fajrdrako | Reading more about Marlowe

So now I've read Christopher Marlowe: The Muse's Darling by Charles Norman.

Unlike all the other Marlowe biographies I've been reading recently, which are more or less new, this was published in 1946. I had wondered what they were saying about him back then. There's been a surprising amount of recent research and revised interpretation, though the basic information is similar.

In the past I have read and ranted about biographies in which the author seems to hate the subject - bios where they miss no chance to tell us what a rotten bastard the guy was. I've always thought that was annoying. I discovered with this book that it can also be irritating to have the author tell you at every chance what a wonderful, talented, exceptional person the subject was. It's like reading hagiography. Words like "genius" keep cropping up, and the best possible light is put on all Marlowe's actions.

I wondered what an author in 1946 would make of Marlowe's sexual orientation. The answer is: nothing. He quotes his more contentious statements (e.g., that St. John "used Christ in the manner of Sodom", that "all who love not tobacco and boys are fools") without comment; on the whole litany of heresies quoted by Thomas Kyd, Norman dismisses it as "table talk and tavern jokes" and "a reaction against superstition". The closest he comes to talking about Marlowe's love life is when he has moved into Thomas Walshingham's home: "What was it, in that somber spring, that turned the mind of Marlowe to love...? For, in the house of Mr. Thomas Walsingham in Kent, he is writing a love poem...." Many modern biographers conclude that it was because Marlowe had fallen in love with Thomas Walsingham. We will probably never know.

There's been a fair amount of information uncovered about Marlowe in the past fifty years. This was a good read, but the newer books are better. There is a tendency towards over-colourful description: "The stairs creak, there is a sound of tramping feet, and armed forms shuffling in the dark. A moment later a heavy hand smites loudly, authoritatively, on the door of Thomas Kyd's chamber...." Sometimes I imagined organ music in the background.