SOURCE: "Christopher Marlowe," in The Shakespeare Conspiracy, Random Century Group Ltd., 1994, pp. 77-89.

In the following essay, Phillips and Keatman assess the theory of Christopher Marlowe as the author of the works attributed to Shakespeare, maintaining that while Marlowe was "arguably capable " of authoring the plays and poems, he was "officially" dead at the time most of the plays were composed.

In 1955 Canadian journalist Calvin Hoffman reached the same conclusion as his Baconian, Derbyite and Oxfordian predecessors, in believing that William Shakespeare had been incapable of writing the plays ascribed to him. In The Man Who Was Shakespeare Hoffman proposed a new, alternative author, Christopher Marlowe. Unlike the previous theories, Hoffman's differed in two important respects. On the positive side, Marlowe was an accepted and brilliant playwright, arguably capable of writing the Shakespeare plays. On the negative side, Marlowe was officially dead at the time most of the...