Dark Renaissance by Stephen Greenblatt

The subtitle is a bit melodramatic: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival. On the other hand, the rise of Christopher Marlowe was so improbable and ended so dramatically, it is probably deserved. In this riveting reassessment of the short, turbulent life of the Elizabethan dramatist and poet Christopher “Kit” Marlowe, the author argues that Marlowe, with his dazzling eloquence, “offered poetic liberation” to an English culture that had been stifled by onerous government censorship. He managed to gain his position through his talents, and if this account is to be believed, through reading the room and making politically correct connections that furthered his ability to stay in Oxford without having to join a religious order. This argues not that Shakespeare stole from Marlowe (which has been asserted before, or that that these was a third author who wrote anonymously) but that Marloww was actually more of a trailblazer than a competitor of Shakespeare. In 1587, 23-year-old Marlowe moved to London, where he wrote “Tamburlaine,” the first of the seven plays he would produce in what turned out to be his last six years. He delighted in shocking his audiences with dramas which, like the times in which he lived, were rife with violence. He took stories from history and made them his own, in ways that were both clever and popular. The time of Marlowe and Shakespeare was set against the backdrop of Queen Elizabeth I’s brutally repressive regime. It was a society in which dissent of any kind was met with imprisonment, torture, hanging, or beheading. Punishable offenses included blasphemy, heresy, homosexuality, and any suspicions of Roman Catholic leanings (or a desire to replace Queen Elizabeth with her Catholic cousin, Mary Queen of Scots). In all liklihood Marlowe was caught up in that and probably led to his murder, but we do know the time was ripe for plays that would laast for the ages.