1 By: Alfred H.

Knight, 2005

HISTORY’S GREATEST COVER-UP

“[T]he divine William is the biggest and most successful fraud

ever perpetrated on a patient world.”

Henry James

One of the great puzzles of the literature we share with the English is the true identity of

its greatest author. Literally hundreds of articles and books have been addressed to this seeming

non-issue. People who have not examined the issue are understandably dismissive and derisive.

They studied “Shakespeare” in high school and college and of course know who he was -- a

natural genius from Stratford on Avon who blessed the English speaking peoples with the most

brilliant and profound written works of our culture. He is the English equivalent of Beethoven

and Dante, about whom there should be no annoying mystery. William Shakespeare it is said,

wrote the greatest plays in the history of Western Civilization. It’s as simple as that; why can’t

the eggheads and eccentrics leave him alone?

Because the identity of the author of the Plays is far from a simple issue. It is in fact a

profound enigma.

In the 1880's an American college professor named Thomas Mendenhall invented a

process which, he claimed, would identify authors as accurately as fingerprints identify

criminals. It was a matter of applying mathematical analysis to literature. Authors, he said, had

distinctive verbal characteristics as definitive as the skin of our fingers. According to him, by

counting and analyzing such factors as the average number of letters used in words and the

average number of words used in sentences, the identity of authors could be calculated beyond
any reasonable doubt. He spent endless hours, with the help of scores of volunteers, to verify his

theory and it seemed to work.

But Mendenhall’s methodology had no obvious practicality. For one thing, the identity

of authors was hardly a hot issue, even in the most arcane corners of academia. More

importantly, the word and sentence counting process would be incredibly ponderous and

therefore incredibly expensive.

These obstacles were overcome -- just once -- in 1902. A wealthy Bostonian believed

that Francis Bacon had written the plays attributed to William Shakespeare, and was willing to

pay to put his theory to the test. Over the previous century, a multitude of analysts, including

many famous authors, had examined Shakespeare’s life and had concluded that he could not

have, or did not, or very likely did not write the “Shakespeare plays”. These analyses had been

impressive but lamentably incomplete. The rejection of Shakespeare as the author became

almost commonplace -- with no coherent arguments on the other side -- but the legion of nay-

sayers had a crucial problem: they could not propose a plausible alternative author. If

Shakespeare did not write these unsurpassed works of genius, who in God’s name did? And why

would the true author remain in unthinkable anonymity? Those who demolished Shakespeare’s

authorship were in dire need of a candidate of their own.

Some suggested Bacon, others Edward DeVerre, the Earl of Oxford. To put it charitably,

both candidates bordered on the pathetic. Bacon was a judge who wrote important essays on the

law. He wrote incisively and decisively, but he was no Shakespeare. For one thing his words

were longer and so were his sentences. He brought no characters to life as Shakespeare did.
 The Earl of Oxford wrote some skillful sonnets, but the sonnets and plays written by

“Shakespeare” were in a far superior psychological and philosophical league.

In addition, a single crushing question hovered over the alleged authorships of Bacon and

Oxford. If they were the authors of Western Civilization’s greatest writings, why did they fail or

refuse to admit it? “Oh yes, by the way, in addition to my pedestrian writings I also wrote

Hamlet and King Lear.” The failure to admit authorship is beyond the pale of human experience.

Nobody could be that careless or indifferent. A refusal to admit authorship, however, might

present interesting possibilities.

Let us return to the great authorship identification project. Professor Mendenhall hired

more than fifty women who worked five to six hours per day -- which was all that they could

stand -- comparing the writing characteristics reflected in the Shakespeare plays, and the

characteristics of other Elizabethan authors, such as the Earl of Oxford, Ben Jonson, Herbert

Spencer and Christopher Marlowe, with the characteristics of Francis Bacon’s writings. Fairly

soon in the process the analysts concluded that Bacon did not write the Shakespeare plays. They

nonetheless plowed forward and concluded their report. In doing so they reached a striking

conclusion, which was buried in the middle of the report:

It was in the counting and plotting of the plays of Christopher

Marlowe . . .that something akin to a sensation was produced by
those actually engaged in the work. In the characteristic curve of
his plays Christopher Marlowe agrees with Shakespeare as well as
Shakespeare agrees with himself. (Emphasis added).

Of course everyone knew that Marlowe could not have written the Shakespeare plays.

He had been killed in a tavern brawl in May of 1593 and the first work bearing Shakespeare’s

name, the poem “Venus and Adonis”, was not published until June of that year. In the preface to
“Venus and Adonis” the author called the poem “the first heir of my invention”. Marlowe could

not conceivably have written Shakespeare’s published works -- dead men tell no tales, not even

brilliant literary ones.

Still, there was that nagging analytic conclusion (“Marlowe agrees with Shakespeare as

well as Shakespeare agrees with himself.”). If Marlowe did not write Shakespeare’s works, he

had somehow left his verbal fingerprints all over them.

The multitude of authors and analysts who have rejected Shakespeare’s authorship over

the last two hundred years have been confronted with four issues: 1) can it be definitively said

that William Shakspere1 of Stratford on Avon was not the author of the Plays attributed to him;

2) if he wasn’t who was?; 3) why didn’t the true author identify himself; and 4) why was he not

identified by his contemporaries?

