Quote:

Quote:

Quote:
"No writer was ever more autobiographical than he was--it was a serious limitation upon him, especially for a dramatist. His creations are very much projections of himself--Tamburlaine, Dr. Faustus, the Jew of Malta,"

Rowse, A. L. Christopher Marlowe: His Life and His Work. Evanston, New York: Harper & Row, 1964

So one of the most pre-eminent Shakespearian Scholars of the 20th century was more than convinced that Marlowe wrote from a biographical standpoint, so much so that it directly effected and limited his creative output.



Great quote, Tom. Can you enlarge on this? It has never been clear to me exactly how this would be the case with Marlowe. I'm not contradicting the esteemed Dr. Rowse, just wondering how he transforms that assertion into an argument.



What I'm talking about is autobiography the way Hamlet is supposed to be--with a real life person behind each of the important characters, and specific incidents like the tennis flare-up alluded to. I can't remember even the duels we know Marlowe was involved in getting into his plays--but I'm not good at remembering details of plays, so they could well be there.


--Bob G.




This is a shallow approach to "Hamlet" - or indeed to any play. To say "Hamlet" is autobiographical does not mean the play is a representational skit of the writer's life. It is a reworking of Saxo with a constellation of personal parallels woven in to express the playwright's inner life in the context of a universally resonant drama, written in lines that simply refuse to stop echoing in the human heart.

Feste