#1 Marlowe blog closes, #2 steps up

Surprising news that The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection blog has quietly closed. The archives will remain posted, a trove of informative articles. So there's that. I guess it's time for the #2 blog to step up.

2009 Fausty Award

After an 8 year hiatus, the 2009 Fausty Award for excellence in communicating Marlowe's claim to fame as "Shakespeare" goes to The International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society founded in 2009 by Ros Barber, Sam Blumenfeld, Carlo DiNota, Peter Farey, Isabel Gorazar, Daryl Pinksen, Mike Rubbo

This blog has moved

Marlovian blog.

Much Ado About ... YouTube

Did Christopher Marlowe write Shakespeare's Plays? -

Did Christopher Marlowe write Shakespeare's Plays? -

On the morning of May 30, 1593, Christopher Marlowe met with three associates in the English intelligence network. Days earlier, a list of charges against him that included heresy, blasphemy and treason had been delivered to the Privy Council. 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 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.

Marlowe Up Close

An extraordinary book by Roberta Ballantine reveals the last half of Marlowe’s life: twenty-nine years filled with high adventure, touching dramatic writings, his mentors, employers and friends, lovers, wives and children and the most difficult kind of loyal service to England. Missing from every previous biography of Marlowe, many events in his life now appear for the first time, fused from increments of factual evidence beautifully corroborated by surprising steganographic messages created by the man himself – a peerless writer and ghost of all the Shakespeare works.

Thereby hangs a tail/tale

Darby Mitchell's essay, ''And thereby hangs a tail/tale': the Memoirs of an Arse Poetica' is available on disk at castlepublishing.net or from the author.

Mitchell's theory is based on her discovery of a diary by a Richard Boyle, THE LISMORE PAPERS.

She writes "This strange diary is written in verbal circles. In it the narrator arrives in Ireland for the first time -- twice in Ireland twice. The first arrival is probably the true date for the arrival of the real Richard Boyle; the second arrival occurs two weeks after the supposed death of Marlowe at Deptford. Thus there seem to be two Richard Boyles. "

Published to day Google Groups (humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare) Shakespeare authorship controversy/Marlowe

Coalition aims to expose Shakespeare - Yahoo! News

Coalition aims to expose Shakespeare:

"Acclaimed actor Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance, the former artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe Theater in London, unveiled a 'Declaration of Reasonable Doubt' on the authorship of Shakespeare's work Saturday, following the final matinee of 'I am Shakespeare,' a play investigating the bard's identity, in Chichester, southern England. . . .

The declaration put forward by the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition — signed online by nearly 300 people — aims to provoke new research into who was responsible for the plays, sonnets and poems attributed to the writer.

Jacobi and Rylance presented a copy of the document to William Leahy, head of English at Brunel University in west London and head of the first graduate program in Shakespeare Authorship Studies, which begins this month."

" -- - Yahoo! News

hlas lives!

A shoutout to Terry Ross and Dave Kathman and the gang at HLAS, which celebrate its 10th anniversary today (appropriately on 'Shakespeare's' birthday).

I wish I could be there to join fellow Marlovians Peter Farey, Ganglieri; Christian Lanciai; Adam Selzer; Peter Zenner; John Baker; Alisa Beaton, along with Art N. and Bob G. and the rest, but I've been too busy with other (more 21st century) matters -- in particular community development of my home town.

As soon as possible, I will revise the banner and update the content of this blog, add some links and photos.

New document found

Reported in The Times Online (London): "Park Honan, a scholar and biographer, has unearthed a “crucial” document that reveals that the murderer, Ingram Frizer — a known conman who received a royal pardon just a month after stabbing the poet — was later rewarded with extensive property."
***
Professor Honan, Emeritus Professor at the School of English, University of Leeds, points the finger at Walsingham, who needed to rid himself of any association with the poet.
***
Professor Honan — whose research is published by Oxford University Press in Christopher Marlowe: Poet & Spy on October 27 — believes that the document unearthed in the archives of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society, in Leeds, shows that Marlowe was killed for financial reasons. The document records that James gave land to Walsingham’s wife, who leased it to Frizier.

Professor Honan said: “It had been known that Frizer had received money before, but not in such a large amount. He enjoyed prosperity as Thomas rose in the court. He later became business agent of Walsingham’s wife and enjoyed even greater prosperity.”

Charles Nicholl, a noted scholar, said of Professor Honan: “Anything he says about Marlowe should be viewed with a great deal of interest.”

Who wrote Hamlet?

Celebrating William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe as Co-Authors of Hamlet

Stratford Upon Avon-The Truth

This year's winning essay is "The Marlowe-Shakespeare authorship debate: approaching an old problem with new methods," by Ary Goldberger MD, Albert Yang MD and CK Peng Phd.

Google Search: Weir Bacon poet group:humanities.lit.authors.*

Google Search: Weir Bacon poet group:humanities.lit.authors.*: "Was Bacon capable of writing with 'drama and intensity?'"

Today I put my foot back in the water (if not in my mouth) at HLAS, with a post to Elizabeth Weir, the industrious Baconian, who must have thousands of posts to HLAS by now. In the past, I've chided her for ducking my questions re: Francis Bacon and ignoring evidence for Marlowe. In my latest post, I ask her to offer any facts she has that Bacon was a poet. If she's already posted it, she may be put off by my laziness, so I should look for evidence myself.

M.B. Malyutov has written Fusion of Various Methods for Resolving the Shakespeare Controversy. Documentary and literary evidence on the authorship attribution of works traditionally ascribed to Shakespeare is complemented by several micro-style, macro-style tests and a study of the validity of anagrams deciphered in the Shakespearean canon.

Roberta Ballantine calls it "the first truly scholarly treatment of different viable approaches to the problem--a study worth wide distribution." Also available as PDF file

Marlowe in Modern Fiction

N.M. Re-Opens Case of Billy the Kid

I pointed out in the Marlovian newsletter months ago that Ben Jonson's Invitation to a Grave Friend (quoted in Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac - DECEMBER 22 - 28, 2003) refers to thought-to-be-dead Marlowe.