1. Shakspere’s Authorship.

Henry James is not alone in his opinion. A surprisingly large number of famous writers

have rejected or expressed strong doubts about William Shakspere’s authorship of the Plays.

The list includes Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Ralph

Waldo Emerson, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Sigmund Freud. Emerson

wrote: “Try as I might I cannot fit the pattern of Shakespeare’s plays into the pattern of his life.”

Dickens was comically cautious in his appraisal: “Shakespeare is a fine mystery and every day I

1
There is confusion about the spelling of his name. In the few instances in which he was

personally referred to during his life -- as an actor, producer or businessman -- his last name was

spelled Shakspere. The name which appears on the plays and sonnets is, of course, Shakespeare.

It is not clear what, if anything, this means.

tremble lest something may turn up.” Coleridge was hysterically emphatic: “What! Does God

send idiots to convey divine truths?” Shakspere’s gravestone in Stratford on Avon bears an inept

little poem as its inscription, which requests that “travelers” not “disturb these bones”. Shaw’s

response to the inscription was barbaric: “It would be a positive pleasure,” he wrote, “to dig up

Shakespeare’s remains and throw stones at them.”

Many of the most potent attacks upon Shakespeare’s authorship have been inadvertent,

made by writers who undoubtedly believed in him. These writers have been unable to find the

Bard in the recorded history of his time despite their best intentions and efforts. Considering the

skill of the writers, these failures appear to speak for themselves.

In a fine biography of Ben Jonson, full of anecdotes about Jonson’s literary career, the

author included only a single reference to Shakespeare: “We can imagine Jonson and

Shakespeare sitting in the Mermaid Tavern over malt and discussing their next projects”.

Imagine? Why are there dozens of anecdotes involving other authors, but when it comes to

Shakespeare we must use our imaginations?

The magnificent biography of Edward Coke, “The Lion and the Throne”, by Catherine

Drinker Bowen, contains this passage: “Coke -- to my knowledge at least -- never mentioned

William Shakespeare . . . .Coke’s critics have said that his lack of interest in Shakespeare was a

sign of ignorance, or at best, disregard for art and literature, though Coke’s legal writings quote

the poets from Virgil to Chaucer.”

John Mortimer, author of the “Rumpole of the Bailey” series, was approached by a

television station to write six plays about the life of Shakespeare. His research into the subject

was predictably disappointing. According to Mortimer, “the first professor I asked said that
everything known about the life of Shakespeare could be written on a postcard and you would

still have room for the stamp”.

Mortimer resolved the problem by engaging in his normal craft: “The best I could do

was to invent six patently fictional stories about Shakespeare’s life.” If this little episode does

not demonstrate that William Shakespeare of Stratford on Avon was not the author of the Plays

attributed to him, it is hard to imagine what would.

Reasoned opposition to attacks upon Shakespeare’s authorship have been nil. Literature

professors who have taught Shakespeare’s works, apparently without learning much about his

personal history, have essentially just said “nonsense”. The most specific retaliatory statement

the author is aware of was voiced by a professor who said that those who doubted Shakspere’s

authorship were “English eccentrics and American snobs”.

The essence of the doubters’ case, as Emerson suggested, is based upon Shakspere’s

personal biography. It indicates more or less conclusively that William Shakspere of Stratford

on Avon did not have the competence, and did not lead a life, that would permit any objective

observer to conclude that he wrote the greatest literature in the history of the English language.

As we know, that literature was unsurpassedly brilliant. Its use of language, its

psychological and philosophical insights, and its character creations are truly stunning. But more

to the present point, the Plays reflect the knowledge of a profound scholar of history, of

mythology, and of cultures that could have been produced only by years of diligent study and

probably extensive foreign travel. They contain, among other things, detailed and accurate

descriptions of the reigns of King John, Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V and Richard III. They

bring to life an obscure Scottish king named MacBeth; a mythical English monarch described in
a 12th Century text named Lear; and a largely unheard of Danish prince named Hamlet. Four of

the Plays describe the physical and cultural environment of Northern Italy in ways which suggest

a personal familiarity. The other twenty-three

“Shakespeare Plays” -- Julius Caesar, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the rest --

are also obviously based upon thorough, first rate scholarship and broad worldly knowledge.

Could William Shakspere of Stratford on Avon conceivably have had the mental

ammunition to create these works? Those who have merely doubted it are being charitable. To

say that Shakspere could have written them is equivalent to saying that an auto mechanic could

have invented the atomic bomb.

. . .

William Shakspere was born in 1564 to parents who were both illiterate. (They signed

documents with Xs). His own prospects for literacy were slim. Stratford on Avon had an

elementary school, but in order to be admitted a child must be able to read and write. Most

students learned these skills from their parents, an opportunity denied to Shakspere. It has been

suggested that perhaps he was taught basic literacy skills by older children. One author has

noted that children of other eras have found more amusing ways to spend their time.

