![Marlowe-Portrait-1585](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Marlowe-Portrait-1585.jpg)
The Marlovian theory of Shakespeare authorship holds that the Elizabethan poet and playwright
Christopher Marlowe
Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe (; baptised 26 February 156430 May 1593), was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe is among the most famous of the Elizabethan playwrights. Based upon the ...
was the main author of the poems and plays attributed to
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
. Further, the theory says Marlowe did not die in
Deptford
Deptford is an area on the south bank of the River Thames in southeast London, within the London Borough of Lewisham. It is named after a ford of the River Ravensbourne. From the mid 16th century to the late 19th it was home to Deptford Dock ...
on 30 May 1593, as the historical records state, but that his death was faked.
Marlovians (as those who subscribe to the theory are usually called) base their argument on supposed anomalies surrounding Marlowe's reported death and on the significant influence which, according to most scholars, Marlowe's works had on those of Shakespeare. 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,
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.
While there are similarities between their works, Marlowe's style,
vocabulary, imagery, and his apparent weaknesses—particularly in the writing of comedy—are said to be too different from Shakespeare's to be compatible with the claims of the Marlovians. The convergence of documentary evidence of the type used by academics for authorial attribution—title pages, testimony by other contemporary poets and historians, and official records—sufficiently establishes Shakespeare of Stratford's authorship for the overwhelming majority of Shakespeare scholars and literary historians, who consider the Marlovian theory, like all other
alternative theories of Shakespeare authorship, a
fringe theory
A fringe theory is an idea or a viewpoint which differs from the accepted scholarship of the time within its field. Fringe theories include the models and proposals of fringe science, as well as similar ideas in other areas of scholarship, such a ...
.
Proponents
In August 1819 an anonymous writer for
''The Monthly Review, or Literary Journal'' suggested that 'Christopher Marlowe' might be a pseudonym assumed for a time by Shakespeare, and this idea was developed further in the same journal in September 1820, noting how Shakespeare "disappears from all biographical research just at the moment when Marlowe first comes on the stage; and who re-appears in his proper name" shortly after the first reports of Marlowe's death. In other words, they argued, just one person was the main author of both the Marlowe and Shakespeare canons.
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.
[.] The first person to propose that the works of Shakespeare were primarily by Marlowe was
Wilbur G. Zeigler
Wilbur Gleason Zeigler (1857–1923) was a lawyer and writer who is best known for founding the Marlovian theory of Shakespeare authorship in the preface and notes to his 1895 novel ''It Was Marlowe''. He also wrote on the history of Ohio, the c ...
, who presented a case for it in the preface to his 1895 novel, ''It was Marlowe: a story of the secret of three centuries'', which creates an imaginary narrative about how the deception might have occurred. On the tercentenary of Shakespeare's death, in 1916, the Pulitzer prize-winning editor of Louisville's ''Courier-Journal'',
Henry Watterson
Henry Watterson (February 16, 1840 – December 22, 1921), the son of a U.S. Congressman from Tennessee, became a prominent journalist in Louisville, Kentucky, as well as a Confederate soldier, author and partial term U.S. Congressman. A Democr ...
, supported the Marlovian theory also by using a fictional account of how it might have happened. The first essay solely on the subject was written by Archie Webster in 1923. All three were published before
Leslie Hotson
John Leslie Hotson, (16 August 1897 – 16 November 1992) was a scholar of Elizabethan literary puzzles.
Biography
He was born at Delhi, Ontario, on 16 August 1897. He studied at Harvard University, where he obtained a B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. He we ...
's discovery in 1925 of the inquest on Marlowe's death,
but since then there have nevertheless been several other books supporting the idea, with perhaps the two most influential being those by
Calvin Hoffman (1955) and
A.D. Wraight (1994). Hoffman's main argument centred on similarities between the styles of the two writers, particularly in the use of similar wordings or ideas—called "parallelisms". Wraight, following Webster, delved more into what she saw as the true meaning of Shakespeare's sonnets.
