I've always been a fan of Marlowe for pretty much the reasons in this thread. Not always as polished as Shakespeare but exciting and vibrant nonetheless, not afraid of rant and bombast in his life or his work. As well as Stones/Beatles you could find other parallels such as Ezra Pound vs T. S. Eliot. Can you imagine Shakespeare or T. S. Eliot saying any of the following, all attributed to Marlowe: "that Christ was a bastard and his mother dishonest," "that St John the Evangelist was bedfellow to Christ" and "all they that love not boys and tobacco are fools."
However, comparing and contrasting Marlowe and Shakespeare is always going to be a slippery affair, as Marlowe died in 1593, when Shakespeare was only just getting started writing his plays. So though they were the same age, they were not really direct contemporaries. It's also worth noting that the stage was in transition from the morality plays of the past that were mostly allegorical and characters were archetypes rather than individuals, to what we now refer to as the Elizabethan stage. Throughout the sixteenth century, the theatre had been turning increasingly secular and morality plays were giving way to chronicle plays, from religious allegory to particular historic individuals. Marlowe harnessed this tension most notably in his greatest play Dr Faustus. His bold steps towards individual characterisation and the wonderful poetry he gave to his heroes had a lot to do with what eventually became conventions of the era that Shakespeare brought to fruition.
So we do have to be careful when comparing the two, and we can only speculate on how Marlowe would have developed had he lived, and if his plays would have become increasingly sophisticated while also retaining the striking verse. I suppose he has to be filed under the “dead rock/movie star: would he or wouldn’t he have got better?” heading, along with Hendrix and chums. However, I’m not sure if any other star who died young was described in such glowing terms as Marlowe, in Thomas Beard's Theatre of God's Judgments, published in 1597:
Not inferior to any of the former in Atheisme and impietie, & equal to al in maner of punishment, was one of our own nation, of fresh and late memorie, called Marlin [printed marginal note: Marlowe], by profession a scholler, brought up from his youth in Universitie of Cambridge, but by practice a Play-maker, and a Poet of scurrilitie, who by giving too large a swing to his owne wit, and suffering his lust to have the full reines, fell (not without just desert) to that outrage and extreemitie, that hee denied God, and his sonne Christ, and not onely in word blasphemed the Trinitie, but also (as it is credibly reported) wrote bookes against it, affirming our Saviour to be but a deceiver, and Moses to be but a conjurer and seducer of the people, and the holy Bible to be but vaine and idle stories, and all religion but a device of policie. But see what a hooke the Lord put in the nostrils of this barking dogge: so it fell out, that as he purposed to stab one whom he ought a grudge unto, with his dagger, the other party perceiving, so avoyded the stroke, that withall catching hold of his wrest, hee stabbed his owne dagger into his owne head, in such sort, that notwithstanding all the meanes of surgerie that could be wrought, hee shortly after died thereof: the manner of his death being so terrible (for hee even cursed and blasphemed to his last gaspe, and together with his breath an oath flew out of his mouth) that it was not only a manifest signe of God's judgement, but also an horrible and fearefull terror to all that beheld him. But herein did the justice of God most notably appeare, in that hee compelled his owne hand which had written those blasphemies, to bee the instrument to punish him, and that in his braine, which had devised the same. |
