Bluster's Last Stand?

Requirements for Solution:
Shakespeare's will alone proves positively that he was not a writer. So, to learn who wrote the plays that appeared under his name, we must look for a contemporary who
[1] is known to have written plays like those credited to Shakespeare, and
[2] had such a powerful reason for anonymity that he was forced to relinquish credit for literary history's most famous corpus.

It is a triumph of establishmentarian cultism that the public has been largely protected from awareness
[a] that a wellknown Elizabethan figure, Christopher Marlowe, provides a glovely fit on both counts, and
[b] that ancient official documents strongly supporting the case for his candidacy have been on the published record since 1955.

Elusive WMDs and Stratford's Nessie:
Remember Tom Tomorrow's deft cartoon on the war industry's brush-off of the embarrassment of 2003's casus-bell lie about those non-existent WMDs? As TomT neatly satirized the industry's fallback position: whether we find those WMDs really doesn't matter. Unless we find them.

Fast-backward to the parallel but far longer failed-search for any direct proof that William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon was even seriously literate. The non-existent mss of the most famous supposed writer in all history are the WMDs of literature: Will's-Manuscript-Data.
Yet despite its bare cupboard, the Shakespeare Industry — aka the “Stratfordian” contingent of the Shakespeare Controversy — continues to try (S5&8) banishing doubt of Shakespeare's authorship of “his” plays and slandering it as nutty. But all such efforts have lately served only to fan skepticism's internet-metastization.
[The theater-tourist town of Stratford (where DR saw Robeson bring Othello to life in 1959) greet these developments with the same jaw-grinding welcome as the Loch Ness community displays towards debunkers of its own tourist-fetcher, the “Loch Ness Monster”, which has somehow — who would have guessed? — proven just as durably elusive as Shakespeare mss.]

So the Stratfordian cult is subject to a question paralleling TomT's: what was the point of centuries of intensive searches for Shakespeare proof if the resultant blank doesn't matter? Are we to accept Stratfordian dream-world-logic that finding Shakespeare mss only matters if-we-find-them? That is, location of WS mss would help the Stratfordians; but the search's real-world blank cannot be admitted to help the skeptics in the slightest degree. (See below under double-standards.)

Indeed, the long search for WS mss has been so intense that (S26) several forgeries were successively welcomed with temporary hosannahs. How revealing that Shakespeare-worshipping orthodoxologists (to coin a word) are eager to hype skeptics' past follies, in order to denigrate all doubt by association — but don't stress equally that forgeries' repeated acceptance indicates that mayhap loyalists have their own shortcomings in the area of rationality.

With similar fairness, Stratfordian J.Shapiro portrays (S201) skeptic Calvin Hoffman as a “self-promoter” nutcase by mentioning a single failed 1956/5/1 mss-search by him.
[In its 5/2 coverage, AP obviously misquotes Hoffman, to his disadvantage.]
Meanwhile, Shapiro
[a] doesn't juxtapose this with hundreds of failed tries at finding WS mss, and
[b] doesn't quote for his readers any of the devastating content of the Elizabethan documents Hoffman has successfully dug out.
But, then, when cultish establishments circle the wagons around a dying sacred moneycow, double standards are the single standard.
[A Stratfordian calling Hoffman a “self-promoter” is a classic case of aggravated calumny. Why did Hoffman have to promote himself at all? Because his theory was met by silence instead of rational discourse.]

Pervasive Perversity: Defending Shakespeare by Insulting His True Craft:
Columbia English&CompLit Prof. James Shapiro's book, Contested Will (NYC 2010), is the latest Stratfordian blast: yet another in a long tradition of attempts to dispel all doubt by bluster, since there is no hard pro-Shakespeare evidence to work with. (From the 1957 film Sweet Smell of Success, recall another classic showbiz-minimalist-art promoment, as agent Sidney Falco girds-up to conjure maximal sales-patter out of nothing: “Watch me run the 100-yard dash with my legs cut off.”) Shapiro's pervasive question-begging attitude, throughout his perverse exorcism-exercise, is based merely on the fact that Shakespeare existed and claimed authorship (S225f vs A370): “once you begin to put Shakespeare back into his own time and place, the notion that he actively conspired to deceive everyone who knew him or met him about the true authorship of the works that bore his name seems awfully far-fetched.” (Clue to the clueless: It's commonplace in times of persecution, such as the 1950s Red-scare; see, e.g., the historically-based 1976 Woody Allen film, The Front, based on the Red-scare period, parallel to the Marlovian case, which occurred during the post-Armada persecution of religious dissent in England.)
Note that bootstrappy-go-lucky Shapiro is just assuming that Will couldn't pretend, though that's the entire question at issue. Moreover, given that acting is the one artistic profession we KNOW Shakespeare excelled at, we can sum up the central argument of the Shapiro book (which the worshipful Forces of Orthodoxology are treating as a last-word lock): skeptics are ignorable jerks because

Longrunning Acts:
I haven't encountered such deliciously straightfaced unintentional folly since 1990 when Corbin Bernsen blurted out his plug for pal Tom Berenger: “He's a wonderful actor. And there's no pretense about him.” (DIO's 1991 comment: “Hey, didn't Reagan already pull that one on us for 8 years?”) Is an academic establishment really prepared to adopt as its central argument a rigid insistence that a professional dissembler — and the Elizabethan-era equivalent of a loan-shark — was incapable of deceit? If so, English Dep'ts' Stratfordian OrthoDoxies may inspire questions about how much thespianism goes into their own long-running traditional pose that they have a solid case for WS' authorship. (A standard establishment-sham: less in the belief itself, than in the winked-at for-public-consumption-pretense that it's rock-solidly founded.)

It can be argued that the collapse of the Age of Faith began with Aquinas, who made the mistake of attempting an elaborate reasoned argument to defend a position that neither arose from reason nor could be successfully defended by reason. Will Shapiro's book (similarly confusing prolixity with rational impact) end up signalling the Aquinas-Moment in the history of the Shakespeare Controversy?
[Or are we looking for the Bishop-Temple Moment? It was Temple who headed off the danger of the Church of England's over-committing itself against Darwin. As Andrew D. White's classic 1896 History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom put it (pp.77-78&82): “While everything was done [by religious forces] to discredit Darwin, to pour contempt upon him … while his followers were represented … as charlatans and dupes, there began to be in the most influential quarters careful avoidance of the [original 1859 reactive] argument that evolution — even by natural selection — contradicts Scripture. The defection of Lyell had … started the question among theologians who had preserved some equanimity, ‘What if, after all, the Darwinian theory should prove to be true?’ Recollections of the position in which the Roman Church had found itself [for centuries, up to the 1830s!] after the establishment of the doctrines of Copenicus and Galileo naturally came into the minds of the more thoughtful…. [Ultimately], Temple, Bishop of London, perhaps the most influential thinker then in the Anglican episcopate, accepted the new revelation” as more progressive than the biblical idea of instant creation by god.]

