An Examination of The Biographical-Historical Evidence Regarding Marlowe’s Authorship Imposture
Christopher Marlowe, wounded child of the angels, you are made immortal with a kiss.
Although the nature of the Shakespeare-X Message allows a mathematical probability calculation which is a conclusive proof, and the validity of this mathematical proof requires no subjective literary supporting evidence whatsoever, nevertheless during my researches confirming the Shakespeare-X Message, I have also confirmed a great many new supporting arguments which take the more traditional forms of humanities research.
These arguments number in the many dozens, although only a select few are presented here.
Throughout this examination of the evidence I consider most of the stated facts to be general Shakespearean knowledge, known to all specialists and taken from multiple sources. Therefore I have not cited particular sources, of which there are hundreds.
Otherwise it is original research and speculative deduction by Lee Vidor.
General reference sources for all subsequent speculations are:
For Marlowe:
Park Honan, David Riggs, The Marlowe Society, Calvin Hoffman, Michael Rubbo, Peter Farey, Charles Nicholl, A. D. Wraight. And many others.
For Shakespeare:
The First Folio, Frank Kermode, Harold Bloom, Park Honan, Stanley Wells, Helen Vendler, James Shapiro, Gary Taylor, Stephen Greenblatt, Ron Rosenbaum, And many others.
My gratitude to you all for your excellent works of scholarship.
Also to everyone who added their intellectual effort to the Authorship Question over the course of the last hundred years. Everything you have done has been valuable to my research.
An Examination Of Some Biographical-Historical Evidence:
1. The Evidence Against Christopher Marlowe as the authentic author of the works of Shakespeare.
1. There exists a single document in which a minor crown bureaucrat, the Queen’s Coroner, states that in May, 1593 at Eleanor Bull's house, an informal Inn in Deptford, London, Christopher Marlowe was murdered in a confused manner by three of his own friends who were crown espionage colleagues, three people of somewhat variable names, at the conclusion of an all day meeting which took place at a known safe house for crown agents, close by the port from which ships commonly sailed to continental Europe.
Marlowe’s body was then thrown into an unmarked mass grave and buried in the nearest local church graveyard to Eleanor Bull’s house, despite him being the most famous and celebrated poet and dramatist in England.
Historical records show these confessed murderers subsequently received no punishment and were pardoned within a few weeks by Queen Elizabeth I herself, making this an unprecedentedly speedy pardon process.
2. The Evidence For Christopher Marlowe as the authentic author of the works of Shakespeare.
This list is not presented in order of significance.
It is presented here to indicate future directions for scholarly inquiry.
50 ish Reasons: Or more if there are updates..
1. Marlowe had the literary talent, which was already recognized, celebrated and still developing when he was ‘murdered’ at age 29.
2. Marlowe had the education. He was a scholar who graduated from Cambridge University on a scholarship.
3. Marlowe had the intellect. Evidenced in his plays, poetry and translations from Latin.
4. Marlowe had a pronounced artistic temperament and character, which the actor William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon clearly did not, as the historical record shows. (The petty lawsuits, the inexpressive legal will, the choice of business ventures, the careful financial investments, the timidly faceless existence etc.).
5. Marlowe had the correct spectrum of social backgrounds, having journeyed from shoemaker’s son to Cambridge University, to espionage service, and on to the company of poets, crown courtiers and intellectual aristocrats as patrons, acquaintances and lovers.
6. Marlowe was the correct age and in the correct location and personally involved with the same specific theater people and printers with whom Shakespeare subsequently collaborated.
7. Marlowe was a famous playwright and poet of extreme youthful genius
8. Marlowe had the correct literary sensibility for the works.
9. Marlowe had the correct enlightened, non theological philosophy as appears in the plays.
10. Marlowe had the thematic interest in that style of historically adapted theater play, which he originated.
11. Marlowe is known to be the original revolutionary creator of the realized form of Elizabethan blank verse in which Shakespeare wrote all his plays.
12. The works of Shakespeare are a continued literary exploration of the works of Marlowe, a continuing exploration of the same literary ideas, gradually brought to maturity. Shakespeare’s plays have been described by some scholars as virtually an appropriation of Marlowe’s earlier work.
13. Marlowe had the same poetic influences as consistently alluded to in the plays of Shakespeare, and the same favorite poet as Shakespeare (Ovid).