To their contributions should perhaps also be added that of
Michael Rubbo
Michael Dattilo Rubbo (born 31 December 1938) is an Australian documentarian/filmmaker.
Early life
Rubbo was born in Melbourne, the son of Australian microbiologist Sydney Dattilo Rubbo, and the grandson of the painter Antonio Dattilo Rubbo. ...
, an Australian documentary film maker who, in 2001, made the TV film ''Much Ado About Something'' in which the Marlovian theory was explored in some detail, and the creation in 2009 of the International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society which has continued to draw the theory to the public's attention.
Marlowe's death
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
Ingram Frizer ( ; died August 1627) was an English gentleman and businessman of the late 16th and early 17th centuries who is notable for his reported killing "According to the official story – the story told by Skeres and Poley – it was Marlo ...
, an acquaintance with whom he had been dining. Together with two other men,
Robert Poley
The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic "fame" and "bright" (''Hrōþiberhtaz''). Compare Old Dutch ''Robrecht'' and Old High German ''Hrodebert'' (a compound of '' Hruod'' ( non, Hróðr) "fame, glory, honou ...
and
Nicholas Skeres
Nicholas Skeres (March 1563 – c. 1601) was an Elizabethan con-man and government informer—i.e. a "professional deceiver"—and one of the three "gentlemen" who were with the poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe when he was killed in Deptfo ...
, they had spent that day together at the Deptford home of
Eleanor Bull
Eleanor Bull (c. 1550 – 1596) was an English woman who is known for owning the establishment in which Christopher Marlowe, the Elizabethan playwright and poet, was killed in 1593.
Life
She was born Eleanor (or Elinor) Whitney, daughter of James ...
, a respectable widow who apparently offered, for payment, room and refreshment for such private meetings.
As new information has become available over the years, however, the Marlovian argument about Marlowe's death has itself changed from (1) thinking that because, in their view, he later wrote under the name of Shakespeare, his death must have been faked; to (2) challenging the details of the inquest in an attempt to show that it must have been untrue; to (3) claiming that the circumstances surrounding it suggest that the faking is the most likely scenario, whether he went on to write Shakespeare or not.
The inquest
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. The Queen sanctioned Frizer's pardon just four weeks later.
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. Of those books or articles written about—or including an explanation of—Marlowe's death over the past twenty years or so, most of the authors believe that the witnesses were probably lying. 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. Some commentators have found details of the killing itself unconvincing.
There is, however, hardly any agreement as to exactly why such a murder occurred or who was behind it. Marlovians say that this confusion arises from scholars asking the wrong question. Instead of trying to find out why he was ''killed'', they should be asking why those particular people would have met at that particular place on that particular day. The Marlovian theory argues that the most logical reason for that meeting to have taken place would have been to fake his death.
Means, motive and opportunity
![William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley from NPG (2)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/William_Cecil%2C_1st_Baron_Burghley_from_NPG_%282%29.jpg)
It is generally accepted that Marlowe had been employed in some capacity as a secret agent, either by the late
Sir Francis Walsingham
Sir Francis Walsingham ( – 6 April 1590) was principal secretary to Queen Elizabeth I of England from 20 December 1573 until his death and is popularly remembered as her "spymaster".
Born to a well-connected family of gentry, Wals ...
or by the Cecils (
Lord Burghley
William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley (13 September 15204 August 1598) was an English statesman, the chief adviser of Queen Elizabeth I for most of her reign, twice Secretary of State (1550–1553 and 1558–1572) and Lord High Treasurer from 1 ...
and his son
Sir Robert Cecil
Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, (1 June 156324 May 1612), was an English statesman noted for his direction of the government during the Union of the Crowns, as Tudor England gave way to Stuart rule (1603). Lord Salisbury served as the ...
), or both. He could therefore, theoretically at least, call on powerful friends, with all of the means at their disposal to organize a
faked death
A faked death, also called a staged death or pseudocide, is the act of an individual purposely deceiving other people into believing that the individual is dead, when the person is, in fact, still alive. People who commit pseudocide can do so by l ...