Unequal Evidences: Frankfurter&Mustard versus The Wizard of Ostrich:
As elsewhere here, we spy symptoms of the unself-conscious nuttiness of a cult that has made it a tactic to projectively regard all outside their cult as nuts. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurther is said to have observed that: to some lawyers, all evidence is equal. But a balanced and non-bound mind will distinguish between evidences' differing weights. E.g., the lack of surviving play-mss is suggestive but not absolute negative proof, as few mss of plays of that era have survived. Shakespeare's title-pages are positive evidence for his authorship but (as we will see below), they are far from firm proof of authorship. Returning to the skeptics' evidence: WS' few extant signatures' inept scrawl hardly suggests an experienced writer but this is alibied as perhaps from illness. The non-survival of any letter from Shakespeare is even fishier (since no one person could be responsible for suppressing all of them), but still short of rigorous proof. (Although all the preceding items in-combine come pretty close.) But, as Mark Twain realized long ago: by far the weighiest and patently unalibiable piece of evidence (on either side) in the Shakespeare debate is Shakespeare's will. The fact that his highly detailed will never mentions his books or disposition of mss (several of the plays weren't yet published: P173) — or anything at all related to scholarship — is alone enough to prove that Shakespeare did not write the plays.

When faced with this unambiguous contradiction of their position, Stratfordian heads dive for the sand.
[Putting them in no position to scoff at equally sand-headed Oxfordians for their own impenetrabilities: [a] to the obvious impediment that their candidate, the Earl of Oxford, died in 1604, and [b] to the fact that their various explanations for his anonymity can never be accepted outside a cult where rigid articles of faith only survive through inertia and repetition. (Comparing their shaky presumptions to the Marlovians' lethal explanation for anonymity is no-contest.) The initially-useful Oxford cause has by now become a block to resolution, having driven skepticism into a patently incredible cul-de-sacrosanct of rigidly held but logically-weak alibis for anonymity, which can only assist orthodoxologists' diversion-tactics.
Thus, Shapiro delightedly cites Oxfordian (and Baconian) arguments in extenso. Not Marlovian. [This even while predicting that presently ascendant Oxfordianism may ultimately give way to Marlovianism.
Stratfordians have big-event debates with Oxfordians (S205) Not with Marlovians. The situation reminds one of US elections: the pseudo-two well-established parties aren't getting us anywhere. So we can hope for resolution via 3rd party.]
Unconsciously following the Napoleonic dictum that sheer numbers win wars (but forgetting that no matter how many zero-evidences one brings to bear on a case, they still add up to zero), Shapiro's divert-and-conquer response is: massively distract attention, by (page-after-page-after-page) piling onto the reader a string of lightweight pro-WS arguments (parallel to also just as massively refuting lightweight anti-WS arguments) — arguments none of which would even begin to cut the mustard with Frankfurter or any other balance-conscious judge.
[Shapiro devotes long chapters (67 pages each) to the irrational excesses of Baconians & Oxfordians, successively. By contrast, his occasional scattered remarklets (S7, 201, 212, 217, 230, 316) on the rational Marlovians add up to maybe a page or two — and transmit not one word from the convincing documentary basis of their case. (Though, he does creditably cite Marlovian websites in an appendix: S316.) Yes, he knows (S217) where the weightiest threat to orthodoxy actually lies.]
Yes, contemporary references to Shakespeare (S223f) as a playwrite survive (Shapiro's & Terry Teachout's idea of skeptic-snuffer data); but, given that his name was on the title-pages of popular published plays from 1598 on, this is hardly remarkable. (Alfred Hitchcock's name is commonly spoken of regarding numerous films. None of which he wrote. Procurement of plays seems parallel: P298.)
[Ben Jonson's 1623 preface to the First Folio, lauding playwrite-Shakespeare, is simply hype to sell a book. (P170, 184) Again, Jonson&co were totally silent (P148, 154) at Shakespeare's death.]

The title-page issue is parallel to the Wizard-of-Oz' pretense: what was BEHIND the title-page curtain? What actual evidence exists that the title-pages were not adorned with the name of a front-man?

Shakespeare's Will Provides a Look Behind the Curtain:
More than any other piece of evidence, the will gives us a firm answer: Shakespeare was not the literary scholar the plays reveal their author was, but was just a mask for someone else of that description. Diana Price's discussion of the full revelations of the will is must reading (P146f): she notes that even actors left books in their wills; that Shakespeare remembered with sundry gifts several among his actor friends, yet not a single writer; that nothing in the will relates to scholarship, but rather to colleagues in his actual professions: acting, business, & usury.
[He evidently had no sense of the immortality of the plays his company had bought (from Marlowe, as we shall see). He appears to have primarily treated them with the same awe a farmer shows to his grain: just a product of commerce.]
The will is so detailed that it even includes (S9) Twain's favorite bit: WS specified that his 2nd-best bed went to his wife.

The will's weight is textbook Frankfurter: it overwhelms all other evidence (on both sides). It leaves zero wiggle-room in proving that Shakespeare could not have written the plays. This is a certainty which we of course cannot expect to quite achieve in identifying the true author; yet, by elementary induction, we may arrive at an answer with surprisingly high surety.
[It takes but a few minutes to read and ponder Price's summation. What does it say of the English-teaching profession that it has taken it over a century to not understand the logic? The same pattern of defending-to-the-last-ditch a shaky grant-cow icon went on for a few decades among historians of astronomy regarding plagiarist and data-faker astrologer-geocentrist Claudius Ptolemy. But even Ptolemy's least-numerate defenders eventually caught on.]

Weighing Probabilities About the Fulcrum:
Indeed, once we consider eliminating Shakespeare as author, the central question that requires confrontation is: who would want to hide behind a front and why? Clearing away extraneous matters to get to the probabilistic nub here: this controversy hinges on the following fulcrum-question.
Which is more improbable for the author: [A] that his will would at great length show no hint of literary of scholarly interests, or [b] that the real playwrite would wish to be anonymous. Since we have yet to consider the gov't's persecution of Marlowe, each option seems inherently improbable. Yet one must be true. And the probability of option [a] is flat zero. leaving option [b] as valid. Aside from the suppressive influence (S5) of academe's cultist sniggers, the failure of option [b] to catch on is due to popular failure to [i] explicitly ponder the comparative likelihoods of [a]&[b] (as we've just done), and [ii] explain the true author's motive for anonymity — a failure which has led to what Shapiro understandably calls (S7) “endless trench warfare.”