14. Marlowe also used Holinshed’s Chronicles as a source for his history plays, treating the original material in a similar freely interpretive dramatic manner as Shakespeare.
15. Marlowe’s Latin was good enough for him to be a celebrated translator of the poet Ovid, and therefore his grasp of the sources of English vocabulary was strong enough to create hundreds of viable new English words, as Shakespeare is known to have done.
16. In his lifetime Marlowe’s own works were published in exactly the same manner as the Shakespeare works, and by the same people, printers who were friends of Marlowe before Shakespeare appeared, and who who published the works of Shakespeare throughout his career.
17. The metanarrative of the entire Shakespeare literary canon bears no relationship to the known life of the successful London actor William Shakespeare of Stratford, but perfectly matches the psychological concerns of a living Christopher Marlowe in exile in Italy.
18. Marlowe had experience of crown intrigue from his work as a spy. This would have enabled him to have the resources and connections to engineer a falsified murder. He also possessed the imagination for this. His life was spent staging fictitious events for the theater.
19. Marlowe’s own literary work is quoted and alluded to repeatedly in the works of Shakespeare. Even the secret, specific, and at that time, generally unknown details of Marlowe’s own 'murder'.
The historical record shows that in his era Marlowe was said by people to have died of various different causes and in widely varying circumstances, including plague which was currently prevalent.
Only Shakespeare himself appears to have known quite precisely that it was recorded in the official records as a fight over a ‘reckoning’, even describing the very room as ‘little’, and he states it as such in the play As You Like It.
But only Marlowe and not the disreputable actor Shakespeare could know that this was the official cover story. As a disreputable public actor, Shakespeare had no access to the official Queen’s Coroners’ archives, he did not have the authority for that.
20. One of the primary themes of the Shakespeare canon is identity. Marlowe had an identity problem.
The actor William Shakespeare did not.
21. Another theme of the Shakespeare canon is exile. Marlowe had an exile problem.
The actor William Shakespeare did not.
22. A recurring theme of a great many of the Shakespeare plays is imposture and mistaken identity. The writer of the Shakespeare plays was concerned with this to the point of obsession. The actor William Shakespeare had no reason to write obsessively about mistaken identity. But Christopher Marlowe certainly did.
Writers do not write about things which do not concern them.
23. The entire Shakespeare-Marlowe legacy is riddled with characters and allusions to people who pretend or are thought to be dead but are not. It is a pronounced motif in the literary legacy.
This concept appears in a great many parts of the entire Shakespeare legacy including in Marlowe’s prologue to the Jew of Malta, in the play The London Prodigal which was incorrectly attributed to Shakespeare upon its first publishing in 1605, and also recurs very frequently in the actual plays of Shakespeare, including the climax of Romeo and Juliet.
It also appears in the sonnets and in the dedications to a number of the Shakespeare publications, as well as in a number of contemporary commentaries from other writers.
Along with mistaken identity it is a principal theme of the entire Shakespeare-Marlowe legacy.
But there is absolutely no reason for this to be true of the actor William Shakespeare, who was only considered dead on one successful occasion, with no suspicious confusion attached to the circumstances.
However there is very great reason for it to be part of Shakespeare-Marlowe’s legacy.
24. There is no reason for the actor William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon to be concerned with Italy, exile, imposture, mistaken identity, nor lost honor. Neither with a recurring motif of falsified or mistaken death.
The historical record apparently shows he was a wealthy and successful actor living comfortably in London. None of these literary issues which riddle his plays touched his life in any way.
Marlowe’s life was touched by all of these, and writers have nothing to write about except what touches and moves their lives. These are the things which have meaning enough to them to write about. Writers do not write about subjects which do not move them.
25. Marlowe’s existence abroad in exile provides a solution to the mystery of the suddenly appearing 18 completely unpublished plays of the First Folio.
If Shakespeare is a well known writer living in London, there is no reason for 18 manuscripts to suddenly appear, or ever to go missing or unpublished in the first place. Marlowe had these manuscripts with him when he returned from exile alive.
The historical record shows that Edward Blount registered 16 Shakespeare plays at the official Stationers' Register on November 8 1623.
Why were so many plays unregistered that they had to be simultaneously registered before the publication of the first folio? The most reasonable answer is that someone had an unknown cache of them and produced them all at once. Otherwise each of the plays would have probably been registered as it appeared, as was done for the other 20 or so previously known Shakespeare plays.
