Katherine Duncan-Jones

Bawdier Than The Bard

Christopher Marlowe, Poet & Spy

By Park Honan

Oxford University Press 422pp £25 order from our bookshop

Writing a life of Marlowe ought to be very much easier than writing one of Shakespeare. For one thing, the book can be much shorter. Both poets were born early in 1564, with similar social origins, their fathers being master craftsmen and tradesmen who achieved local eminence before being embroiled in debt and litigation. One of Honan’s persistent clumsinesses is to describe John Marlowe, who became Warden of Canterbury’s Shoemakers’ Guild in 1589, as a ‘cobbler’, a much more humble craft. But while Shakespeare the glover’s son lived to almost fifty-two, Marlowe the shoemaker’s son was killed at twenty-nine.

Literary Review

Nov 2005

Katherine Duncan-Jones

Of Plagues & Players

Much Ado About Nothing

As You Like Him

The Stratford Wife

Too Much of a Good Thing?

Katherine Duncan-Jones

Bawdier Than The Bard

Christopher Marlowe, Poet & Spy

By Park Honan

Oxford University Press 422pp £25 order from our bookshop

Nov 2005

Of Plagues & Players

Much Ado About Nothing

As You Like Him

The Stratford Wife

Too Much of a Good Thing?

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