17 Thursday Sep 2020
Posted in Eccentricities, Poetry
We have this ongoing disagreement, my friend Milla and I. A friendly disagreement, mind – but still.
It is all about poetry, you see. Or at least, about quoting poetry – and the occasional bit of prose – at what Milla deems to be the wrongest moments. I, on the other hand, argue that not only there is no wrong moment for poetry – but, on the contrary, there is very little in this world that can’t be made at least a little better by a few well-chosen lines. Continue reading
23 Thursday Jan 2020
Posted in Poetry, Scribbling, Theatre
Robert Stewart Sherrif
I love Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great – and by that I mean the first of the two parts. It may be rougher around the edges than his later work, but it’s breathlessly fiery. With his blank iambic pentameter, with the historical subject-matter, and his unpunished bloodthirsty hero, the boy (all of twenty-three at the time) was breaking ground in many ways – and knew it well. Continue reading
18 Thursday Oct 2018
Tags
Alexander Dyce, christopher marlowe, John Day, John Payne Collier, John Warburton, The Maiden's Holiday
The Maiden’s Holiday is a lost comedy, entered in the Stationers’ Register in the early 1650s as “written by Christopher Marlowe and John Day“. Since Day doesn’t appear to have been active as a playwright before 1599 – six years after Marlowe’s death – a later reworking seems far more likely than an actual collaboration, but we cannot tell for sure. The only known manuscript copy belonged to 18th Century antiquarian John Warburton’s collection, that went… er, lost. Continue reading
20 Thursday Sep 2018
Posted in Eccentricities, History, Stories
Tags
Once upon a time, I contacted this American writer, asking about his play featuring Kit Marlowe – published but impossible to find. Because there was no answer, I tried with the publisher: was there any way to get in touch with the author, and/or acquire a copy of the play? Now, you see, I’d done it before – and usually authors are pleased to find someone interested enough in their work to seek them out. Why, I’ve e-met several wonderful people, that way… Continue reading
07 Thursday Jun 2018
I think it’s safe to assume that we’ve all begged for one more minute as children: one more minute of play before bedtime, before going to do our homework, before being given an injection… As though that “one more minute” might somehow change things…
As we grow up, it takes small, everyday forms – such as the “snooze” button of the alarm clock, or lingering a little over a coffee break before that unpleasant meeting, or procrastination in general. Or else, in really bad moments, we revert to that kind of panicked, irrational craving for “one more minute”, just to stave off the bad things a little longer, to keep them away – no matter how little – to not have them happen just yet. Continue reading
05 Saturday May 2018
Posted in Things
Tags
annotated bibliography, christopher marlowe, Marlowe Bibliography Online, Marlowe Society of America, scholarship, University of Melbourne
Exactly what it says on the tin.
Described as
an initiative of the Marlowe Society of America and the University of Melbourne. Its purpose is to facilitate scholarship on the works of Christopher Marlowe by providing a searchable annotated bibliography of relevant scholarship…
15 Thursday Jun 2017
Now, gentlemen, betake you to your arms,
And see that Malta be well fortified;
And it behoves you to be resolute;
For Calymath, having hover’d here so long,
Will win the town, or die before the walls.FIRST KNIGHT. And die he shall; for we will never yield.
08 Thursday Jun 2017
Tags
christopher marlowe, Doomed characters, Hanno Buddenbrook, Johnny Nolan, Konradin von Hohenfels, names
I remember once shopping for Sicilian wine, and choosing a bottle of Grecale for no better reason than the beautiful name. If I were being written, I thought, this wouldn’t bode well for my life expectancy… Continue reading
01 Thursday Jun 2017
So, Tamburlaine the Great, part II. Part I had been such a smashing success, and suddenly conquerors were all the rage in London playhouses, and one can easily imagine the Admiral’s Men pestering Kit Marlowe about a sequel… Continue reading
08 Wednesday Feb 2017
Tags
christopher marlowe, George Bernard Shaw, Léon Daudet, Nat Cassidy, Patricia Finney, Robert Brustein, William Shakespeare
It strikes me how often fiction and theatre portray Will Shakespeare in the act of absorbing his materials rather than creating them.
No, really: the average fictional Shakespeare spends half his life jotting down, more or less metaphorically, everything he hears… Continue reading
Scribblings 