The Marlowe Papers Read Online Free PDF

author needs, my boy. Whereas Mar-lowe
seems altogether fitting, since the sound
paints you with either syllable. Mar, low.
The play went well?’
                                       Ned chips in, ‘Like a trollop!’
    The insult doesn’t land with him at all.
     
    ‘That’s just as well for me. These fashions change,
sometimes before a man can capture them.’
He pushes a manuscript in front of Ned.
‘ Alphonsus, King of Aragon . The part
is made for you, Alleyn. Bold bombastic verse
in quite the style you’re used to. Guaranteed
to pack the house as full as Tamburlaine .
Ten pounds is not too much to ask.’
                                                                     ‘Ten pounds?
    I paid half that for Tamburlaine Part Two !’
‘But this is twice as good again, at least.
(Excuse me, no offence intended.) And
the Spanish title makes it topical.
You’ll more than make your money back again.’
     
    ‘Can I distract you?’ Watson, at my side.
‘A friend from Paris would like to meet the man
who has a shepherd turn kings into beasts.
Sir Francis’ cousin, Thomas Walsingham.’
     
    Thus, you have joined me in the tale I tell:
your gentle face beside him, framed in curls.
‘Perhaps you’d call me Tom. Another Tom.’
You grasp my hand. ‘I’ve read your poetry.
You’re Watson’s heir. In English. And your play –
it’s very brave.’ Your eyes are so intense
I’m speechless for a moment.
     
                                                       ‘How so, brave?’
     
    ‘To scold religions, have an atheist
depose both Christian and Muslim kings.’
     
    Is it natural for a memory to scorch,
word upon blistered word, that first exchange?
Do you recall as clearly my new gaze
falling upon you? Yours was torching me.
    ‘It isn’t bravery, but metaphor.
Impassioned right slays cold hypocrisy.
Those who swear oaths on sacred books and break
their promises should surely feel God’s wrath.’
‘In the form of a shepherd?’
                                                       ‘Why not in a shepherd?
    A shepherd’s a man like any king. But rarer:
he keeps his word.’
                                     ‘You don’t see danger in it?’
     
    Instinctively, I draw back from the cliff
of my own confirmed opinions, wondering if
you fish for your cousin also.
                                                           ‘May I speak
    not as intelligencer, but as poet?’
‘Can you separate yourself so?’
                                                             ‘Certainly.’
    As though you’d entered, verbal sword half drawn,
and we were locked now, hilt to hilt.
                                                                         ‘Then do.’
     
    ‘Truth’s dangerous to liars. But in art
it’s softened by beauty. If we put both sides,
as dialectic training teaches.’
                                                             ‘Where
    were you educated?’
                                     ‘Cambridge.’
                                                             ‘Tom, I swear,
    he works for you already. Interviewed
by Sir Francis himself.’ The jest from Watson there
only voicing my own discomfort. You stay fast
on the subject as a ship’s own barnacle.
    ‘One of the sceptic colleges, no doubt.
Not Christ’s. Say, Corpus