This text area is the helm of The Marlowe Studies meant to navigate your course at the beginning of your journey into the most complex and fascinating life of Christopher Marlowe. The helm's gold links will take you to passages in our library of books that give further detail on the topic being expressed. Some of the links will take you to photographs that illuminate Marlowe's life: Canterbury, his home on the corner of St. George's Street and St. George's Lane, the Canterbury Cathedral and the stained glass windows he himself looked at while singing with the other choirboys as an adolescent, the King's School attached to the Cathedral where he went daily on his divinity scholarship, the tree on his patron Thomas Walsingham's Scadbury estate with the initials 'C.M.' carved into its moss-encrusted bark, the street where his uncle lived . . . and many more.

In his book Who Wrote Shakespeare? John Michell, concludes, “Were it not for the record of his early death Christopher Marlowe would be the strongest of Shakespeare candidates.” The only problem is that Marlowe is thought to have died. And yet we find the author of Shake-speare’s Sonnets telling us repeatedly that he is dead to all the world and it is someone else whose name from hence immortal life shall have, someone else whose monument shall be my gentle verse, someone else who still shall live when all the breathers of this world are dead because of the virtue of my pen.  

The Marlowe Studies is dedicated to the work of A.D. Wraight, whose immense amount of research on Marlowe and attention to historical context proves he did not die in 1593 and continued writing under the pseudonym William Shakespeare.

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." She goes on to say, " . . .the premise of every one of these base intimations is flawed by error at its inception. Not one of these accusations stands up under close investigation." Wraight's work gives us this "close investigation" which proves to be the foundation for a paradigm shift in the interpretation of Marlowe's work.

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. 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.

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. 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.” Indeed, there is so much evidence that the study of Christopher Marlowe is the most important literary endeavor of our time.

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. These 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 our 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. Mr. Farey 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.

Continue to Helm II: Wraight . . .