rupert everett played christopher marlowe in shakespeare in love.
rupert everett played christopher marlowe in shakespeare in love.
who plays christopher marlowe in shakespeare in love?
rupert everett
christopher marlowe is presented in the film as the master playwright whom the characters consider the greatest english dramatist of that time — this is historically accurate, yet also humorous, since the film's audience knows what will eventually happen to shakespeare's reputation. marlowe gives shakespeare a plot for his next play, "romeo and ethel the pirate's daughter" ("romeo is italian...always in and out of love...until he meets...ethel. the daughter of his enemy! his best friend is killed in a duel by ethel's brother or something. his name is mercutio.") marlowe's "doctor faustus" is quoted repeatedly: "was this the face that launched a thousand ships/ and burned the topless towers of ilium?" a reference is also made to marlowe's final, unfinished play "the massacre at paris" in a scene wherein marlowe (rupert everett) seeks payment for the final act of the play from richard burbage (martin clunes). burbage promises the payment the next day, so marlowe refuses to part with the pages and departs for deptford, where he is killed. the only surviving text of "the massacre at paris" is an undated octavo that is probably too short to represent the complete original play. it has been suggested that it is a memorial reconstruction by the actors who performed the work.
shakespeare in love
in 1887 mendenhall published one of the earliest attempts at stylometry, the quantitative analysis of writing style. prompted by a suggestion made by the english mathematician augustus de morgan in 1851, mendenhall attempted to characterize the style of different authors through the frequency distribution of words of various lengths. in this article mendenhall mentioned the possible relevance of this technique to the shakespeare authorship question, and several years later the idea was picked up by a supporter of the theory that sir francis bacon was the true author of the works usually attributed to shakespeare. he paid for a team of two people to undertake the counting required, but the results did not appear to support the theory. it has however since been shown by williams that mendenhall failed to take into account genre differences that could invalidate that particular conclusion. for comparison, in 1901 mendenhall also had works by christopher marlowe analysed, and proponents of the marlovian theory of shakespeare authorship eagerly upon his finding that "in the characteristic curve of his plays christopher marlowe agrees with shakespeare about as well as shakespeare agrees with himself."
thomas corwin mendenhall