Dolly Walker-Wraight

Dolly Walker-Wraight (24 April 1920, Java – 15 February 2002) was a British school teacher and writer, notable for her support of Marlovian theory, the view that Christopher Marlowe was the true author of Shakespeare's works.

Life

She married Robert Wraight in 1940 (they divorced in 1963). She earned the Froebel Teachers Diploma in 1958 and worked as a teacher at Dulwich College Preparatory School (1961–1967; 1975–1983) and at the William Tyndale Junior School in Islington, London, (1969–1974). She played a significant role at the start of the educational scandal at the William Tyndale, which culminated in a formal public enquiry in 1975.

Her interest in Marlowe began in 1956 when the American writer Calvin Hoffman, who popularized the Marlovian theory, published his book The Murder of the Man who was Shakespeare. Dolly Walker-Wraight's research centred around an interpretation of Shakespeare's sonnets from the perspective of the Marlovian theory. She also joined the Marlowe Society, serving variously as secretary, editor of their newsletter, Chair and Vice-Chair. She began a drama branch to revive the rarely performed plays of Marlowe and his contemporaries. In 1965, she published an illustrated biography: In Search of Christopher Marlowe (in collaboration with the American photographer, Virginia Stern).^[1]

She died on 15 February 2002, aged 81.

The Shakespeare Sonnets

The methodology in her book "The Story that the Sonnets Tell" was to divide the sonnets of Shakespeare into different categories according to their meaning, to come closer to the solution of their mystery.^[2][3] She approached the problem by assuming that what the poet himself wrote is as close to the truth as one can get. According to her belief, the basic mistake committed by many interpreters of the Sonnets was that they have assumed that there is only a single young man (the "Fair Youth") to whom most of the sonnets are addressed. She claims to have identified at least three.

The first one is Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, whose seventeenth birthday the first seventeen sonnets were commissioned by Lord Burghley to commemorate. Their intent was to inspire him to marry Burghley's granddaughter.

The second young man of the Sonnets is a certain "William Hatcliffe", one of several candidates to be the Mr. W.H. of the dedication. In this identification she follows the arguments of Leslie Hotson.

The third man is Thomas Walsingham, Marlowe's friend, who stood him by as he was unjustly dishonoured and forced into exile, for which constancy the poet was indebted to him for the rest of his life, and which the sonnets might illustrate.

According to Walker-Wraight, the order of the sonnets in the original 1609 edition probably was arranged by the poet himself, adopting a form like a five act play. She believes that the poet himself could never have envisaged that his sonnets would be rearranged in the pattern she devised.

Publications

• In Search of Christopher Marlowe (1965)
• Christopher Marlowe and Edward Alleyn (1993)
• The Story that the Sonnets Tell (1994)
• New Evidence (1996)
• The Legend of Hiram

References

1. ^ A. D. Wraight (text) and Virginia Stern (photography). The book was published in 1965 by Vanguard Press, New York City.
2. ^ http://hem.fyristorg.com/aurelio/shakespeare.html In: Comments on A.D.Wraight
3. ^ Marlowe in Exile? 2. The Story That The Sonnets Tell

External links

• PBS.org
• Marlowe Society website

Persondata
Name	Walkerwraight, Dolly
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Date of birth	24 April 1920
Place of birth
Date of death	15 February 2002
Place of death