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    Edmonson On Marlowe and Shakespeare

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    gomezin88

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    2s 2 4. “The Woks of Thomas Nase, Ronald B. MeKerrov,s vol, (Onfoxt Bas Blackwel 958, vo. mp. “This poem was poled inthe section ented Light Conc of Laven Two Boks of yes 6266). Set The Compl Engh Wake of Tomas Campion 4. A.HL Bille London Sdgwick & Jackin, 1909), Dp. 6 ‘Oeste in the At of Engl Paes, im Balle ed), ork, p35. “This quotation i ten rom Thomas Wright's tease onthe emovon, The Faso of he Minden Gove (te) ed Thomas ,Stoan (Urbana: Univecty flies Press, 97g, Ms “The objeto the speaker's desire are not only els but abo presen as Awe See Pal Eémmondson and Saney Wel, Shakespeare’ Sonne (Oxford Onford Univers ress 2000. PP 2-3: ‘The relaionhip between A Lowers Complaint and the Sonics hs been muuch dette See for example Wendy Wall, Th imprint of Gender: Author ant Plain nthe gis Rea (Khace, NY: Comell University Pres, on), p20. “The exception to these general ues is Sonnet 8, here the ott and sete linked wih an enambment and Somer, which is writen in amc ten rete Shakespeare alo occasionally varied his eof the sonn form: Sonnet 9a ifleen ines, andthe rweve lines of Sonne 26 ae wren inching couples ‘Spectatorial Essays by Lytton Strachey, ed. James Strachey (London: Chatto and Windus, 1961, p. 75 Fepe in Peer Jones (), Shakespeare: The Somes. A Cacho (Landon: Marla, 177.5 Recent real wor ha explored Shkespeare'scommitmento case inpin as well arin dramatic performance, Se for example alas Ee, Shkepete a {itary Dramas (Camb: Cambridge Univeray Press, 20) Helen Vendler, The dre of Shakespeare's Somct (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Universe ress, 1997p. 34 See Burrow’ notes to Sonnet sn Complete Sones ene Ros 0. Devil, Dance of Rin, ig Pre Chapter 10 ‘The narrative poetry of Marlowe and Shakespeare 1599 was an impoctant year in the afterlife of Christopher Marlowe, as well as, inthe life of Wiliam Shakespeare. in As You [ike It (probably writen in 1599), the selfconsciously Petrarchan Phoebe flls for Ganymede (Rosalind in dis guise) and says: ‘Dead shepherd, now I find thy saw of might: / “Whoever loved that loved not at first sigh” G. . 82-3) Shakespeare, on whose writing. thus far Marlowe had already had a considerable influence, here quotes dioety from the erotic narrative poem, Hero and Leander (sesiad 1. 174-6) published in 1598, probably for the first time. Why should Shakespeare have called Marlowe 2 ‘shepherd’ and what might this say about Marlowe's ongoing reputation as well as the relationship between the rwo poew? 1599 also saw the anonymous publication of Marlowe's poem, ‘Come live with me, and be my love’ in an anthology called The Passionate Pilgrim. It ‘became one of the most famous and influential ofall Elizabethan love lyrics, provoking responses from, among others, Sir Walter Raleigh and John Donne. ‘The poem was frst published without a ttle but became known as “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love’ in England's Helicon, published a year later. A generation of poets wrote Iysics inspired by it. Shakespeare, who had {implicitly referred to Mariowe many times already, responded with a whole phy rather than a poem, When Phocbe praises the ‘dead shepherd’, whose bservations about love at frst sight she is now experiencing at first hand, it 's as if there is also a covert acknowledgment of the debe of gratitude Shakespeare owed his dead, and passionate, counterpart Marlowe was murdered ar the age of twenty-nine in May 1393. ‘Shepherd seems a singularly inappropriate name for someone who was not only a scholar andl an atist, bur also a py and a fraudster, aman who easily became angry and fought duels, « proactive and offensive atheist with a touch of the magician about him. As William Hazlitt observed: ‘there isa lust of power in his writings, a hunger and thirst after unrighteousness, a glow of the ™ imagination, unhallowed by anything but is own energies'* But ‘shepherd? does evoke the pastoral wo:ld of the Greek idyil and eclogue, and conjures ‘up images of ‘natural poets (as well as poets of nature) competing om hillsides, ‘Similarly, the lasical tradition chirnes most readily with Marlowe's sisteenth, ‘century reputation as a writer. Michael Drayton imagined Marlowe "bath [ing]... in the Thespian springs’, possessing ‘those brave translunary things, / "That the frst Poets