Christopher Marlowe, the poet spy: Was he Shakespeare?

From the BBC's In Our Time :

In the prologue to The Jew of Malta Christopher Marlowe has Machiavel say:
"I count religion but a childish toy,
And hold there is no sin but ignorance.
Birds of the air will tell of murders past!
I am ashamed to hear such fooleries.
Many will talk of title to a crown.
What right had Caesar to the empire?
Might first made kings, and laws were then most sure
When, like the Draco's, they were writ in blood."

By the age of 29 Marlowe was a brilliant scholar, a popular playwright, an international spy, a forger, a homosexual and was accused of atheism. His hugely ambitious characters, like Tamburlaine and Faustus, are often taken to be versions of Marlowe himself, a subversive who also counted religion as a 'childish toy'. By the age of 30 Marlowe was dead.

Was Marlowe assassinated by the Elizabethan state? How subversive was his literary work? And had he lived as long as his contemporary Shakespeare, how would he have compared?

From The Christopher Marlowe Conspiracies :

...Conspiracy, Controversy, Questions and Conundrums

Elizabethan playwright Christopher 'Kit' Marlowe left to the world a legacy of seven plays, numerous poems, a romantic reputation and a controversial date: 30 May, 1593. Official documents from the time say that on this day Christopher Marlowe was killed in a brawl in a house in Deptford. But where his official life ends is where most of the theories begin. There are a lot of them, and they twist in and out of each other in a thorny tangle of suppositions and suggestions. The main areas of contention are as follows:

• Marlowe was murdered in May 1593 (as the official documents report), but not in a quarrel over a bar-room bill. There are a number of theories competing for recognition as the real reason for his death, most agree that it was some kind of set-up, the question is - what kind?

• Marlowe wasn't murdered, but had faked his own death in order to escape the charges hanging over him. You can take your pick from a proliferation of sub-theories offering alternative ways he could have done this. The 'Marlowe didn't die' theory leads inevitably on to the next theory - because if he didn't die in 1593, what did he do in the years that followed?

• Marlowe became Shakespeare. This is a big favourite in conspiracy circles. Despite being officially dead for the entire span of Shakespeare's career, Marlowe is among the top three contenders for the Bard's crown.

• This would be enough for most, but Marlowe was always a man for extremes. Some people believe that Marlowe also 'became' Miguel Cervantes (the author of Don Quixote), and also found time to be all 47 translators of the King James Bible, as well as penning a couple of dozen other contemporary plays and poems. All of this, of course, after his death.

Conspiracy Theory Number 1: A Dead Man in Deptford

There are those who are willing to go along with the official line on Marlowe's death, but they will subscribe to it only far enough to agree he was murdered. To their way of thinking, his drinking buddies on that fateful day in May were just a little too shady; the timing of his death was just a little too convenient. And then there is also the fact that Marlowe was in trouble. His ex-roommate, Thomas Kyd, had been arrested, and under torture had told the authorities all sorts of things about his friend that had Marlowe out on bail with the threat of the Star Chamber hanging over his head...

From Marlowe Alive in 1599, 1602 and 1603???!!! :

Since the early 1800s Christopher Marlowe (b.1564) has been a strong contender for the authorship of "Shakespeare's" works. The notion was first suggested by Queen Elizabeth during the wake of the Essex Rebellion, when she singled him out as the author of Richard II.

Few doubt that had Marlowe lived he would have matured into a writer capable of equaling Shakespeare.

Marlovians suppose he did survive 1593 and became the writer "William Shakespeare." Scholars now have good proof of this survival.

It's complicated, as all these matters are, however there is no question that a "Christopher Marley" or "Marlowe" was seen alive and well during the post 1593 period. Here is the text of a dispach to the Privy Council about his from Pisa in 1602...

...It is clear from this that those there at the time thought this caterpillar from Cambridge was the poet/spy. So my question to the world is why, if this is what they thought, should we, who weren't there at the time, think any differently?

We should also note that if this man was the Trinity "Mathew" or "Mathews," as has several times been supposed, we can see that he was at Trinity in 1596 receiving his M.A. This means he cannot have escaped knowing that the Trinity Christopher Marlowe had died in April of that year, several months prior to Commencement. He cannot, thus, be likely thought to have plucked that name out of the blue for use at Valladolid.

In all likelihood, whoever this Marlowe was, he thought the Trinity scholar still alive. And thus felt secure in using his name.

One can almost see it now, "no I'm not that Christopher Marlowe, I'm from Trinity college." It would make a nice ruse in the days before the internet could have our photo and personal history on record in a second.

The evidence is thus well in hand that Christopher Marlowe survived 1593, as suggested in both Famous Victories of Henry V and later in Henry IV.

From The Case for the Christopher Marlowe's Authorship of the Works attributed to William Shakespeare :

The Paper Trail

Two centuries later, scholars began to suspect something was peculiar when they noticed that Marlowe's works supply the "missing" early works of Shakespeare, so it was suggested, anonymously, that Marlowe might have been William's nom de plume.

Once Marlowe's life proved Marlowe's works his own, the theory was discarded, but once it became clear Shakespeare's biography offered no proof of his authorship (apart from the title page advertisements) the theory was revised in the reverse.

This was in 1895 when an American literary sleuth, Wilbur Gleason Zeigler, first suggested that Marlowe created the name William Shakespeare as his own pen name or nom de plume and faked his death to avoid facing pending capital charges.

The rustic, informally educated actor from Stratford, replete with his illiterate family, no intellectual properties or friendships, was, according to Zeigler, pressed into service for the role of author, seven years after his own death. Like the famous lobster, it may have been Shakespeare's finest hour, but it certainly wasn't of his own choosing. This hiatus of seven years remains a pivotal point in the Marlowe case...

From Candidates for Shakespeare :

Christopher Marlowe, playwright, (b. 1564, the same year as Shakspere, d. 1593 just as Shakespeare ‘materialised’). Marlowe was 29 when he died, except that “he didn’t die” and “HE wrote Shakespeare thereafter”. As a claim for authorship, it is described as an elaborate hoax on the part of the aristocracy. It is an extraordinary claim, based on several presumptive assertions – that Marlowe wrote Shakespeare BEFORE 1593, and that Marlowe wrote Shakespeare AFTER 1593, and that Shakspere was a provincial nonentity, some-time actor and scribbler. Shakspere was not a University ‘wit’, not ‘tutored in further education’, and someone who could not possibly have gone on from 1593 to produce a further flow of plays successful and worthy of genius. And that Marlowe was a paid spy, in the government’s pocket and willing pridelessly to hide away and accept this secondary, anonymous role after years of adulation!

Mind you, Marlowe was the son of a humble village cobbler and his attaining University was a fine, substantial step in his education. But hardly to his personal development. He was roisterous and boisterous, blasphemer, drunk, pederast and still a lyrical dramatic genius – on that dramatic side, he is often seen today as OTT (over the top).

His rapid success and an either uncaring or egotistical understanding that he was indeed ‘the real bridge’ between ‘medieval and modern’ in Elizabethan terms and therefore very special, leader of the “new wave” in theatre, could have virtually unhinged anyone – hence his dark delusions leading into entrapment and employment by the Elizabeth / Walsingham secret service, and all the blind often dangerous alleys that ego fascinates us into.

Though some realistically today see his Works as “over-rated”, his “life and talent were spectacular” and he is the truly professional candidate in this great Detective Story...