Shakespear is Shakespear....

[RobRoy]

The problem is that hanging usually leaves signs, and I'm sure the inquest mentions a wound above the eye, so the people involved in the inquest would have had to have been in on it (or really dumb).

I wonder why they would focus on that particular body, since the existence of such records, and the manner of death, would certainly be counter to the whole concept. Perhaps because without a traceable corpse, there is no hard evidence for support of the theory. It’s simply a leap that has nothing for basis.

An anonymous body would be more reasonable, especially given the level of technology and scientific inquiry. The “fact” that Marlowe and company “pulled it off”, would further suggest someone completely unknown with more than a passing resemblance. Magicians/illusionists have often use doubles to pull off some of their feats. Granted, the double only had to be seen for a few minutes, usually in poor lighting, and by an audience who was not intimate with the individual. Still, a passably close doppelganger could have been arranged, with any dissimilarities written off as coincidence or post-mortem after effect. Given his reputation, would Marlowe have hung around with doctors and lawyers who might later be part of an inquest to determine if he was really, most sincerely dead?

Has there been any fiction written about Marlowe’s “death” and hiding?

Oh, and I realize you weren't making an argument for Marlowe's authorship; it's just that his death is such a big stumbling block that people sometimes forget that that's not the only problem.

I prefer the idea that Shakespeare was Shakespeare and that Marlowe was the greater of the two, cut down in his prime. It has a certain dark romance to it that Shakespeare was always struggling under the shadow of Marlowe, and was ever influenced by the better poet/writer. That Shakespeare always saw Marlowe as the bar by which he should be measured, and thus was a better writer for it, paying homage to Marlowe several times in his own work.

 

[headscratcher4]

I wonder why some doubters tend to hold Shakespeare in low esteem because he made money at his craft...the same criticism isn't leveled at DaVinci or Michelangelo (who died quite wealthy), they travelled far and wide selling their art, artistic and other services, yet their money grubbing ways don't seem to get in the way of their being appreciated, whereas the son of a glover from Stratford is suspect because he made himself a rich man.

IMO, Marlowe was an ok writer, btw, Shakespeare a far better one...if that is the result of his trying to out-do Marlowe, than all the better for it.

 

[TraneWreck]

I wonder why they would focus on that particular body, since the existence of such records, and the manner of death, would certainly be counter to the whole concept. Perhaps because without a traceable corpse, there is no hard evidence for support of the theory. It’s simply a leap that has nothing for basis.

...

Faking one's death was immensely more plausible in the 17th century, but the superficial difficulty I have with the Marlowe thing, is that after faking his death, he stayed in the same area and ran in the same circles (at least according to the Shakespeare-is-Marlow theory, I know you said you weren't in that camp).

It doesn't seem that far-fetched to fake a death and hop on a boat for India. It would be pretty difficult to track someone down in that era, but a writer/playwright faking his death in London only to become a writer/playwright in London seems sort of absurd.

 

[headscratcher4]

Faking one's death was immensely more plausible in the 17th century, but the superficial difficulty I have with the Marlowe thing, is that after faking his death, he stayed in the same area and ran in the same circles (at least according to the Shakespeare-is-Marlow theory, I know you said you weren't in that camp).

It doesn't seem that far-fetched to fake a death and hop on a boat for India. It would be pretty difficult to track someone down in that era, but a writer/playwright faking his death in London only to become a writer/playwright in London seems sort of absurd.

Not unlike an aristocrat poet and patron of the arts funnelling his plays through an actor or a philosophere/writer/statesman/author (Bacon) funnelling plays through a front man.

 

[TraneWreck]

It may pre-date his 'books', but I'd call this some kind of Dan Brown thing. Everyone thinks that every tomb holds a hidden secret, and every statue in Europe that is pointing has to be pointing at something important to the Illuminati, and so on.

I never read the Brown magnum opus, but in watching the movie, the most eyeroll-worthy of the many unbearable scenes (1000 year mystery solved with crossword-puzzle skills) was that after all the running around, they found the entrance to the tomb holding the grail underneath a carpet in Rosslyn Chapel. That church has literally been combed over by grail-heads for centuries.

