Shakespeare: The Christopher Marlowe Theory

The tale of Christopher Marlowe, a peer of Shakespeare who some believe might be the true writer behind the bard's work. To view the full feature, please visit:
www.kennedy-cen...

[@Gaul1748]

My senior year in high school I defended the Marlowe-Shakespeare theory, and lost an A grade (for a B) because I offended my teacher. I now have my doubts, but I still am fascinated by Marlowe and always will be.

[@maxwelltoshach8208]

You shouldn't lose points on an assignment because you offended your teacher.

[@cosmopessoa1556]

Shakespeare was a shop keep, never walked in circles that understood the social norms of Europe's ruling class , never a student of european history , never educated his daughters .Marlowe educated , Spied for the British crown all over Europe moved in the upper Echelon of European society was a known play writer .Why would Shakespeare cast his women as educated and powerful while so little regard for his daughters ? The mind that conjured up those plays ,lived in that world , Marlowe did, Shakespeare did not, how can you write so tangibly about any topic if you knew absolutely nothing of it or from snippets of hearsay

[@TheRealValus]

The mind that conjured those works was nothing if not imaginative and capable of empathizing with the human condition, under a dizzying variety of circumstances. Evidently, to strike a clear note of authenticity, an Elizabethan playwright only needed to know just enough to convince judges, like yourself, living hundreds of years later, with zero acquaintance of such circles.

[@nicholasennos4431]

People who are interested in the Shakespeare authorship question may like to know that there is also a Jane Austen authorship question. In my book "Jane Austen - a New Revelation" I show that the true author of the Jane Austen novels was her cousin, Eliza de Feuillide. She could not publish under her own name because she was the illegitimate daughter of Warren Hastings, the Governor General of India.

[@metyuewb]

If Marlowe wrote Shakespeare - who wrote Marlowe?! - Woody Allen. No. Actually, Woody Allen couldn't have come up with that all by himself. Tolstoy must have helped him.

[@cosmopessoa1556]

Shakespeare never wrote a line prior to Marlowe's disappearance how strange

[@stevenhershkowitz2265]

Shakespeare never PUBLISHED a line until after Marlowe's DEATH which is not strange at all because they are different people

[@nikolassantini4744]

Foolish to dismiss the obvious. Shakespeare never wrote or published anything because he was illiterate. He was used as a front man. Marlowe conveniently used him. Funny how stylistically and developmentally as well - Shakespeare’s work picks up exactly where Marlowe left off.

[@jeffreyadams648]

Same with de Vere, shak “retired” in 1604, the same year de vere died.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

@@jeffreyadams648 Strange that he put so many contemporary references from after 1604 in his works.

[@rockhammer85]

Neither is it right for Marlowe to be deemed a lesser talent than Shakespeare. He only got to live to 29 (or did he?), whereas Shakespeare had many later years to mature into the writer of Lear, etc. In fact, Marlowe stood as the greater of the two poets at the time of his death. He'd already written many classics works before Shakespeare had even managed one.

[@nicholasennos4431]

Christopher Marlowe was a servant of Ferdinando Lord Strange, 5th Earl of Derby. It was written at the time that he "took name for his Lord" which means that his plays were in fact written by Lord Strange. Lord Strange wrote a few of the Shakespeare plays such as Loves Labours Lost. He was the main Catholic claimant to the throne and died in mysterious circumstances. Shakespeare's Julius Caesar was probably penned by Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. In the play Brutus represents Oxford and Julius Caesar represents Derby. It is possible Oxford helped to condemn Derby to death because like Julius Caesar he wanted to become king.

[@LonelyStar17]

Using this for a project my dudes

[@jamesbassett1484]

The term 'homosexual" was coined over three hundred years after Marlowe's disappearance.

[@ilikebread206]

They look so similar too.

[@rockhammer85]

thallassocracy: "...but he (Marlowe) could never have written Twelfth Night." I wouldn't be so sure about that... "I say there is no darkness but ignorance." Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (c. 1601) "I ... hold there is no sin but ignorance." Marlowe, The Jew of Malta (c. 1589)

[@zelrius8714]

I'm reading one of Shakespeare's play and had to do a short biography on him for my homework, but it's interesting that I came up on this theory that i've never heard of, the authorship of his works. It's very interesting, but the thing is we may never really know who it is or if it's even real or not. Maybe Marlowe and Shakespeare happen to be the same person, but Marlowe went under a different alias. Maybe it's not true at all and Shakespeare is really Shakespeare. Personally, I think Shakespeare is real and that it's him, yes his background and education is deemed as unknown, but after looking at what other people say, I find it reasonable that he was real. Also, confused as to why people came up with that theory in the first place.

[@alfonsoantonromero932]

Brilliant.

[@MegsHead]

There's zero evidence "they" ever met.

[@rockhammer85]

I don't know who wrote the plays, but I can't understand those posters who say there isn't any stylistic similarity between Marlowe and Shakespeare. Hundreds of near-verbatim phrases appear in both men's works.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

rockhammer85 And yet, Shakespeare never reused his own phrases, and neither did Marlowe. Yet when Marlowe becomes Shakespeare, he suddenly begins recycling? Poaching lines was homage bordering on pilfering. Reusing ones own lines was completely gauche. No self respecting poet of the era did that.

