>
>
> Clark Hulse writes: So Baines's later statements are likely filtered
> through personal animus dating back to the arrest. But the burden of proof,
> I would argue, is upon those who would claim that Marlowe didn't say such
> things. There are sufficient other grounds (such as Greene's allusions to
> Marlowe as the fool who says in his heart there is no god) supporting the
> idea that, whatever Marlowe really said or did, a good number of people
> believed that he was operating in a zone where "atheism," sodomy,
poetry, and
> addictive substances were conjoined.
I certainly wouldn't say that Marlowe did say such things. My point is
that we
do not know the context in which he said these things. Some confident readers
and viewers think they can reconstruct the character of an author from what he
writes, and Marlowe certainly writes about homosexuals (or seems to):
Jupiter,
Gaveston, Edward II, etc. Is it possible that part of Marlowe's reputation as
gay comes from a (mis?)reading of his plays? Compare Shakespeare's sonnets.
As I recall the passage in Greene (as you now know the limits of my memory),
Greene does not refer openly to Marlowe. Readers have inferred that Robin is
referring to Kit.
>
> I think the object of our study, as literary scholars, is that cultural
> belief, and the specific texts, both literary and non-literary, that go into
> it or flow from it.
I'm not sure what Clark is suggesting here, but I'm fairly sure that cultural
beliefs do not "flow" -- except metaphorically. Cultural beliefs are always
embodied, either in brains or in texts or in the plastic arts, and never flow
free.
Yours, Bill Godshalk
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* W. L. Godshalk *
* Professor, Department of English *
* University of Cincinnati *
* Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * Stellar Disorder
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