It's about like writing a mystery book about Abraham Lincoln's missing body only to find it in Lincoln's tomb.

Shakespeare's grave has similar goofiness around it.

 

[Moss]

There is some discussion about whether Marlowe had connections to Francis Walsingham^WP and that his death was actually an assassination. But that would actually pave the way for his death being final instead of being faked.

 

[RobRoy]

Faking one's death was immensely more plausible in the 17th century, but the superficial difficulty I have with the Marlowe thing, is that after faking his death, he stayed in the same area and ran in the same circles (at least according to the Shakespeare-is-Marlow theory, I know you said you weren't in that camp).

It doesn't seem that far-fetched to fake a death and hop on a boat for India. It would be pretty difficult to track someone down in that era, but a writer/playwright faking his death in London only to become a writer/playwright in London seems sort of absurd.

I’m also in the Shakespeare-is-Shakespeare and the Marlowe-is-Marlowe camp as well! My main line of inquiry was simply of interest in regards to Marlowe faking his death. Not in Marlowe faking his death and then becoming Shakespeare. I’ve started to do some digging, and there is plausibility to Marlowe faking his death and then leaving the region, which makes the most sense. Much less plausible that he then became Shakespeare or fronted through Shakespeare.

 

[kookbreaker]

I wonder why some doubters tend to hold Shakespeare in low esteem because he made money at his craft...the same criticism isn't leveled at DaVinci or Michelangelo (who died quite wealthy), they travelled far and wide selling their art, artistic and other services, yet their money grubbing ways don't seem to get in the way of their being appreciated, whereas the son of a glover from Stratford is suspect because he made himself a rich man.

In fairness, part of it has to do with the ephemeral nature of plays in that era. We can look at Davinci's works and see a solid object and get some style from it.

Plays in the 16th century, however, were more 'word of mouth'. Actors were given their lines verbally (paper was expensive!) and some plays were not written down until decades later*. There is always the possibility that massive bastardization took place between the first showing and the writing down for publication.

* This alone torpedoes almost all the cryptography claims by anti-stratfordians , which are often absurd to begin with but then depend on every printing of a play to exactly the same (# of times a word appears on a page, for example). Take a look at these sometime; they make the bible code look sane by comparison.

 

[Lucian]

I’m also in the Shakespeare-is-Shakespeare and the Marlowe-is-Marlowe camp as well! My main line of inquiry was simply of interest in regards to Marlowe faking his death. Not in Marlowe faking his death and then becoming Shakespeare. I’ve started to do some digging, and there is plausibility to Marlowe faking his death and then leaving the region, which makes the most sense. Much less plausible that he then became Shakespeare or fronted through Shakespeare.

Well, I suppose it's plausible that Marlowe could have faked his death (with some help), skipped the country and then disappeared. He certainly had reason to do so: he had torture and execution to look forward to at the time of his "death."

Faking his death, staying in harm's way in London and diligently writing Shakespeare's works, on the other hand.....

And if he did keep writing after his death, why didn't he or "Shakespeare" finish "Hero and Leander"?

 

[Vic Vega]

I’m also in the Shakespeare-is-Shakespeare and the Marlowe-is-Marlowe camp as well! My main line of inquiry was simply of interest in regards to Marlowe faking his death. Not in Marlowe faking his death and then becoming Shakespeare. I’ve started to do some digging, and there is plausibility to Marlowe faking his death and then leaving the region, which makes the most sense. Much less plausible that he then became Shakespeare or fronted through Shakespeare.

I think we are as certain as it's possible to be that Marlowe died on May 30, 1593. There is a coroner's report and documents from the inquest. There were three men in the room with him when he was killed as well as others in the house at around the same time. We know where and when he was buried, etc.

There is absolutely no good reason to think he faked his death.

 

[Lucian]

There is some discussion about whether Marlowe had connections to Francis Walsingham^WP and that his death was actually an assassination. But that would actually pave the way for his death being final instead of being faked.

Charles Nicholl discusses this possibility in The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe.

 

[Vic Vega]

Great book. Not an easy read, but very interesting.