.
He was also in deep trouble at the time. 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. For such crimes, trial and execution would have been almost guaranteed. Within the past two months, at least three people,
Henry Barrow
Henry Barrow (or Barrowe) ( – 6 April 1593) was an English Separatist Puritan, or Brownist, executed for his views. He led the London Underground Church from 1587 to 1593, spending most of that time in prison, and wrote numerous works of Bro ...
,
John Greenwood John Greenwood may refer to:
Sportspeople
* John Greenwood (cricketer, born 1851) (1851–1935), English cricketer
* John Eric Greenwood (1891–1975), rugby union international who represented England
* John Greenwood (footballer) (1921–1994) ...
and
John Penry
John Penry (1563 – 29 May 1593), who was executed for high treason during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, is Wales' most famous Protestant Separatist martyr.
Early life
He was born in Brecknockshire, Wales; Cefn Brith, a farm near Llangammar ...
, had gone to the scaffold for offences no worse than this. Marlovians therefore contend that Marlowe would have had a strong motive for either being complicit in or agreeing to some means of escape.
Most biographers concede that those accusations concerning Marlowe contained in various documents sent to the Privy Council at the time were very serious. It is therefore surprising that, despite the initial summons for his arrest being on 18 May, he was apparently still at liberty on 30 May to attend the Deptford meeting. Whatever the reason for this, it would have certainly given the opportunity for a faked death to be organized and carried out, if the Marlovians are right in claiming that this is what happened.
The witnesses
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
Thomas Walsingham (died c. 1422) was an English chronicler, and is the source of much of the knowledge of the reigns of Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V, and the careers of John Wycliff and Wat Tyler.
Walsingham was a Benedictine monk who sp ...
(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. The most likely reason for the get-together, they say, would have been to save him in some way from the peril facing him. They claim that the faking of his death fits more of the facts as known than any other scenario.
The coroner
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. The inquest should have been supervised and enrolled by the local County Coroner, with the Queen's Coroner being brought in by him only if he happened to know that it was within 12 (Tudor) miles of where the Queen was in residence (i.e. that it was "within the verge") and, if so, for it to be run by both of them jointly. 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. If there was a deception, they say, Danby must have been involved in it and thus almost certainly with the tacit approval of the Queen. This does, of course, give as much support to David Riggs's theory that the Queen ordered Marlowe's death as it does to the faked death theory.
The body
![marlowe](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Marlowe.jpg)
Marlovians argue that if Frizer, Poley and Skeres could lie about what happened, they could just as easily have been lying about the identity of the corpse itself. In other words, that although they claimed it was Marlowe's—and as far as we know they were the only ones there in a position to identify him—it was in fact someone else's body that the jury was called upon to examine.
If a death is to be faked, however, a substitute body has to be found, and it was David A. More who first identified for Marlovians a far more likely "victim" than had been suggested earlier. On the evening before their 10 a.m. meeting at Deptford, at a most unusual time for a hanging,
John Penry
John Penry (1563 – 29 May 1593), who was executed for high treason during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, is Wales' most famous Protestant Separatist martyr.
Early life
He was born in Brecknockshire, Wales; Cefn Brith, a farm near Llangammar ...
, about a year older than Marlowe, was hanged (for writing subversive literature) just two miles from Deptford, and there is no record of what happened to the body. Also of possible relevance is that the same William Danby would have been responsible for authorizing exactly what was to happen to Penry's corpse. 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.
However, this remains a fringe view within academia. In his ''Shakespeare and Co.'',
referring to the documentation concerning Marlowe's death,
Stanley Wells
Sir Stanley William Wells, (born 21 May 1930) is a Shakespearean scholar, writer, professor and editor who has been honorary president of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, professor emeritus at Birmingham University, and author of many books a ...
reflects the view of virtually all scholars that Marlowe did die then when he wrote: "The unimpugnable documentary evidence deriving from legal documents ... makes this one of the best recorded episodes in English literary history" and "Even before these papers turned up there was ample evidence that Marlowe died a violent death in Deptford in 1593."
