Character Analysis
Francis Marloe has one of the least flattering introductions in a novel that you're likely to come across anytime soon—and that's even counting Bradley Pearson's introduction of Rachel Baffin. Seriously, get of a load of what Bradley writes about him, right off the bat:
The person who stood outside (within the front door of the house, but without my subsidiary front door) was strange to me. He seemed to be trembling, perhaps from the recent attentions of the wind, perhaps from nerves or alcohol. He wore a very old blue raincoat and a stringy fawn scarf of the throttling variety. He was stout (the raincoat failed to button) and not tall, with copious greyish longish frizzy hair and a round face and a slightly hooked nose and big very red lips and eyes set very close together. He looked, I later thought, rather like a caricature of a bear. Real bears, I believe, have eyes rather wide apart, but caricatured bears usually have close eyes, possibly to indicate bad temper or cunning. I did not like the look of him at all. Something significantly ill-omened which I could not yet define emanated from him. And I could smell him from where he stood. (1.1.7)
Before we go any further, the first thing we need to note about this passage is that it reflects Bradley Pearson's anti-Semitism. Womp womp.
Now, some of you may be saying, But at the moment when Francis first appears at Bradley's door, Bradley doesn't yet know that Francis is Jewish. That's true, but we think this is one of those moments when Bradley's present-tense knowledge is affecting the way he writes about the past.
Bradley's descriptions of Francis looking hooked-nose and cunning mention characteristics that apply just as obviously to anti-Semitic caricatures of Jewish men as they do to cartoonish caricatures of bears, and they also align with the thoughts that pass through Bradley's mind when he realizes, later on, that Francis has Jewish ancestry. This is yet another good reminder that we need to be careful when considering the truth and accuracy of Bradley's perspectives on the people around him.
Bradley's anti-Semitism aside, Francis's entrance into The Black Prince tells us at least one other important thing—Francis is a bearer of bad news. At the beginning of the novel, he comes bearing news of Christian's return to London, and towards the novel's conclusion, he communicates the news of Priscilla Saxe's death.
Try as he might, Francis just can't seem to succeed in bringing warmth and love into other people's lives. In Bradley Pearson's account, at least, Francis is a harbinger of bad times to come more than he is the ministering angel that he desperately wants to be.
Let's Have Some Sympathy, Shall We?
No doubt about it, Francis has it rough. He's a disgraced medical doctor (the reasons for this disgrace are never made clear) and is also a gay man living in a place and time in which gay people had few protections and rights. By his own admission (or so Bradley Pearson tells us), he has always been unlucky in love, and the one true love of his life died a long time ago.
The one time in the entire novel when Francis gets to enjoy a little bit of mutual attraction and hanky-panky, what happens? His charge, Priscilla Saxe, succeeds in killing herself.
Francis just can't catch a break, despite his best efforts to be a useful, likeable fellow. His sister won't support him, Bradley Pearson relies on him for favors but insults him constantly and tosses him aside whenever it suits him, and his patient doesn't trust him—though with pretty good reason, we've gotta say.
Who doesn't feel a little sorry for the guy—besides Bradley Pearson and Christian Evandale, that is?
Now, Francis is down and out and low on his luck for a good while, but things change for him when Bradley Pearson is accused of, tried for, and convicted of Arnold Baffin's murder. By the time Francis pens his postscript to "The Black Prince," he's gotten himself into business as a psychological consultant, and a critical book on Bradley Pearson is just about to be hot off the press. It's nice to know that some good can come from being a devoted hanger-on.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, but Francis Marloe Isn't
Francis Marloe has two clear counterparts in Shakespeare's Hamlet, and they come as a pair.
Their names are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—two Danish courtiers who once went to school with Denmark's melancholy prince. When Claudius and Gertrude get sick of Hamlet moping around the royal house for weeks on end, they call in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and they ask their son's old schoolmates to lift Hamlet's spirits and figure out what on earth has put him into such a funk.
As Hamlet's old school buds do their best to figure out why Hamlet is acting so oddly, Hamlet eventually loses his temper and tells them off for trying to spy into his inner thoughts and feelings. It's a great speech, so let's take a look at it before getting back to The Black Prince. To understand it fully, you should know that Hamlet has just been asking Rosencrantz and Guildenstern if they know how to play the recorder.
HAMLET
Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me. You would play upon me,
you would seem to know my stops, you would pluck out the heart of my mystery, you
would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music,
excellent voice in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think
that I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though
you can fret me, you cannot play upon me. (Act 3: Scene 2)
Now, with this Shakespearean scene in mind, cast back to the moment in "The Black Prince" when Francis Marloe tells Bradley Pearson that he thinks Bradley is a repressed gay man who's in love with Arnold Baffin. Bradley doesn't take that news too kindly, and he quickly loses his temper as Francis tries to use his psychoanalytic probings to reveal Bradley's hidden heart and mind. See the pattern emerging here?
Luckily for Francis, he meets a much happier end than the one Rosencrantz and Guildenstern get in Hamlet. Whereas Francis builds a promising career out of the sordid scandal surrounding Bradley Pearson's life, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern meet gruesome deaths.