Christopher Marlowe
Son of a village cobbler, Marlowe created a stir with his literary output while attending Cambridge as a scholarship student. The young writer, whose translations of Ovid were ordered publicly burned by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, was the first to translate Ovid's Amores into English. He made the Ovidian cursus, which turns from amatory poetry to tragedy and epic, literally his own. His translation and adaptation into blank verse of Lucan's Pharsalia is one of the earliest English verses written in unrhymed iambic pentameter and has influenced poets from Milton to Wordsworth. While still a university student, Marlowe's play Doctor Faustus was produced in London, and shortly after he earned his M.A. and left Cambridge his play Tamburlaine the Great appeared on the London stage for an unprecedented 200 performances.

In 1593 Marlowe was under investigation for heresy, a capital offense. Ten days after having been questioned by the Privy Council, he was dead--or so it was claimed. The extremely suspect report of his death has led many to wonder: was Christopher Marlowe really murdered in 1593 or was an elaborate hoax planned and executed by his friends in high places in order to save his life?

Sir Francis Bacon
"A man so rare in knowledge, of so many several kinds, endowed with the facility of expressing it all in so elegant, significant, so abundant and yet so choice and ravishing a way of words, of metaphors, of allusion, as perhaps the world has not seen since it was a world." So wrote Sir Tobie Matthew of Sir Francis Bacon. Bacon graduated with a degree in law from Cambridge and became, like his father before him, Lord Chancellor of England. Of the many works of this philosopher, essayist, translator and scholar, the best known are The Advancement of Learning and The New Atlantis. Bacon's essays on morals remained widely read well beyond his time.

Upon his death in 1626 eulogies were written, collected and published in his honor by 32 scholars -- University Fellows and members of the Inns of Court -- crediting Bacon for his talents as a poet and for uniting philosophy with the drama.

Edward de Vere
De Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, was patron of a number of writers, among them Gabriel Harvey who, in a 1578 address, declared: "...vidi tua plura Latina,  Anglica plura exstant (I have seen your Latin things, and more English are extant) ... Francasque, Italasque Camænas et mores hominum multorum artesque forenses Plenius hausisti (of French and Italian muses, the manners of many peoples, their arts and laws you have drunk deeply)...." In 1589 George Puttenham, praising the nobles who wrote plays and masques for the court, wrote in The Arte of English Poesy: "...for tragedy, Lord Buckhurst and Master Edward Ferrys do deserve the highest, the Earl of Oxford and Master Edwards of Her Majesty's chapel for comedy and interlude." De Vere died in 1604.

William Stanley
Stanley, the 6th Earl of Derby, possessed the education, extensive European travel, knowledge of foreign languages, involvement with the theatre and literature, and familiarity with life in court necessary for authorship of the canon. Two letters from the Jesuit spy George Fenner, both dated June 1599, stated that Derby was "busyed only in penning comedies for the commoun players". His elder brother, Ferdinando, formed an acting troupe which evolved into the renowned company The King's Men, known for its Shakespearean productions. According to many scholars, A Midsummer Nights Dream was written to be performed on the occasion of Derby's wedding, which took place in the palace in the presence of the Queen. Derby died in 1642.

COLLABORATION(Others/Group Authorship)