’s light gradually extinguished.The end came at her palace at Richmond in late March 1603.Before several of her privy councilors who had gathered by her death bed,

176 Hamletshe stated enigmatically, “I will have no rascal to succeed me; and whoshould succeed me but a King?” The next day, when she lapsed into speechlessness,Robert Cecil asked her to make a sign to confirm that she wouldhave the king of Scots succeed her, and she made the sign of a crown overher head. (The account of her acceptance of James was probably as apocryphalas the story of the ring.) John Whitgift was now back in the queen’sgood graces for defending the palace during the Essex affair and, though oldand ailing himself, took charge of last rites. With her “little black husband”by her side, Elizabeth pressed his hand and kept him on his knees as theevening wore on, although he tried to rise several times. Only when shelapsed into unconsciousness was he able to slip away after sermonizing onheaven and the joys of the hereafter. The queen died in the wee hours ofMarch 24. The archbishop served as chief mourner at her funeral in WestminsterAbbey as most of England grieved over the only monarch it had everknown.With Machiavellian skill, Robert Cecil orchestrated an orderly succession.After the Essex rebellion, he had opened communications in cipherwith James, explaining, “I know it holdeth . . . even with strictest loyalty andsoundest reason for faithful ministers to conceal sometime both thoughtsand actions from princes when they are persuaded it is for their own greaterservice.” 102 He asked James to “vouchsafe me in this to be your oracle, thatwhen that day (so grievous to us) shall happen which is the tribute of allmortal creatures, your ships shall be steered into the right harbour withoutcross of wave or tide.” 103 Recognizing that the English secretary was “kingthere in effect,” the Scottish monarch overcame his initial doubts and eventuallyallowed Cecil to draft all his own correspondence to the queen. Hisrelation with Elizabeth, which had always been chilly and condescendingbefore, turned warm and harmonious. The morning she died, Cecil’s proclamationof James’s accession was read, as Sir Robert Carey (Hunsdon’sbrother) hastened on horseback to Holyrood House in Edinburgh to be thefirst to deliver the news to an anxious James.Several months later, Archbishop Whitgift crowned James and Anne asEngland’s new king and queen and received assurance that the monarchwould forego Scottish presbyterianism and recognize the supremacy of theChurch of England. But following the queen’s death, long pent up publicfrustrations and hostilities surfaced, and civic hopes rose that James wouldright past wrongs. Foremost among these injustices was the ReligiousSettlement, and Puritans wasted little time in mourning the departedmonarch. Sensitive to seismic rumblings of discontent among his new subjects,King James agreed to a convocation with the Puritans “for the reformationof some things amiss in ecclesiastical matters.” 104 Aghast at the

Shakespeare’s Ghost 177king’s determination to parley with the zealots, the bishops managed tolimit the Puritans to only four delegates in comparison to their nineteen. Asthe embodiment of the old order, Whitgift attended the conclave, held atHampton Court in January 1604. But he was a shell of his former self, andhe let Richard Bancroft, bishop of London, defend orthodoxy. Bancroftseized the opportunity to further his own advancement. Comparing Jamesto Constantine, the first Christian emperor of Rome, he argued for a viamedia between the papists and the Puritans and portrayed both as extremistsbent on destroying royal authority and the uniformity of the church.James opened the proceedings adroitly, assuring the participants that heintended no “innovation.” But just as in an imperfect world the body ofman inevitably corrupts, so too “we have received many complaints, sinceour first entrance into this kingdom, of many disorders, and much disobedienceto the laws.” Like a “good physician,” he proposed “to examine andtry the complaints, and fully to remove the occasions thereof, if scandalous;cure them, if dangerous.” 105 The Puritans entertained the hope that theking would sanction the use of the Geneva Bible in church. With the archbishop,author of its ban, appearing like a ghost of his former self, Bancroftvigorously opposed every proposed change or modification. In the end,James effected a compromise by agreeing to a Puritan proposal to create anew translation of the Bible. “If every man’s humour were followed, therewould be no end of translating,” Bancroft objected, as the archbishop noddedsagely. But he was overruled, and the King James Version of the Bible,the fruit of this otherwise contentious gathering, appeared in 1611.A month after the Hampton Court conference, the archbishop caughtcold on his barge in the Thames during a visit to Bancroft’s residence inFulham. Several days later, on the first Sunday in Lent, he suffered a paralyticstroke when dining at Whitehall Palace. Taken to Lord Buckhurst’schamber and then transferred to Lambeth, he received a visit by the king,but deprived of speech he was only able to utter “pro Eccelesia Dei,” praisingGod’s Church. He called for ink and paper to inscribe his last thoughts,but the pen fell out of his hand. John Whitgift died “like a lamb” onFebruary 29, 1604, in his seventy-third year. 106 At his funeral oration, hewas compared to Jehoradah, a virtuous high priest of Israel.Since the primary aim of this account is to outline the epic strugglebetween Marlowe and the archbishop and the background to Hamlet, wewill essentially end our historical narrative at this point. The next sectionexamines Hamlet, which stands at the very end of Elizabeth’s reign and thestart of James’s. Slightly less than half of the plays attributed to Shakespearewere first performed or published in the Stuart era, including such masterpiecesas Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear. The same incisive social com-

