Biography, Mythography, and Criticism: The Life and Works of Christopher Marlowe

Abstract

over, considerable evidence appears to militate against identifying the young man as Marlowe.The lavish costume bespeaks considerable wealth, whereas Marlowe was the son of a cobbler who got into King's School on a scholarship for "poor boys" who were "destitute of the help of friends."'The Statute of Apparel in force at the time forbade anyone under the rank of knight to wear velvet, yet the anonymous man's doublet, as has been pointed out, is clearly velvet.2 To argue that, as a secret agent in the Queen's service, Marlowe would have been a servant of the Queen, and therefore excluded from this rule, does not really solve the problem, since it would hardly have been in the interest of secret agents to draw attention to their status.3 These minor inconveniences have not prevented identification of the unknown sitter as Marlowe.Like Shakespeare's birthday, which has long been held, in the absence of any firm evidence whatsoever, to have occurred on April 23, Feast of the English patron Saint George, the identification of the figure in the portrait with Marlowe was simply too tempting to resist.By means of the ingenious device of ruling out all the other contenders with the same or even better credentials, not only Marlowe but, arguably, Marlowe scholarship was given a face.It should not surprise us that it was the then Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, who, in 1953, cleverly identified "the face that launched the Marlowe industry."4 Many have gratefully embraced the proposition of, the Master of Corpus Christi.The portrait of the anonymous young man appears on the cover of J. B. Steane's Penguin edition of Marlowe's plays, of A. D. Wraight and Virginia E Stern's biography, of Lisa Hopkins's recent biography, as well as on the cover of and as illustrations in many other Marlowe studies and editions.5 Most scholars who take the trouble to investigate the history of the Corpus Christi portrait agree with J. A. Downie that "there is not one iota of evidence that Marlowe is the subject of the portrait found in builders' rubble at Corpus Christi

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