THE CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE LIBRARY

In The Story That The Sonnets Tell, A.D. Wraight says, “Marlowe’s reputation has been vilified on three counts: that he was a blaspheming atheist, a man given to violence, and a homosexual. These accusations all stem from the Star Chamber witch-hunt of 1593. They have been sheepishly followed by latter-day credulous critics.” Wraight goes on to say that the premise for these ideas is based on error. Her work gives The Marlowe Studies the close investigation which proves to be the foundation for a paradigm shift not only in our view of Marlowe’s character but in the interpretation of Marlowe’s work.

Wraight is referring to the informant Richard Baines who wrote what we now tag Baines’ Note, the charges of heresy and sedition that got Marlowe arrested, then released by the Privy Council’s order he return every day to appear before it. Five to seven days later, Baines’ Note arrived at the council’s door. Most of Marlowe’s biographers treat Baines as if he were town Mayor. Incredulously, they have ignored the 16th century Church and State use of informants to get rid of threatening men through charges of heresy. They also ignore the strong evidence that Baines was working for the ecclesiastical faction and that he had personal motivation in bringing Marlowe down. They ignore the structure of Baines’ Note which follows the template of charges made by the Church to get someone labeled a heretic. They ignore the high coincidence that Marlowe was “killed” by his own patron’s man just days before he was to go before the Star Chamber Court where he would surely be condemned to hanging. They ignore all the references to this aspect of Marlowe’s story in Shakespeare’s Sonnets.

The error Wraight is referring to is composed of three parts. First, there is the cause for his arrest in May of 1593 after “The Dutch Church Libel” was posted on a wall of the Dutch churchyard in London. This “libel” was a poem that threatened Dutch immigrants with harm and violence if they did not leave. It contained references to Marlowe’s plays and was signed “Tamburlaine”, the title of Marlowe’s first London play. Second, there are the charges of heresy and sedition written by the informant Richard Baines, which was delivered to the Privy Council during the time Marlowe had been given ten days’ bail after his arrest. Third, there is the Coroner’s Report on Marlowe’s death, not discovered until 1925, that states he was killed by Ingram Frizer after he had grabbed Frizer’s dagger from behind his back and struck Frizer on the head with it.

Most of Marlowe’s biographers have ignored the 16th century Church and State’s use of informants to get rid of threatening voices, the structure of Baines’ Note that follows the template of charges made by the Church to get someone labeled a heretic, the strong evidence that Baines was working for the ecclesiastical faction, the factual evidence that Baines had a personal motivation in bringing Marlowe down, and, even though most of his biographers have stated they find the Coroner’s Report on Marlowe’s death highly suspicious they have chosen to view it as a State assassination rather than a faking of his death even though the man who “killed” him was Marlowe’s patron’s employee and the event occurred the last day of his bail. The death occurred right before he would have had to go before the Star Chamber Court where he would surely have been condemned to hanging. Most of Marlowe’s biographers have also ignored all the references in Shake-speare’s Sonnets to these aspects of Marlowe’s story.

Sonnet 125

Hence, thou suborned informer! a true soul
When most impeached stands least in thy control.

Sonnet 74

. . . my body being dead;
The coward conquest of a wretch’s knife . . .

Sonnet 29

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state . . .

As Daryl Pinksen says in his award-winning book Marlowe’s Ghost: The Blacklisting of the Man Who Was Shakespeare, “The evidence for Marlowe’s authorship of the works of Shakespeare is overwhelming. The case is made simply by listening to two centuries of Shakespearean scholarship.”

The Marlowe Studies combines traditional scholarship with the detailed research of Marlowe’s advocates, making available online reading of the books and essays that have built a solid case for Christopher Marlowe as the author of the Shakespeare Works. The Marlowe Studies offer academia a most fascinating focal point for students navigating both Shakespeare and the 16th century, and can aid the planning of both college Professors and High School teachers. A quick introduction to Marlowe’s case can be had by reading two essays: Archie Webster’s “Was It Marlowe?” and Benjamin Wham’s “Marlowe’s Mighty Line: Was Marlowe Murdered at Twenty-Nine?”

Of special note are three items in The Marlowe Studies library: Alex Jack’s analysis of Hamlet as written by Marlowe, the most in-depth study ever performed on the play showing its relationship to both the writer and its historical context (for instance, the “Wicked Whitgift” passage voiced by the Ghost that points directly to Marlowe’s nemesis Archbishop Whitgift), Isabel Gortazar’s enlightening “The Clue In The Shrew” which analyzes the Inductions of both The Taming Of A Shrew and The Taming Of The Shrew, concluding they reveal Marlowe did not die at Deptford and that he was helped to escape England, and Peter Farey’s essay “Hoffman and the Authorship” which is a good beginning point for those who are not well-versed in the complexities of Marlowe’s situation that May of 1593 when charges of sedition and heresy were about to be brought upon his head. Peter not only summarizes in an easy-reading style, he brings in the traditional Shakespearean arguments at each point along the way showing the details they have overlooked in their conclusions that Marlowe died at Deptford. He begins his Hoffman Prize-winning essay with an analyses of the “riddle” on the Stratford Monument, the meaning of which traditional scholars such as Stanley Wells admit to being unsure of for its “somewhat cryptic” nature. For the first time, Peter Farey gives us sound evidence from Marlowe’s contemporaries stating he wrote the works of Shakespeare.

In spite of the fact that there is general agreement among orthodox Shakespearean scholars Marlowe’s style had the greatest influence on Shakespeare, many in academia have made their assessments on a seemingly brief study. Perhaps their resistance to studying Marlowe is due to the myths that formed around his character during the turbulent age of religious reformation that swept Europe. This myth was strengthened by the Puritans and the Victorians, and later embellished by 20th and 21st century Shakespearean scholars affiliated with the universities. Academia has also chosen to ignore the obvious connection between the William Shakespeare name suddenly appearing for the first time only a few weeks after Marlowe “died” and the circumstance of England’s Post-Reformation inquisition, which, although of shorter duration than Spain’s, was occurring at the very time Marlowe was accused of heresy.

In Shakespeare New Evidence, Wraight says, “A pseudonym tends to take on a life of its own, and we forget that Voltaire was really the obscure Monsieur Francois-Marie Arouet, who once attended a public burning of his own books.” It should be notes that in 1599 Marlowe’s translation of Ovid was banned and copies publicly burned as part of Archbishop Whitgift’s crackdown on “offensive” material.

Wraight suggests the weak links in the cover-up are the autobiographical sonnets written by Shakespeare. Many of these sonnets have remained a riddle to Shakespearean scholars because they seem so contrary to the Stratford Shakespeare’s successful life as a business-man. In her The Story That The Sonnets Tell Wraight classified all the sonnets into their theme groups, and for the first time the sonnets of exile were discovered. Nowhere is it more clear that these had to be written by someone who was cast out of England, someone whose name had been disgraced, someone who knew another man would take credit for his work.

The Marlowe Studies library contains literature on the authorship debate and the cutting-edge research of those who see Marlowe’s hand in the poems and plays written under the pseudonym William Shakespeare. We would like to thank A.D. Wraight’s family for giving us permission to place all of her books into The Marlowe Studies library. We have put them into book readers with zoom capabilities for easier reading.