178 Hamletmentary, satirical wit, and irony were brought to bear on the stage and inprint during James’s reign as during Elizabeth’s. Measure for Measure,Pericles, and some of the other plays treat critically the burning theologicalissues of the Stuart era, as well as increased censorship and jailing of poetsand actors. 107 Written in the same mischievous spirit of Martin Marprelateand Falstaff as the earlier works, the latter part of the Shakespearean canonfollows in direct continuity with the former part.In 1597 Shakespeare purchased New Place, the second largest house inStratford, and became increasingly involved in legal and property matters,dividing his time between London and Stratford from 1604 to about 1611,when the last play attributed to him was probably composed. In 1613, Willpurchased a house in London near the Blackfriars theatre, the company’swinter home, probably as an investment, so he kept some kind of presencein the capital to attend openings and court performances where an authorialpresence was required. He died in 1616 shortly after preparing his will,the only truly uncontested literary document in his name. There was nomention of his passing in print, in London or elsewhere, and until the FirstFolio was published in 1623, he received no elegies and scant tributes. Loyalto a fault, Shakespeare stoically performed the public role that destiny hadassigned to him. 108The Abstract and Brief Chronicles of the TimeSit fas aut nefas [Be it right or wrong], till I find the streamTo cool this heat, a charm to calm these fits,Per Stygia, per manes vehor. [I am borne through the Stygian regions,through the shades]—Titus Andronicus(2.1.133-135)n perhaps one final nod to Marlowe’s muse, the FirstF o l i o —M r. Shakespeare’s Comedies, Tragedies, &Histories—was registered at the Stationers’ Companyon November 8, 1623. Edward Blount, the primemover of the Folio’s publication, was Kit’s old friend,p u b l i s h e r, and self-styled literary executor. Blountentered the Folio along with Isaac Jaggard, whose familyowned the printing company once operated by James Roberts, the stationerwho had originally registered Hamlet and printed the Second Quarto.William Jaggard, Isaac’s father, was officially one of the Folio’s partners. In

Shakespeare’s Ghost 1791599 he had published Shakespeare’s The Passionate Pilgrim, a brief anthologyof verse containing the first printed version of Marlowe’s The PassionateShepherd to His Love. Nicholas Ling, who died in 1607, sold the rights toHamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Love’s Labor’s Lost, and The Taming of a Shrew toJohn Smethwick, a younger bookseller. Smethwick, who had been in troublefor publishing several pirated editions early in his career, brought outQuartos 3, 4, and 5 of Hamlet (without any substantial changes) andbecame a partner in the First Folio. John Heminge, co-editor of the Folioand a member of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, had acted with LordStrange’s Company in the early 1590s and undoubtedly knew Marlowefrom that time. The volume itself was dedicated to William Herbert, Earl ofPembroke. Pembroke, Mary Sidney’s son, was lord chamberlain at the timeand hence oversaw the office of the Revels and the production of plays atcourt. There is speculation that he was the mysterious Mr. W. H. to whomthe Shakespeare Sonnets are dedicated. As with Hamlet, the First Folio waspublished by a group of influential stationers with subversive roots, aristocraticconnections, and past ties to Marlowe. Leonard Digges, Jr., whowrote the prefatory poem to the Folio, was a kinsman of ChristopherDigges, Kit’s old classmate at the King’s School in Canterbury.The date of the Folio’s registration, November 8, is also highly symbolic.It was the anniversary of the goddess Mania, known as the Mother ofGhosts, the Roman counterpart to Hecate. On her day, the manes, or ancestralspirits were remembered, as mentioned in Titus Andronicus. In Celtictradition, the Lord of Faeries allowed the door of the Underworld to beopened on November 8, echoing or paralleling the ancient Roman festival.The name of the fairy king, Gywnn ap Nudd, means “Light, Son of Darkness,”another allusion to the goddess of the Night and a fit epithet forChristopher Marlowe. It’s appropriate that the works of England’s poet laureateand his collaborator, William Shakespeare, should enter the world ofprint on this symbolic date.As for Christopher Marlowe, that author of “vile, hereticall conceipts,”his fate remains shrouded in mystery. The ideals for which he stood, however,triumphed, and in Horatio’s memorable words “purposes mistook, /[Fell] on th’inventors’ heads” (5.2.382-383). The English Civil War, a generationlater, resulted in the execution of Charles I (James’s son and successor)and Archbishop Laud, and was viewed by many as a reaction to theexcesses initiated under Elizabeth’s and Whitgift’s reign. The ex officio oaththat formed the cornerstone of the archbishop’s persecution of Puritans anddissenters was declared illegal in 1641 and finally abolished along with theStar Chamber and the ecclesiastical High Commission. In 1689, a hundredyears after the appearance of Martin Marprelate’s last tract, The Protestatyn,

180 Hamletand about the time of Dr. Faustus’s debut on the stage, England adopted theBill of Rights and the Tolerance Act, recognizing the supremacy of Parliamentover the sovereign and the Church.For four hundred years there was no burial stone or monument commemoratingMarlowe’s life or achievement—a paean to artistic expression,the precision of language, and the wise use of power. But regardless of hisfinal resting place, the democratic ideals that took root in England andAmerica and continue to spread around the world are his greatest legacy.The modern world has largely forgotten Christopher Marlowe, the clownprince of the London stage, who put on an antic disposition, selflessly wroteunder Shakespeare’s name and let his colleague take the credit for his works,and vied with Church and Crown to save England’s soul. But as the originatorof our common tongue, a creator of the modern mind, and a prophetwho voices our noblest sentiments, Marlowe has outlived all of his contemporaries.Practically every word we speak doth breathe his name and spirit.Were beauty under twenty locks kept fast,Yet love breaks through, and picks them all at last.—Venus and Adonis(575–576)After four centuries, it is time to lay the Shakespeare authorship controversyto rest. As Hamlet soliloquizes when devising the play-within-the-play,“For murder, though it have no tongue will speak / With most miraculousorgan” (2.2.544–545). Beyond a reasonable doubt, Kit Marlowe did not diein Deptford and he went on, with the indispensable aid of William Shakespeare,to bring out Venus and Adonis, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and theother immortal poems and plays. Murder will out, even if it is only staged.