Marlowe and Shakespeare

An illustration from Marlowe's Dr. Faustus
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I've been looking at Christopher Marlowe's plays, trying to puzzle out how to assess them on their own terms. It's hard to beat the rap of second-best playwright of the Elizabethan era, but that's what he is--and it is a distant second.

Some critics like to point out that we don't know what Marlowe might have done had he lived to enjoy as long a career as the first-place playwright. But we can to a reasonable extent extrapolate from Shakespeare's earliest work the greatness that was to come. From Marlowe's work, it's hard to see that he would have produced anything else but more of the same. In Shakespeare's Henry VI, there is an overpowering sense of emerging yet still uneven craftsmanship. In the Marlowe that I have read, there is the sense of an assured and mature style. Of course, we could endlessly debate hypotheticals, but at the end of the day we can only rely on what talent and fate have given us. We wouldn't have had Shakespeare without Marlowe--at least not the same Shakespeare--but nevertheless W.S.'s work shows some markedly different--and more remarkable--characteristics from its precedent.

Marlowe himself was a powerful improvement on his own general precedent, the medieval morality tale. One becomes an English major in spite of the medieval morality tale, I like to think. If Marlowe's Faustus borrows a few of the common tropes of the morality tale, it also improves upon them immeasurably, giving us an exciting protagonist who thrills not so much by the lesson his damnation might provide for us but rather by the exhilaration we get to experience vicariously through his transgressions. He pays for the thrills so we don't have to.

Marlowe's characters, however, bear little of the human dimension of even Shakespeare's early work. Tamburlane is my favorite Marlowe play; it's about one man's fast-paced scramble for the "sweet fruition of an earthly crown." The hero is a prototype of Macbeth, but he bears only traces of the complexity that the wayward Scot displays. Marlowe's plays are intellectual to the core, driven not by character but by ideas, but the poetry of Shakespeare's work comes to us through the methods he uses to define his characters, particularly those soliloquies that spell out for the first time in the history of our language the nature of the fragmented consciousness. As choppy as Henry VI is, I would argue its superiority--in moments, at least--even to Marlowe's greatest hits, thanks in no small part to Queen Margaret, who makes Marlowe's Queen Isabel in Edward II seem the very paragon of virtue in comparison, but also thanks to young Richard of the Yorkist faction--the original Tricky Dick--who would in Richard III become Shakespeare's first truly great creation. As an ineffectual king, Edward II himself bears a certain resemblance not only to Henry VI but also--more so, perhaps--to Shakespeare's Richard II. Edward II fascinates in large part because of his love for Gaveston. We don't expect to find a character in Renaissance drama--much less a king--who so blatantly pursues a love affair with another man. However, Edward's interest to us is less a matter of his speechmaking than of the circumstances of his life, though I do greatly admire his evocation of "perfect shadows in a sunshine day." In Edward's love for Gaveston, Marlowe gives us little psychological insight into what it might have been like to be a gay man in pre-modern society. By contrast, Shakespeare's Richard II, though he inhabits a far from perfect play, amazes us with the consistently poetic force of his speeches. Through him, we see what it is like to be placed on the throne by historical circumstance when in fact the man belongs elsewhere.

A.D. Nuttall is right, I think, in pointing out that Shakespeare's Prospero is akin to--and in many respects represents a one-upsmanship of--Marlowe's Faustus. Faustus may well be a modern character on the Promethean bounds of a new and ever more secularized world, but again there is little to make Faustus seem like a real person as opposed to a walking idea. What is it, exactly, that makes Prospero by contrast seem real? For one thing, we have the moral complication resulting from Prospero's complicity in his own usurpation. Prospero, the rightful Duke of Milan, deliberately turned his attention away from affairs of state to pursue magic; he placed his brother Antonio in charge of governance of the state, thus giving Antonio the responsibility of leadership without any of the perks and in effect tempting his brother to usurp him. Thus Prospero inhabits an infinitely more grey moral climate than that of his predecessor--and this moral greyness is something we recognize from our own lives, from the decisions we face. Faustus voices some uncertainty about his bargain, but his doing so is superficial--it never bites deep. Shakespeare, who made the self-disclosing soliloquy the cornerstone of his art, in an odd move gives Prospero--often regarded as the bard's most autobiographical character--a curious inner life that he chooses not to reveal directly to us, and somehow, improbably, this method works as a new means of realizing the self on stage. Instead of outright pangs of conscience, Prospero experiences puzzling headaches. His doubt is implicit, understated, unexplained. In such a way, Prospero voices more than ambition, awe, and fear--the three tones that Faustus displays. Prospero is cranky, domineering even over those he loves, well aware not so much of the thrill of political power as he is burdened by it--by the memory of the duty he once neglected. The backstory of The Tempest casts aspersions on the value of knowledge; until he is on the verge of renouncing it, Prospero's magic bears no rewards; it merely serves to compensate somewhat for the damage Prospero's negligence had brought about. For years, Prospero bears the obligation of rectifying the damage wrought by his pursuit of magic, and a tremendous irony underscores Prospero's entire career as magician: in his pursuit of knowledge, he loses power. In short, Prospero is at the core of a dynamic that is far-reaching and intricate, and it is largely through context that he achieves dimensions of complexity. Prospero--along with Hamlet, one of Shakespeare's moodiest characters, not to be outdone by the non-human Ariel--possesses a range of emotions, from care and generosity to anger and callousness, but it is more than anything the fact that his love bears with it a trace of anger, his anger a trace of love, that makes Prospero seem real, complex, human--like someone you might know.