Marlowe and Shakespeare
The "Shakespeare" argument
![Venus-und-Adonis+Ovid-Elgie I-15](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Venus-und-Adonis%2BOvid-Elgie_I-15.jpg)
The mainstream or
Stratfordian view is that the author known as "Shakespeare" was the same William Shakespeare who was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564, moved to London and became an actor, and "sharer" (part-owner) of the acting company called the
Lord Chamberlain's Men
The Lord Chamberlain's Men was a company of actors, or a "playing company" (as it then would likely have been described), for which Shakespeare wrote during most of his career. Richard Burbage played most of the lead roles, including Hamlet, Othe ...
, which owned the
Globe Theatre
The Globe Theatre was a theatre in London associated with William Shakespeare. It was built in 1599 by Shakespeare's playing company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, on land owned by Thomas Brend and inherited by his son, Nicholas Brend, and gra ...
and the
Blackfriars Theatre
Blackfriars Theatre was the name given to two separate theatres located in the former Blackfriars Dominican priory in the City of London during the Renaissance. The first theatre began as a venue for the Children of the Chapel Royal, child acto ...
. In contrast, Marlovians argue that this William Shakespeare was only a "front" for the real author, and that any evidence supporting him as the true author can be just as easily explained by this version of events.
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. Shakespeare's first published work, ''Venus and Adonis'', was registered with the Stationers' Company on 18 April 1593, with no named author, and appears to have been on sale—now with his name included—by 12 June, when a copy is first known to have been bought.
Their argument remains highly contentious and no mainstream scholar of Shakespeare's life and work currently accepts it. Stanley Wells summarizes the reasons why Shakespearean scholars in general utterly reject any such idea: "All of this
ocumentary evidence of his deathcompounds the initial and inherent ludicrousness of the idea that he went on to write the works of William Shakespeare while leaving not the slightest sign of his continuing existence for at least twenty years. 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."
Internal evidence
Style
As discussed above, this is a much-disputed area. Much has been made—particularly by Calvin Hoffman—of so-called "parallelisms" between the two authors. For example, when Marlowe's "Jew of Malta", Barabas, sees Abigail on a balcony above him, he says
![Romeo and juliet brown](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Romeo_and_juliet_brown.jpg)
But stay! What star shines yonder in the east?
The lodestar of my life, if Abigail!
Most people would immediately recognize how similar this is to Romeo's famous
But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!
when she appears on the balcony above. There are many such examples, but the problem with using them as an argument is that it really is not possible to be sure whether they happened because they were by the same author, or because they were—whether consciously or unconsciously—simply copied by Shakespeare from Marlowe. It is worth noting, however, that Marlowe is the only contemporary dramatist from whom Shakespeare appears to 'copy' so much, and that the influence Marlowe had on Shakespeare is universally acknowledged.
With
stylometric approaches it is possible to identify certain characteristics which are very typical of Shakespeare, such as the use of particular poetic techniques or the frequency with which various common words are used, and these have been used to argue that Marlowe could not have written Shakespeare's works.
In every case so far where these data have been plotted over time, however, Marlowe's corpus has been found to fit just where Shakespeare's would have been, had he written anything before the early 1590s as all of Marlowe's were. On the other hand, whereas stylometry might be useful in discerning where two sets of work are not by the same person, it can be used with less confidence to show that they are. This was something that
T.C. Mendenhall, whose work some Marlovians have nevertheless thought proves their theory, was at pains to point out.
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, and maybe (not all agree on this) a new collaborator, Shakespeare himself.
Shakespeare's Sonnets
![Sonnets1609titlepage](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Sonnets1609titlepage.jpg)
The current preference among Shakespearean scholars is to deny that the Sonnets are autobiographical. Marlovians say that this is because—other than the references to his name "Will" and a possible pun on "Hathaway"—there ''is'' no connection between what is said in the Sonnets and anything that is known about Shakespeare's life. In contrast, assuming that Marlowe did survive and was exiled in disgrace, Marlovians claim that the Sonnets reflect what must have happened to him after that.