 

[Lucian]

In fairness, part of it has to do with the ephemeral nature of plays in that era. We can look at Davinci's works and see a solid object and get some style from it.

Plays in the 16th century, however, were more 'word of mouth'. Actors were given their lines verbally (paper was expensive!) and some plays were not written down until decades later*. There is always the possibility that massive bastardization took place between the first showing and the writing down for publication.

* This alone torpedoes almost all the cryptography claims by anti-stratfordians , which are often absurd to begin with but then depend on every printing of a play to exactly the same (# of times a word appears on a page, for example). Take a look at these sometime; they make the bible code look sane by comparison.

The acting companies had copies of the plays. They had copies used as prompt books, and possibly other copies, as well. It was two members of Shakespeare's company who prepared the First Folio. Why? Because they had the best copies of the plays at their disposal.* The actors probably had their own parts and cues in written form, but not complete copies.

The cryptography claims are daft. In the first place, of course, the corpus is large enough that you can "prove" just about anything. If you want to find evidence that Edmund Blackadder wrote the plays, I'm sure you could do it.

And then, as you say, there is variation in the copies. Spelling wasn't standardized, so what version do the cryptographers use? Sometimes they seem to favor modern spelling editions. Even if they don't, however, several different versions exist for quite of few of the plays (the First Folio version plus one or more quartos). Now, even real scholars talk about editions that seem to be close to the foul papers (author's first full draft): there are idiosyncratic spellings, and sometimes actors' names are used in speech prefixes; however, the texts still go through several stages before they get to print. The foul papers are copied carefully either by the author or, more often, by a professional scribe. The compositors who prepare the type also change spellings, sometimes based on what letters are still available as they near the end of a page.

*When anti-Stratfordians ask why Shakespeare doesn't mention the plays in his will, they ignore the fact that he didn't own them; the King's Men did.

 

[RobRoy]

Well, I suppose it's plausible that Marlowe could have faked his death (with some help), skipped the country and then disappeared. He certainly had reason to do so: he had torture and execution to look forward to at the time of his "death."

Faking his death, staying in harm's way in London and diligently writing Shakespeare's works, on the other hand.....

Agreed. I think I’ve made it clear in a couple of posts above that I find this part implausible, and I’m certainly not in a Marlowe-is-Shakespeare camp.

And if he did keep writing after his death, why didn't he or "Shakespeare" finish "Hero and Leander"?[/QUOTE]

Dead give-away? Grave case of writer’s block? I can go on.

There is absolutely no good reason to think he faked his death.

Actually, there is good reason. As Lucian points out, he faced almost certain torture and death. He was being accused, at that time, of being an atheist, converting others to atheism, and writing an atheist work. Each of these was a certain death sentence, and all put together meant he was almost certainly going to die.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying Marlowe actually did these things. The simplest answer, that Marlowe was killed, is the most likely. I’m just exploring the idea, and was interested in the particulars. It appears possible, perhaps even plausible, that Marlowe did go through extreme measures, with the help of some friends and associates. There’s a dark romance to the idea that appeals to me.

But no one needs to convince me of anything one way or the other.

 

[Lucian]

I never read the Brown magnum opus, but in watching the movie, the most eyeroll-worthy of the many unbearable scenes (1000 year mystery solved with crossword-puzzle skills) was that after all the running around, they found the entrance to the tomb holding the grail underneath a carpet in Rosslyn Chapel. That church has literally been combed over by grail-heads for centuries.

It's about like writing a mystery book about Abraham Lincoln's missing body only to find it in Lincoln's tomb.

Shakespeare's grave has similar goofiness around it.

I like the way the anti-Stratfordians go crazy over the inscription on the monument. From the Frontline episode I mentioned above:

Charlton Ogburn: The monument in the church in Stratford is the most peculiar monument that I've ever seen. Why does it say: "Readeth thou canst? [sic*]" And if he can't read how is he going to read this injunction?

*The inscription says "Read if thou canst." I assume Ogburn, nutty as he is, got it right, and the transcriber got it wrong.