Even if he had been admitted to an elementary school the education he would have

received would have been -- elementary.2 He would not have encountered, certainly not in any

2
The carefully preserved records of the institutions of high learning, Eton and Harrow,

and Oxford and Cambridge, preclude the possibility that Shakespeare attended them.
depth, the characters or circumstances that populate the Plays. Did he perhaps derive this

massive learning on his own by reading books? Printing had been invented in the previous

century. Books were rare and extraordinarily expensive. Most books were housed in libraries in

the upper level schools and universities, chained to tables and available only to students. It is

also all but certain that Shakspere did not himself own any books. His will was exceptionally

detailed (for example, he left his “second best bed” to his wife) but it mentions no books, which

were highly valuable property. Nor for that matter does it mention any other literary property --

manuscripts of the world’s greatest plays, for example.

There is no surviving record of Shakespeare’s life from the date of his christening to the

date of his marriage at the age of eighteen. It was a “shotgun wedding” to Anne Hathaway, who

was eight years older than Will. They had three daughters, all of whom -- incredibly -- were

illiterate, and were not bequeathed any interest in the Plays in their father’s will.

In an age which lacked our technology, educated people made frequent use of their pens.

They engaged in written correspondence and kept personal diaries recording their thoughts in

their own handwriting. Substantial biographies of prominent people have been written based

largely on these contemporaneous handwritten records. What about Shakspere in this regard?

Not a single scrap of paper in his handwriting survives or has been said to exist.3

We know that he went to London in the 1580's, although his place of residence is

uncertain. He worked in the theater as a third rate actor and as a producer, his main job being to

erect and dismantle scenery. His history as a playwright is as nonexistent as his educational

3
Unless you count the illegible scribbles on his will that are said to constitute his

signatures.
history. During his lifetime, so far as we know, none of his contemporaries -- not Jonson, or

Spencer, or Kidd, or Green -- or anyone else, ever referred to Shakspere as an author, let alone as

England’s greatest playwright.

His sole claim to authorship during his lifetime is based upon a single fact -- his name

appears as the author on nine of the thirty-six plays history has attributed to him. This fact is

somewhat balanced -- and confused -- by the appearance of his name on eight other plays which

have been excluded from the Shakespeare canon. How can we tell when the use of his name was

sincere and when it was a fraud?

Perhaps the most confounding part of Shakespeare’s life was his last twelve years.

Having emerged in 1593 at the age of thirty with his name on “Venus and Adonis”, he

submerged himself ten years later, at the age of forty, by returning to Stratford on Avon. Just as

his plays were becoming the toast of London, as more and more of them were being published

and produced, he slipped back to his hometown with a great deal of money in his pocket, leaving

the burgeoning fame of the Plays in an indifferent wake. Employing his unexplained wealth and

an uncommon business acumen, he became one of Stratford’s most prosperous citizens before

dying in 1616 at the age of fifty-two. There is no evidence that he had any contact with the

Londoners who were producing and prospering from “his” plays or that he was in any way

interested in them.

When prominent literary figures died in 17th Century England, sycophantic eulogies were

written. Even second rate authors were praised by their colleagues in terms that far exceeded

their talents. When Shakespeare died not a single word was written by any of his alleged

colleagues. In fact the only written reference to his death appears in his son-in-law’s diary,
which states “my father-in-law died last Thursday”. Not “my father-in-law the great poet and

dramatist”, or “my father-in-law the toast of London” -- just “my father-in-law”, and so far as his

contemporaries were concerned that was apparently eulogy enough.

2. The Cover-Up.

Emerson’s statement that “the pattern of Shakespeare’s life did not fit the pattern of his

plays” succinctly described the main reason for the rejection of Shakspere as the author of the

Plays. Similarly, James’ statement that Shakespeare’s authorship was “the biggest and most

successful fraud ever perpetrated on a patient world” suggested the reason the identity of the real

author has remained unknown. His anonymity could not have been accidental; it must have been

a deliberate plot -- a fraud -- in which the true author was a participant. No one would invest his

talent, his learning, his heart and his spirit with superhuman intensity to produce these matchless

works, and then modestly fail to claim them as his own . . . unless he had an overwhelming need

to maintain his anonymity. Consider the process by which that anonymity was assured by

branding Shakespeare as the author of the Plays. It occurred in 1623, seven years after

Shakspere’s death, when the first folio edition of the Plays was published. Like so many things

surrounding the authorship question, that publication struck certain false notes. The Plays were

published by a group of “investors” with no mention of any rights in the Plays Shakespeare’s

daughters would naturally have owned. The front men for the publication were two retired

actors, one of whom had become a grocer and the other a tavern keeper, and England’s most

popular living playwright “rare” Ben Jonson.

The grocer wrote a perfunctory introductory comment which addressed a crucial issue

very succinctly. How had the thirty-six plays, all written at least ten years previously, been
identified as Shakespeare’s and brought together for publication? “We gathered them together”

was the Delphic explanation. From whom? Directors, producers, actors who retained them? It

must have been a huge and daunting labor, but all the grocer said was: “We gathered them

together.” Well, what about the seven plays which had never previously been published or

produced, and seem to have come from nowhere? To borrow Hamlet’s last words: “the rest

[was] silence”.

Ben Jonson was, if anything, an even greater enigma. The felicitous, if tardy, eulogy he

produced is the dominant reason William Shakespeare is identified as the author of the Plays. He

called Shakespeare the “Swan of Avon”, a brilliant author and personal friend, and he wrote all

of the glorious things one would have expected him to have written upon Shakespeare death

seven years before. It was a memorable eulogy, and also an apparently remarkable conversion.