Who might have a cache of 16 previously unknown Shakespeare plays? The author of them of course.
26. Many of the Shakespeare plays take place in a foreign country, Italy, which Shakespeare is thought never to have visited. Some of these plays are derived from then untranslated Italian folk tales, (Romeo and Juliet, Taming Of The Shrew, and others). Italian was another language the actor William Shakespeare apparently did not speak. And in any case why would untranslated Italian folk tales be available in England?
Marlowe had motive to live in exile in Italy, since there was a Renaissance in the arts and sciences taking place there at that time and it was a world center for culture. And Marlowe was a dynamic and adventurous artist forced into exile abroad, Italy would be a very appealing choice for him to make.
27. Historical records show evidence that the actor William Shakespeare wrote nothing at all before Marlowe disappeared in 1593. The name Shakespeare only first appears in use in the historical record in September 1593, four months after Marlowe’s ‘murder’. The poem Venus and Adonis, on which publication of September 1593 the name William Shakespeare first appears, was registered anonymously only six weeks before Marlowe disappeared.
Marlowe's own name only first appears on publications in 1594, a year after he disappeared, and yet there are still public records that he wrote 7 plays and several poems and translations before his 'murder'. There is no such record for William Shakespeare.
Marlowe's name begins appearing on quarto publications in 1594 only because it has now become necessary for him to distinguish the Marlowe work from that done under the name of Shakespeare.
28. Shakespeare's first publication was a book of poetry which is in Marlowe's style and appears to be a companion piece to Marlowe’s last work, a very similar book of poetry.
These two books of poetry with such similar titles, Venus and Adonis and Hero and Leander, were registered only five months apart, and may even be approached as a single poetic work in the same style and written on related love themes.
Shakespeare’s poem was anonymously registered only weeks before Marlowe disappeared, and published four months after Marlowe was gone, in the same month (September), as Hero and Leander was first registered to Marlowe. Shakespeare was unheard of before this publication.
29. Unlike the actor Shakespeare, Marlowe in exile did not have additional professions, (stage acting and theater management and direction), to take his time away from the writing of a very extensive canon of work, (at least 36 known Shakespeare plays).
Throughout his life Shakespeare-Marlowe wrote plays at the same consistent rate as a very prolific full time author working at a full capacity without other responsibilities. A rate of of roughly two long complete plays in each year of mature writing. For twenty years.
This is an utterly impossible rate of production for a writer to maintain over a lifetime while involved in several other demanding careers. For a contemporary playwright working today, even producing one 2 hour play a year continuously for decades is close to unprecedented.
It took Arthur Miller, a great playwright himself, 70 years of actual writing to produce the same number of stage plays as Shakespeare supposedly created in 20 years or less while running two other theater careers, a London social life, and a Stratford marriage with a family.
Academic experts often suggest that Shakespeare wrote in the evenings after work and his theater performances. These are clearly experts who have never done any creative writing themselves. Exhaustion is never creatively inspiring.
Shakespeare-Marlowe was a great and prolific genius, but he was not a superman. To suggest that he could maintain this extraordinary literary output for decades along with his numerous other careers is similar to suggesting that he could run not just faster, but five times as fast as the next fastest runner in history. It is not a viable thesis.
But to imagine a Christopher Marlowe living quietly alone in Italy with nothing else to occupy his time, and an earnest need to produce plays in order to generate money to survive, is to see 36 plays in 20 years as something within the reach of a prolific genius spending his time in creative contemplation.
30. Why are there no early works of William Shakespeare in existence? Shakespeare appears fully formed as a literary genius without a past, either biographical or literary, at age 29, within four months of Marlowe’s ‘murder’.
This is because the early immature works of Shakespeare are in the name of Christopher Marlowe.
31. None of the Shakespeare plays or poems mention current English events, not even the death of Queen Elizabeth I. Despite Shakespeare being the poetic genius of the age, and Elizabeth I being a great and longserving Queen, Shakespeare writes no poem or eulogy for the Queen’s death.
Virtually none of the Shakespeare plays are set in contemporary England, despite the fact that Shakespeare is almost always indirectly political and always concerned with power and English history.
The reason for this is that Marlowe was abroad and out of touch with current events, and he was attempting to gain a pardon from exile by showing himself to be politically innocuous.
