Marlowe is but one of the possible candidates. For over 400 years, the question of “did Shakespeare actually pen the plays attributed to him?” has loomed large. So great was Marlowe’s influence on the Bard that there are theories that Marlowe was indeed Shakespeare himself. The “reckoning” that led to Marlowe being stabbed to death was purportedly over an unpaid bill, although the man who wielded the dagger, Ingram Frizer, was-like Marlowe-linked to espionage and the motive for murder was perhaps more political than pound sterling based. Marlowe, a mercurial figure in Elizabethan England, was a rumored spy, a possible heretic, a poet, and, above all, the greatest playwright of his era, up until his untimely death at the age of 29, when Shakespeare would assume the mantle. The line is a direct reference to Christopher Marlowe’s death which occurred six years earlier under extremely suspicious circumstances. The Shakespeare quote comes from the comedic play, As You Like It (Act III, Scene III), and is believed to have been written in 1599. William Shakespeare (Epigraph, A Great Reckoning) It strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room.
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