What is particularly odd is that there is one famous figure who had the only powerful anonymity-motive among the top candidates — an undeniably valid reason for staying out of sight. (The same reason that was featured in The Front.) Yet most of those interested in the Controversy are (on both sides) unaware of this. (Shapiro just skips it.) We will shortly provide the evidence establishing the writer's cause for disappearance; but we pause first for some sociology & background.

A comment in passing, regarding academic-establishment-think. If for decades an entire academic field (English & CompLit) is unable to follow Price's simple, irrefutable reasoning from Shakespeare's will, then one is inspired to ask: what about CompLit&co's complex and-or speculative reading of influences and symbolism into the works they interpret for us? Would you seek solution of a calculus problem from a student who can't add two-plus-two? Should one expect a Tijuana hospital to cure cancer, if it can't do the simplest surgery?
[CompLit's problem in this controversy is similar to the gov't's Beltway mentality: insularity and BS' normalcy, which doesn't work its magic so reliably outside its own clan; thus the necessary resort to non-rational means (mainly shunning) for fighting enemy ideas.
Note that when the shockingly new ideas of Darwin, Einstein, Bohr, Rutherford were announced, they were adopted by most scientists within a decade, often much quicker. The contrast to the present case ought to embarrass the stubborn upholders of English-Dep't orthodoxy, given that the case for Shakespeare's non-authorship has been obvious for well over a century and Hoffman's Marlovian evidence has been published for over half a century. Irony: when the Hoffman theory is finally accepted, it will be a belatedly-much-cited comfort to the CompLit community that he was one of their own: a poet, not a historian or scientist.]

Smear as Argument:
Part of the reason DR has no misgivings about issuing the preceding unkind — but generally accurate — note (on English Dep'ts' common sense) is
[a] it is a matter of international academic import; and
[b] the targets have themselves long since settled into an un-reexamined pattern of using inaccurately-broad-brush smears to repel doubt of Stratfordian orthodoxology.
[Typical Stratfordian and Folger Shakespeare Library comments on skeptics (S206): “the sheer volume of heretical publication appalls …. voluminousness … matched only by its intrinsic worthlessness …. lunatic rubbish” and requiring “the capacity to climb into a soap-bubble and soar away into Cuckoo-land”.]
The Stradfordian cult's latest anticrimethought broadside, the (already-cited) new James Shapiro book, Contested Will (2010), is inevitably a bit more temperate, and produces a detailed survey of dissent's excesses which is of considerable historical value — a credit to Shapiro's dedicated & meticulous scholarship. But, as an argument for Stratfordianism, it is a logically failed mega-diversion, an orthorgy of too-broad portrayal of skepticism as kook, accomplished by the ploy of leaving out explication of reasonable skeptical arguments, while super-detailing a succession of over-speculative searches for alternate candidates. (The hitherto-unrealized natural origin of these unfortunate forays will be revealed below.) On 2010 April 7, the Wall Street Journal's Terry Teachout raviewed the book, titularly implying (following Shapiro's halting hint: S8) that doubters are not only kooks but are akin to Nazi-apologists: “DENYING Shakespeare” (emph added). (We will examine below who's really crackpot in the Shakespeare controversy.) Just as censorially, WSJ deems Shapiro's book to be all-you-need-ever-read on the matter. But the unambiguous pro-Shakespeare data Shapiro provides are merely (S235f) contemporaries' acceptances of his claim that the plays were his (a ploy long drearily familiar to skeptics: P112), circularly assuming the very claim at issue: that Shakespeare was not conning these witnesses.

The Incomplete-Ballot Situation Before 1955:
During the 19th century, the persistent peculiar and unique (P301) lack of direct evidence of Shakespeare's literacy drove major writers such as Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry James (P9) to doubt that Shakespeare ever composed anything of literary note. So far, so sane. And (except to The Industry) so clear and simple. But nothing else about the general public debate since has ever been that simple.

Once Shakespeare was debunked, the natural next question was: then who did write the plays? Skeptics looked about for highly literate contemporaries (other than the presumably-dead Marlowe) and settled on a few favorites primarily bccause they were highly educated (S6, 142), then (in the absence of extant plays by them) tried correlations and clue-hunting of all sorts with the plays' texts: travel, style, education, even (Axxvii, 190f) specific events and Oxford's Bible (A381f vs S214-215) — though with little evident awareness of the statistical insignificance that is typical of these sorts of sweeps (e.g., discerning predictions of the history of the world in the Bible or Nostradamus, etc) across vast reservoirs of potential coincidences.
[For the reverse situation, see DIO 11.1 [2002] ‡1 §C [p.9].]
Chaos was thus assured. And imaginative alibis for key non-fitting evidence abounded, such as (A360) for the inconvenience of Oxford's 1604 death, long before the Shakespeare plays (containing post-1604 references: S179) stopped appearing.
[Leading Oxfordian journalist M.Alexander had (A411) 7 years university education in physics & astrophysics. But (as DIO readers know all too well) such a background carries no guarantee of statistical expertise or instinct.]

Yet a few factors do beckon as potential bases for solid induction. The author had to be someone extremely well versed in the classics (P243), presumably university-trained, and a brilliant writer. As already discussed: obviously, a candidate would be much more plausible if there were evidence that he
[1] was a consummate playwrite (A236; S177) and
[2] had a demonstrably ironclad motive for remaining forever creditlessly anonymous, even while he poured his life into creating the pinnacle of poetic theatrical literature.

Thought-Experiment #1:
Concentrating initially upon requirement [1], let us now ask a hypothetical question which, incredibly, seems never to have been previously posed by anyone. Over a century ago, when the search for the true author started, what would have happened had Christopher Marlowe been on-the-ballot? I.e., if at the outset of the serious controversy, it had been believed that Christopher Marlowe (then thought to have been killed in 1593, before Shakespeare's name had been attached to any published literature) were actually alive during the time-range of all the plays and thus in the running: is there any doubt that he would have been experts' near-unanimous 1st selection? (See below for academe's awareness of Marlowe's unique stylistic connexion to Shakespeare.) His vote would likely have exceeded 90%.

