Q & A on The Marlowe Papers

This presentation is a post-performance discussion of The Marlowe Papers, in which author Ros Barber and director Nicola Hazel describe how Barber’s nine-hour verse novel was transformed into a tightly focused one-person play while preserving its essential story and its iambic pentameter.

The conversation then turns to Christopher Marlowe’s life, the evidence surrounding his supposed death, Shakespearean authorship, and the practical realities of playmaking, with Barber explaining her research, her views on Shakespeare’s likely role as a theatrical businessman rather than a playwright, and the distinction between “co-authorship” and “collaboration” in the Elizabethan theater. The session concludes with audience questions about the adaptation, writing in verse, the performance itself, and the continuing appeal of The Marlowe Papers as both a work of scholarship and an engaging piece of theater.