had’, as well as noticing Marlowe's ‘fine madness’ which ‘xightly should possess a Poet's brain’* ‘Marlowe has survived in both te srudy and the theare as much for his own subjectivity as for his poetic achievement. No one thus far in English letters had ‘celebrated and written about homosexual desire as Marlowe did, whether tis ‘was Edward I love for Gaveston, the god Neptune's amorous and explicitly sensual desire for Leander, or Jupiter dandiing the boy Ganymede in his lp at the beginning of Dido, Queer of Carthage. In As You Lite I, Phoebe herself'is desirous of another Ganymede (Rosalind in disguise), @relaonship that is fraught with the tensions of same-sex deste. Shakespeare is, in a way, acknowledging Marlowe's sexuality by having Phoebe quote ths parila line at this partcnlar moment. ‘Another literary gloss on Shakespeare's “dead shepherd’ is Richard Ramfield's homoerotic “The Teats of an Affectionate Shepherd Sick for Love; or The Complaint of Daphnis for the Love of Ganymede’, published {in 1594 the year after Marlowe died. Not only does Barnfield provide a third Ganymede ta the dizzying possibilities of how Shakespeare’ original audien ‘ces might have reacted to Rosalind, but the title of his poem also suggests 2 homoerotic connection with the ttle that was chosen for Marlowe's lysic “Come live with me, and be my love’, Basnficld’s shepherd was affectionate; Marlowe's would become passionate. When Shakespeare quotes Hero and Leander in 4s You Like I, he puts into circulation a series of cultural and poetic resonances, Between Bitntield, Marlowe and Shakespeare, passionate, affec tionate and dead shepherds serve as useful pointers to sexually ambiguous Ganymedes who crackle with erotic tension ‘Marlowe's poetic enezgies were drawn from his deep knowledge of classical texts. He translated Ovid and Lucan and, as he did so, helped to forge an English poetic rooted in the classical world. While appropriating, he inno- vated. Phoebe in As You Like It talks of Marlowe's ‘saw of might’ in the First Folio of 1623 Ben Jonson praised “Marlowe's mighty line’ (which may or may not have been meant complimentarly). By the time he died, Marlowe had introduced and mastered the full sherorical impact of the fambic line. He is also the poet ofthe rhyming coupler, and pushed it in new directions for the fisst dime since Chaucer, finding within its intensity great wit and ironic a ‘The namative poetry of Marlowe and Shakespeare tension. This prevails throughout his translation of Ovid's Amores, or Elegies, very likely Marlowe's first major poetic achievement. An appreciation of ‘Marlowe's eroticismn and use ofthe couplet in Onid’s Bleies provides a crucial context in which to appreciate Hero and Leander. “There were at least six editions of Marlowe's Ovidian translations before 1599, the year that saw Ovid’ Hlegies banned and burned as part of the Bishop (of London's moral and literary clampdown. Ovid's Hlegies were not as widely read as his other work in the Elizabethan period: Marlowe put chem firmly on the literary map. ‘Elegy’, originally « Greek term for a poem of grief, came through Latin adaptations, especially Ovid's love elegies, to encompass poems on almost any kind of subject. In transleting them, Marlowe also rewrote them, instigating @ new kind of classical taste among his contemporaries. ‘Stephen Orgel suggests that ‘ina sense, this was Marlowe's sonnet sequence, the psychomachia of a poetlover whose love is both his crestion and his ‘ubimate monomania, frustration and despair’? In this context, Marlowe's achievement represents the most sexually frank sequence of poems in the period (until the appearance of Shakespeare's sonnets in 1605) ‘Marlowe sounds as though he is starting a new tradition when he wetes the {allowing atthe beginning ofthe first book: We which were Ovid's five hooks nove ate three, For these before che res preferreth he; [reading five thou plan's of tediousness, ‘Two ta'en away, thy labour wl be les. ‘With Muse prepared | meant to sing of arms, Choosing a subject fi for ferce sem Both verses were alike sill Love (men say) Began to smile and took one foot away. ‘Rash boy, who gave thee power to change line? ‘We are the Muses’ prophets, none of thine. (ens) Echoing Virgil's ‘of arms and the man I sing’, Marlowe claims that classical battles are best avoided, Here is classical love instead, anda version condensed. fom five books to three, Already, there is weyness in the use of the couplet, Marlowe is in fll control, able to involve