A Monograph on the True Authorship of the Plays of William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe

There are three possibilities to be explored here:

l. That William Shakespeare wrote all thirty five of his plays and Christopher Marlowe wrote all six of his plays.

2. That Shakespeare wrote some of the plays attributed to him and Marlowe wrote the rest while he was forced to live out his life in Italy for political reasons.

3. That Shakespeare did not write any of the plays attributed to him, and Marlowe wrote all of them, sent each of them from Italy to his patron in England, Sir Thomas Walsingham, younger brother of Sir Francis Walsingham, one of the four or five men closest to Queen Elizabeth. Sir Thomas had each play he received from Italy copied by a professional copyist, (to prevent anyone in London from recognizing Marlowe's handwriting, which was certain, had he sent the originals directly to London) kept the original, and forwarded the copy to Shakespeare to use as he saw fit, in compliance with the arrangement the two playwrights had made, Shakespeare sharing with the playwright abroad any profits which might be made from each play after it was produced and put on the boards of the Globe Theater, in which Shakespeare was a partner.

We will deal with each of the above possibilities in its turn.

The general purpose of this search is to chide the enthusiasts of the Marlovian theory, which can best be stated as asserting the proposition that Marlowe wrote the works attributed to Shakespeare. Why chide them? Because it seems to me they exhibit far more dedication and enthusiasm in their belief than sensible means of going about testing their theory against whatever realities are available, given the paucity of information about any people from the Elizabethan era. I don't just mean information about Shakespeare, but about all the other Elizabethan playwrights: Beaumont and Fletcher, Messinger, Decker, John Webster, on and on.