The controversy has since spawned a vast body of literature, and more than 80 authorship candidates have been proposed, the most popular being Sir Francis Bacon, Edward de vere, Christopher Marlowe, and William Stanley. First, let's have a look on Sir Francis Bacon's life. He was the leading candidate of the 19th century and one of the great intellectual figures of Jacobean England, a lawyer, philosopher, essayist and scientist. Baconians (Bacon's followers) suggest that the great number of legal allusions in the Shakespeare canon demonstrate the author's expertise in the …show more content…
The poet and dramatist Christopher Marlowe was born into the same social class as Shakespeare. His father was a cobbler, Shakespeare's a glove-maker. Marlowe was the older by only two months, but spent six and a half years at Cambridge University. He pioneered the use of blank verse in Elizabethan drama, and his works are widely accepted as having greatly influenced those of Shakespeare. The Marlovian theory argues that Marlowe's documented death was faked. Thomas Walsingham and others are supposed to have arranged the faked death, the main purpose of which was to allow Marlowe to escape trial and almost certain execution on charges of subversive atheism. The theory then argues that Shakespeare was chosen as the front behind whom Marlowe would continue writing his highly successful plays. These claims are founded on inferences derived from the circumstances of his apparent death, stylistic similarities between the works of Marlowe and Shakespeare, and hidden meanings found in the works and associated texts.
Marlovians(Marlowe's followers) note that, despite Marlowe and Shakespeare being almost exactly the same age, the first work linked to the name William Shakespeare (Venus and Adonis) was on sale, with his name signed to the dedication, just 13 days after Marlowe's reported