The Man Behind Shakespeare (Part 2/4): Could it be Christopher Marlowe?

[This post is the second in a series of posts about "The Man Behind Shakespeare". Part 1 can be found HERE.]

There are a pretty good number of Shakespeare skeptics who firmly believe that Christopher Marlowe is the real Shakespeare behind the plays. At the outset this does not sound plausible. Why? Because during the time Shakespeare’s plays were being churned out Marlowe was dead. Word had it that he died in a tavern brawl — a rather pathetic way for such a brilliant playwright of the time, to go. So, how can it be that a dead man wrote the plays attributed to William Shakespeare?

To believe that Marlowe wrote Shakespeare we need to assume that Marlowe never really died in “a tavern brawl”. Apparenly, historians have been puzzled by the fact that this young man would have died in a quarrel over a bill. Scholars feel that there shouldn’t even have been a quarrel over a bill simply because Marlowe had a patron and patrons took care of such expenses. So this reason was rather a flimsy excuse to fight. What about the three men with him? — Ingram Frizer, Robert Poley and Nicholas Skeres? They were all established “professional liars”. In other words, they were spies — all four of them. Marlowe and Poley were working for Lord Burghley, the Queen’s right hand man, and Frizer and Skeres were working under Thomas Walsingham who was a very close friend of Marlowe. One would wonder what all these spies were doing together on the night of Marlowe’s ‘death’. Surely, it was ‘business’ while most accounts of Marlowe’s death declare he was out with ‘friends’.

The truth is, Marlowe was on the threshold of possible torture and a definite death sentence. He had been proclaimed an atheist (a huge crime in those days) and was charged for heresy and promoting atheism. He, basically, had only a few days more to live. Does the ‘meeting’ begin to make sense? Marlovians (scholars who support the theory of Marlowe’s authorship to Shakespeare’s plays) believe that these four men had got together to fake Marlowe’s death and help him flee the country. In fact, these men didn’t meet at some common tavern. They really got together at a safe house run by a friend (Eleanor Bull). Research into the matter states that the coroner’s inquest was also very fishy. Things didn’t go according to regulations, which meant a death had been ‘staged’.

Marlowe’s death has become quite the mystery now. But, what has all of this to do with Shakespeare? All this proves, or is evidence that works to prove that Marlowe did not die on 30 May 1593. So what?

If you are not aware of it, it might amaze you to learn that Shakespeare’s works have often been compared to Marlowe. Shakespearean scholars (I’m not talking of the skeptics here) have long wondered at Shakespeare’s constant echoes of Marlowe. Some said it would seem that he was almost haunted by by Marlowe’s ghost. There are, apparently, constant references to Marlowe’s works and similar idiomatic phrases. For many decades it never occurred to Shakespearean scholars to question the authorship of William Shakespeare. And in the end of the the nineteenth century the theory that Marlowe was likely the playwright behind these plays, was put forth for the first time. (Before this there was skepticism regarding the true authorship of the plays as proved by Mark Twain’s long essay a few decades before this.) Recently, scholars worked on some sort of textual data gathering project where they compared word count, syntax and various features of Shakespeare’s and Marlowe’s plays, coming to the conclusion that these were plays written by the same man. Marlovians say, that when comparing the chronological order of the plays from Marlowe to Shakespeare, Henry VI Part I (Shakespeare’s first play) is very close in structure, characterisation and style to Marlowe’s last play, Edward II. In other words, they look like they’ve been written by the same playwright.

I watched an excerpt of Much Ado About Something, a well-researched documentary on the Marlowe-Shakespeare Controversy (the excerpt is embedded at the end of this post). In it, interviewees talk about how many of initial themes deal with exile, about a person longing to come back home. Sonnet 50 is quoted in this excerpt as an example of a man in exiled torment:

How heavy do I journey on the way,
When what I seek (my weary travel’s end)
Doth teach that case and that repose to say
‘Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend.’
The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,
Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,
As if by some instinct the wretch did know
His rider loved not speed being made from thee:
The bloody spur cannot provoke him on,
That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,
Which heavily he answers with a groan,
More sharp to me than spurring to his side,
For that same groan doth put this in my mind,
My grief lies onward and my joy behind.

My thoughts:
It all sounds rather excitingly mysterious. I am quite convinced that Marlowe never died. You should read the reports into the investigations made. They’re convincing! Whether Marlowe wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare, I do not know. I do agree, however, that Shakespeare’s authorship is worthy of inspection. What puzzles me about the case for Marlowe:

1. It would seem that ‘Shakespeare’ wrote his plays with his actors in mind. Often I have had it spoken about in school that plays such as Twelfth Night and As You Like It and The Merchant of Venice were written for you the boy actors in the theatre. Later, there was a powerful actor to play the roles of Hamlet and Lear and Prospero, etc.. How could Marlowe have known of this in exile? I suppose, he could have had someone report to him. But it seems strange that Marlowe should seek to have his plays smuggled into England when he could have been writing for another stage in another country. What satisfaction could he have derived from this?
2. In Shakespeare on Toast, Ben Crystal talks of how Shakespeare is famous for his inaccuracy in geography. This would then state that whoever had written these plays had never been to the likes of Italy. However, in Much Ado About Something, the interviewees talk of how amazingly accurate the geography in Shakespeare’s plays is. Who is right? I suspect if this answer can be answered, and should it lean towards the latter, then Marlowe’s case has a chance.
3. Of Marlowe’s seven plays, I’ve read three. I cannot recall Edward II much, but I do recall that I was quite affected by both Doctor Faustus and The Jew of Malta. To me, these plays were spiritually dark. Spirituality seems to be the blood of these plays. I cannot recall this being the case with any of Shakespeare’s plays.

It should be interesting should anyone have answers to these puzzling thoughts.

Let me close with the excerpt from Much Ado About Something and links to my resources. I would suggest you check those links out, if you’re interested. They are extremely detailed. I have barely scratched the surface with this post!

 

Resources:

• The International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society
• The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection
• Marlowe’s Sudden and Fearful End: Self-Defence, Murder or Fake? by Peter Farey

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Note: This is not a scholarly post and is not intended to be one. I am not trying to propagate anything. I am just a reader interested in the whole theory behind Shakespeare’s identity. What you find in this post are simply things that I have come across in my meagre research. Please understand that this is a family friendly blog. Abusive language will not be entertained. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion as long as they do it politely. Thank you.