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Marlowe, Shakespeare and Phrases

Posted by Word Camel on January 04, 2003

In Reply to: Marlowe, Shakespeare and Phrases posted by Bob on January 04, 2003

: : I caught part of a documentary for Frontline on PBS last night all about the people who think that Shakespeare's works were actually written by Christopher Marlowe.

: : I had always filed this away with UFO abductions and various Oliver Stone movies. However, the program presented a pretty compelling case. One of the interesting things it did was to show two actors reading very similar phrases written by the two authors. I'm enclosing a link to a page where you can actually see a video showing the actors and read more about it all (the link ot the video is about half way down the page).

: : Anyway, thought it was worth sharing.

: : Camelita

: Yeah, yeah. So why did Marlowe save his best work for anonymity? The plays that are attributed to Marlowe (hey! maybe written by Shakespeare?) are pretty forgettable when compared to Willie's canon. Pretty humble of Chris.

Well, yes. But the thing that seemed compelling were all the inconsistancies in Shakespeare's life. For instance, he, at least according to his will, didn't own any books. Every other writer of the time did. None of his daughters were educated, which isn't consistent with the circumstances of the families of other writers or of accounts of women in his own plays. There is also no contemporary account of him from Stratford that refers to him as a writer. He's always referred to as a business man. There are all sorts of things like that - enough to raise some doubt.

I haven't read enough Marlowe but this made me want to read more in any case.

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