On the morning of May 30, 1593, Christopher Marlowe met with three associates in the English intelligence network. Later that evening the Queen's coroner was summoned to their meeting place. A body lay on the floor. After an inquest, the dead man was taken to a nearby churchyard busy at the time receiving victims of the plague. According to the official report, England's foremost playwright was interred without fanfare or marker. Soon, plays attributed to William Shakespeare began to appear on the London stage, plays so undeniably similar to Marlowe's that noted scholars have since declared that Shakespeare wrote as if he had been Marlowe's apprentice. Marlowe's Ghost: The Blacklisting of the Man Who Was Shakespeare explores the possibility that persecution of a writer who dared to question authority may have led to the greatest literary cover-up of all time.

Presenting the first exploration of Christopher Marlowe's complex place in the canon, this collection reads Marlowe's work against an extensive backdrop of repertory, publication, transmission, and reception. Wide-ranging and thoughtful chapters consider Marlowe's deliberate engagements with the stage and print culture, the agents and methods involved in the transmission of his work, and his cultural reception in the light of repertory and print evidence. With contributions from major international scholars, the volume considers all of Marlowe's oeuvre, offering illuminating approaches to his extended animation in theatre and print, from the putative theatrical debut of Tamburlaine in 1587 to the most current editions of his work.

For those who doubt that the actor from Stratford, William Shakspere, wrote the works of Shakespeare, the brilliant poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe has always been the professional candidate. In this book, which argues that a chronological approach is essential, Donna N. Murphy employs a variety of tools to document a Marlowe-Shakespeare continuum (with her proposed dates of first-version authorship) in The Taming of the Shrew, c. 1590; II and III Henry VI, c. 1590; Edward III c. 1590–1; Titus Andronicus c. 1591–3; Thomas of Woodstock c. 1593; Romeo and Juliet c. 1595–6; and I Henry IV, c. 1596–7. Her research firmly supports the theory that Christopher Marlowe, living on after he supposedly died, was the main hand behind the works of Shakespeare.

Instead of asserting any alleged rivalry between Marlowe and Shakespeare, Sawyer examines the literary reception of the two when the writers are placed in tandem during critical discourse or artistic production. Focusing on specific examples from the last 400 years, the study begins with Robert Greene’s comments in 1592 and ends with the post-9/11 and 7/7 era. The study not only looks at literary critics and their assessments, but also at playwrights such as Aphra Behn, novelists such as Anthony Burgess, and late twentieth-century movie and theatre directors. The work concludes by showing how the most recent outbreak of Marlowe as Shakespeare’s ghostwriter accelerates due to a climate of conspiracy, including “belief echoes,” which presently permeate our cultural and critical discourse.

Former Marine Will Marlowe dreams of being a great classics scholar, but his subversive street art, Bad Toys, is what he does best. When he’s sent to London to retrieve Tommy Jones, what he’s really interested in is a chance to take Bad Toys global. He doesn’t expect cancer survivor Tommy to captivate him or to become the pet project of a real live—dead—author.

This major work brings together, for the first time in a single volume, all the recognized sources of Marlowe's dramatic work. Many of the forty-two texts presented here are of outstanding interest in their own right. Together they illuminate the cultural milieu which fostered Marlowe's talent, and deepen our appreciation of his dramatic methods. * Each of the texts is accessibly presented for the modern reader and is fully annotated. * Works in Latin or foreign vernaculars are translated, many for the first time, and modern spelling and punctuation are used throughout. * The sources for each play are examined individually and are thoroughly edited. Few libraries provide the range of sources contained in this one volume. The editors include texts of works such as the English Faust-Book from which Marlowe borrowed heavily, and provide substantial extracts from other books with which he was no doubt familiar. This book is an invaluable resource for all those interested in Marlowe and the development of Elizabethan theatre.