A bit about Marlowe

If BARABAS is to work then we must get right under the skin of the man who wrote it.History has left us a fair bit of information about Marlowe – in comparison we know next to nothing about Shakespeare - and it’s my job try to work out what he would have been like, and what he wanted to achieve with the play.One thing is clear. Marlowe is unnervingly honest. He wrote earthy, naughty plays and he was far from polite. How well he understood the world in which he lived, and died!Fascinated by street life, his early years in Canterbury must have witnessed a great many nationalities coming and going – as well as many flare-ups. It is clear from his play that he was good with a sword, great with his fists. He loved as passionately as he fought. I have a strong feeling that a night on the tiles with Kit would have been quite an occasion…Marlowe was no really a poet in the traditional sense – he wrote what he heard in daily life, often verbatim accounts of conversations on the streets. As a result, his plays are very immediate –full of phrases that we still use today.It’s really easy for us to treat people like Marlowe and Shakespeare with reverence. But they were just folk. Marlowe was not over-bright academically (feel free to challenge me on that) and I don’t doubt he wrote plays because it was one of the few ways that he could make a shilling, fast (and feel free to challenge me on that).He educated himself on the streets. He survived a university education by the skin of his teeth. But an extraordinary thing about Marlowe was that he was curious – about almost everything. And as he lived in an unstable world full of political, scientific and religious change and consequently, being curious necessitated being very brave.He sought through his plays to understand the conditions of his own culture. He knew the limits of what he could and couldn’t stage (censorship was rife at the time) and like most of his contemporaries he broke those limits.No other playwright of the time is as deeply imbued in his own work as he is. And no other writer was brave enough to share such controversial views on so many topics – sexuality, religion, politics, commerce…I have always loved him. He was a mischief maker, impetuous, quick to fire off, with strong survival instincts and an uncanny ability to turn things to his advantage. Like Marlowe I’ve got strong views about stuff and believe that the theatre is a great arena in which to air them. He had the courage portray the world as he saw it and he lived at a time when to do this meant dicing with death.Like I do, Marlowe saw the world to be a confusing and disorderly place. Yet he also believed it to be a place where there was much to celebrate. Though making plays he tried to change attitudes. All his plays ask huge questions – about the world, about life, and, above all, about what it means to be a human being.Then, of course, nothing quite became his life like the leaving of it.But that’s for another day…