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). They would note that this going away seems to be a one-off event (48), and whatever it was, it is clearly also associated with his being "in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes", his "outcast state" (29), and his "blots" and "bewailed guilt" (36). The poet also says that he has been "made lame by fortune's dearest spite" (37). Each one of these segments, along with many other throughout the Sonnets, might be seen by a Marlovian as reflecting some aspect of Marlowe's alleged faked death and subsequent life.
Marlovians also claim that their interpretation allows more of Shakespeare's actual words to be interpreted as meaning literally what they say than is otherwise possible. For example, they can take "a wretch's knife" (74) to mean a wretch's knife, rather than assume that he must have really meant Old Father Time's scythe, take an "outcast state" (29) to mean an outcast state, not just a feeling that nobody likes him, and accept that when he says his "name receives a brand" (111) it means that his reputation has been permanently damaged, and not simply that acting is considered a somewhat disreputable profession. Jonathan Bate nevertheless gives reasons for Shakespeare scholars claiming that "Elizabethans did not write coded autobiography".
Clues in the plays
Faked (or wrongly presumed) death, disgrace, banishment, and changed identity are of course major ingredients in Shakespeare's plays, and Stephen Greenblatt puts it fairly clearly: "Again and again in his plays, an unforeseen catastrophe...suddenly turns what had seemed like happy progress, prosperity, smooth sailing into disaster, terror, and loss. The loss is obviously and immediately material, but it is also, and more crushingly, a loss of identity. To wind up on an unknown shore, without one’s friends, habitual associates, familiar network—this catastrophe is often epitomized by the deliberate alteration or disappearance of the name and, with it, the alteration or disappearance of social status."
Whilst noting the obvious relevance of this to their own proposed scenario Marlovians do not seek multiple parallels between Marlowe's known or predicted life and these stories, believing that the plays are so rich in plot devices that such parallels can be found with numerous individuals. On the other hand, there are some places where they point out how difficult it is to know just why something was included if it were not some sort of in-joke for those who were privy to something unknown to most of us.
For example, when in ''The Merry Wives of Windsor'' (3.1) Evans is singing Marlowe's famous song "Come live with me..." to keep his spirits up, why does he mix it up with words based upon
Psalm 137
Psalm 137 is the 137th psalm of the Book of Psalms in the Tanakh. In English it is generally known as "By the rivers of Babylon", which is how its first words are translated in the King James Version of the Bible. Its Latin title is "Super flum ...
"By the rivers of Babylon...", perhaps the best known song of exile ever written?
And in ''As You Like It'' (3.3), Touchstone's words "When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with the forward child, understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room", apparently referring to Marlowe's death, are puzzled over by many of Shakespeare's biographers. As Agnes Latham puts it, "nobody explains why Shakespeare should think that Marlowe's death by violence was material for a stage jester."
External evidence
The main case against the 'faked death' theory is that, whilst there is evidence for Marlowe's death, there is no equally unequivocal counter-evidence that he survived, or did anything more than exert a considerable influence on Shakespeare. So far the only external evidence offered has been in the form of claiming that someone who was alive after 1593 must have been Marlowe, or finding concealed messages on Shakespeare's grave, etc.
Identity after 1593
Various people have been suggested as having really been the Christopher Marlowe who was supposed to have died in 1593. 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, and a ''Monsieur Le Doux'', a spy for Essex, but working as a "French tutor" in Rutland in 1595.
Henry Watterson
Henry Watterson (February 16, 1840 – December 22, 1921), the son of a U.S. Congressman from Tennessee, became a prominent journalist in Louisville, Kentucky, as well as a Confederate soldier, author and partial term U.S. Congressman. A Democr ...