[@TheRealValus]

@@Jeffhowardmeade All the more reason to invoke a pseudonym, to excuse such recycling.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

@@TheRealValus By that logic, all Early Modern poetry was written by one person using scores of pseudonyms.

[@Magemastrtom]

I AM Shadespeare.

[@stephenjablonsky1941]

Whenever people have no hard facts but are still secure in their position you know they are in trouble. It is entirely possible that the real author was a woman...a classic case of Anonymous at work. However, it may terrify some that the greatest writer in the English language was female.

[@catchingrabbits1939]

😆 😆 😆

[@TheRealValus]

While, for others, - particularly, in the time in which we find ourselves living, - the prospect of a Female Bard is positively irresistible; and has no difficulty attracting funding or zealous support from neomarxist, pseudointellectual activists, who are utterly unscrupulous in their approach to history; if only their revisions can help to urge our hopelessly patriarchal society one step closer to the inevitable, egalitarian utopia. Yes?

[@tvdd1973]

There isn't a single theory regarding the 'real' authorship of Shakespeare's work that stands up to any scrutiny and the Marlowe theory is the weakest of them all. Marlowe was a brilliant writer but his style and tone were massively different from Shakespeare's. Besides, despite some half-baked conspiracy theories, the evidence proves Marlowe was DEAD by June 1593. Even if he WASN'T the idea that Shakespeare fronted for him is ludicrous; it's completely impractical, as much as anything else.

[@thadreimagined9391]

Even those Shakespeare scholars who reject Marlovian's claims outright acknowledge the two possess an incredibly similar writing style. Marlowe's plays are rougher, but that could easily be a function of age.

[@maxwelltoshach8208]

Well, if he did, I can't say I blame him.

[@MissHanBananBear]

I don't understand where this theory came from. Who first came up with this theory (of many weird theories)?

[@brucerobbins3584]

Calvin Hoffman wrote a book in the 1950-s claiming that Marlowe wrote the works. He may not h ave been the first, but he was the most noted at that time.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

A guy named Ziegler proposed the idea in 1895. The Baconian theory had been around for a while, but people who actually read Bacon weren't buying it. Marlowe was at least a poet, and his known poetry bore traces of Shakespeare. Enough so that people had been speculating for nearly a century that Shakespeare actually wrote Marlowe's works. The fact that nobody could prove Marlowe really died (a coupe of references from fellow writers) made it an easy leap. The discovery in the 1920s of the coroner's inquest into Marlowe's death should have ended the "Marlovian Hypothesis", but we know what Anti-Stratfordians think of evidence.

[@thadreimagined9391]

The coroner's inquest? As if that constitutes evidence.

[@cosmopessoa1556]

to all the None believers. Could you write reasonably accurately on stories relating to the inner workings of Ancient japan. Intrigues social norms in korea and china's social cultures. IF you did i would know if you you education level and you station in life which would tell me what you were trained to recognise. From the response i had to my first writing 2 mths ago i can spot the critical thinkers the followers, those encased in cognitive dissonance.

[@brucerobbins3584]

Kit's LARGE legacy consisted of only 7 plays and Hero and Leander, which was finished by George Chapman. Shakespeare had 36 plays and a calmer temperment. Marlowe was Trump, Shakespeare was Clinton. If Marlowe did not die with a dagger in his eye, we have no idea where he went or what he did. Maybe he went to Italy. Maybe. There is no proof. Maybe he wrote poetry, Maybe he didn't. Maybe he liked Italian food. Maybe he opened a cafe in Venice called "One-Eyed Diner", wrote a cookbook called "Kit's Kitchen", opened a mission for orphaned little boys. We have no idea what he did. It is all idle speculation. The death of Marlowe was put before a coroner and 16 men jury who ruled murder in self-defense. Some people don't want to belileve that. And want to believe that he wrote Shakespeare. That idea is preposterous at best. If he did survive and wrote plays he would have sent them to his previous producer, Philliip Marlowe of the Rose Theater. Not Shakespeare.

[@teainthesahara]

No credible evidence at all that anyone other thans Shakespeare was Shakespeare. All contemporary documents, without exception, point to him at the author of the plays. Marlow died before Shakespeare's greatest plays were written after Marlowe's death. The idea that he pretended to be dead, hiding off somewhere, is absurd. Also his usage of words has been analysed and was different from that of Shakespeare.

[@MandyJMaddison]

I realise this is te years old, but I am going to respond anyway. Yes, Marlowe apparently died. But he did so under highly suspicious circumstances in the comapny of two spies, a professional assassin and with an unclaimed dead body available through the same coroner. The man who "killed" Marlowe was immediately pardoned by the Queen. The analysis f the use of words ten years ago was most inadequate. The use of words depends largely on the nature of the play.

[@thallassocracy]

Marlowe was certainly clever enough to fake his own death - but there are no jokes in any of Marlowe's plays. Shakespeare's plays are full of jokes. Marlowe was one of the ten greatest playwrights of all time - but he could never have written Twelfth Night. Shakespeare could never have written Edward II either.

[@MandyJMaddison]

thalassocracy, I find this an amazing statement. Tambourlaine would have had the people in the pit rolling around in gales of laughter, and rooting for him.

[@amazonman54]

u know better than your teacher

[@enriqueavalos]

this video is bull. marlowe did not write shakespeare. there's no proof, only conjecture.