Dark Renaissance. The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival, Christopher Marlowe - Stephen Greenblatt

Poor boy. Dark star. Spy. Transgressor. Genius.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Will in the World reveals the daring and subversive life of Christopher Marlowe – Shakespeare’s contemporary, inspiration, and rival.

’A rigorous and sparkling exploration of what makes an artist …. Essential and addictive reading’ MAGGIE O''FARRELL

In brutally repressive Elizabethan England, artists are frightened into dull conventionality; foreigners are suspect; popular entertainment largely consists of coarse spectacles, animal fights, and hangings. Into this crude world comes an ambitious cobbler’s son from Canterbury with an uncanny ear for Latin poetry – a torment for most schoolboys, yet for a few, a secret portal to beauty, visionary imagination, transgressive desire, and dangerous scepticism.

What Christopher Marlowe finds on the other side of that door, and what he does with it, brings about a spectacular explosion of English literature, language, and culture, enabling the success of his collaborator and rival, William Shakespeare.

With propulsive narrative flair and brilliant literary criticism, Stephen Greenblatt reconstructs the youthful involvement with the queen’s spy service that shaped Marlowe’s brief, troubling life and gave us his Tamburlaine and Faustus – dramatic masterpieces on power and its costs. And with detailed historical insight, Greenblatt explores how the people Marlowe knew, and the transformations they wrought, birthed the economic, scientific, and cultural power of the modern world – involving Faustian bargains with which we reckon still.

Poor boy. Dark star. Spy. Transgressor. Genius.

This is the thrilling and subversive life story of Christopher Marlowe Shakespeare s inspiration and rival, who helped to bring England out of the cultural darkness and into the light.

Sparkling, addictive reading' MAGGIE O'FARRELL
'Brilliant' JAMES SHAPIRO
'As evocative as any novel' PHILIPPA GREGORY
'An unforgettable literary biographical tour de force' INDEPENDENT

In brutally repressive Elizabethan England, artists are frightened; foreigners are suspect; popular entertainment largely consists of coarse spectacles, animal fights, and hangings. Into this crude world comes an ambitious cobbler s son from Canterbury with an uncanny ear for Latin poetry which to him is a secret portal to beauty, visionary imagination, transgressive desire, and dangerous scepticism.

What Christopher Marlowe finds on the other side of that door, and what he does with it, brings about a spectacular explosion of English literature, language, and culture, enabling the success of many others, including his contemporary and collaborator William Shakespeare. By the time of his murder in a Deptford tavern in 1593, the 29-year-old Marlowe will be the most celebrated dramatist of his time.

Stephen Greenblatt grippingly reconstructs the involvement with the queen s spy service that shaped Marlowe s brief, troubling life and helped fashion his masterpieces. Along the way we discover how the people Marlowe knew, and the transformations they wrought, gave birth to the economic, scientific, and cultural power of the modern world involving Faustian bargains with which we reckon still.

Dark Renaissance is a scintillating life of a writer whose blazing talent catapulted England from cultural backwater to crucible of creativity.