1623 Folio portrait of Shakespeare is actually a mask: one can see even its border. In his dedication, Ben Jonson suggested the readers should not look at the portrait but rather to find the Author in his texts.
The famous
1623 Folio portrait of Shakespeare is actually a mask: one can see even its border. In his dedication, Ben Jonson suggested the readers should not look at the portrait but rather to find the Author in his texts.
The circumstances of the mystery concerning the identity of the person who was Shakespeare suggest it was not just a fancy of some person but was rather maintained as a state top secret. Some facts suggest that the Author of the Shakespeare canon might have been a child of State — that is, an illegitimate monarch's child.
The Privy Council was involved also in the case of Marlowe's alleged death. The most striking feature is the Queen Elizabeth's personal involvement: she issued a writ in which instructed her coroner on what his conclusion should be. That was the second case of Queen Elizabeth's participation in Marlowe's lot, the first one being connected with the conflict with granting him the master's degree. The letter to the University referring to Queen Elizabeth's opinion was signed by at least four members of the Privy Council.
These two unprecedented cases of Queen Elizabeth's personal involvement are a bit too high an honor for a mere cobbler's son, some 'tanner'. (The age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier ... — Prince Hamlet, V.i.)
So, the hypothesis is formulated: Christopher Marlowe was a secret child of the Virgin Queen. Below are the most striking facts:
Christopher Marlowe was accused in 1593 of three crimes: homosexuality, atheism, and the boasting he was entitled to mint his own coin. The last feature suggests he might consider himself as being of royal origin.(1)
The relations between Queen Elizabeth and Robert Dudley lasted exactly for 30 years — since Elizabeth's coronation in 1558 till Dudley's death in 1588. The same thirty year period of happy life is mentioned in Hamlet three times in four lines (the text of the Prologue to the Mousetrap in Q2 and F1). In Q1, the period of forty years was mentioned once. Which confirms that the Q2 and F1 versions were intended as some biographical allusion.
In September 1564 (i.e., several months after Christopher Marlowe was born), Robert Dudley was granted the title of baron, the following day he was granted the title of Earl of Leicester.
Robert Dudley was an uncle to Mary Sidney-Herbert Countess of Pembroke. She was the same Delia to whom Marlowe addressed his famous dedication. The liberty with which the cobbler's son addressed the Countess suggests they were in close relations. Within the offered hypothesis, they were cousins once removed.
There would hardly be a better hiding place for Marlowe after his staged death than the Wilton house where Mary Sidney-Herbert Countess of Pembroke lived. According to the data published by the 'Baconians', the secret wedding ceremony between the Queen Elizabeth and Robert Dudley took place in the Wilton house.
During Philip Sidney's life, there was not published a single line of his poetry. It was his sister Mary the Countess of Pembroke who dedicated her life to editing and publishing his works. Edward Blount, the most famous publisher due to the Shakespeare publications, was the trustee of that woman. Publishing in 1598 Marlowe's Hero and Leander, he stated that Marlowe was his friend.
If Marlowe was hiding in the Wilton house, he could have participated in the editing, and that would explain Mary Sidney-Herbert's success in editing her late brother's works. The Marlovians suggest that Marlowe might have been acquainted with Philip Sidney. According to the offered hypothesis, they were cousins once removed.
In Hamlet, after 30 years of happy life Queen Gertrude drinks the poison prepared by her spouse. According to the Baconians, Robert Dudley was poisoned by his wife (Essex'es mother) who took for a medicine the poison he allegedly had prepared to kill her.
According to Hamlet's Mousetrap, king Hamlet's widow married his brother who had poisoned him. After Dudley's death, Queen Elizabeth made his stepson the Earl of Essex her favorite. If Marlowe-Shakespeare was the Queen's son, he had all grounds to depict Elizabeth as Hamlet's mother. It should be noted that Q1 was published in the year when the Queen died (1603).
Being [at least] a stepson to Dudley, Essex had to be a half brother to other Dudley's children which is exactly the case of Hamlet and Horatio (and of Edgar and Edmund in King Lear as well).
There follows a passage in which the relations between Essex and 'Shakespeare'
are analyzed. The conclusion is that they were depicted in Hamlet (Hamlet and Horatio), and in The Taming of a (the) Shrew (Christopher Sly and the Lord.)
1. "There is always something just a little irregular about Marlowe's career. He enters the King's School when he is within the age limit by a few weeks only. He draws the stipend of a Canterbury scholar even before he is a regular member of his college or University. He comes and goes more or less as he pleases, both the Buttery Book and the Scholarship Accounts showing his master's degree only by the direct intervention of Her Majesty's Privy Council. He dies six years later by the assassin's dagger under circumstances which are, to say the least, peculiar, and at a time when vague charges which no one now understands are pending against him in that same Privy Council which six years before had been so friendly."
John Bakeless:
Christopher Marlowe, The Man in His Time
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Chapter VIII: The second Virgin in the history of human civilization?
Copyright © Alfred Barkov 2000, 2003