Christopher Marlowe Anonymous is a film presenting the 17th century Earl of Oxford as the true author of William Shakespeare’s plays. There are many theories that doubt the works of Shakespeare to be legitimate. It is hard to believe that a man with very limited education was able to produce plays and poems that are attributed to Shakespeare.
Christopher Marlowe was an English poet and play writer of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe was born in 1564, the same year as Shakespeare and was brought up in the same social class. The difference between the two however is that unlike Shakespeare, Christopher Marlow was university-educated. He graduated from Cambridge in 1587 and as a result greatly influenced the famous William Shakespeare. A warrant was issued for Marlowe’s arrest on May 18, 1593. There is no documented reason for his arrest but it is believed to be connected to allegations to blasphemy.…show more content… It is believed that Marlowe has faked his own death, fled England and passed his plays on to Shakespeare. The argument to back this up is that it wasn’t until 13 days after Marlowe’s supposed death that William Shakespeare’s name would have any association with any literary work. Venus and Adonis was registered on April 18, 1593 with no documented author it wasn’t until June 12 that the first copy was bought with credit given to Shakespeare.
Arguments against these theories stress that there is lack of evidence supporting Marlowe’s survival. It is also argued that Marlowe’s style, vocabulary imagery were all too different to be compatible to supposed original Shakespeare literature, not to mention his weakness in comedy scriptures. However, Calvin Hoffman, American theatre critic and Marlovian theorist discussed the parallelisms between the two writers. In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Romeo calls to Juliet as she stands on her balcony listening:
But soft! What light through yonder window