The Marlowe-Shakespeare Code
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The Marlowe- Shal~espeare Code A Study in Literary Biography By SaIDuel L. BluIDenfeld This essay has been written and is being submitted for the 17th Calvin & Rose G. Hoffman Prize Samuel L. Blumenfeld August 10, 2006 Copyright c 2006 by Samuel L. Blumenfeld. 73 Bi.hops Fore.t Drive Waltham. MA 02452 781-899-6468 [email protected] The Marlowe-Shakespeare Code By Samuel L. Blumenfeld Speculation about Shakespeare's authorship has been the subject of discussion and many books for more than 150 years. But the burning question has always been: if Shakespeare did not write the works attributed to him who did? A number of candidates have been put forth, but each one of them has had a serious problem that prevents final acceptance. However, it was Calvin Hoffman, a writer and theatre critic, who first advanced the idea that it was Christopher Marlowe who wrote the works attributed to William Shakespeare. His book, The Murder ofthe Man Who Was Shakespeare, the first full-length exposition of his theory, was published by Julian Messner in 1955. In its first year the book went into three printings. Hoffman's thesis received some notice, and an article about it appeared in Esquire magazine. Hoffman had read aJJ of the plays and poems of both Marlowe and Shakespeare and had found so many echoes of the former jn the latter, that he began to suspect that both canons were written by one man: Marlowe. He wrote: "It seemed as though versification, vocabulary, imagery, and aJJusion stemmed from the same psychic root." But how could this be? Marlowe was supposed to have been murdered in 1593, before the 36 plays in the First Folio were written and published in 1623. Hoffman suspected that there was something very strange about the alleged murder and went about inve~ligaling all of the circumstances surrounding it. He final1y carne to the conclusion that the so-called murder was a staged event meant to save Marlowe from certain torture and death by Archbishop Whitgift's inquisition against Jesuits, Puritans, and atheists. I first met Hoffman in the 1950s when he brought a copy of his book to my office at Grosset and Dunlap. I was then editor of the Universal Library, Grosset's quality paperback line, and he urged that we publish a paperback edition of the book. I read the book and instantly became a Marlovian. Like so many college graduates who had read Shakespeare in high school and colJege, I assumed that Shakespeare's authorship had been established by solid documentary evidence. But until I read Hoffman's book, I wasn ' t even aware that there was an authorship problem with the Bard of Avon. We published Hoffman's book, adding a new Introduction and Index, including a report on his efforts to open the tomb of Sir Thomas Walsingham, Marlowe's patron, hoping to find the original First Folio manuscripts of the plays. However, nothing was found. I became friends with Hoffman and joined his small circle of supporters who met regularly at an apartment in Manhattan. We created the Marlowe-Shakespeare Society, which held a few meetings. Lack of funding meant that the Society would never be more than a discussion club. Subsequently, I moved to Boston and lost contact with Hoffman, who then retired with his wife to Sarasota, Florida. Nevertheless, he had created enough interest in his theory so that here and there small groups of Marlovians would form in England and on college campuses in the United States. Doubts about Shakespeare's authorship were nothing new in the 1950s. These doubts first arose in the I 81h century when attempts were made to write full-length biographies 2 of the famous playwright. It started when a retired clergyman, Rev. James Wilmot, a friend of Samuel Johnson and a great admirer of the First Folio plays, became curious about this literary genius, of whom so little was known. In 1780 or so, Wilmot moved to Stratford, intending to gather enough documentary material about the Bard so that he could write a full-scale biography of the author. He searched everywhere within a fifty mile radius of Stratford, hoping to find books, letters, or any other records pertaining to Shakespeare, but came up with nothing. After much frustration, Wilmot came to the inevitable and disappointing conclusion that William Shakespeare of Stratford did not write the works attributed to him. But, obviously, someone did write the 36 plays in the First Folio. Who was he? Wilmot undoubtedly gave the question some thought, but he kept his doubts and conjectures to himself and ordered his papers to be burned after his death. Shakespeare's Biography The most recent full-scale effort to find some unequivocal documentation that would establish Shakespeare's authorship was made by Diana Price in a book, Shakespeare's