Shakespeare and
Marlowe? Shakespeare or Marlowe? The centuries old debate about
Shakespeare’s authorship continues. The debate about the real author of William
Shakespeare’s plays has a new dimension. Gary Taylor, professor and senior
editor of the project, Big Data, at the Florida State University, says that
certain questions can now be answered.
Christopher Marlowe, born in the same year as Shakespeare, was also a British playwright, noted for
his tragedies. In fact, his plays were said to be ‘enormously successful.’ He
wrote ‘The Jews of Malta’ (1589 or 1590), ‘The Massacre at Paris: With the
Death of the Duke of Guise’, ‘Doctor Faustus’ and ‘Edward the Second‘
(1593, registered five weeks before his death). He is pictured above in 1585 at the age of 21.
A long-held conjecture
was that Christopher Marlowe wrote Shakespeare’s plays – a notion rejected by
Shakespeare scholars. The idea that British playwright, William Shakespeare
(1564-1616), collaborated with Marlowe (1564-1593) on the ‘Henry VI’ (Henry the
Sixth) plays has been debated for centuries, but it had not been possible to
demonstrate any proof of this – until now.
Scholars used
databases of plays and other writings from the Elizabethan period, not just by
Shakespeare and Marlowe, to search for distinctive words or phrases. The
academics who worked on the New Oxford Shakespeare, and others, who provided
peer reviews of Taylor’s findings were extremely confident about Marlowe’s authorship
of some parts of the ‘Henry VI’ plays, said Taylor.
The Henry the Sixth
plays are three plays: Part 1 (1591-1592), Part 2 (1590-1591, and Part 3
(1590-1591). It is thought that Part 2 and Part 3 were written before Part 1.
These three, often bundled into one play, are Shakespeare’s first plays,
written when he was 26 years old.
The New Oxford
Shakespeare includes 44 of Shakespeare’s plays, 17 of which are identified as
having been written by Shakespeare in collaboration with other authors. The publisher’s
previous 1986 edition of Shakespeare’s complete works identified 8 of the 39
plays as collaborative.
Taylor said there are
parts in the ‘Henry VI’ plays that are ‘very clearly’ by Shakespeare and there
are parts that are ‘very clearly’ by Marlowe, adding that most of the best
passages were by Shakespeare.
Taylor said that
collaboration between playwrights was ‘entirely normal in the Elizabethan
period, and there was no suggestion of any great secret or conspiracy regarding
Shakespeare’s work with Marlowe.’ Taylor added that their famous rivalry was
speculation: ‘It’s possible they loved each other, it’s possible they hated
each other. We have no way of knowing. Rivals can collaborate.’
[Martina Nicolls has presented
two lectures on Shakespeare at the Tbilisi State University’s
International Conferences: Shakespeare and Medicine at the Shakespeare 450
Conference in May 2014, and Shakespeare and Gerontology at the Shakespeare 400
Conference in September 2016.]
Photograph: William Shakespeare 1610
MARTINA NICOLLS is an international
aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of
Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet
(2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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