Born in South Africa, Rodney Bolt was educated at Rhodes University, where a meeting with Athol Fugard led to an interest in the theatre. Bolt's play "Gandhi: Act Two," won the 1980 Durban Critic Circle's Play of the Year. Both he and Christopher Marlow read English Literature at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge - some years apart. He spent the 1980s as a writer and director in London theatre, and has won national travel-writing awards in Germany and the United States. Among his travel books are The Xenophobe's Guide to the Dutch and Take the Kids to Amsterdam.
T.S. Eliot wrote, "About anyone as 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." So, Bolt begins with the story and then supports it with circumstantial evidence from Marlowe's known life and the internal evidence in his plays and those purportedly written by Shakespeare.
T.S. Eliot wrote, "About anyone as 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." So, Bolt begins with the story and then supports it with circumstantial evidence from Marlowe's known life and the internal evidence in his plays and those purportedly written by Shakespeare.
The "story" is that Marlow was not killed in that famous brawl in the Mermaid tavern; rather, he faked his death and embarked on a career as a spy for Queen Elizabeth on the continent. It is a lively and remarkably plausible account which examines the meaning of truth. History is leavened through the memories of eyewitnesses who bring their interpretations and biases to the story. History is brought further into question when it is written second or third hand long after the events by those who did not personally observe the events or know the players except through the imperfect recollections of others. "Truth" becomes what is written down and gains acceptance. Much of what we know about Shakespeare fits especially into this last category.
Read the "Foreword" first, an extensive adaptation of Mark Twain's Is Shakespeare Dead?. Then, read the "Afterword." Bolt notes, "By assuming the seemingly preposterous, I have hoped to shake up our notions of the possible, ... in a spirit of fun, and with the intention of a little saucy iconoclasm." It is a work of "purest (or most impure) conjecture." Keep in mind the admonition of S.T. Coleridge to bring a "willing suspension of disbelief" to this entertaining and excellent "biography." Bolt mixes fact and fiction in this compelling tale. Footnotes in the text and extensive notes at the end elaborate the facts without impeding or detracting from Bolt's premise.
Christopher Marlowe (February) and William Shakespeare (April) were baptized in 1564 exactly two months apart. We all "know" that Shakespeare was the greatest dramatist of all time, and that Marlowe's equal promise was cut short in 1593. Bolt posits that the body, declared dead thirty-six hours (!) after the incident by no less than William Danby, coroner of the Queen's Household, was not Christopher Marlowe. This connection with Danby is just one more "proof" that Marlow was long-employed, perhaps as early as 1583, as a spy for Sir Francis Walsingham.
Christopher Marlowe (February) and William Shakespeare (April) were baptized in 1564 exactly two months apart. We all "know" that Shakespeare was the greatest dramatist of all time, and that Marlowe's equal promise was cut short in 1593. Bolt posits that the body, declared dead thirty-six hours (!) after the incident by no less than William Danby, coroner of the Queen's Household, was not Christopher Marlowe. This connection with Danby is just one more "proof" that Marlow was long-employed, perhaps as early as 1583, as a spy for Sir Francis Walsingham.
Internal evidence from plays attributed to Shakespeare but written after Marlowe's "death," clearly proves, in Bolt's imaginative biography, that Marlow actually wrote them. His father was a cobbler whose shop in Canterbury lay between the cattle market and the butchers. Imagine the smells, the blood, and the offal and read "The Merry Wives of Windsor" III.v. - "Have I lived to be carried in a basket, like a barrow of butcher's offal?" Or, read "King Lear" IV.vi. for a description of lying on the cliffs between Sandwich and Dover and gazing out to sea. Bolt contrasts Marlowe's skills in his Henry VI trilogy with the more pedestrian contributions of Shakespeare, who was basically a scribe writing out a fair copy from Marlowe's drafts. Given his humble beginnings, Shakespeare was able to bring a surer feel for the country folk in the few scenes he actually wrote. So, the stage is set for this delightful and thought-provoking history play wherein all the players have their entrances and exits. Like the plays themselves, this biography is filled with puns and other word play. Look no further than the title. The biography is, indeed, a play on history.
