Edward Alleyn and Christopher Marlowe
sat on the edge of the Rose Theatre Stage. Alleyn asked,
“Do
you favor his work?”
“I attended The Two Gentlemen of Verona at Cross Keys
Inn-Yard, light, mutable language, lacking stagecraft maturity, some amusing
lines like ‘water your ass.’ The groundlings burst their buttons. I hope to
meet this Shakespeare; he certainly has read Los Siete Libros de la Diana, literate fellow for a bumpkin. In
truth I was one before Cambridge.”
“He is fearsomely intelligent,
astonishing memory, can dredge things that most of us have long forgotten. He
also takes notes on everything. When we walk in the street and Shakespeare
hears a snatch of conversation that he finds interesting, down it goes in his
book.”
“How does he carry ink in the street?”
“Has what he calls lead pencils, no ink
needed.”
“I must meet him and beg one or find the
source of his inventory. “Is he a soldier, Edward?”
“Oh the name, I have heard an ancestor
fought at Bosworth Field.”
“Not the one who killed Richard? Please
introduce us.”
“I will. Have you seen Titus Andronicus?”
“Yes, now you mention it. Thundering
oratory, everybody yelling at the top of their voices, all sounding vaguely
similar, copious blood, I would wager that Shakespeare saw Tamburlaine.”
“Yes, he told me that he went twice and
greatly admired your work.”
“To the point he borrowed, or, let us
say, adapted a line here and there, captured the verse adequately. I think I
heard myself.”
“Does not everybody imitate?”
“I confess to having enjoyed the echo.
All of us strip bare the classics.”
Sometime afterwards, by coincidence or
destiny, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare both had plays running at
the Rose Theater, and Philip Henslowe arranged an introduction. Following an
exchange of pleasantries, news of current scandals, and banter about their both
having plays at The Rose, Marlowe said, “I had been eager to meet you since I
watched Two Gentlemen of Verona and Titus Andronicus. You always seem to be
hurrying off in the distance.”
“Trying
to get to my desk and write something new, the demand is without pause. I
adored Tamburlaine, and blush to
admit that the influence of your writing undeniably changed my style . . . ”
(This vignette was excerpted from the new novel, Discovering Will's Lost Years and Marlowe-Shakespeare Lost Play: Uncovering 16th and 21st-Century Mystery, Treachery and Obsession.
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