Jonson had always hated the Plays and had roughly criticized them. He believed in the

Aristotelian requirements of play-writing -- unity of time, place and action. Plays which

presented life in real time, as it were. The Shakespeare plays were sloppy in this sense. One

scene might take place in Henry V’s court in England, the next might depict an invasion of

France weeks or months later, the next an invading English army outside the walls of Agincourt.

Messy! Sloppy! Radical violations of the Aristotelian requirements. Once, when told that the

author of the Plays had “never blotted out a line”, Jonson had exclaimed “God, I wish he had

blotted out a thousand!”.

But now, seven years after his death, the alleged author of the Plays had become the

“Swan of Avon”.
 Jonson was a contemporary of William Shakespeare. Both lived and worked in the

artistic community of late 16th and early 17th Century London. Jonson knew who the artists were

and how capable they were or weren’t. If our thesis is correct, if Shakespeare was a menial

worker and a mediocre actor with little or no education, is it conceivable that Jonson thought he

had authored the brilliant plays Jonson railed against? Hardly. If the foregoing is correct,

Jonson must have known that his “Swan of Avon” eulogy was a lie. Why would he propagate an

enormous lie to help launch a major literary enterprise, and, not incidentally, a mammoth literary

reputation? Well, they paid good fees for important eulogies; and it is reasonable to assume, for

reasons that will be subsequently explained, that Jonson’s fee for his eulogy may have broken the

bank. This could only be true, of course, if the payors were desperate to conceal the author’s

true identity.

3. The True Author.

In the spring of 1593 the young playwright, Christopher Marlowe (age 29) had reached

the top of his game. He had invented a form of play writing which used blank verse (metered but

unrhymed lines) to write plays, instead of outright prose. The only other writer to use this

invention with any success would be William Shakespeare, whose career began at almost the

same moment Marlowe’s was supposedly stopped by death. There is no evidence that the two

ever met, but Marlowe’s influence on Shakespeare appears to have been tremendous.

The similarity went beyond the length of words and sentences. It applied as well to the

form and substance of what he wrote.

. . .
 In 1936, Calvin Hoffman, an English expert on Elizabethan literature rented a cabin on

Long Island. He intended to stay four months and produce a least the basis for a major book.

The first three days were excruciatingly unproductive. He could hardly write a word, let alone a

sentence or paragraph. Finally, in quiet desperation, he went to the local library and checked out

“The Works of Christopher Marlowe”. Although he had virtually memorized Marlowe’s

writings and those of the other prominent Elizabethan writers, reading Marlowe tended to lift his

spirits and hone his literary skills.

As he proceeded in his reading a strange phenomenon began to occur. He would read a

segment or a line and a question amounting to certitude would strike: “I’ve read that line before

and I’m sure it’s from Shakespeare.” The phenomenon continued and he began to take notes.

The process became an obsession. By the end of his stay on Long Island he had accumulated

countless “parallelisms” between the plays of Marlowe and the plays of Shakespeare.

Some were so exact as to amount to apparent plagiarism by England’s greatest

playwright, others were strikingly similar:

Marlowe (Massacre of Paris):

Yet Caesar shall go forth.

Thus Caesar did go forth, and thus he died.

Shakespeare (Julius Caesar):

Caesar shall go forth.

Yes Caesar shall go forth.

Marlowe (Elegies):

The moon sleeps with Endymion every day.

Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice):

Peace ho!
The moon sleeps with Endymion.

Marlowe (Tamburlaine):

Holla, ye pampered Jades of Asia.

What, can ye draw but twenty miles a day.

Shakespeare (Henry IV, Part III):

And holla pampered Jades of Asia.

Which cannot go but thirty miles a day.

Marlowe (Passionate Shepard to His Love):

By shallow rivers, to whose falls.

Melodious birds sing madrigals.
And I will make thee beds of roses.
And a thousand fragrant posies.

Shakespeare (Merry Wives of Windsor):

To shallow rivers by whose falls.

Melodious birds sing madrigal.
There will we make our beds of roses.
And a thousand fragrant posies.

Marlowe (Massacre of Paris):

Stand close, he is coming. I know

Him by his voice.

Shakespeare (Julius Caesar);

Stand close a while, for he comes in haste

Tis Cinna. I do know him
By his gait.
Marlowe (Richard II -- Sometimes attributed to Shakespeare):
Weep not for Mortimer
That scorns the world as a
Traveler goes to discover worlds yet unborn.

Shakespeare (Hamlet):

The undiscovered country from whose bourn

no traveler returns

Marlowe (Faustus):

Was this the face that launched a thousand ships

Shakespeare (Troilus and Cressida):

She is a pearl, whose price hath launched above a thousand ships

Marlowe (Edward II):

Or if I live, let me forget myself

Shakespeare (Richard II):

Or that I could forget what I have been or not remember what I must be
now

Marlowe (Edward II):

Call me not Lord;

Away -- out of my sight

Shakespeare (Richard II):

No lord of thine, thou hot insulting man

Marlowe (Edward II):

Spencer, all live to die

Shakespeare (Julius Caesar):

That we shall die, we know

Marlowe (The Jew of Malta):

And every moon made some or other mad

Shakespeare (Othello):

It is the very error of the moon;

She comes more nearer than she was want
And makes men mad.