Early genius sometimes fades or fails to improve upon itself, and, as Malcolm Gladwell pointed out in a recent article in The New Yorker, sometimes it is the late bloomers--those who arrive upon their genius in mid-career or at mid-life--who provide the most enduring work. Shakespeare was hardly old when his career as we know it began, but if he was a youthful prodigy in his early twenties, we'll never know about it. Marlowe, by general accounts, lived fast, loved hard, and died young. He was an innovator who left an impressive body of work, but we will never know what kind of work he might have produced had he lived, like his great contemporary, to the age of fifty-two.

Writerly Self-Doubt

Montaigne has this to say on the subject:

"And in truth, what are these things I scribble, other than grotesques and monstrous bodies, made of various parts, without any certain figure, or any other than accidental order, coherence, or proportion?"

Such self-doubt is utterly respectable in a writer. This is what makes Montaigne great, even.

You also see something like this in Orwell's essays. I'm thinking of "Shooting an Elephant," in particular, because I just taught it. Rarely does anyone come out of an Orwell essay looking honorable, and in this one Orwell emerges as the biggest fool of all. Above all, Orwell is to be admired for his ability to take a unflinchingly honest look at everything he believes in--and at himself.

Self-doubt may be essential to a good writer. Even Hemingway had it, though he went to great pains to cover it up. Shakespeare might have had it the worst, though. I'm thinking of Macbeth's big moment, when he calls his own story "a tale told by an idiot"--the idiot, presumably, being Shakespeare--or Prospero's relentless self-doubt in The Tempest.

I've known this kind of doubt. I've tried to quit writing many times. What have I ever gotten out of writing? I've never been satisfied with anything I've written--not for long, at least. Maybe if I continue to doubt the virtue of my work, though, I'll end up like Orwell or Montaigne someday. It's a fructifying kind of doubt to strive for.

The Other Boleyn Girl, The Illusionist

There's little I can say about The Other Boleyn Girl that is worth sharing, just a representative observation:

I did not enjoy hearing Mark Rylance (a fine Shakespearean actor, I hear) ask his fictional 16th century wife to "look on the bright side, for once." No one in the 16th century ever would have said anything like that, not in those words. This was, for me, the most painful bit of dialogue in the film, but there were plenty of wooden lines that were nearly as bad.

The Illusionist, however, is a different matter. I wouldn't call this film brilliant by any means, but it did exactly what I wanted it to do: it entertained me without insulting my intelligence.

The Band, 40 Years On

From one perspective, it's an unfortunately generic moniker for a band that is anything but generic. From another perspective, the name is entirely apt. They really were The Band. It's hard to think of another musical group with this level of interaction between members. Robbie Robertson did most of the songwriting, but he plays such a subdued role in the performance of these songs. All five of the primaries pulled their own weight, so to speak.

It's also hard to think of an album with a sound as fully American as The Band's eponymous second release. Blues, folk, country, rock, R & B--not only do the musical styles shift seamlessly from song to song, they also do so within songs. When people think of The Band, they probably think of Woodstock or Ontario, but listening to The Band you realize how grounded this album is in the atmosphere of the American South. By 1969, Americans were pretty used to British takes on American musical traditions, but the mostly Canadian version offered by The Band provides a different, closer perspective--more like that of the insider, but not quite. Part of it is Robbie Robertson's being bowled over by Sothern tradition when he first came down from Toronto to Mississippi, but another part of it is Levon Helm's voice, which makes "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" the song that it is. (The beautiful drumwork he does helps. Can drumming be beautiful? It is here.) Lyrically, the song is less a lament for the defeat of Southern culture than it is an exercise in perspective--it's about a man who lives through that defeat. "Sweet Home Alabama" makes me want to unplug the stereo; "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" moves me nearly to tears.

