Marlovian theory

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. Rather, the theory says Marlowe did not die in Deptford on 30 May 1593, as the historical records state, but rather 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 whatsoever was with the publication of Venus and Adonis just a week or two after the apparent 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.

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.

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