Marlowe (Edward II):

Gallop a pace, bright Phoebus

Through the sky

Shakespeare (Othello):

Gallop a pace, you fiery footed steads

Towards Phoebus lodging

Marlowe (Tamburlaine):

Now eyes enjoy your last benefit

Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet):

Eyes, look your last

Marlowe (Tamburlaine):

Blush, blush fair city

Shakespeare (MacBeth):

Bleed, bleed poor country

Marlowe (Tamburlaine):

For earth and all this airy region

Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet):

Would through the airy regions stream so bright

Marlowe (Hero and Leander):

She, wanting no excuse to feed him with the delays

Shakespeare (Titus Andronicus):

He doth me double wrong to feed me with delays

Marlowe (The Jew of Malta):

Infinite riches in a little room

Shakespeare (As You Like It):

A great reckoning in a little room

Marlowe (Hero and Leander):

Rose-cheeked Adonis

Shakespeare (Venus and Adonis):

Rose cheeked Adonis

Marlowe (Tamburlaine):

Before the moon renew her borrowed light

Shakespeare (Hamlet):

Thirty dozen moons with borrowed sheen

Marlowe (Hero and Leander):

[L]eapt into the water for a kiss of his own shadow

Shakespeare (Venus and Adonis):

Died to kiss his shadow in the brook

Marlowe (The Jew of Malta):

But stay! What star shines yonder in the east

The lodestar of my life, if Abigail

Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet):

But soft! What light through yonder window breaks

It is the east and Juliet is the sun

Marlowe (Hero and Leander):

Hero . . . fell down and fainted

He kissed her and breathed life into her lips

Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet):

I dreamt my lady came and found me dead

And breathed such life with kisses on my lips
Marlowe (Tamburlaine):

Nature does strive with Fortune and his stars to make him famous

Shakespeare (King John):

Nature and Fortune join to make thee great

Marlowe (Queen Isabelle):

Sits wringing of her hands and beats her breasts

Shakespeare (Richard III):

Why do you wring your hands and beat your breasts

Marlowe (Tamburlaine):

The sun, unable to sustain the sight, shall hide his head

Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet):

The sun for sorrow shall not show his head

Marlowe (The Jew of Malta):

Die, life, fly soul

Tongue curse thy fill and die

Shakespeare (Timon of Athens):

Pass by and curse thy fill

Marlowe (The Jew of Malta):

As sooner shall thy drink the ocean dry

Shakespeare (Richard II):

The task he undertakes . . . is numbering sands and drinking oceans dry

Marlowe (Faustus):

O soul! Be changed into small water-drops

Shakespeare (Richard III):

To melt myself away in water drops

Marlowe (Tamburlaine):

Laugh to scorn the former triumphs of our mightiness

Shakespeare (MacBeth):

Laugh to scorn the power of man

Marlowe (Tamburlaine):

Shaking her silver trusses in the air

Shakespeare (Henry VI):

Brandish your crystal trusses in the sky

Marlowe (Tamburlaine):
Their hair as white as milk and soft as down
Which shall be like the quills of porcupine

Shakespeare (Hamlet):
 And each particular hair to stand on end
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine

Marlowe (Tamburlaine):

Ah, that the deadly pangs I suffer now

Would lend an hour’s license to my tongue

Shakespeare (Hamlet):

Had I but time – as this fell sergeant death

Is strict in his arrest – oh, I could tell you

Marlowe (Tamburlaine):

Wounding the world with wonder

Shakespeare (Hamlet):

Like wonder-wounded hearers

Hoffman had never been much interested in the “authorship question”. He had focused

on the literature itself. But his fortuitous discovery of scores and scores of parallelisms (he

claimed to have discovered hundreds, although many of the examples he gives are more

suggestive than “parallel”) completely changed his life and his career. After four months of

meticulous literary mining he became convinced beyond all doubt that Marlowe was the author

of the “Shakespeare Plays”. The virtual identity and close similarity of so many unique passages

and phrases could be explained on no other basis; unless, of course one was willing to accuse

England’s greatest playwright of unprecedented, massive plagiarism.

But how could Marlowe have written the “parallel” lines that appear in Shakespeare’s

Plays? He had been dead a month when the first Shakespeare work was published, and had been
dead for five years when the Shakespeare Plays began to be published and performed in 1598.

Of course no one had attended or heard of a funeral service for Marlowe, and no one has been

able to find his grave. Still, “everyone knew” that he had died in May of 1593. Didn’t

they . . . .?

. . .

Marlowe, like Shakespeare, was born in near poverty but unlike Shakespeare, Marlowe’s

brilliance was recognized at an early age. He attended an elementary school where he performed

well enough to receive a scholarship to Eton. His performance there was good enough to earn

him a Cambridge University scholarship. During his tenure at Cambridge he published several

plays, written in his unique blank verse style. Like the Shakespeare Plays, they delved into

English and world history (i.e., Edward II and Tamburlaine), foreign cultures (The Jew of

Malta), and myths (Dr. Faustus). He became England’s foremost playwright by the age of 29.