Oh, for heaven's sake. The inscription begins, "Stay, passenger [passerby], why goest thou by so fast? Read, if thou canst...." It's a literary motif, get over it. I've seen others mention that, because of the placement of the monument, one couldn't really just pass it by without noticing it. To which I say, "so what? Is this the only grave/memorial you've ever seen?"

Ogburn: "Whom envious death has [actually "hath"] placed within this monument Shakespeare"--Shakespeare actually. Obviously death--nor anybody else--has placed anybody in the monument because it's too small. To me it can only be explained as saying that death has placed Shakespeare--meaning Shakespeare's works--within this monument. No, I don't know whether the manuscripts are in the monument--God knows I have no way of knowing. All I say is that if someone else has an explanation of what this inscription means let him come forward and say so. Nobody else ever has; all they say is, it's just poetry.

It's true that Shakespeare isn't buried in the monument: his burial under the church is marked by a plaque with a doggerel curse on it. Perhaps the author of the inscription thought it was going to be placed at the site of the burial? Obviously, I don't have a definitive answer, but some kind of wacky theory involving the manuscripts of plays that Shakespeare didn't write (according to Ogburn) seems among the unlikelier scenarios.

 

[NotJesus]

The cryptography claims are daft. In the first place, of course, the corpus is large enough that you can "prove" just about anything. If you want to find evidence that Edmund Blackadder wrote the plays, I'm sure you could do it.

Someone probably has. There are lots of funny cryptography stories. I found one in an old Time magazine artice:

In 1938 Economist Wallace Cunningham, who entertained the notion that the plays had been written by a group of Rosicrucians and Freemasons, including Bacon, sent a book to Doubleday, Doran purporting to prove that the plays contained hidden stories (e.g., "The Asse Will Shakespeare . . . beares sland'rous tales to Hatton"). Doubleday sent the book to Cryptologist Friedman, who used Cunningham's own "Masonic Code" to get the message: "Dear Reader, Theodore Roosevelt is the true author of this play, but I, Bacon, stole it from him."

 

[LibraryLady]

Of course, there's always this.

 

[Lucian]

Agreed. I think I’ve made it clear in a couple of posts above that I find this part implausible, and I’m certainly not in a Marlowe-is-Shakespeare camp.

And if he did keep writing after his death, why didn't he or "Shakespeare" finish "Hero and Leander"?

Dead give-away? Grave case of writer’s block? I can go on.



Actually, there is good reason. As Lucian points out, he faced almost certain torture and death. He was being accused, at that time, of being an atheist, converting others to atheism, and writing an atheist work. Each of these was a certain death sentence, and all put together meant he was almost certainly going to die.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying Marlowe actually did these things. The simplest answer, that Marlowe was killed, is the most likely. I’m just exploring the idea, and was interested in the particulars. It appears possible, perhaps even plausible, that Marlowe did go through extreme measures, with the help of some friends and associates. There’s a dark romance to the idea that appeals to me.

But no one needs to convince me of anything one way or the other.

I should point out that I don't really think there is any evidence that Marlowe did fake his death, but everything involving Marlowe is fuzzy: you can't really take anything at face value (again, I would recommend the Nicholl book I mentioned earlier, though it's been years since I read it).

As for the body of the hanged man: I haven't found the site I came across the other day, but this one gives a similar explanation. According to this theory, Ingram Frizer (Marlowe's killer) and the other men present at Eleanor Bull's the day Marlowe died were central to the death hoax.

 

[Lucian]

Of course, there's always this.

Yeah, that's a fun one. I notice the article mentions The Taming of the Shrew. If I recall correctly, Shakespeare plopped Padua in Lombardy and benevolently bestowed a harbor on it. You'd think someone born in Venice might have avoided such errors.

 

[NotJesus]

Of course, there's always this.

From the link:

It is true that Shakespeare acted in the company that performed the plays after 1594, and that the same name appeared on the long poems, on the 15 plays published in Quarto after 1598, on the First Folio, and in documents of the acting company. But no evidence demonstrates that he actually wrote the plays.

Um, actually that IS evidence. Pretty good evidence too. What did you expect, photos?