(725) Greenblatt’s Marlowe Biography Ignores the Authorship Crisis"

Aug 25, 2025

(725) Greenblatt’s Marlowe Biography Ignores the Authorship Crisis"

Greenblatt’s Marlowe Bio:

Stratford Myth Lives On"

The Absurdity of the Shakespeare-Authorship

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1MkwdE7nZ-w&t=1

Why Stephen Greenblatt Will Never Break Up with Stratford – Even When Marlowe Screams at Him from the Shadows

Ah, Stephen Greenblatt
—our beloved bardolater-in-chief—has now graced us with a Marlowe biography. Bold move, one might think. Surely, with all that new historicist bravado, he might finally question the quaint Stratford myth? Surely, when faced with the ferocious intelligence, radicalism, and survival instincts of Christopher Marlowe, he might at least hesitate?

Of course not. Greenblatt treats Marlowe like a dangerous ex-boyfriend: thrilling, tempestuous, brilliant—but ultimately a narrative device to make Stratford’s “gentle Shakespeare” look like the stable, respectable partner you bring home to Queen Elizabeth.

The problem for Greenblatt isn’t lack of evidence about Marlowe. The problem is that there’s too much evidence—if you dare to look at it properly. The man doesn’t die in 1593; he vanishes into thin air, right as a warrant for his arrest threatens him with torture and death. And then, as if by magic, a flood of works begins pouring in under a dozen names:

Shakespeare, Drayton, Heywood, Breton, Barnfield, Davies, Fletcher, Markham, Clapham even Taylor. Each with stylistic fingerprints that trace back to the same pen.

But Greenblatt can’t go there. Imagine admitting that the greatest literary corpus of the English Renaissance might be the secret survival strategy of one outlawed genius. Imagine tearing down the Stratford Birthplace Trust’s souvenir shop. No more Bard-themed tea towels, no more Shakespeare-as-safe-icon-of-Englishness. His entire academic empire, built on the myth of the man from Stratford, would collapse like a house of cards in a London plague pit.

So what does he do? He romanticizes Marlowe’s “fatal genius,” casts him as “Shakespeare’s greatest rival,” and then buries him—again. A life that didn’t end in Deptford must end there, for Greenblatt’s story to hold. Otherwise, Stratford loses its savior. Otherwise, the “multitude of voices” in Elizabethan literature becomes the singular, surviving voice of Christopher Marlowe in disguise—utterly dismantling the narrative of a humble provincial genius “learning” to write masterpieces by magic.

Greenblatt’s new Marlowe biography is thus a perfect act of scholarly containment: celebrate the rebel, neutralize the threat, and return to Stratford’s warm embrace. It’s not history—it’s damage control.

And that, dear reader, is why Stephen Greenblatt will never leave Stratford. Not because the evidence compels him to stay—but because the evidence, if truly faced, would make him homeless.