Just for the record--
--there's absolutely no historical evidence anywhere that Thomas Walsingham and Christopher Marlowe were lovers.
None.
Hell, there's not even any evidence that Kit was actually homo- or bisexual, except for a single line in the Baines libel ("All they that love not tobacco and boys are fools") which was attributed to Kit by somebody who was trying to get him killed. And some vaguely slanted/slanderous comments made after his death about the circumstances thereof--which are the same sources that give us the inaccurate information that he was killed in a tavern brawl, so we take with a certain amount of salt.
Oh, yes, and Kit included two homosexual relationships in his plays--one in Edward II, and one in Dido.
So where did this scurrilousness come from?
Fiction writers and literary critics. We made it up. Based on some textual suggestiveness and the endless search to have something interesting to tell people about a writer about whom all the existing evidence could be typed on a 3x5 card.
Because it was interesting. We are naughty that way. Naughty, naughty, naughty. Which is why you should do your research from histories and primary sources, and not from fiction. *g*
There's also no historical evidence that William Shakespeare died of syphilis (or that he was bisexual). We made that up too. Based on a couple of references to venereal disease in the sonnets and the late plays. (The bisexuality thing comes from a whole buncha love poems to a young man of inadequately proven identity--and even existence.)
As a writer, I find this amusing, because by this theory I am certainly a torture, kidnapping and rape survivor, based on the content of a couple of my protagonist's histories. Also a military veteran. I'm also probably male and possibly immortal. *g* I might also be Richard Feynman.
Textual evidence ain't worth the paper it's printed on.
That said, I've read "Hero and Leander." And I think I know whose butt Kit was checking out. Besides, it's interesting, isn't it?
None.
Hell, there's not even any evidence that Kit was actually homo- or bisexual, except for a single line in the Baines libel ("All they that love not tobacco and boys are fools") which was attributed to Kit by somebody who was trying to get him killed. And some vaguely slanted/slanderous comments made after his death about the circumstances thereof--which are the same sources that give us the inaccurate information that he was killed in a tavern brawl, so we take with a certain amount of salt.
Oh, yes, and Kit included two homosexual relationships in his plays--one in Edward II, and one in Dido.
So where did this scurrilousness come from?
Fiction writers and literary critics. We made it up. Based on some textual suggestiveness and the endless search to have something interesting to tell people about a writer about whom all the existing evidence could be typed on a 3x5 card.
Because it was interesting. We are naughty that way. Naughty, naughty, naughty. Which is why you should do your research from histories and primary sources, and not from fiction. *g*
There's also no historical evidence that William Shakespeare died of syphilis (or that he was bisexual). We made that up too. Based on a couple of references to venereal disease in the sonnets and the late plays. (The bisexuality thing comes from a whole buncha love poems to a young man of inadequately proven identity--and even existence.)
As a writer, I find this amusing, because by this theory I am certainly a torture, kidnapping and rape survivor, based on the content of a couple of my protagonist's histories. Also a military veteran. I'm also probably male and possibly immortal. *g* I might also be Richard Feynman.
Textual evidence ain't worth the paper it's printed on.
That said, I've read "Hero and Leander." And I think I know whose butt Kit was checking out. Besides, it's interesting, isn't it?
short summary:
snerk.
Re: short summary:
Besides, there's something irrepressibly fascianting about the Gay James Bond of Elizabethan England. It just lends itself so well to a tag line.
Like, perhaps, "Gay James Bond of Elizabethan England."
Except you need to get "great poet" in there somewhere too.
Actually, we haven't got any good evidence that he was a spy, either, but the circumstances of his life and the company he kept certainly seem to imply it.
Slash is eternal
Interestingly enough, King James used a similar analogy to the Privy Council:Researchers aren't certain whether he thought this protested his innocence or was a common covert analogy for homosexuality.
Sources: Baines & James
Re: Slash is eternal
Ain't that the truth?
In nature, we have to find those patterns ourselves.
Re: Ain't that the truth?
Re: Slash is eternal
A problem does lie there, actually: so much of that stuff *was* boilerplate....
I suspect the whole popular image of Marlowe as gay comes out of the discoveries into his death (which seem to rule out the het love affair angle) and that dishy painting discovered in Corpus Christi.
[I have got to get myself a copy of King James and the History of Homosexuality; I've read it twice all the way through, but always a library copy. I know it has something about Marlowe rumors, but don't have it on hand. I wonder; has anybody done a study on precisely how Marlowe's reputation evolved in this way...]
Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated--
They start off fairly close to the coroner's inquest, and rapidly diverge into la la land--and that's actually where some of the suggestion of homosexuality comes from. Now, the charges of atheism, those date back to during his life time, so may be a little better founded. *g*
That's Elizabethan Atheism, however, which essentially means "Not Catholic, not Protestant."