32. No historical evidence exists to prove that William Shakespeare of Stratford ever wrote anything, apart from a piece of embarrassing third rate doggerel documented in the historical record as having been specifically written by the actor William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon- Avon, to adorn his tomb.
The man who wrote the exquisite plays of Shakespeare would neither have written nor allowed such a poor piece of amateur verse to appear on his tomb as a final permanent memorial to his existence.
It would have offended his literary taste, just as it does ours. And his literary taste was highly refined, as we have seen from his exquisite works.
33. No evidence exists to prove that the actor William Shakespeare of Stratford ever was a writer, far less wrote the entire Shakespearean canon.
All we have are the letters WS and variations of the name Shakespeare, printed on various quartos, but no documentation whatsoever which connects the actual writing of these published quartos with the actor William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. There are no manuscripts, no documents whatsoever. Not even any written public comment of any weight.
There is not even any indirect textual evidence in the plays, such as there is with Marlowe, and can be seen by comparison of the play texts with the actual life of Marlowe. (There are a great many examples of this, for example that the name of the inn owned by Marlowe’s sister is used in the Shakespeare play Henry IV. )
In fact ‘Shakespeare’ gets the actual environs of Stratford wrong in the plays, apparently deliberately, eg: the non-existent Forest of Arden, in As You Like It.
In contrast there is a good deal of contemporary comment in the historical record which connects Marlowe specifically to his named plays, to his university career, and also his early success as a literary genius.
33A. The Shakespeare sonnets are a famously confused and obscure story when applied to the life of the actor William Shakespeare.
When applied to the authentic life of Marlowe in exile the sonnets tell a clear story.
34. There is more record extant of the actual life of Marlowe over his 7 year career, than the life of Shakespeare over his 27 year career
The reason that this odd state of affairs exists at all is that the name Marlowe could not be mentioned in association with the Shakespeare plays because Elizabethan England was an authoritarian state which horrendously tortured and savagely executed its dissidents. Even an acclaimed genius like Marlowe was forced to flee under threat of torture and execution.
For clear understanding, one should perhaps compare the situation to that of Germany under the rule of National Socialism, although in Elizabethan England the tortures perpetrated upon dissidents were more capricious, savage and summary.
Using this admittedly bizarre contemporary analogy, it is lucidly clear that it is foolish to ask; ‘Why did no-one speak out publicly against the will of Hitler and the National Socialists? The answer is obvious.
In the Elizabethan era even a private diary or manuscript would routinely and legally be requisitioned by a torturer. As apparently was repeatedly done in the falsified atheism case against Marlowe.
Under this authoritarian circumstance, nothing other than the various pseudonyms for Shakespeare could be mentioned by contemporary writers in association with the plays, even though some of them knew precisely who wrote them, and who did not.
There was no reason for commenters to mention the actor William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, even upon his death, because insiders knew he did not write the plays. And furthermore there was no way to mention Marlowe by name without courting severe Crown punishment and perhaps execution.
35. The only existing signature of Marlowe, found on the will of Katherine Benchkin signed in 1585, when Marlowe was 21, shows a sublimely flowing penmanship. It is the flowing and artistic handwriting of a man who has already spent a great deal of time with a pen in his hand.
The six existing signatures of the actor William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, show a man who cannot handwrite well, but has to actually draw the letters, virtually one by one.
This is not the handwriting of a man who has spent a lifetime writing plays by hand with a quill. Not even a man on his deathbed, which the final three signatures are claimed to be, but in fact are not, the actor Shakespeare didn’t actually die until some weeks later.
Furthermore, in his six known signatures the actor Shakespeare is unsure exactly what to call himself, instead using a wide range of variable names for himself. This is a clear indication that he was a man who rarely wrote down his own name. This is a very unusual circumstance for a man of financial substance who had handwritten 36 plays and presumably signed his name on the cover page of each when they were completed. Even if he somehow lacked the pride in his work to do so, he would still have to sign them with a recognizable name for no other reason than so that theater owners would know to pay him, and not someone else. This would require a consistent and stable name, which the actor Shakespeare apparently did not possess.
In addition the writer of the plays of Shakespeare was in fact obsessed with names. Textual analysis shows that the word ‘name’ appears with abnormal frequency in the plays of the First Folio. My research indicates that it appears 663 times in 36 plays, while a thematically important word such as ‘love’ appears only 2000 times. This is an extremely abnormal relative ratio for a writer known as a love poet.
