Under an Old Oak by Isabel Gortázar

Following Mike Frohnsdorff’s suggestion¹ and Peter Farey’s further elaboration on the subject,² here are my own thoughts about Oliver’s speech in As You Like It, below.

For those of us who believe that Christopher Marlowe did not die in Deptford in 1593, but lived on to write the works that have been attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford, it is imperative to try and read in those works the information that any author, but particularly one in Marlowe’s circumstances, would have included about himself, his life in exile, his friends and his enemies, in the various texts.

As You Like It is one of the Shakespeare plays in which scholars and academics have recognized references to Marlowe, including his unclear relationship with “William of Arden," although all orthodox explanations of such references remain so far unconvincing. In this respect, I agree with Farey that Oliver’s speech may be providing us with significant information. Here is the speech again:

Oliver
Under an old oak, whose boughs were mossed with age
And high top bald with dry antiquity,
A wretched, ragged man, o'ergrown with hair,
Lay sleeping on his back. About his neck
A green and gilded snake had wreathed itself,
Who with her head, nimble in threats, approached
The opening of his mouth. But suddenly
Seeing Orlando, it unlinked itself,
And with indented glides did slip away
Into a bush, under which bush's shade
A lioness, with udders all drawn dry,
Lay couching, head on ground, with catlike watch
When that the sleeping man should stir. For 'tis
The royal disposition of that beast
To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead.(4.3.105-119)

Let me comment on these lines separately:

Under an old oak, whose boughs were mossed with age
And high top bald with dry antiquity,

There seems to be here an unnecessary emphasis on the fact that the oak is very old; in fact, its high top is bald with dry antiquity. The word “antiquity” evokes a mythical scene: According to one of the Arthurian legends, Merlin the magician was trapped in an oak tree by a sorceress; the magician was not dead but due to re-appear some day. Merlin was one of Marlowe’s nicknames, not only on account of the etymology of the name: Marl, Marlin, etc., but also because of Marlowe's identification with his creation, Dr. Faustus. About ten years later, yet another magician, Prospero (a Spanish name synonymous to Fausto), will find his spirit, Ariel, also trapped in a tree by a witch in The Tempest.

These possible references to the Merlin story, steeped in antiquity like Oliver’s tree, might be confirming the identity of our runaway friend. Also, the fact that he is asleep: in the induction of The Taming of the Shrew,³ Marlowe's absence of fifteen years is referred to as "a goodly nap."

Second Servingman
These fifteen years you have been in a dream;
Or when you waked, so waked as if you slept.
Sly
These fifteen years! by my fay, a goodly nap.

Back to As You Like It:

A wretched, ragged man, o'ergrown with hair,
Lay sleeping on his back.

These lines are describing a man that has been on the run, probably in these same woods, long enough for his hair to be o'ergrown, and his clothes in rags. Considering that in As You Like It, the woods are the hiding habitat of the outlawed Duke and his followers, the fact that Oliver seems to be hiding/living in a wood would be another pointer to his being an outlaw.

(…). About his neck
A green and gilded snake had wreathed itself,
Who with her head, nimble in threats, approached
The opening of his mouth. But suddenly
Seeing Orlando, it unlinked itself,
And with indented glides did slip away
Into a bush,

Given Frohnsdorff’s suggestion that the basic colour of ecclesiastical vestments changes to green at Pentecost (about the time of the Deptford episode), I agree with Farey that this green and gilded snake may well be a reference to Archbishop Whitgift, attempting to stop Marlowe’s heretical and seditious mouth. Apparently, the snake does not let go off his intended prey until this moment, when Oliver seems to be already an outlaw in the woods, and has obviously been on the run long enough to explain his wretched appearance.

(…) under which bush's shade
A lioness, with udders all drawn dry,
Lay couching, head on ground, with catlike watch
When that the sleeping man should stir. For 'tis
The royal disposition of that beast
To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead

Again, I agree with Farey that this lioness may be Queen Elizabeth; as we know she died in 1603 but she would certainly have been considered an old woman in 1593. However, I personally would feel much more comfortable imagining this lioness/Queen years later, allowing for the time necessary to justify the sleeping man's appearance.

While I personally cannot accept Farey’s theory that Whitgift would have agreed to Marlowe’s banishment, I can easily believe that, given the amount of people that seems to have been in the know as to Kit’s fate, Whitgift would have found out the truth within the next few years. Banishment does not stop anybody’s mouth, only death does that, and silencing heretics was as important as punishing them.

When Richard II banished Bolingbroke, that was perceived as punishment. When Romeo was banished, that was also perceived as punishment; it was Juliet who faked her death while Romeo was punished by exile. From a politico-religious point of view the accidental death staged at Deptford was no punishment in any practical sense, since it was not exemplary. In any case, the exiled life did not silence Marlowe as we know, and stopping Oliver’s mouth is what the snake seems to be intent on, until he leaves the job to the lioness.

Putting all these thoughts together, my personal reading of the speech in question is that Whitgift, having found out over the next few years that Marlowe was still alive, made sure the Queen would never allow him to come back to life, like Merlin.

The scene depicted in this metaphorical manner is covering a period between 1594 (let’s give at least a year for Oliver’s hair to overgrow and his clothes to become rags) and the first months of 1603, when both the “snake” and the “lioness” were still alive. However, the play was entered into the SR on August 4th 1600, although its publication was stayed. This suggests two possibilities: a) That Marlowe had lost his head and was cutting his own throat by writing this speech in 1599, or, b) That precisely in 1599, given Essex’s departure for, and expected failure in, Ireland, Marlowe’s situation was anyway hopeless, and he knew it, so he no longer cared which snake or lioness he might offend. (As I have said before, I believe it was the Earl of Essex who persuaded the Queen to save Marlowe’s life in 1593 and the man who gave him employment and financial support as an agent until 1599.)

A third possibility, and the one I prefer, is that this scene was revised after the Queen’s death, perhaps for that famous performance in the autumn of 1603, tantalizingly announced in Mary Sidney’s lost letter to her son, William, by then Earl of Pembroke.

I personally have no problem with that. Oliver’s is not the only speech and/or scene in As You Like It that seems to have been added after 1600 - the surmise that Marlowe, as most creative writers, may have revised his plays, adding information over the years, seems very reasonable to me.

In any case, this clue, picked up by Frohnsdorff and Farey, suggests to me that Whitgift may have been actively instrumental in preventing the Queen from “resurrecting” Marlowe before she herself died. If, as it appears by the involvement of her Coroner, William Danby, Queen Elizabeth had agreed to the Deptford scam, she must have had some plan for a future “happy ending."

Although, of course, it would not be as simple as that. I can imagine a changing scenario, with Marlowe’s release on the balance, as influence over the Queen shifted slowly, over the next five years, from Essex to Whitgift, with the Cecils swimming with the tide, as Essex insistently blotted his political copybook.

© Isabel Gortázar, October 2010

Isabel Gortázar is an independent scholar, specializing in Shakespeare and Marlowe studies. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Marlowe Society (UK) and a founding member of the International Marlowe Society. She divides her time between London and Bilbao, Spain.
Roland Emmerich Shakespeare Anonymous
¹Frohnsdorff, Mike. The Marlowe Society Newsletter 18, Spring 2002, pp.31-33.
²Farey, Peter. 2010. "Christopher Marlowe: Flight or Banishment."
³See Gortázar, Isabel: The Clue in the Shrew (Revised): A Tumbling Trick.

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