While at Oxford he struck up a close friendship with Edward Walshingham, a wealthy

and very well connected “gentleman”. They developed a durable homosexual relationship, and

Marlowe spent much time on Walshingham’s thousand acre estate. Walshingham’s cousin,

Francis, was Queen Elizabeth’s Secretary of State, and had been the driving force in the

execution of Mary Queen

of Scots. He was called England’s second most powerful man (the first being Robert Cecil) in

Churchill’s “History of the English Speaking Peoples”.

 The royal connection worked to Marlowe’s advantage. Shortly before he was to receive

his master’s degree from Cambridge, he disappeared and popped up on the Continent. He was

arrested in Holland for counterfeiting, then released for undocumented reasons. His travels led

to France where he was suspected of having contact with political activists. The 1580's were a

savage period in European history. Wars were threatened and fought, spying was rampant and

mutual hatred between Catholics and Protestants threatened to pull nations apart or bring them

down (The Spanish Armada met its legendary fate while attempting to attack England in 1588).

All of this made the Cambridge authorities very nervous about young Marlowe’s

continental travels. Was he possibly a secret ally of French Catholics and an enemy of Her

Majesty’s government? Better to be safe than sorry. When Marlowe returned to England the

nervous authorities denied him his master’s degree.

A short time later, the most powerful governmental institution in the land -- the Queen’s

Privy Council -- set the Cambridge fathers straight. The Council sent a letter to the Dean of

Cambridge informing him that Marlowe had been in France “on the Queen’s business”, and

instructed him to grant Marlowe his master’s degree. He did so, of course.

Later on Marlowe got in much more serious trouble. He belonged to an organization

known as “The School of the Night”, which dabbled in scientific study and practice. As Galileo

and Bruno and others would learn, science was a dangerous pastime in that era of religious

fervor. Explaining God’s works in secular terms was considered atheistic, and atheism was a

form of heresy. One of the School’s members had in fact been burned alive for his Godless

beliefs in the 1580's.

 In early 1593, a member of the School named Francis Kneble was arrested by the

Queen’s messengers. They ransacked his rooms and seized a dangerous manuscript, which

described Christ in disgusting terms and referred to Mary as a whore. For good measure it also

provided instructions in counterfeiting coins -- itself a capital offense.

Kneble was tossed into a cellar and regularly beaten for a period of two or three weeks.

When he could stand it no longer he said: “I confess -- Christopher Marlowe wrote that

manuscript.” Marlowe was arrested, but treated with more gentleness than Kneble. After a few

hours of questioning he was freed -- subject to a bond which required him to report back to the

authorities every day. Meanwhile a report of his apparent heresy was being prepared for

issuance to higher authorities.

What happened next was -- nothing. Christopher Marlowe somehow disappeared. No

one seemed to know what had happened to him, but the rumors were rife. At first it was said that

he had died of the plague which had invaded London that spring. Later a story circulated that he

had been killed in a brawl, involving a “lewd love”. Finally, the word came out that he had been

killed in a tavern knife fight in a dispute about a reckoning (i.e., the tab).

For well over three hundred years, that was all that was generally known about

Marlowe’s strange evaporation. There were no eyewitness reports of his death, no funeral

service, no eulogies, no known grave for England’s greatest playwright.

The most specific early account of Marlowe’s supposed fate was provided in 1600 by one

William Vaughn in his book “Golden Grove”: “[I]t so happened that in Deptford, a little village

about three miles distant from London, as he meant to stab his poniard into one named

Ingram . . . he [Ingram] quickly perceiving it, so avoided the thrust that withal drawing out his
dagger for his defense he stabbed this Marlowe in the eye. Such sort that his brains coming out

at the dagger’s point, he shortly after died.” Vaughn did not say how he knew these facts, or

why they had remained a secret for seven years.

Three hundred and twenty-five years later, Vaughn’s account was, more or less, officially

confirmed. In 1925 a researcher discovered an amazing document in the basement of an English

public repository. It was a report by the Queen’s coroner, William Danby, dated June 1, 1593,

describing the results of an inquest into the death of Christopher Marlowe, on the afternoon of

May 30, 1593. There could be no doubt about the report’s authenticity. It was stamped with the

Queen’s seal and signed by her, and her signature was authenticated by experts. What it said had

less credibility. It told a story that those who read it and gave thought to it found very hard to

believe.

It purported to describe the circumstances of Marlowe’s death. Coupled with other,

known facts, the story it told is as follows. At 10:00 a.m. on May 30, 1593 Marlowe met with

three thugs named Ingram Frizer, Nicholas Sacres and Robert Poley in the dingy port town of

Deptford. The meeting took place in Eleanor Bull’s boarding house. The reason for the meeting

was, and remains, a mystery. Marlowe’s only conceivable connection with the thugs was that

Thomas Walshingham employed Ingram Frizer, using him to commit frauds, underwriting the

costs and dividing the proceeds.

