The more I read these messages, the more I am convinced that some among
us view Marlowe as a James Bond kind of figure, or maybe an early-modern
version of "The Third Man". I do not know much about all this and so I will
not say whether I agree or disagree but it seems to me that much weight is
being placed on the poetry to find evidence for his being Shakespeare and
all the rest.
This leads me to the question: why? Why must poetry be taken as
directly representative of someone's life? Are not conventions just that?
Just because a poem is written in the first-person, does that "I" have to be
the poet him/herself? My answers to these questions would be no. I think
it a little symplistic to try to reduce everything in a poem to an
allegorical representation of the life of the poet. I'm not saying that
anyone here is doing this but I had wondered about it, all the same.
Let's use an example. Many people take for granted that Wordsworth is
the "I" in Tintern Abbey. However, the poem itself was composed on the way
to Bristol after he had sat with Dorothy by the "sylvan Wye" and not written
till their return to their lodgings. So, though the poem is written in the
present tense, as though the "I" was viewing the scene, it could not be
Wordsworth. We can say that the poem is inspired by a life-event, but in no
way does it accurately portray that life-event. It is a construction. The
scene, the figures in the scene and the mind of the speaker are all
constructs. This is my view, at least. I hope no one minds this.
Sara
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep
And miles to go before I sleep. (Robert Frost)
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