Today, with Marlowe generally overlooked, the two most popular candidates are Shakespeare himself and the Earl of Oxford. But Shakespeare was inadequately educated and not provably more than barely literate. And, despite surviving 2nd-hand remarks on supposed plays, Oxford unquestionably died in 1604 (well before the “Shakespeare” plays ceased coming out); of the putative plays his fans think the rumors were admiring, none has been thought worthy of preservation (unless one circularly attributes the “Shakespeare” corpus to him), and the long-frustrating (S194, 202) lack of supportive Oxfordian evidence is similar to the Strafordians' situation. Yet Marlowe — born 1564, same year as Wm.Shakespeare — wrote several excellent surviving plays (and these very much in the style of “Shakespeare”). E.g., Doctor Faustus (played by Richard Burton in the 1967 film), Edward 2, The Massacre at Paris. Both's plays are in the blank verse style of which Marlowe was the acknowledged establisher in English drama. See, e.g., Encycl.Brit. The view of no less than Swinburne (ibid): “the first English master of word-music in its grander forms…. The place and the value of Christopher Marlowe as a leader among English poets it would be almost impossible … to overestimate…. He first, and he alone, guided Shakespeare into the right way of work; [in] his music … there is no echo of any man's before him…. He is the greatest discoverer, the most daring and inspired pioneer, in all our poetic literature. Before him there was neither genuine blank verse nor a genuine tragedy in our language. After his arrival the way was prepared, the paths were made straight, for Shakespeare.” (See also the Enc. Brit. on Marlowe suffusing Henry 6; even Stratfordian A.Rowse agrees. And see Blumenfeld's amused comments on the matter: B158.)
[C.Wilson (W147) on the earliest of the First Folio plays: “Henry VI, Richard III and Titus Andronicus are so like Marlowe that it is generally assumed that he had a hand in the writing of them”. See Hoffman's extensive quotes (H133-136) from Stratfordians who detect Marlowe in numerous early “Shakespeare” plays. These expert stylistic detections will happily serve as shame-ameliorators in case the ultimate victory of Hoffman's theory triggers overdone post-game shaming of the whole CompLit field.]
The similarity of style is so great that 2 centuries ago, it was even proposed (S195, 312) that Marlowe's works must have been written by Shakespeare.

Universities' English Dep'ts Lockstep-Imply a University Education Isn't So Crucial
the Marlowe and “Shakespeare” plays evidence a love of Ovid, of whom Marlowe was actually a translator (B31) during his years at Cambridge University. By contrast to such evidence of Marlowe's education and rare intelligence (not everyone went to Cambridge): beyond circular arguments from the plays themselves, there's no evidence that Shakespeare was educated at all.
Teachout & Columbia University's Shapiro scoff at the idea that this is relevant, since it is claimed (S239, 276) that a high-school education then was adequate for the plays' author (as good as a university education today). Price contends otherwise (P242) in detail. In any case, Shapiro's dodge evades the question of whether the obvious extra-ordinary intelligence of the plays' author — not just his degree of exposure to classics — might perchance be (probabilistically) correlated with odds that he'd go to university. So, again, we find orthodoxy-cling requiring opting for an a-priori improbable notion. How could academic cultism get any funnier than the nonpareil self-cornering delight that universities around the world boast English Dep'ts who must defend their religious attachment to Shakespeare's authorship by arguing against the import of a university education.

As already noted above, WS' otherwise detailed will notoriously left no books and no mss (S9, P146, Axxix) a POWERFUL, SOLID rock of evidence for which Shapiro can only offer insult and alibi-fluff speculations (S224, 275-277) at least as “far-fetched” (S212) as any he attacks in his heretical targets. These alibis (e.g., WS must've just thumbed through books at bookstores!) are so feeble and ad-hoc that — presumably to avoid triggering astonished snickers — they are not even identified as answers (to the will's shocker on books), and are presented hundreds of pages distant from his early-on passing acknowledgement (S9) of the will's booklessness.
[Price notes (P129, 302) that Ben Jonson's personal library ran to hundreds of books. As his excuse for why WS (richer than Jonson) had to browse bookstalls to read his sources, Shapiro claims (S224): “Shakespeare must have been a familiar sight [there], browsing through titles — for he could not possibly have owned all the books [see P242f] that echo through his plays.” Again, Shapiro's main put-down of alternate theories is that they are too speculative.]

Shapiro's Teachout-touted chapter using Shakespeare's fame as an argument for his authorship only raises (S2, P114 301) the question of why no one would have preserved a single letter by the most prominent man of English drama. But, then: did any ever exist?

There is an addendum to this issue. Shapiro adduces (S224) George Buc's written note that Shakepeare attested to his inquiry that a minor 3rd party play was by an obscure minister: Buc “knew Shakespeare well enough to stop and ask him” about the matter (emph added). But why does Shapiro (like his source) assume the exchange was verbal and not written? Is even Shapiro aware of the obvious answer to the question concluding our previous paragraph? (Note: This is Shakespeare's only surviving comment on authorship. Why is it about someone ELSE's plays? A glaring measure of Stratfordian evidence's thinness.)

Noble But Unsatisfactory Exploratory Tries at Solving the Shyness-Mystery —
How the Controversy Received an Injury Requiring Our Present Surgery to Restore It to Health&Sanity:
Now to requirement [2]: motive for anonymity. Oxfordians and others (P133) have devoted much advocatory creativity to justifying and getting the popular debate ever-deeper into their shared&now-canonical hopotheses that (Axxxiii) fear of retribution for veiled critical portrayals of lords or (P133) shyness of mundane publicity explains author-anonymity. Understandably, few scholars have been or ever will be convinced that anyone would on such bases spurn credit for decades of dedicated artistic achievement, obviously the center of his life's work. If he eschewed the plebian theater, he could have his plays performed at the several private patrician theaters (A255&275; B86) of that day. (It has also been asked why a noble author would choose the name of an actor-broker-moneylender as his cover: S208. And, if retribution-fear was a factor, why would the non-peerage actor Shakespeare be more immune from such?) However, before condemning these arguments' promoters, empathize with and be grateful for those valuable pioneer revisionists, who had creditably perceived Shakespeare's fraudulence, and — given the mistakely-restricted spectrum of likely suspects (fatefully but at-the-time-reasonably skipping Marlowe) — were simply going with what seemed the best explanations possible at that time for the true writer's mysterious shyness. (See below analogies in the sciences.)

