DId Christopher Marlowe fake his death?

John Penry the Welsh Martyr

On May 29th in 1593, a Welsh divine with a poor impression of the Church of England was hustled off from dinner to be strung up for sedition.

Dismayed by the poor quality of pastors in his native Wales — men of poor character, poor education, and poor command of Welsh — John Penry was one of many calling for a reformed Episcopal clergy. Critiques of his type formed the germ of the Puritan movement already underway, which would blossom after his death.

Penry would have been around to see all that if he hadn’t hacked off the realm’s chief vicar by running a salty underground press, most notably publishing the pseudonymous Martin Marprelate.

The Oxford man dodged the law for a good three years in the Scottish reaches, until he couldn’t resist moving to London, where (fittingly) a local clergyman recognized him.

The mere draft — nasty, but uncirculated — of a petition sufficed for the condemnation on grounds of sedition, and the annoyed Archbishop had the pleasure of inking his John Hancock on the Welshman’s death warrant.

Penry seems to have had a few friends in high places and some hope of cheating the executioner; he must have been taken by surprise when the sheriff burst in during the late afternoon this day to haul him immediately to a gallows at St. Thomas a Watering — unannounced, the better to keep attendance down,* with the prisoner denied the customary parting speech.

But was Penry’s ill turn a boon to the world of literature?

The day after Penry’s execution, star English playwright Christopher Marlowe was killed in a fray whose timing some find a bit suspicious.

Some enthusiasts think Marlowe faked his death and went on to write Shakespeare under a pen name. And if he did that, his confederates would have needed a body to pass off as Marlowe’s … the body, perhaps, of a man of Marlowe’s age and class who’d just been hanged a couple of miles up the road.

Shakespeare and Marlow

I have found a few new Websites and Books with some very interesting ideas about Christopher Marlow.

Shakespeare and Marlow says that Shakespeare and Marlow co-authored the play of Hamlet, and there is a new edition of Hamlet that shows this collaboration.

Peter Zenner (The Phoenix) in England has an intriguing new idea. That Kit Marlowe did not exist at all, and that Kit Marlowe was somehow mixed up with a man named Christopher Morley. However it seems Christopher Morley was not his real name either. His real name was William Pierce. Peter Zenner says he has written a book describing this triage - The Shakespeare Invention - where he reveals that the 'Invention' consisted of three men -- the author, the actor and the man whose name they purloined.

Marlow/Shakespeare School of Thought By John Baker. This is an amateur website that brings together a large number of links about Marlow. Some very interesting pages too. Such as the following.

Primary Documents for Marlow
What really happened in 1593

And lastly I found an article from the New York Times dated January 2005, about Christopher Marlow.

Books about Marlow

The World of Christopher Marlow. By David Riggs.

A Review of The World of Christopher Marlow

History Play: The Lives and Afterlives of Christopher Marlowe By Rodney Bolt (2004)

Shakespeare Thy Name is Marlow, By David Rhys Williams. (1966) Williams was a Unitarian Minister.