Christopher Marlowe and Shakespeare
A growing school of theorists (or scholars with a lot of time on their hands) have been questioning the authenticity of Shakespeare’s works, beginning this questioning over a hundred years ago. The first theory of fifty seven in total, formally put forth disputing the authorship of the works was put forth in 1785 by Reverend James Wilmot, arguing the real author was actually Francis Bacon, an Elizabethan philosopher. Other claimants to authorship throne include Edward de Vere, William Stanley, and of course Christopher Marlowe. The most prevalent of these theorists would be Calvin Hoffman, arguing for Marlowe, coming forward with his argument in the fifties. He claimed that Marlowe’s death was staged and he was exiled to Italy where he wrote the works and sent them back to England. This has some validity because at this time there were many letters traveling about in lieu of the secret service. In the 1970’s he even arranged an excavation of the Walsingham family tomb in hopes of discovering that the Founder of the English Secret Service had taken these secrets, by way of documentary evidence, to the grave with him. In Hoffman’s book The Man Who Murdered Shakespeare, he explores over 400 parallelisms between the works of William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, the man he names as the true author of these beloved literary works.
Passionate
Shepherd to his Love Marlowe
By
shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals
And I will make thee a bed of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies.
Merry Wives of Windsor Shakespeare
To
shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals
There will we make our beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies.
Tamburlaine Marlowe
Holla,
ye pampered Jades of Asia
What, can ye draw but twenty miles a day
Henry
IV Part 2 Shakespeare
And
hollow pampered Jades of Asia
Which cannot go hut thirty miles a day.
Unfortunately
for Hoffman there is still reasonable doubt with little documentary evidence to
support his claims, he is therefore forced to rely heavily on the works
themselves. In defense of
Hoffman’s theory the scene of Marlowe’s murder at Deptford raises many
questions. With Marlowe being
involved with the Queen’s Secret Service there seems to be evidence to suggest
a staging of his murder. The murder
was not reported until the following day and the coroner did not convene the
court, as would have normally been done, and there is question as to whether or
not the body was switched with a prisoner executed the day before. Robert Sales author of Christopher Marlowe, disputes
this claim saying,
“The
body that the coroner examined was that of a drunken sailor.
The staging of such an outward show certainly fits the theatrical style
of the secret service. There is,
however, no evidence to support the view that Marlowe survived to write the
plays associated with Shakespeare while in exile.
Hoffman is therefore reduced to producing passages from Shakespeare’s
plays that he claims have Marlowe’s fingerprints all over them.
The argument, based as it is on the snobbish assumption that only
somebody who had a university education could have written Shakespeare’s
plays, is not convincing.” (Sales p.46)
The
Marlovians fight on by questioning this man known as Shakespeare.
Lots of interesting facts and questions come up.
If Marlowe was indeed dead, why is there new evidence showing there was a
Christopher Marlowe found in Valladolid, Spain in diplomatic records
posthumously? There are only six
known signatures of the man Shakespeare, barely legible, questioning whether or
not the man was even literate. Even
at the gravesite of the man known as Shakespeare, there is only the name of
Christ written on the tombstone. How
would Shakespeare have known languages other than English, or about foreign
landscapes and culture, where many of the plays take place (The Taming of the
Shrew, Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, etc…), or the inside politics
of noble court life (Hamlet, Macbeth, etc…) is a good question.
Whoever wrote the works, nothing will detract from the greatness of them, and until proof beyond a reasonable doubt is presented it would be silly to say the author is anyone but Shakespeare. Scholars can have fun however trying to figure out who the real man was.
