We all think of William Shakespeare as a playwright and actor. It is certain that he was an actor, but the idea of him writing plays isn’t set in stone. As a matter of fact, there is more evidence to suggest that Christopher Marlowe, an English poet, used the name William Shakespeare as a pseudonym to publish his plays. Credit for the works of William Shakespeare was wrongly given to Shakespeare as oppose to Christopher Marlowe. Marlowe was born on February 26, 1564, to a shoemaker in Canterbury, England. He was well educated, and attended King’s School on scholarship. He then proceeded to write poetry, and became both a poet and playwright. He allegedly died in a fight on May 30, 1593, but there is enough suspicion around the event to suppose …show more content…
There are many uncanny similarities between their writing styles, including nearly identical stories within their plays. Marlowe also had more education than Shakespeare, who didn’t have any more than an elementary level education, if that. His life of secrecy, particularly with his alleged atheism and homosexuality, is a theme that is very common among the works attributed to William Shakespeare. Also known as a spy, Marlowe could have potentially faked his own death to write plays without worrying that someone would stop him from publishing his literature. We have reason to believe that Christopher Marlowe wrote plays such as Romeo and Juliet under William Shakespeare’s name.
There are many accusations of Marlowe being a spy. He supposedly died in a tavern fight, but there is minimal evidence showing that he was buried at his local cemetery after his “death”. This leads to many questions. Did Marlowe fake his own death? Why would he do this?
Marlowe had a problem. His published works made it easy for those he had bad blood with to find him, so Marlowe “might...have used a pen name, in order to confuse his many enemies” (Hornby, 716). Using a pen name, especially a name of someone who actually existed, made it harder to pin down exactly what Marlowe was doing and if he was still