What Must Now Happen in Shakespearean Scholarship?
Christopher Marlowe, wounded child of the angels, you are made immortal with a kiss.
What must happen now in Shakespearean Scholarship:
Firstly scholars must admit their error. And some humility in the matter may be appropriate. Also an expression of gratitude to the multitude of people who have been trying to get their attention on the Authorship Question for the last hundred years.
To try to refute the mathematical conclusions of the Shakespeare-X Message is impossible and foolish.
Anyone who attempts this will only further damage their reputation. Younger academics will arise and begin to do the work properly for those who refuse to immediately accept the inevitable. The reputations of those distinguished professors who cannot grasp the significance of the Shakespeare-X Message will be destroyed.
Which is a shame because they have done good work on the Shakespeare play texts and on the history of the Elizabethan era. I certainly couldn't have solved the matter without their fine work on everything apart from the biography of the actor from Stratford.
THEN:
After this is done, everything regarding Shakespeare can and must be reappraised, re-researched and properly interpreted.
The literary works of Shakespeare-Marlowe are a good deal more autobiographical than we have previously understood. The authorial misattribution has made the personal seem impersonal because it could never be related to anything known in the life of the actor William Shakespeare. Nowhere is this more true than in the sonnets, which have long been considered by many to be an autobiographical statement which has somehow become confused.
Now that we know Shakespeare-Marlowe was the authentic writer, and understand his traumatized personal circumstances, the writings of Shakespeare have a new clarity. What has often seemed abstract or confused in the imagined life of the actor William Shakespeare, is now seen in the authentic Shakespeare-Marlowe to be a deeply personal statement.
THEREAFTER:
The news for Shakespearean scholarship is really pretty good. Although it's going to be busy. But really exciting too. It's been a very long time since there has been real breaking news in the field of Shakespeare. Well there never has been really..
Everything must be re-appraised and re-examined in light of the Shakespeare-X Message and the fact that it was actually the astonishing Christopher Marlowe who wrote the works of Shakespeare. Every single word ever written on William Shakespeare must be re-examined.
The entire historical record must be re-interpreted and corrected.
Careful new research must be done into the real life of the real Shakespeare. Shakespeare-Marlowe.
Everything ever written on the literary intentions of the plays and poems must be re-examined. The entire interpretive literary record.
The Marlowe play texts and poetry must be brought into the Shakespeare-Marlowe canon.
The youthful literary development of Marlowe into Shakespeare must be properly understood and contextualized. Now that we know who young Shakespeare was, and where he came from, and what he first wrote. And how he slowly matured into Shakespeare-Marlowe.
The sonnets must be re-interpreted. They are a story of a man in a painful exile. More than one type of exile.
The sources and development of the Shakespeare plays must be reinvestigated in light of Marlowe and his exile. Marlowe was already writing some of the Shakespeare plays before he was evicted from England.
The contemporary Elizabethan written records must be re-investigated and re-interpreted in light of the imposture, which may have been quite widely known to intellectuals and writers and discreetly acknowledged by inference. I've already seen a good deal of this in Elizabethan records myself.
Exactly what else Marlowe did during his relatively long life must be fully explored. He was a genius on the loose in Renaissance Europe. He had money and friends and more imagination than he knew what to do with. His reputation as a genius was widespread. What else did he get up to during his very long exile? Contemporaneously Cervantes was creating the novel, Galileo was changing the scientific conception of the world, King James was having the bible retranslated for political reasons. It is unlikely that a dynamic and connected man like Marlowe was sitting in Italy doing nothing except writing the whole time. Even before he was sent into exile he was a central figure in a circle of intellectuals who were sowing the first seeds of the European Enlightenment. Via the Raleigh circle and Giordano Bruno, Marlowe was connected to intellectuals and revolutionary scientists all over Europe, including Galileo. It is possible that Christopher Marlowe in exile was up to a very great deal.
AND BTW:
The new plays erroneously attributed to Shakespeare for commercial gain in recent publications should be removed from his canon. It is extremely likely that the First Folio was edited by Shakespeare-Marlowe himself, following the example of his friend Ben Jonson. The First Folio is therefore utterly definitive regarding his true works. If he did not put his name on the work then neither should you. You know who you are.
LASTLY:
Grand new scholarly reputations must be made by dazzling new young academics who grasp the dynamic new Shakespeare-Marlowe situation early. Everything in Shakespeare studies is beginning over again, and for the first time in at least 50 years Shakespearean scholarship is wide open for brilliant new reputations to be made.
Publishers must start re-publishing everything in their catalogues with the word Marlowe in it. Or Shakespeare. Or Shakespeare-Marlowe. Or Lee Vidor. The publishing industry may be saved after all! Every single book in the world on Shakespeare is out of date now.
New plays by Shakespeare-Marlowe must be performed. There are at least 7 new ones now. Work for actors! Theaters saved! Seven whole plays full of gorgeous dramatic Shakesperean speeches! Where are my tights!
New movies of new Shakespeare-Marlowe plays must be made. Get to work Branagh! Seven of them at least! Get Emma Thompson back in them!
New movies about the swashbuckler Shakespeare-Marlowe faking his own murder and running around Renaissance Europe waving a sword and seducing lady aristocrats into romantic swoons and states of voluptuous undress must be made by Hollywood. Hurry! There's money to be made! James Bond in tights! And with the talent of a genius! It's a blockbuster franchise. Johnny Depp is Shakespeare In Flight!
Omg there is work for everyone for the next 20 years!
Things could hardly be better for the Shakespeare industry. The Shakespeare-Marlowe industry.
This is the greatest thing to happen to the world of Shakespeare since that dark day in Deptford.
You can thank me if you wish. I've been cursed enough.