According to the coroner’s report, which said it was based upon the testimony of sixteen

witnesses (i.e., jurors), the four mismatched associates spent the day drinking and engaging in

conversation, the subject matter of which was not disclosed. After supper, matters became a bit

hairy. According to the report “the said Ingram and Christopher Marlowe were in speech and
uttered to one another divers malicious words for the reason that they could not be at one nor

agree about payment of the pence, that is, le recknynge there . . .” According to the report,

Marlowe was lying on a bed behind the backs of all three thugs. Frizer was sitting between the

other two “in such manner that . . . the same Ingram Frizer could in no wise take flight . . . . The

said Christopher Marlowe of a sudden and of his malice toward the said Ingram . . . with the

same dagger (which dagger?) the same Christopher Marlowe then and there maliciously gave the

aforesaid Ingram Frizer two wounds on his head.” According to the report, Frizer was pinned

between Sacres and Poley “so that he could not take flight”. After being struck the second time

he somehow struggled free of his comrades and “in defense of his life” wrestled the knife away

from Marlowe and gave him “. . . a mortal wound over his right eye of the depth of two inches

and the width of one inch; of which wound the aforesaid Christopher Marlowe then and there

instantly died.”

This tale is so flimsy the most mediocre lawyer would tear it to pieces on cross-

examination and no respectable historian would accept it.

First of all, why in God’s name did the effete, brilliant, and ultra-sensitive Marlowe travel

to Deptford, of all places, to meet with these three crooks and thugs? What could they have

conceivably have talked about for eight hours?

Secondly, is it a coincidence that one of the three, and the leader of the pack, (Ingram

Frizer) was a corrupt associate of Marlowe’s best friend Edward Walshingham? Was it

happenstance that Frizer was the one who allegedly delivered the fatal blow?

The description of the killing was obviously absurd. How could Marlowe have stood

behind Frizer, delivering downward blows with a knife without doing substantial damage?
There is nothing to indicate that he managed to inflict any real injury on Frizer. It was said that

he suffered “scalp wounds”. And why did Frizer’s thuggish colleagues remain transfixed,

pinning him in place? Presumably the three of them, had they acted in concert, could have

disarmed the comparatively fragile dilettante easily.

Physicians who have reviewed the report say that a two inch penetration in the frontal

lobe is not lethal -- and those who have receive lobotomies would certainly agree.

But the coroner’s report does not have to be refuted by internal analysis; it refutes itself

by its very existence.

First, and less importantly, it states that sixteen citizens were assembled to hear evidence

regarding Marlowe’s death on the morning after he supposedly died. How amazing! How

unnecessary! Why would the government hasten to knock on people’s doors until late in the

evening in order to roust sixteen of them to hear evidence in a murder case the following

morning? How many doors had to be knocked on to produce the sixteen? How long did it take?

And why the rush? Summoning a jury of any kind overnight appears to be unprecedented in the

long history of Anglo-American law.

Far more fatal to the report’s authenticity is this: how could such a sensational legal

process conceivably have occurred without any public knowledge? Imagine the scene. Sixteen

jurors spend a day listening to bizarre testimony describing the brutal slaying of England’s

greatest playwright. Each of the sixteen would surely have had friends and family at home to

whom they would surely have said, at the earliest opportunity: “Guess what I learned today?

The great Christopher Marlowe has been butchered to death.” Multiply the sixteen by five to

obtain a modest estimate of the number of people who would have learned the sensational news
by day’s end. Which of these eighty people would not have spread it with lightening speed to

other family, friends and acquaintances on the following day, who would, of course, have spread

it further and further and further until everybody in England would have known about it? It is, in

short, inconceivable that Marlowe’s disappearance would have remained a mystery if a coroner’s

jury had actually been convened.4

And again, no funeral, no grave, no eulogies. Are we to assume that after the coroner

completed his report he ordered that Marlowe’s body be dumped into the Channel? Such

meticulous regard for the manner of his death; such total disregard for the disposal of his body,

or for any celebration of his distinguished life. Like so much in this bewildering dual biography,

the official version of Marlowe’s alleged demise makes no sense at all.

. . .

Why Deptford? It was a crummy, stinking, port town that had only one conceivable

attraction. It was within the Queen’s verge. When England’s monarchs traveled they took their

jurisdictions with them. They were surrounded by a jurisdictional circle with a thirteen mile

radius, within which any crime became a matter for royal, rather than local, investigation. It

4
It may be argued that Marlowe’s disappearance occurred long before the age of mass

communications. But word of mouth was an ultra-efficient means of “spreading the word”

centuries before Marconi was born. In the midst of the 12th Century, for example, four knights

murdered Thomas Beckett alone in a cathedral. It took England just long enough to learn of the

crime to have the King of England publicly horsewhipped for ordering it.
happened that the Queen was traveling on May 30, 1593 and that the town of Deptford was

within her verge, and therefore within her coroner’s control. Can you say “Walshingham”?

Based upon her coroner’s report the Queen granted Frizer a pardon, whereupon he

resumed his employment with Edward Walshingham, Marlowe’s best friend. “I killed Kit, but it

was all his fault,” he presumably told his master. “That’s okay,” Walshingham presumably

replied. Does that seem at all likely?

The pardon itself is somewhat enigmatic. After granting it, the Queen stated:

“Nevertheless the right remains in our Court if anyone should wish to complain of him [Frizer]

concerning the death above-mentioned.” In other words, although pardoned for Marlowe’s

murder, Frizer was not necessarily immune from future prosecution relating to his death. Not a

bad way to keep a lid on a dangerous conspiracy.

