Hamlet Volume II: History and Comments

CONTENTS

• Principal Sources 4
  

• Introduction: Sweeter Than A Muse's Song 7
• 
  Hecate's Ban: The Comical History of Christopher Marlowe, Clown Prince of England 13
  London 1593 15
  Elizabethan Dramatis Personnae 16
  
  The Jewel Inestimable 19

 

I. Marlowe's Ghost 23

Prologue: Marlowe and Whitgift, the Mighty Opposites, Vie for the Queen's Allegaince 25
1. When That Fell Arrest 26
2. Sovereign Reason 45
3. Lawful Espials 60
4. Impress of Shipwrights 93
5. A Great Reckoning 102

 

II. Shakespeare's Ghost 113

• Prologue: Will Shakespear Absents Himself from Felicity Awhile to Tell Marlowe's Story 115
• 1. A Mechanical Solution 119
• 2. The Muse's Springs 124
• 3. Hand in Hand pages 138
• 4. My Outcast State pages 146
• 5. Bonfires for My Overthrow 155

 

III Hamlet's Ghost 181

Prologue: The Play's the Thing Wherein Marlowe Captures the Consccience of the Queen 183

1. More Than Moertal Wisdom 187
2. Poem Unlimited 204
3. To Be or Not to Be 277
4. Spirit of Health or Goblin Damn'd 283

5. So Hallowed the Time 307

 

Afterword: To Bring Truth to Light 327

 

Appendices

A Le Recknynge 339

B Hecate, Queen of Night 351

 

Glossary 367

Annotations 371

Changes 401

Endnotes 405

Works Cited 427

Resources 439
About the Editor 442

Index 443

Picture Credits 479

Order Form 480

 

LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS

1. Espials (spies), Intelligencers, and Informers 93

2. Marlowe's Deptford Connections 101

3. Frequency of Biblical Allusions and Echoes in the Marlovian and Shakespearean Works 122

4. The Characters in Hamlet's Seven Versions 200

5. Prince Hamlet and Christopher Marlowe 209

6. Posssible Alllusions to Queen Elizabeth and Archbishop Whigift in the Shakespearean Plays 315

7. Key Resonances in Hamlet 325