Christopher Marlowe

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30959, 15 January 1966, Page 4

Christopher Marlowe

In Search of Christopher Marlowe: A pictorial biography. Text by A. D. Wraight, photography by Virginia F. Stern. Macdonald, 84s.

The quatercentenary last year of Shakespeare's birth was celebrated on such a scale that it was largely overlooked that his great predecessor in the Elizabethan theatre had been bom in the same year. This book is offered as an opulent tribute to Marlowe. Though it is called a “critical biography” there is in reality no criticism of the plays and poems, though a pervading tone of reverence conveys the author's estimation of his subject. Moreover there is nothing new of a biographical nature.

What the book mainly does is to provide a pictorial and documentary upholstery of the life story as it is already accepted. The photographs present Marlowe’s physical environment from his childhood at Canterbury, through the Cambridge years and the interlude at Scadbury (the Kentish estate of his patron, Walsingham), and so to Deptford where Marlowe was stabbed to death.

Also generously photographed is a series of manuscripts relating in one way or another to the great dramatist—the register of his baptism, his name on the roll at the King’s School, the records of his purchases in the Corpus Christi Buttery book, and so on. The intention to create a setting for Marlowe in terms of places and personalities

has been richly and lovingly achieved. Yet because the “facts” are in so many cases controversial, the conduct of the story is predominantly tentative, the temptation all the time being to make “possibly” into “probably" and “probably” into “certainly.” Moreover, the paucity of material relating directly to Marlowe encourages the overelaboration of matter which is either speculative or peripheral and sometimes both. What seems both new and as convincing as such things can now be is the comparison of a panel portrait unearthed at Corpus Christi with the “Grafton” portrait so widely accepted as Shakespeare’s. Placed side by side there is a pretty compelling likeness between them and Mr Wraight seems justified in assuming that both are of Marlowe and is using the former on the dust-jacket. The second “find” which the photographs go far to authenticate arises from a comparison of the only extant signature of Marlowe with a manuscript leaf from “The Massacre at Paris.” The latter may reasonably be assumed to be in Marlowe’s handwriting. On many other more familiar issues Mr Wraight is merely disputatious and wishful rather than convincing. For those whose literary interests extend avidly into antiquarianism and biographical hypothesis this book will be a treasure. And those who find their understanding of an author enhanced by an evocation of the manners and scenes of his times will be equally rewarded.