Was Marlowe Shakespeare? Much Ado About Something

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Scenes from my 90 min. documentary, a film which explores the possibility that William Shakespeare was actually a front man for Christopher Marlowe.

You can get the complete film from Amazon, PBS Frontline, or myself

Film clips used have been purchased.

For the latest on the Marlowe theory, get Daryl Pinksen's excellent book, Marlowe's Ghost, and go to Carlo DiNota's blog:
http://www.marlowe-shakespeare.blogsp...

Please visit The International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society
http://marloweshakespeare.org

"Much Ado About Something is a film of ideas - well, notions, anyway - that are bound to stimulate discussion, an aspect long missing from documentary [. . .] Mr. Rubbo is an old-fashioned rabble-rouser, and he knows a good story when he finds it. And he's got one in this case, with its adherents to a cause and their whipsaw articulation of thoughts." (Elvis Mitchell, New York Times)

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Was Marlowe Shakespeare?
• Christopher Marlowe
• William Shakespeare
• Authorship question
• Mike Rubbo
• Jonathan Bate
• Daryl Pinksen
• Samuel Blumenfeld
• Dolly walker Wraight
• Peter Farey
• John Baker
• John Michell
• Mark Rylance
• Derek Jacobi
• Carlo DiNota

[fitzjamie1]

My take is this: My evidence is the work. Why is it so hard to accept that a creative mind, immersed in a creative atmosphere, cannot be creative? Why a conspiracy? What to gain? And to hide for so many generations? have you ever met a playwrite? Even as a ghostwriter, you cannot keep that a secret. What conspiracy? Please change my mind-I would love to see the evidence, not the lack of evidence.

[defiantwon33]

again back to evidence. i would say, i'll show you mine if, you show me yours, but i've never claimed to really have any....just questions and doubts. HOWEVER you have asserted that more is known of marlowe than shakespeare which is pretty much the same as saying 'you have none either.' but i see you making for the exit and i won't get in your way. i'm a little tired myself. it has, sincerely, been fun chatting about this.

[MikeRubbo]

@defiantwon33 No, a lot is known about Marlowe. His schools, his spying activities , his writing, his troubles with the the star chamber, his quarrels, and many curious facts surrounding his supposed death in 1593.

I offer my complete film, here excerpted, to anyone who's sincerely interested.

[MikeRubbo]

@fitzjamie1 Such secrets were kept very effectively during the McCarthy witch hunt era when Hollywood writers who were blacklisted , put out screen plays under other real person's names. Those conspiracies were not exposed even with the modern press which existed . See Daryl Pinksen's book, Marlowe's ghost.

[MikeRubbo]

To to continue the crtiticism that SW never claoimed his works. youc n argue of course that i9t's a long time ago and such claims, letters conversations, could have been lost.

Yes, but Diana Price makes up a grid, a checklist of all the things one might expect to survive as evidence. Then she compared WS, his residue, with all the other writers of the era. Time winnows everyone but the others all leave more. Indeed, only WS scores zero.

[MikeRubbo]

Burbage story contd. "Then message being brought that Richard 111 was at the door (of the woman) Shakespeare cause return to be made that William the Conqueror was before Richard 111. Shakespeare's name, William" What does this tell us. Anecdotes do come down through time. That Mannignham does not know that WS is the author of the play. That surely would have added to his story. Finally, WS is not well known, and to make the joke work, he has to tell us his first name, William.

[Dabhach1]

Whoever wrote the plays simply had to be present at the theatre when they were being produced. That let's Marlowe out. Ditto Oxford and effectively Bacon too. Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare and he was a glover's son from Stratford. He was a hick and he did it anyway. Get over yourselves.

[defiantwon33]

....but that in itself is interesting enough to raise eyebrows.

[defiantwon33]

the reason we're here is to question shakespeare's authorship so that dwindles us down to bacon and marlowe. bacon would have necessity to hide his name, and many of the philosophical ideas expressed in both 'shakespeare's' and bacon's writing are similar, if not the same; however, bacon, to my knowledge, was neither a poet or a playwright. this leaves us with just marlowe, the least likely candidate for the sole reason that he died two weeks before shakespeare showed up....

[defiantwon33]

..........and definitely not laden with the level of wordplay that shakespeare is famous for.

[defiantwon33]

....the other 3 are oxford (edward deveer), francis bacon and christopher marlowe. edward deveer, in my opinion, easily cancels himself out for 3 reasons: 1. being that he was notorious for 'airing his dirty laundry in public', it doesn't fit with the need to hide his name. 2. the writing's of shakespeare don't show a knowledge of court that deveer would've had, being in the house of lords. 3. his poems weren't, in my opinion, all that good....

[defiantwon33]

.....yet people continue to believe it for the simple fact that it's already believed - when you see someone's name on something, why question it? well i don't believe it. so i do question it. and one of the first questions that comes to mind is, if shakespeare didn't write shakespeare, who did?  secondly, if someone else did, why would they need to cover it up? there are 4 major candidates(that i'm familiar with) for authorship, shakespeare being one, and the least likely at that.

[defiantwon33]

@fitzjamie1

as is usually the case when someone tries to convince people that 1 + 1 = 3, questions and theories arise. the 2 greatest examples i can think of, being an american, are the 'magic bullet theory' (JFK) and the official report of 9/11 - i apologize for changing the subject, but these two examples clearly do not 'add up' when applied to logic. (back to the topic) when applied to logic, it does not make sense that shakespeare wrote shakespeare.

[defiantwon33]

@MikeRubbo

yes, i agree. that was the point of my argument. there is much more that is known about marlowe, particularly that he was in fact a writer. someone has stated that no one in shakespeare's circle knew of him as a writer, which, for someone like shakespeare, who supposedly churned out this immense collection of plays and poems, is extremely odd. i write as a 'hobby', and there's no mystery about it amongst anyone that has ever conversed with me long enough to know my name.

[defiantwon33]

@fitzjamie1

naturally, comparisons have been made and the findings are there for you to see. so go see.

[fitzjamie1]

@defiantwon33 What we have are the plays. Compare M to S. A very differnt style. If the hypothosis is right-M faked his death and wrote the plays- I think that it is up to that camp to show the similarities as well as the evidence that M was not killed, that he escaped somehow, and continued to live and content to disappear. The 'I faked my death' is only as good as when we find the evidence that he did not die. Otherwise, he died. !