It's also worth considering "Up On Cripple Creek." It's easy to want to overlook this song, overplayed as it is on classic rock radio--but then again, the radio never understood these guys. "Up On Cripple Creek" riffs on a theme from a traditional folk song called "Cripple Creek"; it's about a good-time rounder who reminisces on the virtues of a woman who understands her man. Like "Dixie," this song highlights Helm's earthy vocal twang, but there is also a funkiness to this song (as embarrassing as that term can sometimes be when applied to white music) that seems as natural as anything. This funkiness comes from the distinctive sound of a clavinet played (by Garth Hudson) through a wah-wah pedal (a sound Stevie Wonder would later apply to "Superstitious"), but it's hard to say where geographically this sound comes from. Chalk it up to The Band's inventiveness. You can also hear that inventiveness in the sprightly honky-tonk piano at the end of "Rag Mama Rag"; the song fades out, but Garth Hudson--certainly one the best piano players in the rock music tradition--seems unwilling to quit. "Rag Mama Rag" also boasts a tuba instead of a bass; the song just bounces along like a rubber ball.

It's hard to tell sometimes who is singing on a particular song; everyone in the band, it seems, gets his time at the mic. Helm's voice might be the soul of this ensemble, Robertson's pen the heart, but really no one takes the lead for long enough to diminish the others. For me, The Band stands beside Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited and The Byrd's Sweetheart of the Rodeo as one of the great albums of its era, not just for what it says about the moment of its creation but also for what it says about traditions in American music.

Bob Dylan, Diane Arbus, and Sword Swallowers (Albino and Otherwise)

Well, the sword swallower, he comes up to you
And then he kneels
He crosses himself
And then he clicks his high heels
And without further notice
He asks you how it feels
And he says, "Here is your throat back
Thanks for the loan"
--Bob Dylan, "Ballad of a Thin Man"

Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man" and Diane Arbus' photographs of carnival performers essentially do the same thing, make the same point, establish the same relationship between subject and object.

There is a curiously defined notion of otherness in both artistic visions represented here, and in Arbus' case (because she worked in the realm of the visual, presumably, and not the aural: because we can tell that a particular individual is represented in this piece of work) this has resulted in criticism of her photographic method. These critics accuse Arbus of exploiting outcasts and those on the fringe; they claim that she has depicted others as Others from her own privileged perspective on the inside. They claim that her photographs do not ennoble their subjects, that they posit freaks only as freaks. Without attempting to elaborate upon what Arbus might have intended with these photographs, I will still claim that these criticisms are misplaced. These photographs capture something that is and, without a narrative context, ask us to interpret its significance entirely on our own. This is, of course, what any photograph does, and in this respect photography is in a way perhaps the purest of media. Susan Sontag pointed out many years ago that photography bears great potential for corruption--"the worst form of mental pollution," she called it--neglecting, however, to point out that her own chosen medium, that of written text, has just as much capacity to pollute. We are reasonably intelligent people, are we not? We can determine the value and function of a photograph on our own, without text, without narrative. Those who are reasonably imbued with humanist sentiments will see the humanity of the photographic subject. Those who are not so reasonably imbued will likely go elsewhere to get their kicks. Moral function just might have to come from somewhere else, from some source entirely external to the photograph, to the song, to any work of art. Ultimately the artist doesn't get to choose how the work of art will be decoded.

Arbus' sword swallower one-ups Dylan's by being albino to boot, and it's worth noting that it is more the albino quallity that makes this performer a "freak" than it is sword swallowing, which, though unusual, is an acquired skill and not a natural aberration.

As for Dylan, his Highway 61 Revisited is an album full of freaks. They march in and out of the songs, especially "Ballad of a Thin Man" and "Desolation Row," the latter of which announces in its first stanza that "the circus is in town" -- as if it weren't apparent from the managerie of oddballs on display. Furthermore, the freaks seem primarily to serve the purpose of pointing out how weak in understanding--how morally thin--the rest of Dylan's characters are. The Thin Man of Dylan's ballad is, it would seem, the ignorant one, the one who doesn't understand: "And you know something is happening / But you don't know what it is," Dylan intones at the end of each stanza. The Thin Man bears witness not only to the sword swallower but also to a one-eyed midget and a host of others. It was 1965, and things were getting strange; it was time to freak out the squares. In the case of this Thin Man, his squareness takes on the quality of a moral fault, an inability to understand the other, and Dylan seems to harbor little sympathy for such a type. If the lyrics don't convince you of this, the tone of derision that unmistakeably inhabits Dylan's voice in this song should do so. Dylan has an advantage over Arbus here; while she works in one-dimension, his words function on the page and through the added dimension of sound.