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Introduction
This essay
exposes the greatest literary hoax in history: the long-suppressed story
of "William Shakespeare" and the banished author his name concealed: Christopher
Marlowe. There can be little doubt that the official report of the inquest
into the death of the most brilliant and controversial poet of the Elizabethan
Age in "a tavern brawl" on May 30, 1593 was a legal fiction, concocted to
appease the demands and interests of the Elizabethan church-state, particularly
Archbishop of Canterbury John Whitgift, whose court of Star Chamber, would
have arranged for the torture and probable execution of Marlowe on charges
of blasphemy, heresy and treason.
Less than
two weeks after the disgraceful end of the greatest poet-dramatist of the
Elizabethan Age in a so-called 'tavern brawl', a literary successor by the
name of William Shakespeare appeared to blossom right out of Marlowe's grave
with a narrative love poem, Venus and Adonis. Although there was no name given on the title page, the poems were
prefaced by warm words of dedication to a contemporary of Marlowe's at Cambridge
University, Henry Wriothesley, the young Earl of Southampton. The dedication
was signed "William Shakespeare," an appropriate pen-name for a writer who
loved wordplay, who once wrote "thy words are swords" and "shaking their
swords, their spears." (See Spears in Tamburlaine.)
The following
year, another narrative poem came into print--The Rape of Lucrece-- a somber tale of lust and tyranny, ending
with the words everlasting
banishment, containing a
pointed description
of a concealed warrior. For most of his writing career the author was primarily
associated with these two poems. They enjoyed exceptional popularity, as
evidenced by their multiple editions and many contemporary literary allusions
to them.
In fact,
it was not until 1598 (five years after Marlowe's sudden end) that "William
Shakespeare" was named as a dramatist, as the author of plays with recurring themes of
putative death, banishment, mercy and reconciliation.
Three phases
The Great
Shakespeare Hoax® can be divided into three phases. It began with the events
leading up to Christopher Marlowe's reckoning at Deptford at the end of May,
1593; followed immediately by the launch of the pseudonym "William Shakespeare,"
which he (and possibly others) used successfully for many years. The third
phase begins with the publication of the First Folio of Collected Plays
of William Shakespeare in 1623. Rather than being a grand design from the
start, each stage of the hoax appears to have been an ad hoc solution to an immediate problem. That it
has remained concealed until this century is a testimony to the seriousness
of the charges against Marlowe, and to the importance of Stratford-on-Avon
and the Shakespeare "industry" to the economy of England, not to mention
the possible involvement of a secret organization that had its roots in England,
and continues strong throughout the world up to the present day. Having no
desire to topple the British economy, or spoil someone else's surprise, I
offer the evidence and explanation below as a stimulus to discussion and renewed
interest in the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.
PHASE ONE: Banished
to death, May, 1593
PHASE TWO: Pseudonymous writer, 1593-1622
PHASE THREE: Collected Plays of Shakespeare (1623)
APPENDIX: Reinventing Shakespeare
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