How Did Academics Get It So Wrong?
Christopher Marlowe, wounded child of the angels, you are made immortal with a kiss.
What Caused This Astonishing Failure Of Scholarship?
This is a more complicated question than it appears.
The future will marvel less over the fact that Marlowe wrote the works of Shakespeare, which is transparently obvious now with the uncovering of the Shakespeare-X Message, than they will marvel over the fact that literary critics and Shakespearean scholars got it so wrong for 400 years.
As soon as you accept that Marlowe wrote the works of Shakespeare this mass academic delusion becomes an even more mysterious question than the Authorship Question ever was. A far more difficult puzzle to solve.
The future will ask how did the academic community remain in such denial in the face of such overwhelming evidence? These were and are intelligent and erudite people, deeply earnest in their research and analysis.
It might not be inappropriate to mention the word hubris in passing here, but let's gracefully refrain.
So How Did This Incredible Misattribution Happen?
In brief, there was a dogma in the field of Shakespearean studies. A utter denial even of the existence of an Authorship Question, in the face of mounting evidence. This made all of the Marlowe evidence exist in a blind spot for academics. They never really looked into it, far less studied it closely, even as the amount of it grew over time to voluminous size.
For any mainstream academic to even suggest that it was perhaps not the actor William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon who wrote the works, was to commit a career suicide.
I imagine some of them must have harbored suspicions, they are bright people who sincerely adore Shakespeare's plays, and we may see a large number of public confessions of suspicions now.
From the time they were students though, today's distinguished Shakespearean scholars were indoctrinated to ridicule the Authorship Question, it was the very foundation of their scholarly education. And they always lacked the imagination to transcend it.
What Specifically Went Wrong Inside The Shakespearean Academic Community?
Most of all it was the entrenched dogma which created the blindness.
But here is what also happened, what made the misattribution so fantastical and detailed:
Almost everything scholars have to support the actor William Shakespeare as the author of the works is from impoverished secondary sources, rather than primary sources. Which should have set off alarm bells in itself, but did not.
Errors of interpretation made a century ago by scholars have been relentlessly accepted and compounded upon until they have become a detailed web of automatically accepted, but imaginary 'facts'. A cathedral of fantasy was built upon a foundation of sand.
And scholars have not used the primary sources which we do possess either properly or wisely, the actual plays and poems.
Instead they have simply interpreted everything to fit their preconceived dogma, to align themselves with a large but mistaken canon of scholarly thought.
Rather than trust what is being said by Shakespeare-Marlowe himself in his literary works, they have trusted a falsified document of 1593, written by a minor Crown bureaucrat, the Queen's Coroner, which states that Marlowe is dead. Even though the historical record offers little real evidence of this fact.
Academics have relied upon their limited experience as historians, rather than their skills as literary experts, which were insufficient to the task.
They are scholars and academics who do not understand people and artists very well , their understanding is the understanding of a different kind of person, an academic scholar. They adore and admire Shakespeare, and therefore gradually come to imagine that he was like them. But he never was, he was always a renegade artist and a revolutionary bohemian, a man utterly unlike an academic scholar. He was a man so intellectually dangerous that he was banished from his entire country.
How Did Lee Vidor Recognize The Misattribution?
Lee Vidor is an artist and a literary writer.
I approached Shakespeare as a fellow artist, only a really good one.
I read the plays of both dramatists, Shakespeare and Marlowe, (and the literary works of the other authorship contenders too ).
It was clear enough that Marlowe and Shakespeare were the same writer at different stages of their literary careers.
I read the documented lives of both Marlowe and Shakespeare.
It was clear that Marlowe was a wildly imaginative man who could have written the plays, and it was equally clear that the actor William Shakespeare was not such a person. He did not have the artistic temperament and his known life never evidenced it in the slightest.
And so I knew to my own satisfaction that it was Christopher Marlowe who wrote the works of Shakespeare.
I then decided to wait for several generations for the proof of it to finally arrive..
What Has Been Learned In Scholarship By This Misattribution?
The future will not be amazed that Marlowe wrote Shakespeare, it will be amazed that we managed to get it so wrong for 400 years in the face of such overwhelming evidence.
As soon as you realize that Marlowe wrote Shakespeare, it’s completely obvious that he did. The Shakespeare-X Message takes the imposture out of our blind spot. Then you begin to be amazed that anyone could ever have thought otherwise.
Thus we have learned that orthodox dogma is anathema in scholarship.
All dogmas must be driven from all fields of scholarship to prevent this kind of disaster from ever happening again.
Scholarship is a place for new ideas, and for old ideas to be tested. It must be a home for original thought, not a haven for intellectual orthodoxy.
Groupthink:
Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within groups of people. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative ideas or viewpoints. Antecedent factors such as group cohesiveness, structural faults, and situational context play into the likelihood of whether or not groupthink will impact the decision-making process.
The primary socially negative cost of groupthink is the loss of individual creativity, uniqueness, and independent thinking.
A Final Statement from Lee Vidor on Shakespearean Scholars:
I should say I am extremely sympathetic to the present situation of Shakespearean scholars. These are honorable people who did a very great deal of fine work lasting centuries, which I have studied while confirming the Shakespeare-X Message, and always to my own enrichment.
However Shakespearean scholars are not general literary scholars or historians, they are Shakespearean specialists, and they were simply incorrect in their interpretations of certain literary texts and historical facts which they painstakingly uncovered.
Nevertheless these scholars have done a wonderful job in impressing upon the world the universal importance of Shakespeare as a writer, and this has greatly enriched world civilization. Only the bible can compete with the works of Shakespeare for its effect on the maturing civilization of mankind. In this, Shakespearean scholars have not been mistaken in the slightest, and they have done the world a great and important service.
I do not consider us enemies at all, but rather colleagues on the same journey towards understanding and truth. They have my respect and my gratitude for the excellent work they have done in the past, and I greatly look forward to the new work they will now do, building upon the stunning new revelation of the Shakespeare-X Message.
Culture advances only upon the shoulders of many. It is the fine work of this army of Shakespearean scholars and devotees which has made my new discoveries possible. They are my respected friends.
