Chapter 9 Summary and Analysis

"Laughter at the Scaffold" This chapter takes a step back in time, beginning at a point in Shakespeare's life and career when Christopher Marlowe was still alive. The author describes the likelihood of a friendly personal relationship but intense professional rivalry between the two men, suggesting that the circle of playwrights and theatre professionals in which they both moved was small enough that they had to have known each other. He describes their similarities - love of language and learning, intense attraction to the theatre - and indicates they were the same age, born within weeks of each other. There were, however, substantial differences between the two writers. Marlowe was socially and politically outspoken, homosexually oriented and sexually liberated, a drinker and a brawler. Shakespeare, on the other hand (as indicated by his discretion in the sonnets - see "Chapter 8), was...