Is it double identity, or is it just wishful thinking? Some say that Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare are actually one and the same. Others say it is all “poppy-cock.” It could just be a romantic notion. Shakespeare, or someone helping Shakespeare, took the subject matter from Marlowe's four plays and used them to create thirty-eight plays of his own, but was Shakespeare Christopher Marlowe in disguise? When the evidence is reviewed, the idea that Christopher Marlowe faked his death and resurfaced as William Shakespeare becomes quite believable.
Who was Christopher Marlowe? Biography.com tells us that he was born in Canterbury in February of 1564. He was a well educated, well traveled man of intrigue who was a spy for the Queen. He attended Corpus Christi College, Cambridge from 1580 to 1587, and although he received his bachelors of arts in 1584, the college hesitated granting his master's degree. Apparently, he had been excessively absent from classes and was suspected to be converting to Roman Catholicism which would have meant transferring to another college. Instead, the Privy Counsel sent a letter stating that Marlowe was currently taking care of matters concerning his country, and the college awarded his degree as planned. The matters concerning his country allude to the secret agent status that Marlowe held. In support of that idea, cafeteria records indicate that Marlowe spent abundant amounts of money on food and drink while at the college. He would not have been able to spend such large amounts with only his scholarship money to live on. He did not continue to be a spy, however, and moved to London to write full-time. Evidently, Marlowe had quite a temper. There are several accounts of altercations that he ...
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... do YOU stand? On the belief that Marlowe is Shakespeare – or that Shakespeare simply used Marlowe's works and maybe others to create his own?
Works Cited
"Christopher Marlowe." 2013. The Biography Channel website. http://www.biography.com/people/christopher-marlowe-9399572. Nov 13 2013, 08:43
Robert McCrum. “Who really wrote Shakespeare?” The Observer. http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2010/mar/14/who-wrote-shakespeare-james-shapiro. March 2010. web.
Bacino, Ted. http://www.theshakespeareconspiracy.com/. 2010. Web.
The International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society. http://www.marloweshakespeare.org/. August 2009. Web.
The Marlowe Studies: The Christopher Marlowe Library. http://www.themarlowestudies.org. Nov 19 2013, 6:38.
"William Shakespeare." 2013. The Biography Channel website. Nov 19 2013, 05:41 http://www.biography.com/people/william-shakespeare-9480323.
Vickers, Brian. 1993. Appropriating Shakespeare: Contemporary Critical Quarrels. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Appearance matters. What people express towards others, ultimately, results in a variety of reactions. In the play The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare, every major character shows the audience their real personalities through Polonius’s words, “This above all: to thine own self be true” (1.3.79). If someone becomes true to himself, he will be true to others. However, these characters have facades where they put on a different personality to hide their true feelings, as well as to deceive others. In the end, these false personalities lead to their demise.
Price believes that perhaps were approaching this problem with the wrong question. Asking whether or not Shakespeare was the author might be framed incorrectly as a result of a false dichotomy set-up by ardent Oxford scholars. Rather, our author believes the more precise question should be asked as, "Was it Shakespeare or was it Oxford?" Price states, "Arguing an alternative case for a candidate who may or may not be the right one is ultimately an exercise in futility, because it does not first require that Shakespeare's literary biography be rejected on the strength of the evidence." It is through this false dichotomy that orthodox scholars are essentially off the hook. These orthodox supporters criticize the differences in the incidental case for the contender, while not exploring the same arguments thrown against the incumbents. This is because the authorship question is never a true way to attain objective.
Vickers, Brian. 1993. Appropriating Shakespeare: Contemporary Critical Quarrels. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
How could such a marvelous person like Shakespeare be called a fraud, how could that make any sense? Many people known about Shakespeare and how well known he was in writing his famous plays. There is evidence to show whether or not that Shakespeare even wrote the plays. However based on theories, there are many reasons why only Shakespeare could write the plays that he supposable did not write.
In today’s world the quality of the art form called writing is said to be somewhat diminishing, it is important for English literature to keep some studies of classic literature, such as Shakespeare. I think well rounded education must have a strong foundation in both modern and classical literature, for the foundation in classical literature, an in-depth study of Shakespeare’s works would be more than sufficient. Not only was Shakespeare so skilled in his writing that he has become a significant point in the history of literature, but a majority of his works were written on such basic human themes that they will last for all time and must not be forgotten.
