The Return of Christopher Marlowe

About the Book

Mass misinformation did not begin in the 2020s. It began at least four centuries earlier, when the Secret Service of Queen Elizabeth I faked the murder of England’s wildly popular playwright Christopher Marlowe to save him from imminent execution for heresy—and to enable him to continue writing his plays under a pseudonym—"William Shakespeare”
That ruse was meant to be just temporary, while Marlowe lived. But once launched, the fake name stuck and became myth. Centuries later, with the British Empire collapsing, the country’s cultural guardians realized that the tale of William Shakespeare—the village boy who’d become the greatest writer in the world—had become a great national treasure. The colonies were failing, but the language Shakespeare had helped to build was ascendant. It had become the global medium of trade, technology, diplomacy, and popular culture: the Empire of English!
In the 1960s, an implicit agreement was reached among leaders of the English government and academia that the name William Shakespeare—the “brand” of the language that now ruled the world—must never be replaced. “Marlowe” must be forgotten! In the years since then, a group of independent literary investigators has found long-hidden evidence that Marlowe’s murder had been staged. That group’s findings are now ready to share.
No previous book has recounted, with a rich trove of hard evidence, the epic travels and troubles—and life-changing loves and losses—that compelled Marlowe to write his sonnets and plays. This is the first book in four centuries to tell the full, 58-year story of the man who was the real Shakespeare.

About the Author

Ed Ayres earned a degree in psychology at Swarthmore College, taught English and coached cross-country for five years at the George School in Bucks County, PA and then began his lifelong career as a science editor and writer. He became editorial director at the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, D.C., publisher of the annual State of the World. He was editor of the institute’s multinational magazine World Watch, which was published in seven languages and helped build global awareness of human-caused climate change and biodiversity loss. The magazine declined to accept advertising, and ceased publication for lack of funding several years after Ed retired. In his 13 years with Worldwatch, Ed edited dispatches on developments in global climate and biodiversity research for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, which distributed them to newspapers and radio stations worldwide. He developed a growing interest in the phenomena of mass denial, public misinformation, and adversarial views of “what’s true”—whether in the fields of human evolution, cultural history, or the prospects for a sustainable human future. In retirement he joined his brothers Robert and Alex, both of whom had joined the literary investigator Roberta Ballantine in her decades-long quest to solve the four-century “cold case” of the Shakespeare authorship. This book is the product of their collaboration.