New Light on Who Really Wrote the Works of Shakespeare

    LOS ANGELES, CA, April 22, 2020 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Two questions come into play on William Shakespeare's 364th birthday this week.

First of all, how could anyone – including Shakespeare – have written 14 plays after he died?

And secondly, how many Shakespearean authorities would it take before the world accepts the fact that Christopher

Marlowe was the actual author of all those famous plays?

This week Dr. John V. Nance, associate editor of "The New Oxford Shakespeare, Modern Critical Edition," joined the dozens of authorities to acknowledge that the actor from Stratford was not the true writer of The Taming of the Shrew.

This linguistic analyst is now part of the army of hundreds of respected experts to join the list that includes names like Sigmund Freud, U.S. Supreme Court's Sandra Day O'Connor, Charlie Chaplin, Jeremy Irons, Sir Derek Jacobi and former Shakespeare Globe director, Mark Rylance.

Michael Whitmore, Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, recently acknowledged that there are 11 plays that he's determined were not by the actor from Stratford including King Lear, Macbeth and Richard III.

Even as far away as Prague, at the Czech Academy of Science, Dr. Petr Plechas announced that he has determined the Henry VIII was not by Shakespeare.

"The New Oxford" edition of "The Complete Works of Shakespeare" lists Christopher Marlowe as the co-author of Henry VI, parts one, two and three.

According to "The London Guardian" these three plays are among 17 more that are now authorship suspect.

Two other questions have plagued historians for years. How could Christopher Marlowe, a known spy and England's foremost playwright be suspiciously murdered and quickly buried in an unmarked grave – just days before he was to be tried for treason?

And, how could William Shakespeare replace Marlowe as England's greatest playwright virtually overnight – when Shakespeare had never written anything before and was merely an unknown actor?

According to The Shakespeare Conspiracy, a novel by Ted Bacino, the answer lies in Marlowe's suspicious murder and the unmarked grave, which has never been found to this day. If Marlowe's death was faked, as many historians believe, he could have fronted for Shakespeare for years. That would explain the plays that regularly appeared after 1616 when Shakespeare died. Marlowe could have outlived Shakespeare and continued to write those 14 plays.

There have always been many questions about the Bard's ability to have written those works. Marlowe, a former spy, was highly educated while Shakespeare had a grammar school education of "little Latin and less Greek." Marlowe, who was probably gay, traveled extensively, knew court manners, legal issues, and maritime facts. Shakespeare had no background in these areas that are so prevalent in his plays and he never left England, even though many of the works take place in Italy.

Bacino's novel is written as "The Greatest Literary Deception of All Time." It chronicles the life that Marlowe possibly lived as a fugitive in Italy, writing the works we know today as those of Shakespeare.

Also, researchers have found almost a hundred identical or very similar lines in the writings of Marlowe and Shakespeare. Did one person write both?

The last fifty pages of Bacino's novel is a supplement of historical notes and data to verify the accuracy of the details in his novel.

The major argument that Marlowe could not be the author is that he was murdered in 1593 before Shakespeare's writings began appearing. The conspiracy theory explains how Marlowe could have been alive to write these works if his murder was faked.

Bacino's novel, The Shakespeare Conspiracy, has been made into a stage play of the same title, which has had productions Off Broadway, as well as in Columbus, Fort Lauderdale and Rockford University in Illinois.

The Sydney Morning Herald put the issue succinctly: Has the debate over the authorship of Shakespeare's plays…finally been settled? The paper wrote that these recent revelations shed "new light on the links between the two great playwrights after centuries of speculation and conspiracy theories."

Ted Bacino

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