Almost no one who has read the coroner’s report seems to have accepted its conclusion

of justified homicide. The most common theory is that it was a cover-up for murder. But why

would Thomas Walshingham’s employee murder Walshingham’s best friend? And why would

he take such elaborate measures to do so? A third conclusion seems by far more plausible: that

Marlowe’s death was a fraud designed to conceal his existence from the authorities who were

threatening his life. Better to live life in obscurity than be executed for heresy.

How did the conspirators get away with a massive, blatant cover-up that makes

Watergate look like hide-and-seek? First of all, those who knew about the plot would have been

subject to the death penalty for protecting a heretic, and therefore, had powerful motives to keep

silent about what they knew. Secondly, there were no investigative reporters in the early 17th

Century, no Woodward and Bernsteins, no Seymour Hershes, to grill Ben Jonson, Edward
Walshingham and their associates, some of whom might have at least given clues about their

shared secret. The flimsy charade survived for two hundred years, after which, in spite of the

powerful rationality of the numerous doubters, the reputation of the “Bard of Avon” was too

strong to crack.

Given that the evidence strongly indicates that Christopher Marlowe did not die in May

of 1593, what happened to him? Clues exist in the “Shakespeare” sonnets, many of which seem

to be personalized narratives of a tortured, fleeing soul, who begs to be forgotten by his lover. A

small sample follows:

How heavy do I journey on the way,

. . .

Thus far the miles are measured from my friend! . . .

My grief lies onward and my joy behind,

Sonnet 50

How careful was I when I took my way,

Each trifle [writing] unto truest bars to thrust,

That, to my youth, it might unused stay,

From hands of falsehood, in sure wards of trust.

Sonnet 48

How far I toil, still further off from thee . . .

But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer,
And night doth nightly make my grief strength seem stronger.

Sonnet 28

Til whatsoever star that guides my moving . . .

To show me worthy of thy sweet respect,
 Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee . . .
Til then, not to show my head.

Sonnet 26

Let me confess that we too must be twain,

Although our undivided loves are one . . .
I may not ever more acknowledge thee,
Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame,
Nor thou with public kindness honor me,
Unless thou take that honour from thy name.

Sonnet 36

No longer mourn for me when I am dead . . .

Nay, if you read this line remember not
The hand that writ it . . . .
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse . . .
Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
And mock you with me after I am gone.

Sonnet 71

What merit lived in me, that you should love

After my death – dear love, forget me quite . . .
My name be buried where my body is,
And live no more to shame nor me nor you.

Sonnet 72

Why write I still all one, ever the same,

And keep invention [writing] in a noted [famous] weed [disguise],
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth, and where they did proceed.

If ever coded words sent a message to a loved one, Shakespeare’s sonnets did. They

provide highly believable snapshots of Marlowe’s post-May 30, 1593 existence -- assuming that
he survived beyond that date. Do they reflect any known aspect of Shakspere’s life? None that

anyone has mentioned.

The four plays centered in Northern Italy: Two Gentlemen of Verona, Othello, Romeo

and Juliet and The Merchant of Venice, are said by experts to reflect an author who had learned a

culture from traveling to and living in it. It is hard to dismiss the impression that Christopher

Marlowe, having faked his death with Walshingham’s assistance, crossed the channel and took

up a new life in the cultural center of the world.

There are a few buried clues other than the sonnets.

In As You Like It, a character is made to say “when a man’s verses cannot be understood .

. . it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room”. This is not only evocative

of the Marlowe line “infinite riches in a little room”, it is suggestive of the circumstances of

Marlowe’s alleged death -- killed in a boarding house over “le recknynge” (i.e., the bill). It also,

of course, describes Marlowe’s terrible fate -- that his verses were not understood as being his.

To the extent Hoffman’s version of Marlowe’s last moments is accepted -- that he

withdrew a knife from a scabbard Ingram Frizer had at his back -- one of Shakespeare’s most

famous phrases comes to mind: “Is this a dagger I see before me, its handle toward my hand?”

(MacBeth). This is just what Marlowe would have seen in the last moments of his life if the

coroner’s report were taken at face value, and an important part of the narrative of his fake death.

What about psychological clues? The one thing we know about Marlowe’s psyche is his

atheism. The Plays are notable for their lack of religious references, which were a common

feature of the literature of the age. Instead, there is the voice of an author who despaired of any

afterlife, indeed of any meaning to life itself beyond what it seemed to be. A religious man
would hardly have written: “who knows what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this

mortal coil”; or “life is . . . a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is

heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing”. These are not statements by

secondary characters; they are presented as the voice of the Playwright himself. Since we know

nothing at all about William Shakespeare’s beliefs we cannot say whether they are reflected in

these words, but we can definitely say that Marlowe’s atheism is. It is a melancholy but telling

clue.

. . .

In 1956 a portrait believed to be that of Marlowe was found at Cambridge University in

the rubble of some large scale repairs. It bore the following inscription: “Quod me nutrit me

destruit.” (“That which nourishes me destroys me.”) Shakespeare is the only writer known to

have used that line (in Pericles). It was a fitting epitaph for Marlowe. The same brilliance and

audacity that had permitted him to create three dozen uniquely magnificent plays had doomed

him to write those plays in an agonizing hell of anonymity. After all these centuries, surely he

deserves a resurrection.