Nicholls also points out that most of the copies of the resporations of the Corpus Christi portrait make Kit look a little more girly than he does in the original restoration: the hair's brown, not auburn, his skin is a nice scholarly minty green that most of us moderns would recognize as "cathode ray tan" (surely the height of fashion in Elizabethan days) rather than peachy, but ooo, that doublet.
And those eyes.
*g*
I like
Thomas Walsingham lived until 1630, interestingly (generally outlived the Hell out of everybody) and, if you ask me, died just time. *g*
Re: Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated--
One more tidbit from Marlowe's writings: "Live with me and be my love" never mentions the gender of the beloved, clearly comes from Ovid and pastoral tradition (which involves same-sex romance), and in period kirtle was still primarily used to describe men's garments, not women's.
A book I found but never managed to read through (aside from checking the index references to Marlowe) was Bruce R. Smith's Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare's England which looks at the writing of the period.
I am such a geek...
Re: Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated--
I'm sure there was contemporary scandalmongering in the mix, but it does seem to me that Marlowe got put onto the list of Great Gay Forebears around the turn of the C19th-C20th and this was then constantly recirculated through popular works, like the Rowse one that![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
cheshyre suggests.
I'd also hazard (This is Not My Field) that works such as Edward II had dropped out of the canon and that interest only revived with that late C19th endeavour to produce scholarly editions of Elizabethan/Jacobean/Restoration drama. And lots of these works did not get produced, even in 'club' performances to avoid the theatre censorship, until the 1920s, because their moral universe was so different to that of late Victorians/Edwardians.
Re: Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated--
Well, yah. And there's a reason the only thing of Kit's that's taught in high schools is "The Passionate Shepherd." And I think the only thing of his that's regularly produced these days is the Faustus, although I'm a little surprised that Dido isn't. Edward II: too queer. Tamburlaine: too gory. Massacre: too corrupt. Jew: too antisemitic. (Although I still maintain the Christians are worse than the Jews in that play, and that's part of its point.)
Kinda cool that the guy's work is still too transgressive for the groundlings 400 years later. *g*
Re: Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated--
Re: Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated--
Obscure C16-17th plays
Re: Obscure C16-17th plays
Re: Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated--
It's a revenge play, certainly, but deliciously so. [Hmm... suddenly envisioning finding a Jewish theatre troupe to perform it...]
I've finally found a video store that has Derek Jarman's Edward II which I really want to see one of these days.
A local theater troupe did Faustus several months back, but I didn't get to see it.
Regarding the rest, I think the stories behind Tamburlaine and Massacre and Dido are considered too arcane for modern audiences. [A massacre in Paris? You're not talking about the French Revolution? Who knew?]
Kinda cool that the guy's work is still too transgressive for the groundlings 400 years later.
Reading this aloud to my husband, he replied, "Anybody can offend one person; there are plenty of people that offend everybody around them, but to manage to offend people born hundreds of years later who were raised to think of your timeperiod as stodgy? -- that takes talent."
Re: Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated--
I don't think there's enough left of Massacre to perform, sadly--it's practially down to just the stage directions in places. Dido's not any more arcane that Anthony & Cleopatra--and it has that wonderful heroine...
Derek Jarman's Edward II isn't bad. It has some really good bits--but it misses the fact that Kit's characterization of Isabella was unusual for the time in that it was sympathetic, and--well. :-P
But it has moments, definitely. Including the infamous red-hot poker. Ouch.
Re: Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated--
To which I say, go Will. Represent. *g*
Re: Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated--
<sigh>
Re: Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated--
Re: Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated--
"died just in time."
The desire for genealogy
Re: The desire for genealogy
On the other hand, there's no evidence that he was heterosexual, either. Or even that he had any close relationships with women. (One flowery dedicatory epistle on Tom Watson's poems to Mary of Pembroke doesn't count.) There's just no evidence either way.
On the other hand, some of his poetry is certainly gorgeously smutty, which leads one to think he knew what he was talking about (eee! Textual evidence! bad, no biscuit!)
Also Elizabethan sexual politics didn't require one to choose a Kinsey number. Gay and straight hadn't been invented yet. There was only fornicating and non-fornicating, and once you were fornicating, well, sodomy's a pretty nasty sin (the definition of sodomy included bestiality and sex with devils) but what the hell.
So to speak.
I'm just not going there. I certainly know enough people who insist they're Kinsey 1's.
But really, even the Kinsey scale is madly inadequate to reality.
Naughty
Personally, that's the reason I give when confronted with that annoying 'where do you get your ideas?' question ::grin::.
Wouldn't she be surprised to hear it?