Someone is WRONG on the Internet!
Elsewhere on Teh Interwebs, I am engaged in a discussion with a real live Marlovian.
No, not the uber-powerful aliens from Jack L. Chalker's Well World books--those are Markovians.
So why am I chatting with a Marlovian?
Well, Marlovians, if you were not forced by your choice of major to learn the ins and outs of the Authorship Question, comprise one of the numerous sub-groups of anti-Stratfordians, a/k/a Shakespeare Denialists, a/k/a Global (Theater) Conspiracy Theorists. Like other anti-Stratfordians, they believe that William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire, was not the true author of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets.
But as anyone who's studied the Protestant Reformation already knows, being against the established order does not necessarily create unity. No, it's but a hop, step, and jump to having competing synods and sects and schools, with high church this and low church that, and Missouri this and Conservative that and Free Will those... and sure enough, the anti-Stratfordians are fiercely united in their opposition to the idea that the Bard of Avon actually wrote Shakespeare's works, and are just as fiercely divided by their various beliefs about who DID actually write them.
A brief summary of the three major groups (though there are many more):
Oxfordians: Currently the most numerous, but also the most recent group, having gotten started in the early 20th century, these guys believe that Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, was the author. His social position, they claim, would have prevented him from wanting his name associated with something as declasse as the theater, so he wrote plays for Shakespeare's theater company and used his name as a front. Problem: de Vere died in 1604, and several of Shakespeare's plays make reference (or at least seem to make reference) to events that took place some years after that date, including the Gunpowder Plot and the shipwreck off Bermuda that inspired The Tempest.
Baconians: Not as much fun as the other groups, but the most established, having come together in the early 19th century, this lot believe that another embarrassed nobleman, Sir Francis Bacon, wrote Shakespeare's works and used Will as a front. Bacon was a scientist, philosopher, courtier, essayist, and politician, not to mention a major player in Elizabeth I's court (so much so that some Baconians believe he was actually her son, which would give him an even greater social status and therefore greater reason to disassociate himself from theatrical works, not to mention calling the whole "Virgin Queen" thing into rather a lot of question). Bacon was five years older than Shakespeare and lived ten years longer, so there are no calendar difficulties, and he had intimate knowledge of the workings of royalty. There's also honorificabilitudinitatibus, the nonsense word in Love's Labour's Lost, which is an anagram for Hi ludi F. Baconis nati tuiti orbi, a Latin sentence usually translated as "These plays born of F. Bacon are preserved for the world." Problem: When you're reduced to anagrams, you're getting into Da Vinci Code territory. Moreover, much of Bacon's own written work survived, and most scholars believe that while his prose was perfectly fine, his poetry was nothing like (and nothing like as good as) Shakespeare's. He was also from London, which would make the plays' use of Warwickshire slang somewhat puzzling.
Marlovians: In many ways the most intriguing group, though only a bit more than a century old, the Marlovians believe, quite reasonably, that the best candidate to write brilliant plays and poems is another brilliant playwright and poet. And it just so happens that Shakespeare knew one well: Christopher Marlowe, author of such Elizabethan masterworks as Tamburlaine, The Jew of Malta, and Dr. Faustus. Marlowe was a few months older than Shakespeare, but established himself as a dramatist some years before him. Aside from his recognized literary genius, Marlowe is also an appealing candidate because of his education (at Cambridge) and his unspecified "service" to the crown, which has led some to believe he worked for Sir Francis Walsingham, the queen's "spymaster." If he had needed a front for his literary output, Marlowe's pal Will would have served quite admirably, and based on some of Will's early plays, he probably would have welcomed the opportunity to attach his name to better stuff. Problem: Marlowe was dead, to begin with. He was declared so in 1593, after someone stabbed him in the head during a tavern brawl in Deptford. Since most of Shakespeare's plays and poems date from well after this point, most Marlovians claim Marlowe's death was faked, possibly due to his career as a spy; there is definitely strong evidence that the killer, Ingram Frizer, had worked for Walsingham, though that does not in and of itself prove Marlowe survived the fight. Even without the handicap of being dead, however, he was also from well outside Warwickshire, having been born in Kent, so the slang issue arises with him as well. Though he was clearly a major influence on Shakespeare's early works, the evidence that he wrote the later plays and sonnets is considerably less clear.
Full disclosure: though I remain open to evidence that would prove otherwise, I am a Stratfordian. I believe William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote Shakespeare's work, though there is ample evidence that others contributed to assembling the published scripts, particularly for the First Folio. Why am I a Stratfordian? Well, I believe in Occam's Razor, for one thing, and the Oxford/Bacon/Marlowe theories depend upon conspiracy and secrecy to a degree I consider unlikely to work properly. I am also inclined to note that there is no record of objections to Shakespeare's authorship during his lifetime, nor around the time of his death, nor for nearly 200 years afterward, well after he had become the leading light of British literature (and therefore a target for wild speculation and/or axe-grinding).
Moreover, the motivation of many anti-Stratfordians seems a wee bit snobbish to me; they assert a disbelief that Will of Stratford, the son of a middle-class merchant, could be educated enough or sophisticated enough to use the language he used, or to make the observations on courtly behavior that he made, or to capture the breadth of human character that he captured. To this there are a variety of answers, including these:
*Faulkner, Twain, and Whitman are just a few of those who'll be surprised to hear that a college education is required for the writing of literature.
*If only a nobleman could write a convincing Claudius or Lear, then an Oxford or a Bacon could never write a convincing mechanical or gravedigger.
*If only a nobleman could write a convincing nobleman, then Fyodor Dostoevsky was a murderer, Vladimir Nabokov was a pedophile, and Franz Kafka was a cockroach.
*As Neil Gaiman had Will say in The Sandman, "I would have thought that all one needs to understand people is to be a person. And I have that honor."
That said, what's frustrating about the discussion I'm having is not that the person I'm chatting with is a Marlovian; heck, there may well be evidence for Marlowe's authorship that I simply don't know about yet. No, what's frustrating is that I asked her yesterday, point-blank, what she considers the best evidence that Marlowe wrote the sonnets. Not evidence that Will of Stratford did NOT write them, or evidence that Marlowe COULD write them, but positive evidence that he DID write them. And she won't answer.
Instead, she says things like "Read Anthony Burgess's A Dead Man in Deptford; it's all based on his college thesis!"
And I say, "I did read it, and it's a good novel, but I didn't see anything in it that proves Marlowe wrote the sonnets. What evidence did you find most persuasive?"
And she says, "Oh, you have to re-read it, then!" and tells me about a poem that experts originally credited to Dickinson but later discovered was a fraud because of the patterns in the text.
And I say, "The Dickinson fraud isn't really relevant to Shakespearean authorship. I'd just like to know what piece of evidence YOU found most persuasive in Marlowe's favor."
And she says, "Oh, I was just showing how patterns in the text can reveal authorship."
And I say, "I can accept that. I'd just like to know what patterns in the text, if any, persuaded you that Marlowe wrote Shakespeare's sonnets."
And she says, "There are entire books written about this subject. Would you like suggestions?"
And I say, "ARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHH!!!
I mean, all I want to know what SHE PERSONALLY found to be convincing evidence, and I've now spent over 24 hours and multiple exchanges dealing, as politely as I possibly can, with this person who cannot even muster an argument to support her own case when offered the opportunity--nay, even begged!--to do so. Is she actually unable to state an original thought about her position? Is she unable to analyze her position in such a way as to find a piece of evidence? Is she so fearful that her position cannot withstand scrutiny that she's throwing up a smokescreen to prevent anyone from seeing it?
Or am I just trapped in an interview with Miss Anne Elk?
?