/lit/ - Literature

Marlowe's Doctor Faustus outclasses Shakespeare's The Tempest. Discuss.

*cough*

So is the difference between the A and B texts of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus simply that the B text contains more stuff? Should I just go ahead and read the B-text, or should I read the A-text first?

My vote doesn't necessarily go to Christopher Marlowe, but I do believe - as, I was delighted to discover, did Anthony Burgess - that had he lived longer, he would have supplanted Shakespeare's spot in the literary canon. [Of course, I'm just speculating about stuff I can't know for no reason other than the fact that it's kind of fun every now and again.]

I'll add that I love Aeschylus, Samuel Beckett, Anton Checkhov, Henrik Ibsen, and Oscar Wilde. Not sure who my favorite is out of them.

If I could get Christopher Marlowe to be on bottom, I would so totally fuck him.

Hey /lit/ this is what it would be like if Christopher Marlowe had written a porn in response to that shitty porn by Shakespeare.

Oh poor limp Will, thinkst that a porno sonnet?
It fails at filth, its metric corset pinches.
You offer fourteen lines, but sit upon it
And you shall see that I've got fourteen inches.

A foot and two inch more of cock for you,
To make you weep and gag at irrumation
I'll watch thy face turn blue, because you blew
The greatest poet of our generation.

Swallow my seed, then, gulp it down like manna
Sent down to help thy versification:
And one day you may thank me, sing hosanna
That my seed deep inside found germination

And bade your talents bloom, taught you the trick
Of learning how to write as well as you suck dick.

FACT: there was only one English Pope, Adrian IV, his real name was Nicholas Breakspeare.
FACT: the man known as "Shakespeare" appears earlier in underground Catholic Recusant circles under the name "Shakeshaft"

It is clear that "Shakespeare" was in fact a secret Jesuit agent known better to the world as Christopher Marlowe.

To write pentameter, you need to count
To ten, or sometimes counting to eleven
Is necessary for an ending like:
"To be or not to be, that is the question".
That ending's feminine, the unstressed beat
is hanging out there, but it's still blank verse.
You also need to pay attention to
The line break, just like I did there. See that?
That's called "enjambment". Oft times blank verse can
Do interesting things by how you end, or don't
Quite end the line. Like: this line is end-stopped.
Is that enough, or should I give you more?

>>There's a metric fuckton of evidence for Shakespeare being the author AND against all the other "candidates".

Yeah yeah. Oxford died before the Tempest was written, Bacon clearly didn't write them. What if Christopher Marlowe didn't really die? What if some other body were buried and Marlowe's death was faked? It happens in Cymbeline (Cloten's headless corpse) and in Measure for Measure (Barnardine).

Marlowe is the only person with the talent to have written Shakespeare's plays. But if it was Marlowe, it would be related to some kind of conspiracy / cover-up. And we know Marlowe WAS involved in conspiracies, cover-ups, and espionage. How can you so easily rule Marlowe out? Seriously.

1. Stephenie Meyer is a Mormon.
2. Mormons give 10 percent of their income to the Mormon church. This is called tithing.
3. Stephenie Meyer is proud to do this and mentions this in interviews. Google her name + tithing
4. Stephenie Meyer makes a lot of money.
5. The Mormon church does not like gay people, to put it mildly.
6. The LDS Church uses their money to fund anti-gay campaigns like Prop 8 in California.
7. Meanwhile, have you read the Twilight series?
8. Main characters are named Edward and Isabella, nickname Bella. Edward is glittery / sparkly; incredibly beautiful; cares about Bella's feelings but refuses to sleep with her; is fundamentally different from her in a way that is thought to be evil or damned for eternity.
9. Meanwhile Stephenie Meyer was an English Major at Brigham Young University.
10. Maybe you noticed when she gives plot summaries for Romeo and Juliet and Merchant of Venice and Pride and Prejudice, etc. Everything she read in English 101 at BYU.
11. Have you ever heard of the famous gay writer Christopher Marlowe?
12. He wrote a play called "Edward the Second", about King Edward II of England.
13. It's the kind of play that usually gets put on English 101 syllabuses, although I didn't go to BYU.
14. The main characters are Edward, a gay man (and King of England), who is forced to marry Isabella, a woman.
15. If you know the play, it doesn't end well.
16. Stephenie Meyer clearly is writing her books from what Freud would call "the return of the repressed." She knows the Mormon attitude towards gays is wrong. She's not inhumane. But as a good tithing Mormon, she is forced to see/believe that boys like Kurt on Glee are somehow seductive yet dangerous....damned for all time yet covered in body glitter, just like Edward Cullen.
17. In any case, stop reading Stephenie Meyer, start reading Kit Marlowe.
18. Any questions?

Here's what I think you should do.
1. Remember Stephenie Meyer is a Mormon.
2. Remember she gives 10% of her income to the Mormon church, this is called tithing.
3. Remember the Mormon church bankrolled the campaign to stop gays from being allowed to marry in California, and elsewhere.
4. Now read "Edward the Second" by famous gay writer Christopher Marlowe.
5. Note that the main characters in Marlowe's play are a gay man named Edward and a girl forced to marry him, named Isabella.
6. Remember Bella Swan's full name is Isabella.
7. Remember Edward Cullen is damned for all eternity, strangely sparkly like he's got bodyglitter or sequins, incredibly beautiful, keeps telling Bella he can't sleep with her, and yet really cares about her anyway.
8. Remember that all the Twilight novels have references to things you read in English 101 at Brigham Young University, like Romeo and Juliet, Pride and Prejudice, The Merchant of Venice, etc.
9. Remember that English 101 usually makes you read something by Christopher Marlowe.
10. Ask yourself if the Twilight novels are really about a woman who belongs to a crazy hate-filled religion like Mormonism trying to write about the deep contradictions in realizing that 10% of all the income she makes from these books and movies goes to promoting hateful legislation against gay people.
11. Decide Christopher Marlowe is a better writer than Stephenie Meyer, and start reading his works instead.