Marlowe, or Shakespeare's fellow actors, as influence?



In 2016, Gary Taylor, editor of the New Oxford Shakespeare, explained in a BBC article that Christopher Marlowe was being credited in their latest edition of the plays as co-writer of some of the plays long attributed to Shakespeare alone.

But if there's a hint of Marlowe's voice in some of the plays, where does that come from? Marlowe himself? or some other Marlowe-influenced source?

Carol Rutter of the University of Warwick thinks it wasn't Christopher Marlowe directly, but Shakespeare's fellow actors and their knowledge of Marlowe's plays from performing them, that influenced the plays:


This is an important conversation to have, especially when scholars of Shakespeare are often not playwrights themselves, and with only scholarly knowledge of the creative process rather than first-hand knowledge.

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