's almost certainly fictiona
accountof 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. And if
Don Foster's hypothesis is correct that the "begetter" of the Sonnets may have meant the poet himself, then Marlovians would point out that "Mr. W.H." might not have been a misprint, as Foster suggests, but merely showed that the identity being used by Marlowe in 1609 (including the name "Will"?) most probably had those initials too.
Hidden messages
Many anti-Stratfordians search for hidden messages in the form of acrostics and transposition ciphers, although this approach is not so popular with Marlovians.
Peter Bull nevertheless claims to have found such a hidden message deeply concealed in the Sonnets, and at least two Marlovians—William Honey and Roberta Ballantine—have taken the famous four-line "curse" on Shakespeare's grave to be an
anagram
An anagram is a word or phrase formed by rearranging the letters of a different word or phrase, typically using all the original letters exactly once. For example, the word ''anagram'' itself can be rearranged into ''nag a ram'', also the word ...
, however coming up with ''different'' messages. Anagrams as such are useful for conveying hidden messages, including claims of priority and authorship, having been used in this way, for example, by
Galileo
Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. Commonly referred to as Galileo, his name was pronounced (, ). He was ...
and
Huygens; however, given the number of possible answers, they are really of use only if there can be some confirmation from the originator that this was the answer intended.
Another method for finding hidden messages lies in interpreting passages that could be construed as ambiguous, since a favourite technique of the poet/dramatists of the time was irony, the double meaning or ''double entendre''. For example, orthodox scholars often cite the poems in the First Folio as evidence for Shakespeare, such as Jonson's introductory poem describing the engraved portrait as having "hit his face" well, his eulogy that calls Shakespeare "sweet Swan of Avon", and
Digges's line that refers to when "Time dissolves thy Stratford monument". Yet Marlovians say that those can each be interpreted in quite different ways. The "face", according to the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (10.a) could mean an "outward show; assumed or factitious appearance; disguise, pretence".
![Shakespeare monument plaque](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Shakespeare_monument_plaque.JPG)
When Jonson writes of "Swan of Avon", we may choose to take it as meaning the Avon that runs through Stratford, or we may think of
Daniel
Daniel is a masculine given name and a surname of Hebrew origin. It means "God is my judge"Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 68. (cf. Gabriel—"God is my strength" ...
's ''Delia'', addressed to the mother of the First Folio's two dedicatees, in which he refers to the Avon in Wiltshire where they all lived:
But ''Avon'' rich in fame, though poor in waters,
Shall have my song, where ''Delia'' hath her seat.
And, when Digges writes "And Time dissolves thy Stratford monument", one Marlovian argument says that it is quite reasonable to assume that he is really saying that Time will eventually "solve, resolve or explain" it (''O.E.D.'' 12), which becomes very relevant when we see thatwhether the author intended it or notthe whole poem on Shakespeare's monument ("Stay Passenger...") may be re-interpreted as inviting us to solve a puzzle revealing who is "in" the monument "with" Shakespeare. The apparent answer turns out to be "Christofer Marley"as Marlowe is known to have spelt his own namewho, the poem would then say, with Shakespeare's death no longer has a "page" to dish up his wit.
The Hoffman Prize
Calvin Hoffman, author of ''The Man Who Was Shakespeare'' (1955), died in 1988, still absolutely convinced that Marlowe was the true author of Shakespeare's works. Anxious that the theory should not die with him, he left a substantial sum of money with the
King's School, Canterbury
The King's School is a public school (English independent day and boarding school for 13 to 18 year old pupils) in Canterbury, Kent, England. It is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference and the Eton Group. It is Britain's ...
—where Marlowe went as a boy—for them to administer an annual essay competition on this subject. 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. (Emphasis added)
The adjudication of the prize, which as of 2019 was around nine thousand pounds (UK), has always been delegated to an eminent professional Shakespearean scholar and, despite Hoffman's clear intentions, the winning essay has seldom espoused the Marlovian cause, the prize having usually gone to essays along entirely orthodox lines.
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...
