The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in London’s West End will stage a play titled “Born With Teeth” by Liz Duffy Adams this summer, inspired by a Guardian article that reported William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe as literary rivals and collaborators. The play, directed by the RSC’s co-artistic director Daniel Evans, explores the relationship between the two playwrights, who worked together creatively, both envious and admiring of each other. Edward Bluemel and Ncuti Gatwa will portray Shakespeare and Marlowe, respectively.
Adams’s play was inspired by the Guardian’s 2016 news report on Marlowe being acknowledged as the co-writer of Henry VI, Parts One, Two, and Three, a research project by Oxford University Press that gave joint billing to Marlowe on the title pages of those plays. The OUP’s research involved a team of 23 academics led by four professors as general editors, who used computerized textual analysis to identify unique word combinations associated with Marlowe during that period.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2025/may/26/guardian-article-inspires-rsc-play-shakespeare-marlowe