Given that the writer of the Shakespeare plays was so obsessively interested in names, one might reasonably expect that he would have settled upon one for himself at some time in his own life.
As Christopher Marlowe himself did by his early 20s, when his fully formed signature appeared on a will.
36. The recorded will of the actor William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, is utterly incongruous as the will of a poetic genius. It is an resolutely prosaic document, relentlessly businesslike and without the slightest expressive flourish. It appears to have been written by a lawyer rather than a writer of expressive genius. This legal will does not even manage to provide a personal adjective before the mention of his beloved favorite daughter, to whom he left most of his estate. And if there is one thing a poetic genius loves, it is adjectives.
It is simply not the will of a wildly expressive poet who has spent his life writing poetically and theatrically of the importance of love in human life.
36A. Even before Marlowe was ‘murdered’ there are indications that he was writing plays psuedonymously, or anonymously, to earn money from Lord Strange, a patron who supported a theater company but hated Marlowe in person. Thus Marlowe already had a track record of imposture even before the 'murder'.
This is documented in Kyd's confessional letter to the Crown inquisitor which attempts to clear Kyd's name of the charge of atheism by implicating Marlowe.
36B. Marlowe has a record of mentioning his previous written works in his own plays. The date of creation of the poem The Passionate Shepherd To His Love has been identified only by using the references to it which appears in Marlowe's plays.
The plays of Shakespeare are strewn with references to Marlowe and his works.
37. The existing references to Shakespeare by his contemporaries are all subjectively interpreted by scholars, often incorrectly and always according to the prevailing dogma of authorship by the actor Shakespeare of Stratford, as I have lucidly seen in my new research based on the conclusions of the Shakespeare-X Message. They do not stand up upon examination. And just as often they mislead.
Here are two examples to hand from Ben Jonson’s remarks alone. There are dozens of such ambiguous interpretations spread across the entire historical record.
Ben Jonson writes, ‘I remember, the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned), he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, would he had blotted a thousand. ‘
It’s clearly possible to interpret this statement as a reference to an authorship imposture, but it never has been in the past. The entire remark is always interpreted as hostile to Shakespeare, but it fact it can also be interpreted as a witty joking inside remark about a close friend. And there are virtually contemporaneous reports, (possibly imaginary), by Thomas Fuller of the many evenings Shakespeare and Ben Jonson spent drinking and talking together. They certainly sound like friends drinking and debating together in these reports.
Ben Jonson also writes of Shakespeare: ‘there was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned.’ Apparently indicating his knowledge that Shakespeare-Marlowe was in need of a pardon. This remark has never been interpreted in this way by scholars, even though it is clearly possible to do so.
Furthermore these contemporary references from all extant historical sources were sometimes being deliberately and surreptitiously made to Marlowe himself, by friends and people who knew he was still alive and writing under the pseudonym Shakespeare, in all its various forms.
Further complicating matters, some of the historical references were also written by people who did not know of the imposture, and therefore thought that W Shakespeare was the actual author. This is why so much confusion has arisen over the true authorship.
Also it should always be remembered that a man variously named W. Shakespeare did write these plays, but that man was, in actuality, Christopher Marlowe.
38. The First Folio text contains 18 unpublished, and sometimes untofore completely unknown play manuscripts.
Also many of the First Folio plays contain new scenes and amendments in Shakespeare’s stylistic hand, alterations to the texts which exist in no other published versions.
The probable reason for the sudden and remarkable completeness of Shakespeare’s oeuvre in the First Folio texts is that Marlowe returned from exile and edited the First Folio himself, preparing an authoritative version of his Shakespeare works, and rewriting some things in preparation for their definitive publishing. This would be the immortality he had promised himself and prepared for throughout his life.
The First Folio specifically states that it was published from manuscripts. Historical records indicate that original play manuscripts were not valued in the professional theater, therefore where did they come from?
The most likely source is the actual author, who is the one who would value them most. When the First Folio was prepared for publishing the actor William Shakespeare had been dead for 7 years, but Marlowe was alive.
There is some speculative evidence that Marlowe may have died after most or all of the editing was done, but during the actual typesetting and publishing process, which death appears to be stated regretfully in the publishers’ Folio introductions, that the writer is dead and possibly recently. The matter is not clear.