In fiction
Apart from the stories by Zeigler and Watterson, others have used Marlovian theory as an inspiration for fiction as well. Rodney Bolt's ''History Play'' (2005) was inspired partly by
Mark Twain's writings. It portrays Marlowe as being the true author of Shakespeare's works after staging his own death.
In ''
The Marlowe Papers
''The Marlowe Papers'' is a novel by Ros Barber published in 2012. It won the Hoffman Prize in 2011, the Desmond Elliott Prize in 2013 and was joint-winner of the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award.
The novel, written in blank verse, is a ...
'' (published in 2012), a novel by
Ros Barber
Rosalind Barber (born 1964) is an English novelist, poet and academic.
Education
She has a BSc in Biology, an MA in creative writing, the arts and education, and a PhD in English literature, all from the University of Sussex. She also has an Op ...
, Marlowe's "death" is a ruse, and he writes plays under the Shakespeare name. The novel is written in
blank verse
Blank verse is poetry written with regular metrical but unrhymed lines, almost always in iambic pentameter. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the 16th century", and P ...
and won the Hoffman Prize in 2011 and the
Desmond Elliott Prize
The Desmond Elliott Prize is an annual award for the best debut novel written in English and published in the UK. The winning novel can be from any genre of fiction and must exhibit depth and breadth with a compelling narrative. The winner receiv ...
in 2013.
In the 2012 movie ''
Only Lovers Left Alive
''Only Lovers Left Alive'' is a 2013 fantasy comedy-drama film written and directed by Jim Jarmusch, starring Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, Mia Wasikowska, Anton Yelchin, Jeffrey Wright, Slimane Dazi and John Hurt. An international co-producti ...
'', Marlowe is portrayed as a vampire who mentions he wrote Hamlet, and wishes he based the character on his son-in-law instead.
Ben Elton
Benjamin Charles Elton (born 3 May 1959) is an English comedian, actor, author, playwright, lyricist and director. He was a part of London's alternative comedy movement of the 1980s and became a writer on the sitcoms '' The Young Ones'' and ''Bla ...
's 2016 sitcom ''
Upstart Crow
Upstart or upstarts may refer to:
* HMS ''Upstart'', a Royal Navy U-class submarine
*Upstart (company), an online lending marketplace
*Upstart (software), a process management daemon used in several operating systems.
* Upstart (sculpture), a publi ...
'' inverts the Marlovian theory. In the series, Shakespeare is persuaded to write plays for Marlowe (including ''
Doctor Faustus'', ''
Tamburlaine
''Tamburlaine the Great'' is a play in two parts by Christopher Marlowe. It is loosely based on the life of the Central Asian emperor Timur (Tamerlane/Timur the Lame, d. 1405). Written in 1587 or 1588, the play is a milestone in Elizabethan p ...
'' and ''
The Jew of Malta
''The Jew of Malta'' (full title: ''The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew of Malta'') is a play by Christopher Marlowe, written in 1589 or 1590. The plot primarily revolves around a Maltese Jewish merchant named Barabas. The original story comb ...
'') in order to maintain Marlowe's cover as a playwright.
Notes
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Further reading
'Marlovian' publications – in chronological order
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External links
The International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society ("Our Belief is that Christopher Marlowe – in his day England's greatest playwright – did not die in 1593 but survived to write most of what is now assumed to be the work of William Shakespeare.")
''The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection''(a Marlovian blog/website, started in May 2008, with regular contributions from leading Marlovians.)
* Peter Farey'
''Marlowe Page'' (archived)
* Cynthia Morgan'
The Marlowe Studies An online library of books by noted Marlovians
The Marlowe Society (Although not officially endorsing the theory, they do not reject it either, and have several items related to it on their website.)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Marlovian Theory
Shakespeare authorship
Image:ShakespeareCandidates1.jpg, alt=Portraits of Shakespeare and four proposed alternative authors, Oxford, Bacon, Derby, and Marlowe (clockwise from top left, Shakespeare centre) have each been proposed as the true author.
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