Marlovian theory of Shakespeare authorship

[2] They also point out the coincidence that, despite their having been born only two months apart, the first time the name William Shakespeare is known to have been connected with any literary work was with the publication of Venus and Adonis just a week or two after the death of Marlowe.

The argument against this is that Marlowe's death was accepted as genuine by sixteen jurors at an inquest held by the Queen's personal coroner,[3] that everyone apparently thought that he was dead at the time, and that there is a complete lack of direct evidence supporting his survival beyond 1593.

Marlowe's candidacy was initially suggested by Thomas William White, M.A., in the 1892 book Our English Homer; Or, Shakespeare Historically Considered, as a member of a group of authors.

On the tercentenary of Shakespeare's death, in 1916, the Pulitzer prize-winning editor of Louisville's Courier-Journal, Henry Watterson, supported the Marlovian theory also by using a fictional account of how it might have happened.

As far as is generally accepted by mainstream scholars, Christopher Marlowe died on 30 May 1593 as the result of a knife wound above the right eye inflicted upon him by Ingram Frizer, an acquaintance with whom he had been dining.

Together with two other men, Robert Poley and Nicholas Skeres, they had spent that day together at the Deptford home of Eleanor Bull, a respectable widow who apparently offered, for payment, room and refreshment for such private meetings.

[24] On 1 June, two days after the reported killing, the inquest was held in the same house by the Coroner of The Queen's Household, William Danby, and a 16-man jury found it to have been in self-defence.

The body of this "famous gracer of tragedians", as Robert Greene had called him, is recorded as being buried the same day in the churchyard of St. Nicholas, Deptford, but the exact location of his grave is unknown.

[citation needed] Most scholars would now agree that the official verdict of the inquest was to some extent untrue, concluding that Marlowe's stabbing was not done in self-defence, as claimed by the witnesses, but was a deliberate murder.

[25] Usually they suggest that it was a political murder, citing the fact that the two witnesses, Robert Poley and Nicholas Skeres, were or had been agents in the pay of members of the government.

[28] Accusations of his having persuaded others to atheism were coming to the Privy Council thick and fast and, whether true or not, he was certainly suspected of having written an atheistic book which was being used for subversive purposes.

Marlovians suggest it is significant that every person involved in the incident seems to have been associated in one way or another either with his friend and patron Thomas Walsingham (Frizer and Skeres) or with his employers the Cecils (Poley, Bull and Danby).

They point to the lengthy period (10 hours) in which the four men remained together at Eleanor Bull's house that day, and suggest this seems unnecessary if the intent had been simply to dispose of Marlowe.

[31] Support for the possible involvement of people in high places (whether it was to have Marlowe assassinated or to fake his death) has recently come to light with the discovery that the inquest was probably illegal.

Marlovians argue that therefore the only way for Danby to have finished up doing it on his own—given that it was only just within the verge, the Court in fact some 16 of today's statute miles away by road—would be because he knew about the killing before it actually occurred, and just "happened" to be there to take charge.

Those who reject the theory claim that there would have been far too many obvious signs that the corpse had been hanged for it to have been used in this way, although Marlovians say that Danby, being solely in charge, would have been able quite easily to ensure that such evidence remained hidden from the jury.

A central plank in the Marlovian theory is that the first clear association of William Shakespeare with the works bearing his name was just 13 days after Marlowe's supposed death.

During this period he is alleged to have produced a string of masterpieces which must be added to those he had already written, which no one in the busy and gossipy world of the theatre knew to be his, and for which he was willing to allow his Stratford contemporary to receive all the credit and to reap all the rewards.

[citation needed] As for the less quantifiable differences—mainly to do with the content, and of which there are quite a lot—Marlovians suggest that they are quite predictable, given that under their scenario Marlowe would have undergone a significant transformation of his life—with new locations, new experiences, new learning, new interests, new friends and acquaintances, possibly a new political agenda, new paymasters, new performance spaces, new actors,[41] and maybe (not all agree on this) a new collaborator, Shakespeare himself.

[43] In Sonnet 25, for instance, a Marlovian interpretation would note that something unforeseen ("unlooked for") has happened to the poet, which will deny him the chance to boast of "public honour and proud titles", and which seems to have led to some enforced travel far away, possibly even overseas (26–28, 34, 50–51, 61).

Some examples are a Hugh Sanford, who was based with the Earl of Pembroke at Wilton House in Wiltshire and a Christopher Marlowe (alias John Matthews, or vice versa) who surfaced in Valladolid in 1602,[citation needed] and a Monsieur Le Doux, a spy for Essex, but working as a "French tutor" in Rutland in 1595.

[49] Henry Watterson's almost certainly fictional account of an Englishman called Marlowe who died in Padua in 1627 has nevertheless triggered research by some Marlovians among the Paduan archives, without finding any confirmation so far.

The apparent answer turns out to be "Christofer Marley"—as Marlowe is known to have spelt his own name—who, the poem would then say, with Shakespeare's death no longer has a "page" to dish up his wit.

Anxious that the theory should not die with him, he left a substantial sum of money with the King's School, Canterbury—where Marlowe went as a boy—for them to administer an annual essay competition on this subject.

[57] The Trust Deed stipulated that the winning essay should be the one:which in the opinion of the King's School most convincingly authoritatively and informatively examines and discusses in depth the life and works of Christopher Marlowe and the authorship of the plays and poems now commonly attributed to William Shakespeare with particular regard to the possibility that Christopher Marlowe wrote some or all of those poems and plays or made some inspirational creative or compositional contributions towards the authorship of them.

A further stipulation of the initial Trust Deed was that:If in any year the person adjudged to have won the Prize has in the opinion of The King's School furnished irrefutable and incontrovertible proof and evidence required to satisfy the world of Shakespearian scholarship that all the plays and poems now commonly attributed to William Shakespeare were in fact written by Christopher Marlowe then the amount of the Prize for that year shall be increased by assigning to the winner absolutely one half of the capital or corpus of the entire Trust Fund...Apart from the stories by Zeigler and Watterson, others have used Marlovian theory as an inspiration for fiction as well.

[65] In the 2012 movie Only Lovers Left Alive, Marlowe is portrayed as a vampire who mentions he wrote Hamlet, and wishes he based the character on his son-in-law instead.