Shakespeare’s sources – King Lear

Finally, Marlowe;

Marlowe is the most recent candidate to be linked to the authorship of
Shakespeare – Calvin Hoffman suggested him as the author in 1955.

Since he was already a well-known playwright his need for a pseudonym
was different to those associated with his noble counterparts.

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Just as numerous parallels were drawn between the works of Bacon and
Shakespeare, Hoffman saw similarities between the acknowledged works of Marlowe
and those of Shakespeare, which caused him to deduce that Marlowe was
Shakespeare.

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Before his ‘death’, Marlowe had been called before the Privy Council and
charged with publishing atheist and inflammatory texts – this may refer to the
publication of the posting of the ‘Dutch Church Libel’, an anonymous doggerel
handbill, which called for the violent expulsion of the ‘strangers’ from
England and was signed ‘per Tamberlaine’ in reference to Marlowe’s famously
bloodthirsty character. Marlowe’s roommate Thomas Kyd seems to have been
brought in and tortured over the Libel. Weeks later, Marlowe had apparently
been killed.

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Hoffman argued that Marlowe had a homosexual relationship with his
powerful patron Sir Thomas Walsingham. Believing his lover’s life was in
danger, Walsingham paid three ‘ruffians’ to go to London and murder a foreign
sailor. They were then to allow themselves to be arrested, state that their
victim was Marlowe and claim that they had acted in self-defence. Walsingham
would bribe the coroner to accept their plea and the fact that the body was
Marlowe.

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Marlowe, still alive, was then apparently smuggled out of the country
and settled somewhere on the continent – Northern Italy. From there Marlowe
continued to write – this is how the plays of Shakespeare gained their Italian
influence / knowledge – the manuscripts were sent to Walsingham. The steady,
unimaginative Shakespeare was seen, by Walsingham, as a suitable cover to be
employed, so that his lover’s plays could find their rightful home on the
English stage.

Shakespeares sources could be….other people writing his work.  There are at least three other men as the probably authors:
1920 – J. T. Looney, a
Gateshead schoolmaster proposes Oxford as the author behind Shakespeare in his
book Shakespeare Identified. His
followers have modified the theory to put Oxford at the head of a group of
brilliant courtiers who produced the plays as a committee.

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Oxford’s biography also fitted the bill, according to
Looney. As a courtier he had the necessary intimate knowledge of the monarchy
and nobility. His extensive travels had caused him to be mocked as an
‘Italianate Englishman’. In 1598, Francis Meres named Oxford as ‘The best for
Comedy among us’, which Looney asserted was evidence for Oxford having written
plays – none of which exist under his name, perhaps because they were known
under Shakespeare’s name?

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Shakespeare’s
role in the syndicate was as the honest broker that negotiated with theatres
and printers for production and publication of the plays. His name became the
pseudonym that would protect the true authors form any politically dangerous
material that they produced. Shakespeare’s acting knowledge may have aided the
authors in rendering their literary productions into texts that were suitable
for stage performance.