Shockingly Neat Solution Surfaces a Half-Century Ago
But Too Long After Debate Had Hardened Into Cement-vs-Cement:
In 1955, US poet Calvin Hoffman dropped a slow-acting bomb onto the debate by proposing that Christopher Marlowe's death was just as illusory as those in several of the very plays we are discussing (e.g., Romeo & Juliet.) But both sides were by then far too locked into their long-established theories to listen. The center scoffs that the idea is “far-fetched” (S212), personally denigrates Hoffman (S201), and won't tell its readers what his evidence is (S212) even while being aware of it (S227). And, perhaps sensing sudden danger from an unexpected quarter, the competitive Oxfordians generally won't (even when mentioning the theory of fake-death: A274) mention Hoffman at all!
[Note: Oxfordians' blindness must be TOTAL to the Marlovian evidence — to the (admitted: A274) oddities of Marlowe's “death”, to the similarity of his style to WS', to the provocative neatness of the 1593 Marlowe→Shakespeare segue. The rejection must be 100.00%, leaving no room whatever for doubt of Oxfordianism. When the theory of fake-death is mentioned by today's top Oxfordian, Hoffman is not cited (A274-275, emph added). Instead, we hear: “The murder was a hit job. None of the [three Walsingham] agents was ever punished because they were only carrying out the orders of powerful forces who could have been brought low, had Marlowe lived long enough to complete his testimony for the Star Chamber.
In addition to being a secret agent, Marlowe was also the only serious literary competition Elizabethan England could offer Shake-speare…. Marlowe's Tamburlaine, Doctor Faustus, and Edward II reigned above all other works yet produced for the London stage in popularity and acclaim….
On February 6, 1594, the London printer John Danter registered [anonymously Titus Andronicus,] the first published Shake-speare playscript, a blood-and-gore fest worthy of Marlowe's nightmarish vision…. Unknown forces, perhaps [Oxford]'s new and settled married life, perhaps the impetus of Marlowe's death, had stoked [Oxford]'s creative fires.” The open-minded scholar lets the evidence teach him. The foregoing quote is thus a textbook example of the very reverse.]

Is Marlowe's survival unmentionably far-fetched? Well, let us see — by examining the evidence which the most prominent orthodox cultists refuse to tell anyone about.

Thought-Experiment #2:
Our next thought-experiment can be an eye&mind-opener for those too-long insularly steeped in any of several cults (P10) built upon inconclusive reasoning on the authorship question.
Forget about the Shakespeare Controversy. Forget about the fact that Marlowe's survival has the attraction that it would at a stroke solve the greatest literary mystery ever. Set that entirely aside. And instead: just try independently gauging the likelihood of Marlowe's survival: strictly in isolation, entirely on the biographical and documentary evidence which Hoffman and more recently (B211) David A. More and Samuel L. Blumenfeld have revealed.

The key events all occur in 1593 May, as part of the growth of the ill-fated (A334) Essex challenge (A273; B202, 216) to the power of the Walsingham-Cecil circle around Queen Liz 1. On May 18th, a warrant was issued (B216) for Marlowe's arrest for atheism, A CAPITAL OFFENSE. (In the wake of the Catholic powers' near-miss 1588 Armada, England was paranoically sniffing out & snuffing out all religious dissenters.) Marlowe's former intimate, fellow writer Thomas Kyd was tortured (ultimately fatally: H61), and spilling testimony (B216) that was certain to hang his former friend. Marlowe appeared before the Star Chamber on May 20 (H64). Damning testimony against him continued to come in, so he was faced with certain torture himself — or execution or both. The most detailed indictment (quoted in full at H66-67) was by an implacable enemy (B200, 225-226), Richard Baines, accusing Marlowe of promoting homosexuality and teaching that religion, Moses, & Jesus were frauds, etc. This fatal document reached the Star Chamber on 1593/5/29 (H66). The very next day, 5/30, Marlowe was “killed” in Deptford, at the house of Eleanor Bull.
[Shapiro (S7, 212, 230) scoffs at the theory that Marlowe fled to the Continent (at least temporarily). But Blumenfeld rightly asks (B219): What were Marlowe “and two of Walsingham's servants doing in Deptford, spending a full day in idleness and hours walking in a garden (who spends hours walking in a garden?), at a seaport [on the Thames, near Greenwich] where [Cecil]'s spies conveniently went abroad and returned and could freshen up at Eleanor Bull's safe house before making their way to London? … Shouldn't Marlowe have been at Scadbury, available for appearance at the Star Chamber in London at a moment's notice?” His constant availability to same was explicitly ordered in his presence and appears in the May 20 arraignment document (H64): he was “commanded to give his daily attendance on their lordships.”)]

Marlowe was a longtime operative (A274; B200, 202, 218) for the Walsingham family's spy ring. (Geoffrey Rush played all-powerful, resourceful Protestantism-guardian Francis Walsingham in the 1998 film Elizabeth.) Marlowe thus had friends (B200) who were wealthy, potent, routinely superdevious. Or all three. So: did they arrange a fake death, to protect Marlowe from torture that might reveal secrets that would endanger his associates, as Kyd's testimony had already undone Marlowe?
[So his hypothetical rescue might have had little relation to preserving Marlowe's creativity. (Though Hoffman argues that T.Walsingham was determined to save his lover.) Today, we see prosecutors “indicting up” a chain of offenders. The Walsingham power-clique may have feared that its enemies were torturing-up: torture A to get testimony on B, then torture B to get something on C, and so on to the top. Marlowe's “death” severed the prospective chain.]
There is no question of Marlowe's relation to the Walsinghams: the May 18 arrest document specifies (H64, B216) that Marlowe be 1st searched for at Thomas Walsingham's estate. The temporal coincidence of his “death”, so soon after his arrest, is at least provocative. (Though, to Shapiro, not enough to cause even a mention of any of this evidence.)

Probability Math:
How do we measure said provocativity? To choose among candidates to replace Shakespeare, we can simply multiply the probabilities of thought-experiments [1]&[2]. For Oxford: it's about 10% times 50%, which equals 5%. For Marlowe, it's about 90% times 50%, equalling 45%, an ordmag more likely. And, actually, the 90% for Marlowe is probably too low: once we realize (from the will alone) that Shakespeare is out of the running, then: if Marlowe is assumed alive, the expert vote would be virtually unanimous for Marlowe. I.e., the probability that he is the best candidate is effectively equal to the probability that he lived past 1593. We next turn to evidence that will probably convince many that the 50% figure of Thought-Experiment [1] is also considerably too low.

