Introduction: “The Rivals of My Watch”

Abstract

The “Introduction” chapter first declares what my book will not be, since the title may suggest different things to different readers. My book is not a detailed examination of the biographical character of either Marlowe or Shakespeare. Nor is it another futile attempt to show that Marlowe single-handedly actually wrote some of Shakespeare’s plays. Nor will it focus solely on the working and playing conditions of the early modern theatrical scene. What it will examine is the link between Shakespeare and Marlowe as it has been portrayed in biographical and critical forms from the first mention of the two by their contemporaries in the 1590s, through the most recent revisions of the association in post-9/11 biographies. I demonstrate how historical, aesthetical, and personal pressures continually shape the view of the literary association between the two playwrights. As early as Robert Greene’s alleged attack on the “upstart crow,” and continuing through the early 21^st-century renderings of the two dramatists, critics persist in reading the pair through a lens that refracts the relationship as much as it reflects their own individual literary and historical contexts.

CHORUS: Not marching in the fields of Trasimene

Where Mars did mate the warlike Carthagens,

Nor sporting in the dalliance of love

In courts of kings where state is overturned,

No r in the pomp of proud audacious deeds,

Intends our muse to vaunt his heavenly verse.

(Doctor Faustus, 1993: B-Text, 1–6) ¹

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BARNARDO: “Well, goodnight.

If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,

The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.”

(Hamlet, First Folio, 1623: 1.1.9–11)

BARNARDO: “An if you meet Marcellus and Horatio,

The partners of my watch, bid them make haste.”

(Hamlet, Q1, 1603: 1.4–5) ²