History Play: The Lives and Afterlife of Christopher MarloweA gloriously playful retake of the biographies of Shakespeare and Marlowe. Working with hard facts and a healthy dose of conjecture, History Play questions the purpose of biography in a stunning narrative of the imagination.'About anyone so great as Shakespeare, it is probable that we can never be right; and if we can never be right, it is better that we should from time to time change our way of being wrong.' T. S. EliotMark Twain likened writing the biography of Shakespeare to reconstructing the skeleton of a brontosaurus -- using 'nine bones and six hundred barrels of plaster of Paris'. We work with a handful of facts and a pile of conjecture. All biographies of Shakespeare, from the wayward to the academic, use the same few-score hard facts kneaded together with legend, then leavened by a dash of zeitgeist and a large dollop of author's imagination. |
Contents
CHAPTER ONE Prefaces to Shakespeare | 3 |
CHAPTER TWO Une Histoire Inventée | 29 |
CHAPTER THREE Catch My Soul | 48 |
Copyright | |
15 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
actors Alchemist Antwerp appears Baines Bakeless Bene't Byrd Cambridge Canterbury Catholic Christopher Marlowe Claudio Monteverdi Coryate court death Deptford Dowland Dr Dee drama Duke Duncan-Jones Earl Eleanor Bull Elizabeth Elizabethan Elsinore England English comedians English Renaissance Culture espionage Essex Ferdinando Stanley Frizer Fynes Moryson Gosson Grantley and Roberts Hamlet Henry Hesketh Italian Italy Jews John Kit's later letter London Lord Burghley Lord Strange Low Countries Mantua Marlowe and English Marlowe's Monteverdi Nashe Oliver Laurens Oliver's Padua performance perhaps Peter Paul Rubens play players plot poem poet portrait Queen Reckoning Rheims Richard Rubens scholar Secret Services seems Sir Francis Walsingham Sir Robert Cecil Skeres sonnets Southampton Spanish Stephen Gosson Strange's Stratford Tamburlaine tavern theatre Thomas Nashe Thomas Walsingham Tom Watson Tragicall History troupe Ungentle Shakespeare Urry Venice Vincenzo Watson William Shakespeare writing wrote young