The Martin Marprelate Controversy - Ritchie D. Kendall (essay date 1986)
Ritchie D. Kendall (essay date 1986)
SOURCE: Kendall, Ritchie D. “Martin Marprelate: Syllogistic Laughter.” In The Drama of Dissent: The Radical Poetics of Nonconformity, 1380-1590, pp. 173-212. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.
[In the following essay, Kendall compares Marprelate's nonconformist approach to religious literature to that of Thomas Cartwright and others. He also explores the author's use of a persona, notes his fervent religious conviction, and discusses his identity.]
Robert Codrington, the seventeenth-century biographer of the earl of Essex, records a now-famous encounter between that aspiring young courtier and his volatile sovereign.1 Elizabeth, so the story goes, was excoriating the libelous attacks of Martin Marprelate upon her bishops before certain members of the court. Among her audience was Essex. Observing the queen's displeasure with the unknown satirist and reminded of the...
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