This recent death of Shakespeare-Marlowe is possibly what caused the mysterious delay of almost a year during the actual folio publishing process. It also appears to have generated a small measure of uncertainty regarding the true domain of a very few of the plays in, (and possibly outside), the Folio.
Almost all of what is published in the First Folio is final and authoritative text, and represents itself as such. It was included there by Shakespeare-Marlowe himself as his final testament on the texts.
This is why the First Folio differs so strongly from the earlier quartos in content, range and number of plays published. Marlowe was there and had all the manuscripts and definitive rewrites.
39. In his duties as a crown agent Marlowe is recorded as having had substantial personal experience of foreign travel, which is unaccountably described in many of the Shakespeare plays. There is no record of Shakespeare ever having traveled abroad nor of having spoken any languages other than English.
Marlowe grew up in the town of Canterbury which had a large population of native French speaking people.
Marlowe’s early plays describe Venice and Padua in Italy as if he had been there. As do Shakespeare’s subsequent plays which take place in these locations.
The Massacre of Paris reflects Marlowe’s trip to Paris for the Crown. The historical record suggests that Marlowe probably spoke Italian, French, Spanish and possibly Dutch (Flemish), which implies he spoke German also. He also was an acclaimed expert translator of Latin, and most likely spoke Greek also as part of his Cambridge education. These are exactly the kind of broad linguistic abilities we would expect in a writer with the literary and language skills of Shakespeare.
40. If Shakespeare, according to Ben Jonson, really had ’small Latin and less Greek’, then how exactly did he create hundreds of new English words derived from Latin and Greek roots appropriately understood and utilized? Scholars do not dispute that he did this.
In fact the Shakespeare plays are so brimming with Greek and Latin literary references, they are obviously written by an expert classical scholar. As Marlowe was.
Therefore this famous remark is an ironic joke by Jonson, an indication of his knowledge of the existence of the imposture.
In the Elizabethan era classical scholarship was important and therefore highly refined among the educated classes, this remark of Jonson’s therefore appears to be a quite witty ironic remark made by a friend, which would be easily understood by all educated people of the time. It is only today that it has become recondite with the decline in classical scholarship.
Jonson is kidding his friend Marlowe, while also saying that the actor William Shakespeare was an ignorant uneducated man who therefore could not write the plays, which are quite clearly full of highly erudite classical scholarship and reference.
It is a grave error to assume that Elizabethans were any less subtle or intelligent than the most intelligent men of today. Shakespeare-Marlowe alone is proof enough of this.
41. The play Titus Andronicus is attributed to William Shakespeare, even though it matches nothing else in the Shakespeare canon. Normally it is concluded that it was an early play, possibly his first. Its lack of match in the entire Shakespeare canon has led scholars to attribute the play as a collaboration between Shakespeare and anyone else, occasionally in desperation, even Marlowe.
In fact the play perfectly matches the Marlowe canon. And it therefore it is an early play by Shakespeare. Marlowe wrote is as Marlowe, while very young and long before transitioning to his later, mature, Shakespeare style.
It was first published in quarto in 1594 after Marlowe’s disappearance in 1593, during the period in which Marlowe’s works were being collected and registered by his printer friends shortly after Marlowe’s exile, probably at Marlowe’s request.
There is no author’s name printed on any of the 3 published quartos of Titus Andronicus. It is a play clearly in early Marlowe’s youthful and gory dramatic style, which has caused great confusion only because it carries Shakespeare’s name in the First Folio.
Scholars have been unable to resolve this known conflict because traditionally their only source of attribution lies in the letters WS or the various names of Shakespeare appearing on published quartos and on the First Folio.
Thus when confronted with an obvious work of the dead Marlowe which carries the Shakespeare name, they have been unable to resolve the issue.
The reason for this play’s presence in the First Folio may indicate a deliberate attempt by Marlowe to promote the authorship question. Which it has successfully done, by making a distinct connection between Marlowe and Shakespeare by virtue of an unmistakably strong, but easily definable, stylistic incongruity.
42. The famous poem, The Passionate Shepherd To His Love by Marlowe was first published in 1599, attributed to William Shakespeare.
Even at this extremely early date there is therefore a record of public confusion regarding the identity and authorship of the works of the two names. Marlowe had only been gone for 6 years at this point, and the public already are being told Shakespeare wrote some of his works.
