The Grave-digger has got a university background which is very unusual for a man of his standing (he knows Latin and fluently operates with the law rhetoric). More than twenty years before the described events began, he attended the parties held at the Court . (Otherwise Yorick the jester could not pour Rhenish on his head: the jesters performed their duties only in the presence of their monarchs).
Besides, this character carries the most important composition function: he hints the cues necessary for re-evaluating everything the Narrator reports, and to restore the truth. From the point of view of the composition, this character stands above the Narrator. Which means that his position is identical to that of the titular Author. To the position of Shakespeare, to be precise.
Does not that mean that Shakespeare had a university education?..
As the whole text of Hamlet, the Grave-digger's tongue is very ambiguous. For example, he mentions king Hamlet as our last King (V.1). According to the traditional interpretation of the content of Hamlet, the last is erroneously interpreted as previous while king Hamlet turns out to be 'the now living king'. The usage of the word last as verb is not less interesting: in the text of Hamlet, it is used three times, in all cases only in the prosaic part, and in all cases only by the same Grave-digger. In two instances the verb is present in two neighboring lines:
... he will last you some eight year
or nine year: a tanner will last you nine year.
See how identical construction is used in the neighboring lines? Which is an obvious violation of poetic principles. When an author such as Shakespeare allows such flaws, they always carry some intended composition function. In this case it goes about some tanner who would last nine years after his death.
The Grave-digger's speech contains still another ambiguity, this time based on the meanings of the verb to lie. (Or are there two different verbs: lie — lay — lain, and lie — lied — lied?):
Is not the Grave-digger the tanner 'lasting' for nine years outside his grave?.. The text was registered in 1602. Extracting the lasting nine years from 1602 makes 1593.1 That is the year Christopher Marlowe (who was also known as the Tanner) is considered to have been killed on his thirtieth year of life.
According to the true plot of Hamlet, Hamlet created a play, then disappeared at the age of thirty. After that his play was published with false authorship data, bearing the name of Shakespeare rather than that of the 'real' Author. Actually, it is the case of Marlowe as it is interpreted by the Marlovians. Who still lack the proofs of the smoking gun quality...
Well, I prefer fingerprints to the smoking guns. They are more reliable. And I believe the sophisticated and strictly individual inner structure of menippeahs may serve as both. The multi-plot inner structure of Marlowe's The Jew of Malta and Doctor Faustus is identical to that of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Considering the identity of every detail of the unique and extremely sophisticated inner structures, this feature might be considered as the wanted smoking gun.2
The fingerprints: the same unique composition method of discriminating the main text (the prosaic passages) from the inner story (the pentameter portion of the text) is employed in the works of both Marlowe and Shakespeare. Moreover, the identical seemingly insignificant characters (the clowns) carry the main composition function in Marlowe's and Shakespeare's works (there follows a detailed analysis of both 1594 and Folio versions of The Taming of a (the) Shrew texts; there are indications that it was created by some university graduate whose name was Christopher.3 There are some other Shakespeare's works featuring the same clown with a university background performing Shakespeare's functions).4
There follow the conclusions:
1. The mentioned above menippeahs the authorship of which has been traditionally attributed to William Shaksper of Stratford-upon-Avon, and to Christopher Marlowe, were created by the same person.
2. In all mentioned cases the authorship belongs to Christopher Marlowe.
3. At least on the date of the registration of the text of Hamlet (1602), its author Christopher Marlowe was still alive.
There has been an issue too awkward for the Marlovian version. Marlowe sympathized with the Catholicism. The Shakespeare canon does not contain any sign of Shakespeare's negative attitude towards the confession. On the other hand, from the content of Doctor
Faustus in its traditional (wrong) interpretation follows that
Marlowe depicted the confession in an extremely satirical manner. The
thing is that the true content of this Marlowe's work is absolutely
different: it is the Narrator who serves devil and negatively
describes the confession. Consequently, the true position of Marlowe is not satirical but on the contrary, apologetic. The effect is achieved with the depicting the Narrator satirically. This same method of apology of the Jews was employed in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and in Marlowe's The Jew of Malta. They are both menippeahs with absolutely identical inner structure. Moreover, in
Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice Shylock identifies himself with Barabas of
Marlowe's The Jew of Malta.
1. The nine year period was first mentioned in Q2 (1604). In Q1 which was published a year earlier, Shakespeare indicated the period of the lasting as eight years. Which confirms the biographical significance of this passage. (Back)
2. The strictly unique and extremely complicated structure of Shakespeare's and Marlowe's works turns to be identical even in the smallest details. If we presuppose an impossible situation in which there existed two geniuses of equal magnitude, and if we hypothetically presume that Shakespeare adopted Marlowe's method, even then such a detailed reproduction of the unique method is impossible. Moreover, just think of the character of the hypothetical situation: a genius such as Shakespeare would never imitate scrupulously the method of other genius; he would use his own individual method. Otherwise, he would hardly be a genius. The geniuses are not alike, they are strictly individual, and that makes them real geniuses. Besides, they are extremely scarce... (Back)
3. The 1594 version of The Taming of a Shrew text was published anonymously. Maybe that is the reason why the academic scholarship excludes it from the Shakespeare canon. The scholars assert that the 1594 and the Folio texts differ so much that their authors were different persons. As I understand, they consider the 1594 version as rather primitive, which was later improved by Shakespeare.
A structural analysis proves that the scholars' attitude is completely wrong. The 1594 version is a menippeah with extremely complex inner structure presenting several consequent 'inner' menippeahs. It is only too obvious that the 'true' events take place not in Athens but rather in England; that the actual act of the taming takes place between the Author — clown Christopher with a university background, and his arrogant patron, the Lord.
The Folio version possesses with the same complex structure. The analysis of the differences between the two texts suggests that the main work was carried out so as to refine the complex structure, eliminate slight structural discrepancies between the consequent inner menippeahs (by adjusting the strophic structure of the corresponding structural elements), and obscure the Marlowe's authorship which was manifested too prominently in the 1594 version.
(Back)4. The hero of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice is not Shylock but rather the clown, a university graduate narrating the whole story. The same clown narrates in Marlowe's The Jew of Malta. Another common feature is that in both cases the act of the narration takes place neither in Venice nor on Malta but rather in England where the corresponding dramas are staged. The same as in Hamlet and in The Taming of (a) the Shrew where the main plots feature the act of creating and staging dramas, the main story of both The Merchant of Venice and The Jew of Malta is about the process of staging the corresponding plays in an English theatre.
(Back)Chapter VII: What was Queen Elizabeth to Marlowe, or Marlowe to Elizabeth?..
Copyright © Alfred Barkov 2000, 2003