Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival (book)

There needs to be a word for someone who knows a lot about the works of Shakespeare, but comes far short of a Shakespearean. Last week, Ian McKellen appeared on Stephen Colbert and delivered “The Strangers’ Case” speech from Sir Thomas More (c.1591-1593). That man, McKellen, is a Shakespearean. He lives and breathes the work, all the work, even work like Sir Thomas More, which isn’t actually Shakespeare.

I have, on occasion, referred to myself as a Shakespearean, but only as short-hand. I do know much more about Shakespeare than your average person, and probably more than you. I can deliver a few speeches by heart, and deliver them well, I think. But that only goes so far. I am Shakespeare-passing, Shakespeare-fluent, Bardophilic.

I am not a Bardolotist. I do not worship him. I am also not a Shakespeare fantasist, one who receives or creates bold theories about Shakespeare the man, and warmly keeps and shares them as a kind of truth. We know nothing about Shakespeare’s personality, or his personal decision-making processes, apart from that which is apparent: He lived, he married, he fathered, he acted, he wrote plays, he was financially successful in business, he died. That’s it.

Like a lot of the cursorily Shakespearean, I do not know early enough about his contemporaries. I just read Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival, Stephen Greenblatt’s recent biography of Christopher Marlowe, which I was disappointed, though not surprised, to find that it includes not much more definitive information about its subject that one of the countless Shakespeare biographies.

I have stopped reading Shakespeare biographies altogether – no one knows anything about him and never will.

No, as in those other books, including Greenblatt’s own, the author finds a man (usually a man) who was in the same place and at the same time as Marlowe, and tells us an awful lot about them. He then infers many purely fictional things Marlowe may have done or experienced as a result of these theoretical associations.

Even worse. I did learn one thing for certain: That one portrait which is generally said to be of Christopher Marlowe? That isn’t even him. It was discovered at Cambridge in the 1950s and nearly discarded. It is unsigned and features no name, only the date and age of the sitter. This means it could be a portrait of any number of people, including Marlowe. But it is far more likely not to be him. However, I have seen this painting so many times, having been told that it is Marlowe, and so it has become him. But it’s not.

Marlowe has a fanciful reputation as the “bad boy” to Shakespeare’s married-with-children vibe. Born With Teeth by playwright Liz Duffy Adams (Dog Act) is a great recent addition to the SDU (Shakespeare Dramatic Universe™) depicting the writing relationship between the established Marlowe and the inexperienced Will (note: they were both born in 1564) collaborating on the plays that would become Henry VI parts one and two. Duffy plays upon the mythology of Marlowe – queer, brash, and probably a spy for the Queen. The great thing about Adams's play is how it suggests that our dearth of knowledge about Shakespeare may have been intentional; in brief, during a period of authoritarianism, the best way not to get murdered is never to share your thoughts.

Was Marlowe even queer, though? Greenblatt focuses his attention on three of Marlowe’s most familiar works; Tamburlaine, The Jew of Malta, Edward II, and Doctor Faustus, describing how each was terribly transgressive for its time. I have only ever seen Edward II (longer title: The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England, with the Tragical Fall of Proud Mortimer) in a solo adaptation that I will describe to you over drinks some day. This play is held up as evidence of Marlowe’s sexual identity,

anonymous sitter, unknown artist
"ad 1585, of his own age 21"
Found: Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
(Seriously. It's not him.)

The play centers on the (married) monarch’s intimate, possible romantic relationship with Piers Gaveston, to the neglect of his royal responsibilities. However, depicting a homosexual relationship does not necessarily make for a gay-positive play. While the time, attention and gifts Edward lavishes upon Gaveston enrages members of the monarch’s inner circle, would they not have been as troubled had Gaveston been a woman? The king is portrayed as a lovesick fool, unworthy and incapable of maintaining the crown, in much the same way his descendant Edward VIII would be some six hundred years later, over a woman who was considered unacceptable as a King's consort.

It is true, centering a queer relationship must have been a sensation. But the play Edward II is as homophobic as The Taming of the Shrew is misogynist or The Merchant of Venice is antisemitic. And just as Katherina is gaslit and abused into docility, and as Shylock receives a forced conversion into Christianity, Edward is assassinated in a grotesque parody of sodomy. Not merely conquered, but humiliated.

