Much Ado About Something

Did William Shakespeare, the man born at Stratford-on-Avon in 1564, write Shakespeare? Or was the greatest of writers a mere...producer? We're taken on an exploration of William Shakespeare's life, in search of the answer to an elusive riddle: Who wrote Shakespeare? Christopher Marlowe emerges as an all-too-credible candidate; at least as credible as the Bard himself. Spy, counterfeiter, atheist, free thinker - the rogue Marlowe was, at the time of his murder in 1593, also the most influential poet-playwright of his day. But was he in fact murdered? Or, as scholar Calvin Hoffman has argued, was Marlowe's murder faked, freeing him to escape to Italy where, in exile, he would have the kind of downtime required to write English Lit's supreme works? The evidence against Shakespeare mounts quickly. Among the most compelling is Shakespeare's lack of education. How could such learned plays as "Titus Andronicus" or "Love's Labour's Lost" have been written by a country boy finding his literary footing?