Cloak-and-Dagger. Theory-Interlude on Marlowe's Supposed Death:
Suppose you were arranging a fake stab-death of Marlowe. All three of the men in the room when the “killing” occurred were of the Walsingham circle (B218-219): Ingram Frizer, Robert Poley, & Nicholas Skeres. Poley had been key (W146, A273, B42&70) in undoing the 1586 Babington plot by Catholics trying to overthrow Queen Elizabeth in favor of Mary Queen of Scots. As a reality-check here, it's worth asking: for schemer-spies of such awesome and historic international ability, is it really “far-fetched” to believe that they could pull off a standard cloak&dagger body-switch to protect their spy-ring?
[Even the relative amateurs of The Third Man almost succeeded with a similarly-pals-witnessed fake-death of a spy desperate to escape prosecution.]
Which is more of a challenge? Saving-hiding a small private individual? Or saving an entire nation?
[Note that this situation provides an inverse version of the disproportionality encountered when comparing the difficulties of CompLit's challenges on WS' unsubtle will vs the subtle symbolisms, etc, which the field's profs profess to discern in the world's literature.]

Required ingredients for rescue scheme: [a] Marlowe cannot be passively attacked but instead must attack the killer, Walsingham-employee Ingram Frizer (B218). This permits Frizer to get off on self-defense, which he did — going right back to his employment by Walsingham (Enc. Brit., B240). [b] The weapon must belong to Frizer (since Marlowe carried no dagger). Yet [a]&[b] together force a two-stage (thus doubly improbable) scenario, namely, that Marlowe grabs the weapon and attacks Frizer (from behind), but Frizer grabbed it back and killed Marlowe! A-priori-farfetched? Obviously. Yet all this is exactly what is in the official report (B219). One can understand why Marlovians disbelieve said report — and suggest that the body seen by the coroner was someone else's.
[Remarkable Marlovian speculative research (D.More) has found (B211) that a prominent Puritan (see E.B.), John Penry, was hanged 1593/5/29 — on shockingly short notice, one day before Marlowe's “death”. Penry was pretty near Marlowe's age, and his hanging was only 3 miles (B218) from the place of the latter's 1593/5/30 “death”.]

Dagger-and-Cloak:
The report said Marlowe died instantly of a stab-wound over his eye. Skeptics have already realized this would not kill quickly (W146, B220). Indeed, such a wound is usually survivable. But a hitherto-unasked question is: if one wished to substitute a freshly hanged body for Marlowe, wouldn't it help to stab it in the forehead, thereby cloaking the face with a flood of blood? (This could help fool an innocent coronor or provide a failsafe excuse for a nervous bribed one.)
[The body was oddly stabbed in a hard place, the skull. Several commentators remark (e.g., W145) that a real attack would be more effective at torso or neck. Was Frizer's scar in his scalp pre-arranged to justify his required counter-stab to the head?]

Saving Private Marlowe: Segue-Squared:
So Hoffman's claim that Marlowe lived isn't far-fetched at all. There is no sure guarantee that the theory is true. But it's not kook, despite insufferably arrogant shun-attempts to paint it so. Marlowe and his also-vulnerable but also-agile fellow spies were presumably in a state of try-anything desperation, with he under the shadow of the Tudor rack and-or noose. But he was backed by powerful, rich allies and a raft of slippery co-spies, who were capable of teamwork to save one of their own. So, were someone to ask whether his “death” was a classic espionage ploy for entering him into what we may dub a Nonwitness-Protection Program, most of us would deem the probability far from low. Probably more than 50-50, even before we get into the spectacular inductive profit the theory will provide in the Shakespeare Controversy. Which segues us to a startling segue.
[The worst of Shapiro's several key misjudgements on Marlovianism is the astonishing claim (S211-212) that the sole reason anyone would believe in Marlowe's survival is just to make him into Shakespeare. The kindest interpretation of this charge is that Shapiro is confusing Hoffman's original impetus to check out Marlowe's fate, with the strength of the evidence his seemingly-wildcatting curiosity actually turned up. The evidence that Marlowe escaped obviously stands on its own (quite independently of the motive for its 1955 unearthing), and stands much more strongly than Shapiro's evidence for WS' authorship.]

The Neat Temporal Marlowe→Shakespeare Handoff:
Once we start examining the foregoing in the Shakespeare-mystery context, the Hoffman argument appears less a speculation and more a perfect potential solution to that long-intractible mystery. Then, on top of the at-least-substantial possibility that Marlowe escaped, we learn that “Shakespeare” 1st appears publicly as a writer on 1593/9/22, signing a dedication of Venus and Adonis which calls the poem his 1st work (S173vs234): “first heir to my invention”. This less than 4 months after Marlowe's disappearance:

Further: the poem's creation is so obviously beyond a neophyte's ability that Shapiro must hypothesize (S226) that Shakespeare had been SECRETLY writing for most of a decade! (This while on the previous page accusing his critics of speculative zanity: S225.) Specifically: writing plays for 6-7 years before 1st publication (anonymously) of Titus Andronicus in 1594.
[There was plenty of anonymity in play-production at the time, since the authors were selling the plays for money not glory. This left it open for a wealthy theatrical figure to adopt material. E.g., Venus & Adonis was originally registered anonymously on 1593/4/18 (B230), before Shakespeare's September dedication claimed it for himself. Many of the plays eventually published in the 1623 First Folio had not previously been publicly attached to his name.]
Shapiro passes off its anonymity as irrelevant to the authorship question, claiming that we have no documentary evidence that Marlowe wrote Tamburlaine, without mentioning that the 1597/12/20 diary entry of theater paymaster Philip Henslowe refers to “Marloes Tamberlen” (B99). The diary also (B98) mentions plays by Ben Jonson and many others — but not Shakespeare.

Defending Shakespeare by Contradicting Him:
The cult of Stratfordian orthodoxy traditionally, invariably, and improbably has kept trying to contradict their own hero's direct statement (that his 1593 poem was the start of his literary career) by adducing (S234) a lone, ambiguous-at-best (P45f), 1592 Robert Greene pamphlet, which obscurely appears (P45f; Axxx, 235, 257-259, 317; B85&184) maybe to be accusing someone (dubbed “Shake-scene”) of showboating and-or plagiarism: “an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers”. Pathetic? Yes, but that's the ENTIRE extent of the Shakespeare cult's “proof” that Shakespeare wrote anything before Marlowe's 1593 disappearance. (And these same mirrorless speculators call everybody else's theories “far-fetched”.) Again: this one-foggy-item-based chronology contradicts Shakespeare's own clear chronology — yet it is holy writ among ALL orthodoxologists.

Question regarding Stratfordians' inability to quote to their readers the documents regarding Marlowe's desperate plight: do Stratfordians find these documents totally uninteresting? Just too boring to pass on? If so, one can reliably and profitably gauge their commmon sense. But even more revealing is the implicit arrogance: should anyone make such a judgement FOR everybody else? — thereby systematically keeping from public awareness (decade after decade) the full range of startling evidence relating to whether Marlowe survived?

Where the Kooks Are:
We now identify which side shows symptoms of crankitude, by checking comparisons to the Evolution-vs-Creationism debate.