Although William Shakespeare is considered to be one of the most revered and well-renowned authors of all time, controversy surrounds the belief that he actually produced his own literary works. Some rumors even go so far as to question the reality of such a one, William Shakespeare, brought on by paralleling the quality of his pieces with his personal background and education. With such farfetched allegations, it persuaded others to peek into the person we all are taught to learn as “Shakespeare”, but who is actually the person behind these genius works of literary promise and enlightenment? To some, Shakespeare is as much accredited to his works as frequently as you see his name placed. To others, Shakespeare is a complex enigma into which we the people are supposed to unravel; the true author behind a falsely-given pseudonym. The debate pertaining to the true authorship of William Shakespeare’s works are still questioned in today’s society.
Vickers, Brian. Appropriating Shakespeare: Contemporary Critical Quarrels. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. 1993.
In A Midsummer Night's Dream, playwright William Shakespeare creates in Bottom, Oberon, and Puck unique characters that represent different aspects of him. Like Bottom, Shakespeare aspires to rise socially; Bottom has high aims and, however slightly, interacts with a queen. Through Bottom, Shakespeare mocks these pretensions within himself. Shakespeare also resembles King Oberon, controlling the magic we see on the stage. Unseen, he and Oberon pull the strings that control what the characters act and say. Finally, Shakespeare is like Puck, standing back from the other characters, acutely aware of their weaknesses and mocks them, relishing in mischief at their expense. With these three characters and some play-within-a-play enchantment, Shakespeare mocks himself and his plays as much as he does the young lovers and the mechanicals onstage. This genius playwright who is capable of writing serious dramas such as Hamlet and Julius Caesar is still able to laugh at himself just as he does at his characters. With the help of Bottom, Oberon, and Puck, Shakespeare shows us that theatre, and even life itself, are illusions that one should remember to laugh at.
With the question being examined by so many literary scholars, information has come to light which points to people other than William Shakespeare as being the author. One of these people offered up as the supposedly true author of Shakespeare is a man by the name of Christopher Marlowe. However, Marlowe was claimed to have died before many of Shakespeare's works were written, so the question becomes, how could he have written Shakespeare? One claim is that Marlowe faked his death, which is theoretically possible. There are aspects of Marlowe's life that seem to indicate that he most definitely had the ability to fake his own death. First of all, the 3 witnesses to his death were all professional liars. According to The Shakespearean Authorship Trust, two of the witnesses were con men and two worked as spies like Marlowe (one being both a spy and a conman). This indicates that he could easily have faked his own death and had his so called witnesses claim he was dead. Suspicion is also
“There is a lust of power in his writings, a hunger and thirst after righteousness, a glow of the imagination, unhallowed by anything but its own energies. His thoughts burn within him like a furnace with bickering flames, or throwing out black smoke and mists, that hide the dawn of genius, or like a poisonous mineral, corrode the heart” (O’Neill 17). William Hazlitt writes this critique on Christopher Marlowe as a playwright in his Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth and honestly he could not have said it any better. Christopher Marlowe was a brilliant man who excelled in school. He was a gifted individual and with the help of schooling became a famous playwright in the 16th century. He was roughly two months older than William Shakespeare and has been identified as the most important of Shakespeare’s predecessors.
When one thinks about playwrights and poets in The Renaissance one automatically thinks of Shakespeare, but before Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe made his big entrance on the stage by influencing theater and literature. He even taught Shakespeare a thing or two.
Every character in any work of literature has a goal or purpose, whether it be heroically saving a princess from certain death, protecting a reputation, or even something as broad as antagonizing another character. Of course, all of these aspirations, as with any, require a certain degree of ambition and confidence. In the play Tamburlaine by Christopher Marlowe, we discover the somewhat far-fetched intentions of Tamburlaine and just how far he will push the cultural limits to reach his objective of becoming a King, and we as the audience are ultimately left to decide whether or not he is too ambitious or too confident for his own good.
“Marlowe’s biographers often portray him as a dangerously over–ambitious individual. Explore ways this aspect of Marlowe’s personality is reflected in ‘Dr. Faustus.’ ”
Snow, Edward A. "Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and the Ends of Desire." Two Renaissance Mythmakers: Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson. Ed. Alvin Kernan. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Print.