I mean. It was a different time. By today’s standards Marlowe isn’t so much controversial as he is in bad taste. The lesson of Doctor Faustus is entirely conventional. A mortal man sells his soul to the devil in exchange for twenty-four years of receiving pretty much anything he wants. In the case of Faustus, that means learning everything there is to know, and at first that includes standing on far flung mountain tops to view the heavens, and flying through the skies – riding a motherfucking dragon – to examine all the world.

In the end, however, when there is nothing left to know, he is reduced to visiting Rome to slap the Pope and debasing himself by seducing Helen of Troy, which just isn’t as special as you think it might be when you know she may not have been that into you otherwise. The last hour of his life, before he is literally dragged to Hell, Faustus laments and tries to pray and regrets and despairs. How much more devout can a play get? He FA, he FO. The play may have been offensive to the censors, but I can’t imagine a single audience member who didn’t take in this drama and then go straight from the playhouse to the church.

DID YOU KNOW ..? Once Sir Walter Raleigh introduced tobacco to Britain, the English did not first use the verb "smoke" to describe the act of lighting the leaf and inhaling the smoke produced. They called it drinking. They drank tobacco.

Tyrant, Shakespeare On Politics (book)

Angela Merkel, on vacation, reading "Tyrant."

Stephen Greenblatt, American author of the acclaimed Will In the World, was apparently so entirely disturbed by the election of Donald J, Trump that he swiftly produced a brief examination of Shakespeare’s villains (189 pages) and how they each compare to the current occupant of the White House.

Tyrant, Shakespeare on Politics, was released on May 8, 2018, and even at that point it was easy to see what kind of President Trump was going to be, as if that were not previously evident. Though he never names the President, his thesis is clear, with every chapter and every would-be emperor described, accurately for the most part, with precisely the same language many have used to describe Trump.

He calls Jack Cade, leader of a populist uprising in Henry VI Part 2, a “loud-mouthed demagogue” possessing an “indifference to the truth, shamelessness, and hyperinflated self-confidence.”

Shakespeare's Richard III “divides the world into winners and losers” and “is not merely indifferent to the law; he hates it … because it gets in his way.”

Macbeth has “a compulsive need to prove his manhood, dread of impotence … a fear of failure.” These psychological cues explain his “penchant for bullying, the vicious misogyny” and “explosive violence.”

Surprisingly, Greenblatt spends few words on the character of Julius Caesar, who, of all of Shakespeare’s monarchs, has been the one most often directly compared to Trump, for all of each man's vanity, poor health, and weakness for flattery at the same time ferociously protesting their own god-like inability to be manipulated.

Instead, this author focuses, as the play does, on the character of Brutus, and his desire to preempt disaster and assassinate Caesar before he attains absolute rule. Shakespeare’s lesson, it is clear, is that violent overthrow, no matter how pure the intent, is never pure, and impossible by design; an oxymoron in action.

“Real-world actions grounded on noble ideals,” Greenblatt suggests, “may have unforeseen and ironic consequences.”

Carole Healey as Julius Caesar
Photo: Roger Mastroianni
(Great Lakes Theater, 2019)

Published almost a year before the release of the Mueller Report, Greenblatt also provides a warning; that, though investigation and the possibility of impeachment is not a violent act, subverting the will of the electorate will always be suspect, and probably futile, even if you believe it would be the poorer choice to do nothing at all.

“The attempt to avert a possible Constitutional crisis, were Caesar to decide to assume tyrannical powers, precipitates the collapse of the state. The very act that was meant to save the republic turns out to destroy it. Caesar is dead, but by the end of the play Caesarism is triumphant.”

As it happened, the Mueller investigation came to a close without touching Trump nearer, finding that while a foreign power certainly offered Citizen Trump political assistance during the 2016 election, there was not definitive proof that he accepted it.

It should surprise no one who has been paying attention that we are now mired in a nearly identical circumstance, with definitive proof that President Trump himself has solicited political assistance from (at least) one foreign power for the 2020 election.

Impeachment now increasingly likely, looking into the works of Shakespeare may be a direful predictor of future events.