hearsay ~ ‘men say’ ~ and call attention to his own use of metre ~ ‘took one foot away’ ~ and just at the moment when Love himself smiles. Here, too, is & good example of Marlowe's empowering ambiguity. ‘Rash boy’ is Cupid, but might also refer to Marlowe himself, reducing Ovid's five books to three and serving them up ‘in witry, English iambic pentametes ‘What kind of translation is Marlowe's? A comparison with Ben Jonson's translation of one of Ovid's Blegis makes clear Marlowe's sensual and aes. thestic agenda. Firs, Marlowe on the immortality of verse: “Therefore when fin and iron wear away, Verse is immortal, and shall ne'er decay. (115.383), Jonson translates the same lines as: ‘The suffeing ploughshare or the flit may wear, But heavenly poesy no death can fear. ‘And a the end of te same elegy, Jonson bas: “Then when this bod falls in faneral fre, >My name shall ive, and my bes part aspire ‘Whereas Marlowe has: ‘Then though death rakes my bones in funeral fie, Tilive, and ashe pulls me down mount higher. 5. 41-2) In both examples, Marlowe's dition is tougher and mioce physical. His ‘fine’ and ‘ron’ stand in stark contrast o Jonson's ‘ploughshare’ Jonson's body only fils (ike Dido's) inco ‘funeral fire’; Matlowe'sis raked (perhaps suagestve of ‘wracked’, too) by death himself: That last line is the most revealing of Marlowe's power for translation. Marlowe does not eare about his ‘name’ like Jonson lnstead, he imagines his whole self, rising phoenix-lke from the flames, ever tumaphantly, mounting (aches than merely asptin) higher. Iris Doctor Fausts’sambiion that streams through this couple: ‘0, leap up to my God Who puls me down? (DeciorFoustus, scene 1, line 74). Here indeed is Marlowe the overseacher. Theres, t00, an echo of the end of his particular elegy in the death Of Shakespeare's Richard I Moune, mount, my soul: hy seats up on high, ‘Whale my ros Bes sinks downward, hese wo de. (5. ur2) ‘As a wandlator, Meslowe works with an apparently simple, yet empowering verbil cexure, rooted firmly in the-physial and sensual world, making Jonson's pedantic lieralism pale by comparison. Marlowe's translation of Ovid overseaches itself into Shakespeare's English history play, where i ‘becomes appropriated and subtly Christinised. “The muscular physicality of Marlowe's translation pervades the rest of Ovid's Beis, relating most obviously tothe language of sexual desire. For v6 The narrative poetry of Marlowe and Shakespeare the most part Ovid's Begs present a predominantly heterosexual gaze of desire, one primarily determined by the classical text itself. Having nothing. ‘peter t0 do in the middle of a summer's day, the poet sees his beloved ‘Corinna come into the room wearing ‘along loose gown’. The couplets here devour the beloved with an intensity of gazing which easly evokes the heat of passion with repetition and exclamation. ‘The reader is defined by what the poet himself sees. He is totaly in control of our poine of view, manipulating. ‘out perspectives and feclings. He encourages us to gaze and then comically excludes us from the ensuing love bout, Stark naked af she stood before mine eye, ‘Not one wea in her body eould 1 spy ‘What ams and shoulders did T touch and se, How apt her breasts were ta be pressed by mel How smooth e belly under her wast sa I, iow large a leg and what a lusty high! “To leave the rest, al liked me passing well: [linge her naked body, down she fll Judge you the rer: being tired she bade me kis; Jove send me more euch aiemoons as this. (1.5.17-26) Rhyming couplecs might here have limited voyeurism with stitedness, but Marlowe's achievement is instead one of engaging and inevitable flow. He as us to follow him, but then playfully foreshorcens the reader's own sense of climax by pushing us away from his own intimate pleasure: satisfied poet, tantalsed reader. ‘At one point Marlowe's use of the couplet even evokes the sensation of essing with tongues: “Tisil they pleased so much, for in my lips Lay her whole tongue hid, mine in hers che dips. (2. 