Unorthodox Biography, published in 2001. In it, the author examined all of the documents pertaining to Shakespeare unearthed by literary scholars during the last 300 years and came to the conclusion that Shakespeare was not a writer. She wrote: "These documents account for the activities of an actor, a theatre shareholder, a businessman, a moneylender, a property holder, a litigant, and a man with a family, but they do not account for his presumed life as a professional writer." In contrast to Price's picture of Shakespeare based on documentary evidence, we have Caroline Spurgeon's very different view of the poet-playwright. In her book, Shakespeare's Imagery and What It Tells Us, published in 1935, Spurgeon came to the conclusion that the author is "in many ways in character what one can only describe as Christ-like, that is, gentle, kindly, honest, brave and true, with deep understanding and quick sympathy for all living things." Obviously, we are faced with two very different people: Price's actor-businesman and Spurgeon's Christ-like poet, who resembles Christopher Marlowe far more than he does Shakespeare. Indeed, none of the other contenders, Francis Bacon or the Earl of Oxford, could be considered "Christ-like." The Quest of Delia Bacon Of course, Diana Price was not the first American to question Shakespeare' s authorship. The first was Delia Bacon, a brilliant woman who developed a career as a very successful lecturer in history. Some of her students considered her a genius. Born in 1811 in Tallmadge, Ohio, Bacon turned her interest to literature in 1852, reading all of Shakespeare and coming to the very unorthodox conclusion that the plays in the First folio revealed a well-hidden comprehensive philosophy which could have only been written by several philosophers-including Francis Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh, and others. She decided to pursue her research and writing in England. She remained in England five years, corresponding with Emerson, Carlyle, and Hawthorne, spending her last months in sickness and near poverty in Stratford where she hoped to be able to open Shakespeare's tomb. She wrote in one of her letters: "The archives of this secret philosophical society are buried somewhere, perhaps in more 4 places than one." Her obsession with the authorship mystery brought her to near insanity, and she was brought back to the United States in April 1858. The opening chapter of her projected book had been published by Putnam's Monthly in January 1856, but when the book itself was published, it was largely ignored. She died in September of 1859. Looney's Theory But the burning question still remained: If Shakespeare did not write the plays and poems, who did? One dedicated man who tried to solve the problem was Thomas 1. \l Looney (pronounced Loney). Charles Ogburn, Ius his massive tome, The Mysterious (p.J+5") William Shakespeare, wrote: " Looney did what no one had done before. He approached the quest for the author systematically, with a completely open mind ....He deduced seventeen characteristics of the author and then set out to comb through the annals of the Elizabethan age to see who would come closest to possessing them. The man, in Looney's opinion, who fit all of the characteristics was none other than Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. Thus was born the Oxfordian theory, which has spurred the publication of many books and articles on the subject. Of course, Looney never considered Marlowe as a possible author, since he believed the generally accepted view that Marlowe was killed in 1593. However, the main problem with the Oxford thesis are the dates: he was born in 1550 and died in 1604. Shakespeare was born in 1564, the same year as Marlowe, and died in 5 1616, and the First Folio, with twenty unpublished plays came off the press in 1623. Oxford's dates badly throw off the chronology of the plays, a chronology that has been accepted by most scholars. For example, the earliest of the First Folio plays, Titus Andronicus, is believed to have been written in 1590, when Oxford was 40, and the latest, Henry VIII, in 1612, eight years after the Earl's death. In fact, thirteen of the plays were written after Oxford's death. In addition, there is no indication that Oxford had the kind of literary genius found in the plays and poems. Oxford himself was a talented poet, but not a genius. He did not leave a legacy of writings under his own name that could be considered works of genius. C. S. Lewis wrote of Oxford: "Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, shows, here and there, a faint talent, but is for the most part undistinguished and verbose." Also, if Oxford had written plays and poems of such magnificence, he would have left evidence somewhere, in a will or in a statement, that he was the author.