Classes in the Literature of the English Renaissance often leave students with the impression that Shakespeare was the only playwright making money for almost an entire century. Rarely are we reminded that Thomas Kyd's sole success, The Spanish Tragedy, played for nearly two years. Seldom do curriculum synopses include John Lyly, Thomas Nashe and Robert Greene. Oh, but our teachers couldn't ignore that brat-pack leader of the Elizabethan Age, Christopher Marlowe.
In The Lamentable History of Dr. Faustus—Marlowe's most well-known play today—a professor willingly sells his soul to the devil. In Edward II, a king cavorts with his boyfriend, to the disapproval of his advisers. In The Jew of Malta, his title character murders innocents in revenge on oppressive authorities, and the conquering hero of Tamburlaine likewise slaughters whole populations with callous impunity. Not content to shock people with his lurid themes, Marlowe was also renowned for carousing, brawling and making outrageous public pronouncements—claiming that Jesus and John The Baptist were bedfellows, for example. When he was killed in a tavern scuffle at the age of 29, rumors circulated that he was a spy for the monarchy, and his murder, a set-up engineered for political purposes.
Playwright Harlan Didrickson speculates on the brief and turbulent life of Christopher Marlowe, whose legacy continues to arouse controversy more than four centuries later, in his biodrama entitled Marlowe. This world premiere play makes its debut on June 12, produced in conjunction with Bailiwick Repertory's Pride series.
MARY SHEN BARNIDGE: Christopher Marlowe isn't much of a household name nowadays. What motivated you to write about him?
HARLAN DIDRICKSON: The initial inspiration occurred 18 years ago when I was pursuing my MFA at Carnegie-Mellon University. I was intrigued by Christopher Marlowe's untimely death—who could have murdered him and gotten away with it?
MSB: So you set out to solve the mystery?
HD: Yes. As I did more research, I became fascinated with his life. Not only did he write beautiful plays, but he addressed subjects that were COMPLETELY taboo in his day: Faustus questions the wisdom of religion. Edward abdicates his throne for love of another man. This is what made Marlowe one of the most notorious figures in Elizabethan England, before he was brutally murdered.
MSB: History portrays Marlowe as a rebel, all right, and his early death contributes to his enigma. Why do you think that is?
HD: I think we're all intrigued by 'bad boys' who meet an untimely end, like James Dean or River Phoenix. I think we enjoy projecting 'what-if' fantasies of what their lives COULD have been—'What if he had lived longer?' 'What if he had kept writing?' But more important, to me, are the 'why?' questions—why did these young men do and say things that put them on a collision course with society? Then the 'why' questions beg the 'what' questions—what made Dean, or Phoenix, or Marlowe, who they were? What took them to that dark place? I think it's their very darkness that haunts us.
MSB: There's no argument that Marlowe styled himself a social outlaw, but is there any hard evidence that he was gay?
HD: I found nothing in my research that said he was involved with women. His society actively promoted intimate relationships between men. Boys were schooled 16 hours a day, six days a week. Four boys would live in dormitory rooms with only two beds. But while homosexuality was defined very differently then, I think if anyone looks at his writing, it's pretty clear that he was gay. It would have been incredibly risky for a playwright to portray a king as homosexual in those days, and when you read Edward II, with its passages of passionate love between men, it's hard to imagine it being written by a straight man. So if there's scant evidence that Marlowe was gay, there is even LESS evidence that he was straight.
MSB: Do you think he was really irreligious—Faustus repents, after all—or was blasphemy just another way to attract attention?
HD: I think that Marlowe's education led him to suspect that organized religion was developed by rulers as a method to keep their subjects in check when the laws failed to do so. Marlowe asked questions that those ruling parties were unwilling to answer. And I think this is what ultimately made him a target for assassins.
MSB: Your play suggests that his wild ways may have been deliberately perpetrated to serve as a distraction to his undercover operations—is this speculation, or do reports support this?
HD: Queen Elizabeth's Secret Service was known to instigate coups in order to quell them. Now THERE's a parallel to our time.
MSB: Your play's plot includes stealth murders, double-crosses, secret missions, cover-ups, people-in-power moved by obsessive emotions to irresponsible actions—all devices similar to those in Marlowe's OWN dramas. Is this deliberate?
HD: When you write a play about an Elizabethan dramatist, set in Elizabethan England, and you include his Elizabethan cronies and excerpts from his Elizabethan sonnets and plays, the structure of the play naturally falls toward Elizabethan drama.
MSB: Did you intend your play to be a historical re-interpretation, or are we to enjoy it purely as an espionage thriller and/or love story?
HD: In creating a dramatic story from authentic characters, I exercised some poetic license. So while my play is not, in any way, a documentary of Christopher Marlowe's life, it is—in EVERY way—a look at the facts from a fresh perspective.
MSB: Do your own gay sensibilities influence your work?
HD: Being gay is part of my 'fabric'. And so, of course, it influences my work. I find that I enjoy writing about relationships, but I think being gay provides me with yet another dimension, and that is the opportunity to view the situation from an angle generally inaccessible to straight playwrights.
Critics' Picks
Dave DaVinci Saves the Universe, House Theatre at the Viaduct, through July 9. The House rocks and the frat party continues in this time travel tale, a streamlined piece of storytelling in which House also finds bittersweet resonance and new emotional depth. JA
Pigs Have Wings, City Lit Theatre, through June 12. 'A woman marrying a man who looks like YOU would feel as if she were committing bigamy!' To find out what the lady means by THAT, see City Lit's adaptation of P.G. Wodehouse's madcap comedy. MSB
Seven Guitars, Congo Square at Duncan YMCA Chernin Center, through June 12. This acclaimed staging of August Wilson's play set in the late 1940's is the kind of show folks will claim they saw, even if they didn't. See it for real and you won't have to lie. MSB
The Subject Was Roses, Writers' Theatre, Glencoe, through July 10. This 1965 Tony winner—about a boy's return from WWII to witness his parents' crumbling marriage—benefits from Shade Murray's sensitive direction and an outstanding ensemble. RR