This is not an accidental occurrence. Professional Elizabethan writers and printers knew exactly what Marlowe wrote 6 years before. Marlowe was a star writer in a small city of 200,000 people with a tight theatrical and writing/publishing community. Elizabethan publishers were no more forgetful than the publishers of today. We know perfectly well who created the works of Picasso and James Joyce and Bob Dylan, they are not confused after 50-100 years, far less 6 years.
Christopher Marlowe was not a man who could be forgotten in 6 years by his own profession. And he has not been forgotten by admirers 400 hundred years later either.
This incorrect attribution to Shakespeare of The Passionate Shepherd To His Love, is probably taking place because Marlowe and his friends deliberately intend indications of the imposture to come into being by their actions. They are developing the subtle enduring connection between Shakespeare and Marlowe.
43. The Taming Of The Shrew, which was published in quarto in 1594, and written on an uncertain date, is attributed to Shakespeare.
According to Stanley Wells in his book, Shakespeare & Co, the play contains as many as 20 direct borrowings from three different plays of Marlowe, some of which, (Dr Faustus) were not published until 10 years later, in 1604. Stanley Wells therefore surmises that the writer, (whom he declares to be the actor William Shakespeare), of The Taming Of The Shrew must have known Marlowe’s work very well, and had access to manuscripts of it, since some of the references are direct quotations of several lines in length.
Christopher Marlowe knew Marlowe’s work well and had manuscripts of it.
The record shows that the actor Shakespeare was unknown and unpublished as a writer before 1593. There is no reason whatsoever to assume that an unknown writer would have access to the manuscripts of the greatest star writer in London, while Marlowe was still living, and even less so after he was ‘murdered’, when Marlowe’s manuscripts would be of even greater value and scarcity.
And further there is no reason to assume that the actor Shakespeare could perform such an incredible feat as the perfect memorization of three complete and long Marlowe plays, while still acting regularly in many other plays, and prolifically writing his own, as is claimed.
The Marlowe references in Taming Of The Shrew are there because Marlowe put them there to deliberately reference and quote himself. To draw our attention from Shakespeare to Marlowe.
He does this not only in the Taming Of The Shrew, but all through the Shakespeare canon. Sometimes this was probably done unconsciously, sometimes deliberately for convenience in quickly solving a dramatic problem he had already solved as Marlowe, and sometimes in order to specifically draw attention to the parallels, and thus the imposture.
This pattern of direct and indirect quotation and reference to Marlowe is repeated throughout the Shakespeare canon. For any writer repetition of idea is inevitable in the writing of more than 45 plays by a single person. He is after all only one man, with only one dramatic aesthetic.
44. The ‘14 lost years’ of 1579-1593 approximately in the biographical record of the actor William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon are lost because he did not not do anything other than be a young provincial in Stratford-upon-Avon, and later an unknown minor actor in London, perhaps along with his much younger brother Edmund.
In the Elizabethan era the average life span of an average man is variously estimated as 35-47 years, (35 for those living in London).
To be ‘lost’ until the age of 29, is to be lost virtually for a lifetime. Thirty years of age was middle age for Elizabethans.
Marlowe has no lost years until his ‘murder’. His life is well documented, as the life of a star poetic genius living in a small city of 200,000 people should be.
Shakespeare the actor only became found when Marlowe selected him to be the person used for the imposture. He was selected only because he possessed the name William and was the correct age. It was the most fortunate moment of his undistinguished life.
45. On Elizabethan quarto publications Shakespeare's name is quite often spelled Shake-Spear and variations upon it, frequently with a hyphen in the center.
This naming has been a source of confusion and controversy due to the Elizabethan custom that using a hyphenated name in that circumstance indicated a pseudonym.
Which we now know it was.
There was no reason for the actor William Shakespeare to use a hyphen in his public name.
There was reason for Marlowe to use it, to draw attention to the existence of an imposture. It was always in Marlowe's to engender authorship confusion, and confusion over the precise name of the writer was particularly in Marlowe's interest.
Also perhaps the hyphen was a very subtle allusion to the tearing apart of the name, in order to reveal the hidden Shakespeare-X Message in the names. Shakespeare-Marlowe was an allusive writer who made his living by the use of dramatic metaphor.
46. The historical record shows that Marlowe and Shakespeare appear to have personally known almost all of the same people; friends, theater colleagues, actors, writers, lovers, patrons and dedicatees, perhaps as many as 20-40 people in all.