1. It is standard among anti-evolutionists to attack Darwinians by harping on the (inevitably!) fragmentary nature of the evolutionary record, complaining of “missing links” in said record. Similarly, Shakespeareans (who plead antiquity of records to alibi holes in their own arguments' supporting data) sneer that the skeptics can't explain all details of (S225) the mechanics behind a hypothesized Shakespeare imposture. Where the parallel to creationists becomes most amusingly obvious is on the point that — like creationists — the missing-link-demanding Stratfordians don't even have any hard evidence to link.

2. The record of Darwinian evolution is a series of fossil layers over time. Marlowe's record, from the mid-1580s at Cambridge University (B23), and on to London up to 1593, is a series of gradually maturing scholarly work known to his colleagues: translations (of classical works that breathe in the Shakespeare corpus, as well as poems & plays that are universally recognized as resembling Shakespeare's.

3. Creationists reject evolution in favor of a sudden miracle by an invisible god without background who is (on no evidence) posited to exist — and to have existed for a long time prior to the miracle. Stratfordians posit a Shakespeare who comes out of nowhere (B341, P255) with zero known educational vita in his debut at the (for a poet: Hxiii) advanced age of 29 yet nonetheless is overnight artistically at the top of his field.
   [See analogous establishment-creationism at DIO 11.3 [2002] ‡6 n.23 [p.75].]

4. The only evidence for god's existence is: lots of people believe he exists. Likewise, in the absence of any proof that Shakespeare wrote plays, Shapiro is reduced to the same familiar religionist logic that convinced pre-curtain-drop Ozians that their Wizard was real: Shakespeare was a writer because lots of contemporaries believed he was a writer.
   [And, as with other religious sects, most of academe's Stratfordians believe in Shakespeare's authorship because their mentors and funders do.]
   He is driven into this embarrassing corner because of a long-notorious absence of solid evidence on the point from Shakespeare's lifetime.
   [Diana Price tabularly shows that of 25 comparable writers [incl. WS] he is the least documented: not even an obit at his 1616 death: P301. And Price emphasizes (P138) a point that guts the strength of Shapiro's main argument from contemporary alleged witnesses to WS as a writer: “Most of the explicit [contemporary] literary allusions to Shakespeare … could have been written after reading or seeing one of Shakespeare's works. Allusions such as those by Weever, Barksted, or Meres tell us only that these writers knew Shakespeare by his works and name. [Of the] principal ambiguous allusions …, none confirms a personal acquaintance with the author…. Contrary to the impression created in traditional biographies, none of the contemporaneous Shakespearean allusions qualify as personal literary paper trails”.]
   All Shapiro can do is cite (S235f, P112) several admirers of (what they believed were) Shakespeare's writings. (We return here to the plagiarist-astrologer Claudius Ptolemy, about whom admiring legends grew up after his death — but of whom nothing extant was written during his lifetime. Also relevant: astronomers have known for centuries that though Ptolemy's name is on the ancient thousand-star catalog, the work was actually accomplished by the school of Hipparchos.)

5. The prime testimony for the Christian god is contained in a holy book, the Bible. The prime reason people believe Shakespeare wrote the plays is the First Folio of 36 plays, published in 1623, 7 years after Shakespeare's death, with his name on the title page. Shapiro thinks that this and prior title pages are conclusive (S225): “overwhelming evidence”.
   [Most Stratfordians seem naïve about how much ghostwriting and fraud goes on in various of the arts, an inevitability on a planet where celebrities are much rarer, richer, and pushier than creators. Are we to suppose that Elvis & Bobby Darin wrote their songs? That Dear-Abby wrote all her advice-columns? That Frederick the Great [not J.Quantz] entirely composed his flute concerti? That Mozart's 37th Symphony was not (as we now know) mostly written by Michael Haydn? — though a (pristine) copy exists in the hand of Mozart — who was an entrepreneur and star-performer. (Like Shakespeare. Who was famous in Stratford as actor, not writer: S242.) Note that one of the many trenchant points Blumenfeld makes when questioning Shakespeare's authorship is that the actors were struck by the spotlessness of the play-copies they worked from: B233, 245; S239; P171.]
   But, as with the Bible, there are improbabities & contradictions. E.g., Henry 6 is in the Shakespeare-titlepaged First Folio, but (B156, 184) it was performed at least in part in 1591, well before the 1593 work Shakespeare himself calls his 1st. (Even orthodox scholars recognize that Henry 6 is Marlovianesque.) Moreover, Shapiro goes with the new fash theory (S240) that the late plays were heavy collaborations, which (since no collaborators are cited in the First Folio) means he accepts that the title page — his prime-exhibit evidence — is untrustworthy.
   [Further, there were some works published c.1600 with Shakespeare's name on the title-page that no-one today accepts as his: P129.]
   

6. The time-line matter brings us to another analogy. Evolution is testified to by time-ordered geological layers. So creationists unshakily cling to shaky cavils, to try throwing doubt on that order. One of the funniest among Stratfordian Verities is the insistence, despite Shakespeare's own statement (1st work in 1593), that Robert Greene's masked 1592 attack is somehow solid proof that Shakespeare was a playwrite then. (Not even the editor of the modern critical edition of the Greene work agrees with them: P46.) As with creationists, flimsy evidence is preferred over clear evidence, even for central tenets.
   [Such mote-beam disproportionalities are typical of cults (thus the need to keep Frankfurter's point in mind). For one of the funniest examples ever, see how the worshippers of the thoroughly exposed explorer-faker Frederick Cook deal with photographic disproof of his claims by Brad Washburn and Rob't Bryce: DIO 7.2-3 [1997], esp. Figs.6&8, 18, 28&29. (Note that none of these evidential clinchers prevented promotion of the family-wealth-driven Cook cause in 2009 by the so-easily-influenced American Philosophical Society [!] and Smithsonian Magazine.) Take particular note of Cookie logic at ibid p.85 and at DIO 9.3 [1999] p.122, and especially Fig.6 (p.116).]

7. One of the most revealing analogies to creationism is seen in the projection of haughty certainty — the intensity of which is inversely proportional to the evidential support for it, because intensity is the only sharp arrow in the quiver.

8. Which leads to the next resemblance: suppression of heresy. In 1925, Tennessee actually outlawed the teaching of evolution in classrooms. (Even today, US high-school students are protected from all but the briefest acquaintance with it.) And what is the only effective weapon for countering Shakespeare-skepticism? Banish it from the classroom. Shapiro agrees (S5&8) it's been “taboo” there for years (Axxvi, 411). Irony: the unacademic creationists are more liberal than the effete perfessors. The former only try to control secondary education. The profs, on the other hand, try to keep their censorship intact all the way through college and grad school.

