The descriptive phrase in the title of this study, ‘Merlin's prophet’, refers primarily to a style, rather than to a man. It derives from the passage with which Rabelais concludes his Gargantua. There, Gargantua and Friar John both comment on the meaning of a ‘prophetic riddle’ engraved on a plate and discovered in digging the foundations of the abbey of Thélème. Gargantua interprets the riddle – a muddled account of an Antichrist, an apocalypse, and a triumphant elect – to mean ‘the Continuance and Upholding of Divine Truth’. Friar John, however, disagrees:

Friar John's brief argument with Gargantua can serve to introduce two basic sources of disagreement among the spectators and readers of Marlowe's work. First, Marlowe seems to have been a rhetorical provocateur, as well as, quite possibly, a political one. He could tantalize and manipulate the imaginations of an audience in a masterful fashion. Rarely does he disappoint our expectations without first over-inflating them. He thereby encourages us to ‘dote’ about his heroes and his ideas.