Even though Elizabethan London was a small city of only 200,000 people, and the theatrical world there was small, it seems highly improbable that they they would both also appear to be adoringly and romantically linked to the same patrons and dedicatees, as can be inferred across the spectrum of their publication history and dedications, and their variously recorded social interrelations with commenting contemporary writers.
The probability for this alone would be one in millions, if we were to attempt to estimate it.
Much of the historical record shows that they appear to have been living the same social and romantic life, as historically documented in Marlowe’s actual life record, and then further documented as Shakespeare’s implied life, via the quarto, poetry and Folio dedications, as well as contemporary comment from other living writers.
In fact almost the only people in the historical record whom they do not both seem to have known personally, is each other.
Which is the most unlikely circumstance of all for two uniquely timeless creative giants of age 20-29 living and working for 7-9 years together in one small theatrical social circle in London, which circle revolved around the same theater troupe and bohemian / artistic / aristocratic / intellectual / romantic social circle.
47. There are many references in the Shakespeare plays and poetry to Marlowe’s documented real life, real friends, real lovers and real acquaintances.
The plays also indicate a knowledge of the environs of Kent and Canterbury and sometimes of the Marlowe family itself, via character names, (his mother’s name Katherine/Kate appears frequently), occupations (cobbling and leatherwork), and local Kent lore. Shakespeare-Marlowe's skill in the authentic creation of female characters reflects the fact that he grew up in a house full of sisters, which the actor Shakespeare did not.
48. Marlowe and his friends and associates deliberately left a sufficient number of subtle clues and allusions throughout the historical record for an Authorship Question to come into existence.
No other major writer or artist of England or any other country has been left open to this imposture suspicion. Such a suspicion cannot arise unless there are telling lacunae in the official historical documentation, and also clues left with which to solve the suspicion. And the leaving of clues can most easily be done with intent.
Elizabethan England was an extremely well documented authoritarian regime, which kept good records, and yet there is no official documentation for the most celebrated poet and dramatist of their age.
There is a reason for this. It cannot happen otherwise. Shakespeare-Marlowe was a man famous for at least 27 years as a dramatic and poetic genius of spectacular intellect and wit.
49. The Tempest is thought by most scholars to have been written in 1610–11, and is generally accepted as the last play that Shakespeare wrote.
In the play Shakespeare appears aware that this will be his final play, and effectively declares that he will now put down his pen.
The final words of this play are spoken by Prospero, who is generally accepted as a representation of Shakespeare himself, and whose name translated into English from Italian essentially means the same as that of Faust, Marlowe's greatest stage hero:
Prospero closes the play and Shakespeare's writing career with these words:
As you from crimes would pardoned be, Let your indulgence set me free.
Thus the final words of Shakespeare's writing career are the request for a pardon and for freedom. Apparently from someone with the power to grant it.
The play was first performed before King James I, probably in the celebrations for the wedding of his daughter, Princess Elizabeth.
It is reasonable to assume that the final words of the writing career of a prolific and celebrated writer might have some particular significance in his life.
There is absolutely no reason for the actor William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon to end his writing career by requesting a pardon from a King, since the actor required no pardon.
But there is very great reason for Christopher Marlowe to request one in order to return to England from his long exile.
50. Christopher Marlowe left the Shakespeare-X Message stating unequivocally and irrefutably to the world that he wrote the works of Shakespeare.
The Shakespeare-X Message definitively states:
CHRIST WILL I AM SHAKESPEARE OVER MARLOWE
Please Note:
None of these interpretative aspects are required to prove the case that the Shakespeare-X Message is proof of an authorship imposture perpetrated by Christopher Marlowe. This has already been proven mathematically elsewhere. This additional evidence is presented as matters of interest, as solutions to the multitudinous anomalies in the Shakespeare biographical history, and as directions for future academic research.
Also because it's an interesting and persuasive list.
General reference sources:
Lee Vidor.
For Marlowe:
Park Honan, The Marlowe Society, Calvin Hoffman, Michael Rubbo, Peter Farey, David Riggs, Charles Nicholl. Stanley Wells. And many others.
For Shakespeare:
The First Folio, Frank Kermode, Samuel Schoenbaum, Harold Bloom, Park Honan, Stanley Wells, Helen Vendler, James Shapiro, Gary Taylor, Stephen Greenblatt, Ron Rosenbaum, And many others.