5.57-8) Atcheir wittiest Marlowe's couplets anticipate Lord Byron (who, lke Leander, ‘also swam the Hellespont) by 200 years: ‘Thus I complained, but Love unlocked his quiver, ‘Took out he sha, ordained my heart to shiver. (1.3.35-6) And later Graecinus (well wot) thou told'st me once {could not be in love wich swo at once, By thee deceived, by thee surprised am I, For naw Ileve two women equally ca Both are-well favoured, both in rich aray, Which fe the lovelies itis hard to say. ‘This seems the fest, s0 does thao me, [And this doth please me most, and so doth she. (2.20. -8) ‘There is a balance in these lines which seeks no justification beyond the pleasure of itself, cerinly no moral one. Couplets like these ~ apparently spontaneous, daring and confessional, yet finely uned and selFironic ~ sepre- sent Marlowe at his mischievous and Byronic best. In contrast stands ‘Shakespeare's Sonnet 144 (Two loves I have of comfort and despair’), which finds that two lovers present 2 complex moral dilemma, rather than an ‘opportunity for Ovidian sexual pleasure. Marlowe shares with Ovid a liberat- {ng guiltlessness that never offers an apology. Ovid’ Hlgies move beyond the mere erotic to a frankness about sex which ‘ight be more properly termed pomographic, @ trait that Marlowe's trans- lation clearly relishes. On occasion, nothing is left to the imagination. Here is the poet playfully describing and addressing his penis: Yer nocwithstanding, lke one dead it lay, Drooping mote than a rose pulled yesterday, Now, when he should not jr, he bolts uprighs, And craves his task, and seeks to be at fight [Le down with shame, and see thou stir no more, Seeing thou woulds: deceive me as before. Nay more, the wench did not disdain @ wit ‘To take icin her hand and play with ‘But when she saw it would by no means stand, Bur sll drooped down, regarding not her hand : 6.6570, 75-6) And the poet, alas, cannot make a stand. This elegy ends with the disappointed mistress pouring warer on the bedsheets to fool her maid into thinking she has had sex. Thomas Nashe would indulge in a more detailed description of ereaile dysfunction in The Choice of Valentines or Nashe His Dildo ($0 porno- ‘graphic that it was not published until 1899, and then only by private sub- scription), and the theme and tone would be taken up in the seventeenth century by the Parl of Rochester in poems such as "The Imperfect Enjoyment’, “On his Prick’, and ‘A Curse of his Pintle’. By contrast, in Shakespeare's Sonnet 151 the poet has no problems experiencing an erection (at the volta or turing point of the poem) and one which is heppily, proudly, sustained in “>. perfect relationship to is mistress until the end of the poem: The narrative poetry of Marlowe and Shakespeare "No want of conscience hold it that I call Hye love for whose dear love I ise an fill (Sonnet 5, lines 13-14) Herein does Shakespeare combine sexual with poetic tlumph over Ovid, Marlowe and Nashe, and establishes his anxiety of influence over Rochester, Heo and Leaner would have been impossible without Marlowe's translation ‘of Ovid's Hegies, rooted as they are in an honest, yet ever playful eroticism. If ‘one of the achievements of the couple in translation was to intertwine the lovers, in Hero and Leander, the technique drives the reader inevitably forward, s95 times lke the strokes of strong swimmer, to the moment when the couple Jie both in each other's arms chained (2.306). The poem isan epylion: ashore, semantic epic. Leander is as heroic asthe couples which deseribe him. ‘The opening of the poem seis the scene in atone of voice not dissimilar to the beginning of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet: On Hellespont, guilty of rue love's blood, In view and eppasterwo cites stood ra) Bur, since “Apollo courted Hero for her hain’ (1.6), we quickly understand that any tragic intonation is being thinly applied by Maslowe. Like the arial flowers on Hero's veil which are overtaken by her own perfumed breath (4.19-22), there is only the appearance of tragedy in Maclowe's poem. Its real essence is one of erotic, comic romance. Like the beloved in ‘Come live with me, and be my love’, Hero is dressed in. 4 "ele" (11s) with ‘a myrde wreath’ (1.17) for her head, Likewise, the coral around the tops of Hero’s boots finds a counterpart in the ‘coral clasps’ on the ‘elt of straw’ thatthe poet promises his beloved. But Hero's krtle is stained “with the blood of wretched lovers slain’ (1.16). Marlowe's mockcheroic tone of voice helps to subvert the poem's status as an epic. Later, Hero is described in terms anticipative of Shakespeare's Cleopatra on her barge, who makes 'a gap in narure’ (Antony and Cleopatra, 2. 2. 25) So lovely fur was Hero, Venus's oun, ‘As Nature wept, thinking she was undone, Because she rook more ftom her than she lef, ‘And of such wonsirous beauty her bereft. 58) Just asthe people rush to see Cleopatsa, so they rush to see Hero, Marlowe

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