Talk:Rival Poet

Christopher Marlowe

Marlowe is often seen as Shakespeare's foremost rival early in his career. I believe there is more evidence for this than is stated on this page. Marlowe might have had few plays before he died, but his plays were often considered more popular and more powerfully written than Shakespeare by Elizabethans for at least the first decade of Shakespeare's career. Marlowe's reputation was still great after his death. Also, his influences on Shakespeare's plays rings all through Shakespeare's career, with references to him in Love's Labours Lost, Hamlet, MacBeth, and even possibly the Tempest. This might indicate the two actally had been acquainted in some way and therefore he could have been a subject of rivalry in at least some of Shakespeare's sonnets.

There is absolutely no evidence that Marlowe and Shakespeare even knew each other, much less that they were rivals. Shakespeare had not written nor published one word by the time of Marlowe's supposed death on May 30, 1593. Not a word.06:15, 30 March 2013 (UTC)daver852 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.215.208.184 (talk)

"Two-way traffic" seems to be a misinterpretation of the simple facts and also, of course, of Bate's view. Marlowe would not have been substantially influenced by Shakespeare's plays; at the time of Marlowe's death, Shakespeare was a noted and up-and-coming playwright, but he had as yet produced nothing of the genius with which he would later be credited. Whatever value his plays till then may have had would most likely have been read as insignificant by Marlowe, who was considered the foremost prodigy in the theatre industry. Indeed to say that Titus Andronicus or The Taming of the Shrew had any significant impact on Marlowe's own final plays is at best unsubstantiated and at worst clearly mistaken; so the traffic here is clearly only one way, really: Shakespeare learnt from Marlowe, as he did from all his predecessors.

That said, my issue is only with the wording and point-of-view implied by the post, not with Marlowe's candidacy. I think he is a very strong possibility for the Rival Poet. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.155.15.226 (talk) 13:39, 18 August 2015 (UTC)