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by Eric_WVGG
1661 days ago
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On a related note, this article reminded me of something one of my professors had to say about William Shakespeare. There's a long tradition of conspiracy theorizing around Shakespeare, that he didn't actually write his own plays, that they were instead written by Francis Bacon or Queen Elizabeth or something ridiculous. These arguments usually start from his background: how could the son of a common glovemaker have gotten the sort of education necessary to write like this? The thing is, glovemaker was a highly skilled profession. Exactly like you said, any dum dum could cut a hole in a sheet of fabric and call it a poncho, but handmade shoes and gloves take serious craftsmanship. This kind of profession would have put Shakespeare's family firmly in the upper-middle class. |
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They were born only a couple of months apart and had the same sort of background- the sons of skilled craftsmen working with leather (Marlowe's father was a shoemaker) who attended their local grammar school.
Both schools still exist- King's School Canterbury is a much more prestigious institution than King Edward VI School Stratford these days, but I'm not sure how much of a difference there is then.
The course of their lives diverged in their late teens- while Marlowe obtained a scholarship to study at Cambridge, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway in some haste as she was pregnant with his daughter...