Marlowe's Contemporary, William Shakespeare

The Chandos Portrait of Shakespeare, 1610

Shakespeare (1564-1616), a respected Elizabethan playwright and poet, was a contemporary of Christopher Marlowe.  Scholars believe Marlowe and Shakespeare likely knew each other because the worked in same field and their plays were produced around the same time.  Was Marlowe a spy and assinated at the request of the Crown? Some scholars believe that Marlowe's death was faked and that he went into hiding and, under the patronage of Thomas Walsingham. wrote plays attributed to Shakespeare. This wild theory is called the Marlovian Consipiracy. 

Publication of Dr. Faustus

The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus by Christopher (Kit) Marlowe is based on the Faust story in which a man sells his soul to the devil for unlimited power and knowledge. Doctor Faustus was first published in 1604,  eleven years after Marlowe's death and at least twelve years after the first performance of the play.  Better known is the 1616 version, which may be an adaptation of the play by other playwrights.

If we set this play in a literary history context, Marlowe’s Faust is caught between the Church-dominated consciousness of the Middle Ages (6th to 15th centuries) and the humanism characteristic of the Renaissance (literature primarily written between 1500-1660). Equally, Faust has qualities that harken back to the earlier epic tradition:  he will undertake a journey, as is so with the heroes of traditional epics. 

Industrial Revolution

George Cruikshank, "London Going Out of Town, or, The March of Bricks & Mortar," 1829.

 As England moved from an agrarian society to an urban one, people began to lament the loss of nature.  Leading caricaturist George Cruikshank animates the building blocks of industry--shovels and bricks move into and erode the countryside while personified haystacks look on in horror. Not surprising, the Industrial Revolution had a major impact on Romantic poetry by authors including William Blake and William Wordsworth. Nostalgia for the pastoral also resonates in  literature of the long nineteenth century by authors including Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell. 

William Blake Completes Apprenticeship and Starts Independent Career

In 1779 William Blake completed his apprenticeship and started an independent career as an engraver. In addition to working on his own artwork, he did comission work for other artists, much of it engraving. The conventional method of engraving at this time was copperplate engraving, a very long and tedious process that came about in the 15th century. It required many slow and careful hours of work because any mistakes would be impossible to correct without restarting the piece. Copperplate engraving uses an intaglio printing technique. Lines are carved into the plate and ink is placed into the grooves and then wiped away from the rest of the piece. The plate is then pressed into a humid sheet of paper using a printing press. Copperplate engraving was said to produce more exquisite images than woodcuts, though many famous engravers -- Blake included -- were masters of both techniques. For many of his most famous works, however, Blake used a method of printing that he invented called "illuminated printing," though it is known today as relief etching. This method involved painting the design on the copper plate backwards using an ink that was resistant to nitric acid. When the plate was put in the acid, it would etch away all of the unprotected metal and leave the design raised so that it could be easily printed. 

Death of Jane Austen in Winchester

8 College Street, Winchester, The Victorian Web, photo by Jacqueline Bannerjee.

Jane Austen grew ill in 2017, and she and her sister Cassandra went to stay in Winchester in this house on 8 College Street.  Jane could be attended by a physician named Mr. Lyford of the County Hospital, Winchester, who had treated her previously. She died there on July 18, 1817 and was buried in nearby Winchester Cathedral.  The home has a plaque that reads, "In this house Jane Austen lived her last days and died 18th July 2017."

Death of Edgar Allan Poe

On September 28 1849, Edgar Allan Poe died. The circumstances around his death remain a mystery to this day. One notable theory is that he was a victim of "cooping", a method of voter fraud that involved a victim being kidnapped, drugged, and disguised several times in order to cast many votes. Some people suggest that he died of alcohol poisoning, or that he even contracted rabies. Poe is famous for his horror tales, and many early critics of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wall-Paper" (1892) view it as a Poe-esque horror story. 

“The Mystery of Edgar Allan Poe's Death (U.S. National Park Service).” National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 24 Feb. 2021, https://www.nps.gov/articles/poe-death.htm.

Publication of Goblin Market with illustrations by Christina's brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Christina Rossetti is best known today for her long narrative poem "Goblin Market," published in 1862 with two illustrations by her artist brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti.  The illustration above shows the sisters together after Laura has been tempted, and the frontispiece shows Laura gorging on forbidden fruits with Lizzie looking back at her but walking away from temptation.  The poem has been illustrated variously as a children's tale and as an erotic work, but the first illustrations grew out of the original collaboration from the Rossetti siblings. 

1920: 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Women's Right to Vote