Sunday, March 8, 2009

Simplicity versus Academia by D.K. Marley


Galileo said, "Facts which at first seem improbable will, even on scant explanation, drop the cloak which has hidden them and stand forth in naked and simple beauty."

Simplicity often reveals truth, whereas there is confusion in an overabundance of words. I do not claim to be an academic, nor do I ascribe to the level of a scholar who spends her days wrangling with Stratfordians about the identity of "Mr. W.H." or "the Dark Lady." I am simply a writer who finds beauty in words, the way certain phrases roll off the tongue, the transcending feeling that a mere paragraph can invoke, or when a novel shows the commonality of the human condition. In that beauty, that naked and simple beauty, stands stark truth uncluttered by a convocation of words. At last, seeing the forest and not just the trees.

Facts that Stratfordians voice as improbable - the fact that Christopher Marlowe is the true writer of the plays and sonnets - even on scant explanation, such as I am able to produce being as I am just another common enthusiast, has indeed, to my mind, dropped the cloak which has hidden them and stands bared for all the world to see. Truth is simple. Truth is the one person shouting that the emperor is naked when all others shut their eyes, look away or refuse to believe. And the simplicity of it relates to the everyday ordinary person, which is the vast majority of the world.

If the world was able to be presented with the simple facts concerning Christopher Marlowe, as I was, there would be no more doubting. Even if the academic world can never produce solid evidence, we have more than reasonable doubt here that William Shakespeare had the skills, education, knowledge of languages, etc. to produce such profound verse. Simply put, he was an actor, not a playwright or poet.

Christopher "Kit" Marlowe, on the other hand, was gifted at an early age with skills that exceeded his years. Educated at the best schools and surrounded by those who prodded him, he travelled to the continent, he excelled in languages and proved himself a capable playwright and poet well before his twentieth year. Where was Shakespeare during those years? Still in Stratford, married with three children, with no evidence that he wrote a single thing.

Again, Galileo, an academic himself, revealed the answer in relation to these two men. Simple truth trumps pretentious fabrications any day. All you have to do is to remove the veil from your eyes, to stop gorging on the Shakespearean propaganda fed to you through the years, and hear the ring of truth sounded in Marlowe's own words in Sonnet 76: "Why write I still all one, ever the same, and keep invention in a noted weed, that every word doth almost tell my name, showing their birth and where they did proceed?"

D.K. Marley

© D.K. Marley, March 2009

D.K. Marley is a historical fiction writer specializing in Shakespearean topics. She is the author of A Reckoning for the Sparrow, which imagines Christopher Marlowe as the true author of the Shakespeare works. The novel awaits publication. She is also the editor of Soliloquy Literary Magazine. D.K. resides in Georgia and is presently working on a novel about the life of the real Lady Macbeth. She can be reached at dkmarley@gmail.com.

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

Well done, D.K. Marley (what an appropriate name!)
Common sense is always refreshing, even though it is the less common of all senses.
You find fault -as I do- with the tenacity with which Stratford insists on backing the wrong man, and yet I find there is some logic in their reluctance to let go of a "truth universally acknowledged". They need solid proof; I can understand that.
However, the old-time detractors of their man are presenting "proofs" that become weirder and weirder over the years; in view of this confusion, Stratford smiles contentedly. No wonder.
Compared to the lack of common of sense of the Oxford and Bacon claims, the Stratfordian case sounds almost Galilean in its simplicity.
Isabel Gortázar

Anonymous said...

nicely stated

Anonymous said...

exactly how i feel, dk