Marlowe and Shakspere
I cannot help it, but in those dramatic lines
for centuries now published under Shakspere's name
I keep on hearing Marlowe's mighty line,
as if behind Macbeth and Hamlet, Julius Caesar and Othello
there was Tamburlaine behind them all at bottom,
buried deep but never dead
in ever resurrected unsurpassed consistent cruelty,
a theme recurrent constantly in Marlowe
in the Jew, the duke of Guise, the fate of Faustus
and poor royal Edward; buried to the triumph of the boring Puritans
obscurely atheistically and anonymously whisked away
to be replaced by Shakspere's chastized mollified modification
without controversial stuff but with the poetry triumphing
over death and vanity the more in booming verse
in straight continuation from the drama launched by Marlowe.
Well, it has been proved that Marlowe was in difficulty
seriously accused of atheism and homosexuality
and other controversial stuff most insolently published by himself,
like pamphlets against church and order and an atheistic lecture,
which would mean, if he did not abscond,
then he would certainly be executed.
Now his death appears as the most masterfully staged
of all Elizabethan plays, a well concealed intrigue performed obscurely
just to make a show of a most controversial poet's demise
for the obvious purpose to just let him be, remain alive
and go on with his work, but under cover, for security.
Thus Shakspere enters as a mediator
for the continuity of Marlowe's drama, although modified,
to let it grow in ever more astounding glory
in its mighty lines on stage
to never die, like Macbeth, Hamlet and Othello,
Julius Caesar and the mighty Tamburlaine the great,
most threatening and most immortal menace of them all.
Poetry by Christian Lanciai
Read 457 times
Written on 2007-05-11 at 10:34
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