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David's avatar

Nashe writing that Marlowe “contemned his life in comparison of the liberty of speech.” does not mean he 'condemned' his life. The word is not 'condemned', which makes no sense grammatically within the sentence. It is 'contemned' . It means that he was contemptuous of his life in comparison to his belief in the liberty of speech. Not only does that work grammatically, it also works better in describing Marlowe's character.

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Ros Barber's avatar

Correction appreciated and made.

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John Meredith's avatar

Fascinating exploration of some details with which I was heretofore unfamiliar, Ros, re Vaughn, Golden Grove, and the man in Valladolid.

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Robert Challis's avatar

I was going to ask you about footnote 6, but I was able to find the detail myself. Some impressive detective work! http://marlowe-shakespeare.blogspot.com/2010/07/

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Carol P's avatar

What is most interesting about the Valladolid episode is not that the man at the English College was the poet, he was not, but that someone who plausibly knew more than most about what happened at Deptford thought that he might be. Vaughan wanted to compare descriptions of the Valladolid man and 'our' Marlowe, which only makes sense if he thought it possible that the poet did not die at Deptford.

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Ros Barber's avatar

Exactly this.

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Robert Challis's avatar

It also shows the power of coincidence and the risk of jumping to conclusions before the facts have been thoroughly checked.

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Ellis's avatar

Do you think it is genuine or might it have been their marketing efforts?!

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Ros Barber's avatar

The inquest document?

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Ros Barber's avatar

I would say the narrative is well controlled by people connected to the secret service, so like a good proportion of scholars who have studied it i think it is highly likely to be a false version of events.

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Ellis's avatar

No - the intrigue in general.

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Robert Challis's avatar

Have just read “A Groatsworth of Wit”, the whole thing, including Greene’s letter to his long suffering wife, for the first time. What a grimly fascinating piece, and what light it sheds of the fate of four poets, playwrights all recorded tragically dead within a year of its writing.

Re identification of the upstart crow, connection to Shakespeare as far as I can see rests entirely on one word, Shake-Scene. Strongly against that identification is the date of Groatsworth of wit, 1592, well before there is any evidence of Shakespeare as a successful man in theatre. In the section before the upstart crow reference, Roberto meets a player who commissions him to write plays. This player tells that he has himself written “Dialogue of Dives”, “moral of man’s wit”, has thundered on stage the 12 Labours of Hercules, refers also to Delfrigus and The King of Fairies, and played the Devil in “Highway to Heaven”. I am wondering which of these can be identified with known plays, and how this may help identify the Player. I have read an article by Daryl Pinksen https://www.marlowe-society.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/jl06_03_pinksen_upstartcrowalleyn.pdf making the case for Edward Alleyn. Case hinges somewhat on reference to ‘able to afford a windmill’ to Possible evidence Alleyn wrote Tambercam and (more strongly) a reference years earlier to Alleyn and a crow in Borrowed feathers. I’d be interested to know what other evidence there is.

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Ros Barber's avatar

I looked into those plays… nowhere to be found. I’ll publish a piece on Groatsworth here shortly.

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David's avatar

Isn't there reference to Delfrigus and The King of Fairies, etc as associated with Alleyn in one of Nashe's essays? Not sure whch one, now, but it seems I read it somewhere. The windmill shows up in Fair Em that Wraight said was written by Alleyn.

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Ros Barber's avatar

I’d love it if you found it. I searched EEBO but EEBO search doesn’t work like it used to.

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Carol P's avatar

"Sundry other sweete Gentlemen I doe know, that haue vaunted their pennes in priuate deuices, and tricked vp a company of taffaty fooles with their feathers, whose beauty if our Poets had not peecte with the supply of their periwigs, they might haue antickt it vntill this time vp and downe the Countrey with the King of Fairies, and dined euery day at the pease porredge ordinary with Delfrigus. "

Possibly the above? From Nashe's preface to Greene's Menaphon (1589)

Page 17 (numbered 3) at:

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=8B5LAAAAMAAJ&pg=PR5#v=onepage&q&f=false

Or in plain text at:

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Preface_to_Greene%27s_Menaphon/Text

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Ros Barber's avatar

Brilliant, Carol, thank you. Bizarrely I am often referring to Menaphon’s preface but a different section; the last time I read the whole thing was presumably *before* I read the whole of Groatsworth. The extract alone doesn’t link to Alleyn I don’t think but I will look at it in context.

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David's avatar

Yes. Menaphon. And the sentence that follows "pease porridge ordinary wth Delphrigus", is; "But Tolosa [Toulouse] hath forgotten that it was sometime sacked, and beggars that ever they carried their fardels on footback, and in truth no marvel, whenas the deserved reputation of one Roscius is of force to enrich a rabble of counterfeits. "

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Robert Challis's avatar

I'll look forward to it.

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David's avatar

There is a windmill in Fair Em, that Dolly Wraight says was written by Alleyn. Of course, as we know, Alleyn later built windmill. Was that a "So there, Robin Greene!" moment?

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Ros Barber's avatar

Yes, I wasn’t convinced by Dolly’s arguments for his authorship as I remember. My feeling is that Alleyn had this in mind for years as a philanthropic ambition and Green was simply noting it as an identifying peculiarity.

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Robert Challis's avatar

Further connection I forgot to mention. I read somewhere a Stratfordian blog which connected writer and printer Robert Crowley with Dialogue of Dives and Moral of man’s wit, and also connected Robert Crowley to Shakespeare of Stratford, claiming the Player Roberto met was supposed to be William Shakespeare. I couldn’t find any other references to verify this. Wondering if anyone has any other information.

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Ros Barber's avatar

The Player is such a perfect fit for Edward Alleyne and such a poor fit for Shakespeare that we don’t need to look elsewhere.

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Robert Challis's avatar

Do "Dialogue of Dives" and "Moral of Man's Wit" reference any known works and author?

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Ros Barber's avatar

All the plays Roberto mentions, if they existed at one point, are lost. There are a lot of lost plays. There is even a Lost Plays Database: https://lostplays.folger.edu/Main_Page

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