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Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival
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About This Book
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. In brutally repressive sixteenth-century England, artists had been frightened into dull conventionality; foreigners were suspect; popular entertainment largely consisted of coarse spectacles, animal fights, and hangings. Into this crude world came an ambitious cobbler's son 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 skepticism. What Christopher Marlowe found on the other side of that door, and what he did with it, brought 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.
Reviews
"An expert exploration of the tumultuous world of Elizabethan England, rendered with his signature literary elegance and scholarly depth."
"Greenblatt excels at immersing the reader in that time and place and has an ear for the delectable turn of phrase."
"Greenblatt surveys theories of the slaying but none entirely convince ..."
"His generous insights on Marlowe and Shakespeare and their peers are antidotes to our festering obsessions with luxury, technology, and status."
"In Greenblatt's hands, literary scholarship...has taken a great leap forward."
"Greenblatt excels at delineating Marlowe's intellectual and artistic growth ..."
"As Dark Renaissance goes on, its mythmaking also interferes with Greenblatt's greatest skill: the interpretation of the plays themselves ..."
"As he's demonstrated in books like Will in the World and The Swerve, Greenblatt writes comfortably for a general audience despite his academic background, skillfully melding conventional biography with accessible and informative literary criticism."
"[A] narrative flair is beautifully showcased in Dark Renaissance."
"[Has a] dazzling effect ..."
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