Marlovian Theory - Proponents

Proponents

The first person known to have proposed that the works of Shakespeare were by Marlowe was Wilbur G. Zeigler, who presented a case for it in the preface to his 1895 novel, It was Marlowe: a story of the secret of three centuries, which creates an imaginary narrative about how the deception might have occurred. On the tercentenary of Shakespeare's death, in 1916, the Pulitzer prize-winning editor of Louisville's Courier-Journal, Henry Watterson, supported the Marlovian theory also by using a fictional account of how it might have happened. The first essay solely on the subject was written by Archie Webster in 1923. All three were published before Leslie Hotson's discovery in 1925 of the inquest on Marlowe's death. Since then, there have nevertheless been several other books supporting the idea—a list is given below—but perhaps the two most influential were those by Calvin Hoffman (1955) and A.D. Wraight (1994). Hoffman's main argument centred on similarities between the styles of the two writers, particularly in the use of similar wordings or ideas—called "parallelisms". Wraight, following Webster, delved more into what she saw as the true meaning of Shakespeare's sonnets.

To their contributions should perhaps also be added that of Michael Rubbo, an Australian documentary film maker who, in 2001, made the TV film Much Ado About Something in which the Marlovian theory was explored in some detail, and the creation in 2009 of the International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society which has continued to draw the theory to the public's attention.