Ralph C R A N E
the first (pseudonymous) Editor of the
FIRST FOLIO
This video argues for a non-traditional interpretation of Ralph Crane’s role in the creation of Shakespeare’s First Folio.
Ralph Crane, normally known by scholars as a professional scribe whose copies of King’s Men plays helped shape several texts in the First Folio, is here presented as much more than a copyist.
The Video suggests that Crane was actually a pen-name or identity used by the “true Shakespeare” — i.e., Christopher Marlowe, who, in this theory, faked his death in 1593 and continued writing under multiple pseudonyms.
The video claims that Crane’s own writings (particularly the prefaces to his poems The Works of Mercy and its 1625 edition The Pilgrim’s New Year’s Gift) contain allegorical hints or coded messages implying a hidden life and change of identity, including an assertion that the person on the Stratford monument “is not dead.
The argument further emphasizes Crane’s professional connections to legal figures, the Privy Council, and the theatre world as evidence that he operated in secrecy as a literary figure far beyond a typical scribe.
In short, the video reinterprets Ralph Crane not as a mere editor/scribe but as an alter ego or pseudonym of Christopher Marlowe, thus fitting into a broader Marlowe multi-pseudonymity theory of Shakespeare authorship.
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