Marlovian theory of Shakespeare authorship
The Marlovian theory of Shakespeare authorship holds that the Elizabethan poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe was the main author of the poems and plays attributed to William Shakespeare. Further, the theory says Marlowe did not die in Deptford on 30 May 1593, as the historical records state, but that his death was faked.
Marlovians 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.
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, 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, 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'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 and A.D. Wraight. 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, 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, 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.As new information has become available over the years, however, the Marlovian argument about Marlowe's death has itself changed from thinking that because, in their view, he later wrote under the name of Shakespeare, his death must have been faked; to challenging the details of the inquest in an attempt to show that it must have been untrue; to 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
It is generally accepted that Marlowe had been employed in some capacity as a secret agent, either by the late Sir Francis Walsingham or by the Cecils, 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.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, John Greenwood and John Penry, 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.