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Did Jonson Hint at Marlowe's Name in Epigram 77?

Diana Price's new Unorthodox Biography of Shakespeare points out that Jonson, on whose shoulders the First Folio’s hoax must rest, confesses, openly, to having hidden the name of someone from us in Epigram 77 which reads:

            To one that desired me not to name him

            Be safe, nor fear thy self so good a fame,

        That, any way, my book should speak thy name:

        For, if thou shame, rank’d with my friends, to go,

        I am more ashamed to have thee thought my foe.

 

            Let us see if we can agree on what the epigram says.  First it appears to imply, that Jonson is addressing a living person, for it would not make since to write this to someone who was already long dead.  If he were dead Jonson would have written, “To the memory of one who desired me not to name him.”  Or words to that effect.  The next two lines:

Be safe, nor fear thy self so good a fame,

        That, any way, my book should speak thy name:

Imply that whoever he cannot name risks something important if he does name him, namely his “safety.”  Which is the meaning of the phrase “be safe” and “fear.”   Where it not for metrical considerations Jonson might have written “rest safely your secret is safe with me.”  However this analysis will not do for the rest of the couplet, which is a bit of light humor at the expense of the unfortunate one, for in these phrases Jonson turns the tables on his friend (and us) by implying that including his name in his book might diminish the honor in his friend’s name, rather than vice versa.   It’s a nice touch.  We know however its just a rhetorical touch because the next two lines:

            For, if thou shame, rank’d with my friends, to go,

        I am more ashamed to have thee thought my foe.

tell us that it is “shame,” and one must say, the hidden shame of his unnamed friend, that is the problem.  A shame that most certainly lies with Jonson’s friends  and not the friends of the Unnamed.

 

For those of us who have read the Sonnets we know the poet bewails a “hidden shame” that ties him to “Mr. W. H.”  A shame that makes it impossible for “Mr. W. H.” to “acknowledge” the poet with “public kindness without taking that honor from thy name.”  A situation that implies that “Mr. W. H.” is the poet’s illicit son.  Whatever that case may be, it is fairly obvious, upon reflection, that Jonson does have “Shake-Speare” in mind.  But as I’ve mention this analysis does not please Ms. Price, so she did not trouble herself to go this far.

            Worse, I think, Price misses a very important point, one that shipwrecks her analysis, under which she place the unknown party among the nobility, peerage or aristocracy and then concludes his association with Jonson might not be seen quite proper or kosher with this nobleman’s friends.  This will not wash, because Jonson assures us the hidden shame, that has attached itself to his anonymous friend, lies among Jonson’s  friends, not among Mr. Anonymous' chums.  He writes “thou shame, rank’d with my friends.”  So Price’s worldview has caused her to turn Jonson’s words, and their clear meaning, upside down.  She supposes the shame to rest among the genteel of the upper classes, whereas in fact Jonson assures us the shame lies among Jonson’s friends.

            But wait, we have not gone as far as the Epigram supposes we might.  We shall now discover that the poet does name the man who he could not acknowledge because of that man’s hidden shame.  But first we should notice that these two lines:

For, if thou shame, rank’d with my friends, to go,

I am more ashamed to have thee thought my foe.

Mean: For, if your shame, as it is ranked with my friends, were to go, I would be more ashamed to have you thought my foe.  Ergo: were the unnamed freed of his “hidden shame” his fame would be more than that of Jonson’s and, under these circumstances, Jonson would not like to be thought his [~your] foe.

            Now this is not very suggestive of any Jacobean other than a long-lived Christopher Marlowe, who from concealment, or as a hidden poet and expatriate, wrote the works of Shake-Speare and talked Jonson into ushering them into print under a pseudonym.  We know, for example, that Marlowe’sThe Jew of Malta did not materialized until 1633, when it was dedicated to Thomas Hammon, Marlowe’s classmate from both the Kings School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, the dedicatee boasting of a life-long friendship between the two throughout the “long compass” of their years, both men nearing seventy that year.

            Luckily the case for Marlowe is much stronger than mere supposition, even when it is back by a dedication such as the one attached to The Jew of Malta and ostensively signed “Thomas Heywood.”  Let us consider the Epigram again:

To one that desired me not to name him

            Be safe, nor fear thy self so good a fame,

        That, any way, my book should speak thy name:

        For, if thou shame, rank’d with my friends, to go,

                I am more ashamed to have thee thought my foe.

As it turns out there is but one poet’s name that fits the rhyme of this epigram.  Have you guessed it?  (I’ll give you a hint, I didn’t suffer myself to write this essay because it was Oxford or Bacon.)  Let’s insert it where it belongs and see how it reads:

To one that desired me not to name him

Be safe, nor fear thy self so good a fame,

That, any way, my book should speak thy name:

For, if thou shame, rank’d with my friends, to go,

        I am more ashamed to have thee thought Marlowe.

Notice it works nearly as well if Marlowe is substituted for  “to go,”

For, if thou shame, rank’d with my friends, Marlowe,

        I am more ashamed to have thee thought my foe.

Lest it be thought that I too have succumbed to the tunnel vision of the true believer, I should point out that Jonson does mention Marlowe’s name, and even in the First Folio’s dedication to “Shakespeare.”  However this sort of mention, which placed Marlowe safely among the dead, i.e., Kyd and Lyly, can hardly be the same as mentioning Marlowe as the author of the First Folio or even the surviving author of The Jew of Malta .  No Jonson’s epigram 77 is more certainly a public confession about authorship information withheld, hidden because the author was besmirched with a shame or public scandal among Jonson’s friends.  Price, in painting in her paradigm, would have us believe that Jonson was protecting a high born friend, but, as we have seen, this is not the case at all.  Jonson was, at this time of his life, a highly respected poet, poet laurel, about to be entombed in Westminster Abby.  He openly associated with the Pembrokes, Prince Henry and other well-to-do peers.  So Price’s analysis that there were peers who could not be seen associating with Jonson fails the acid test.  If the reader knows a period writer whose name rhymes with “foe” and “to go,” other than Marlowe, the name should be brought forth for consideration.

    Otherwise we have presumptive evidence that the man Jonson declined to name, because of his hidden shame among Jonson's friends, was Christopher Marlowe, the man who wrote the First Folio and the poems attributed to Shakespeare.  

 

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