9. In addition to psychological, epistemological, political, & philosophical parallels with creationism, there have also been numerous historical replays, especially in science. E.g., when Darwin 1st proposed evolution in 1859, the case for it was crippled by limited knowledge: there was no known mechanism to explain the proposed and only-fragmentarily-glimpsed process. Several bungled attempts were made to do so. (But not even creationists go as far as Shapiro, by using these ancient cases to devalue Darwin.) Finally, Mendel and the science of genetics filled the void.
   [Similarly, from Plato's complaints, through Copernicus' famous work, even the best-looking theories didn't quite fit actual planetary motion (e.g., eccentric or equant models), until Kepler applied the ellipse. Another example, from geography: for 2000y, no mechanism was known to explain why the two dominant ancient estimates of the Earth's radius differed by 40%. Weird schemes were taught by establishments for decades, until it was realized that light-bending by the Earth's atmosphere explained the discrepancy on the nose. (DIO 14 [2008] ‡1 [pp.2-12].)]
   For over a century, the Shakespeare Controversy suffered the same paroxysms, since no known theory could convincingly explain who could have written what WS obviously couldn't, or why the true author would hide. Strange theories (e.g., playwriting too declassé) were bound to fill the vacuum and did so — until 1955, when Hoffman's startling new solution vaporized at a stroke the very need for said vaporous alibis.

10. Sewing Up the Wounded, Long-Crippled Shakespeare Controversy:
    Our final evolution-Shakespeare parallel appears less cut&dried than our earlier ones, but it should be the most compelling of all (especially to those of experience in historical — or police — detective work), namely, COHERENCE: the neatness of fit to multiple evidences and the broad resolution of what were previously intractible independent mysteries.
    [To the research world's dullards, all must be rejected if not attested. But the pioneers whose inspiration underlies great academic progress look for the hitherto-unseen fruitful theory that suddenly solves a range of problems all at once and thereby turns chaos into order.]
    The power of Darwin's idea of Natural Selection is its neat simultaneous solution of several disparate mysteries.
    [Why do lower creatures lie in lower geological layers? Why did man's emergence take so long? Why do men look like apes? How can a chance process produce progress?]
    And Calvin Hoffman's brilliant 1955 theory — that Marlowe's death was a shamlet and that he was thenceforth fronted-for by a non-literary actor-userer — is the linchpin that seamlessly sews together a variety of mysteries; neatly and reverse-Hamletly merging their separate dew-droplets and resolving them into the solid flesh of a reality that at last makes sense. Let us list a few of these mysteries:
    Why are there no Shakespeare mss?
    Why did the literary world ignore his death?
    Why no letters of such a stage-celeb?
    Is it a coincidence that Marlowe “died” a few days after arrest for a capital crime?
    Why does Shakespeare suddenly appear out of nowhere as a remarkably mature poet?
    (Right after Marlowe's exit.)
    Why would a great playwrite have to hide? How did the plays end up published under the name of a businessman-usurer-actor whose will proves him no writer?
    Why was their style so nearly that of Marlowe?
    Most spectacularly of all, the mending theory chronologically sews together the careers of Marlowe and Shakespeare, with the seam fixable at mid-1593.

Remember our two requirements for spotting the correct candidate:
[a] he wrote plays like Shakespeare's &
[b] he had strong reasons for vanishing.
Marlowe is not just an ideal fit. He's the only fit.

There are plodding, it-says-here scholars in all academic fields, who cannot use theory or imagination to move beyond texts or other surface indicia. (DR calls them the park-your-brains-at-the-door crowd.) If the real world accorded with their dull fundamentalist faith, then all truth would be found in a book. Scientists have enriched knowledge by instead seeking, sifting, and testing theories until finding the key that fits the available data (Aristachos, Kepler, Darwin, Planck) and fruitfully explains further mysteries. The contrast explains why science has moved so far ahead of other academic fields.
[Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle discovered the law of gravitation from the Moon's motion — and it was then found that it accounted for the planets' as well (explaining Kepler's 3 Laws): thus a plenitude of knowledge (and eons of celestial motions) issued from one tiny but potent gravitation law.]
But one needn't be a scholar to accomplish such solutions: detectives approach mysteries similarly (and do so far more often than professors), dealing with cases where contradictions in what appears on the surface require inducing coherent solutions from scattered evidence.
[Another geographical analogy. The Earth looks flat, doesn't it? It took doubt and experiment for the ancients to realize that it was nearly a sphere, with a radius of a few thousand miles. This explained ships' vanishing over the horizon, the shape of the Earth's shadow during lunar eclipses, etc.]

To anyone of inductive bent — whether in police work, science, or philosophy of science — Hoffman's solution to the Shakespeare Mystery is a rare delight in its neatness as well as the many clarifications & satisfactions it simultaneously produces, all flowing from one simple and plausible theory: that Marlowe dodged otherwise certain execution.
[My friend Sam Hopkins — who in 2010 April urged DR to respond to Teachout's slanderous piece — has added (2010/6/8) another consideration: Marlowe's anonymity was only partial; unlike Oxford or Bacon, he already had to his public credit a considerable corpus of the most popular plays of the pre-1593 period, so his dramatic immortality was assured, regardless. Possibly this relates to the interesting if secondary question of why he never came forth later to claim authorship, though the (likely very few) involved parties' silence may have more to do with standard spy-ring group-protective discretion.]

That is why no amount of suppression and derision will dampen its appeal to the brightest scholars, e.g., philosopher-detective Colin Wilson (whose evaluation 1st brought Hoffman to DR's attention: W144f, 344f). It is a shame that Hoffman did not live to see wide acceptance of it. But its ultimate triumph (among the informed if not the general public) is inevitable. Perhaps even imminent: it will only require one popular adventure film, based on the Hoffman theory, to cripple Stratfordianism's longtime lock on the forums that determine fashion — thereby sending present rickety orthodoxy gradually (but inexorably and deservedly) down, into history's intellectual dustbin. And Shapiro knows it.

A = Mark Anderson “Shakespeare” by Another Name 2005.

B = Samuel L. Blumenfeld The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection (2008).

E.B. = Encyclopaedia Britannica 11th edition [DIO Collection has original rice-paper set] or 1961 ed.

H = Calvin Hoffman Murder of the Man Who Was ‘Shakespeare’ 1955.

P = Diana Price Shakespeare's Unorthodox Biography 2001.

S = James Shapiro Contested Will 2010.

W = Colin Wilson History of Murder 1990.