Book Description
This major work brings together, for the first time in a single volume, all the recognized sources of Marlowe'sdramatic work.Many of the 42 texts presented here are of outstanding interest in their own right.Together, they illuminate the cultural milieu which fostered Marlowe's talent, and deepen our appreciation of his dramatic methods. ... Read more

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Series Editors: James Nagel, University of Georgia; Zack Bowen, University of Miami and Robert Lecker, McGill University

The full range of literary traditions comes to life in the Twayne Critical Essays Series. Volume editors have carefully selected critical essays that represent the full spectrum of controversies, trends and methodologies relating to each author's work. Essays include writings from the author's native country and abroad, with interpretations from the time they were writing, through the present day. Each volume includes:

• An introduction providing the reader with a lucid overview of criticism from itsbeginnings-illuminating controversies, evaluating approaches, and sorting out the schools of thought
• The most influential reviews and the best reprinted scholarly essays
• A section devoted exclusively to reviews and reactions by the subject's contemporaries
• Original essays, new translations, and revisions commissioned especially for the series
• Previously unpublished materials such as interviews, lost letters andmanuscript fragments
• A bibliography of the subject's writings and interviews
• A name and subject index

Book Description
This volume gathers together some of the best literary criticism devoted to the dramas and poems of Christopher Marlow. Harold Bloom's introduction focuses on The Jew of Malta, as the largest instance of Marlow's radical originality. Take an in-depth look at more of his work.

This title, Christopher Marlowe, part of Chelsea House Publishers' Modern Critical Views series, examines the major works of Christopher Marlowe through full-length critical essays by expert literary critics. In addition, this title features a short biography on Christopher Marlowe, a chronology of the author's life, and an introductory essay written by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The Truth About Christopher Marlowe...
...is that we can never really know the complete truth. I once did a paper on Marlowe (1564-1593) during my college days and I have been fascinated with him ever since. Like his exact contemporary Shakespeare, Marlowe has left us only a paper trail to follow. He didn't have the advantage of having a set of his plays published during his lifetime and of course he didn't plan to be stabbed to death when he was 29. Because all we have are a few documents and a possible portrait at Cambridge you have to fill in the blanks with a lot of conjecture which can't be based on solid evidence. Some biographers have followed in the footsteps of writers such as George Garrett (ENTERED FROM THE SUN) and Anthony Burgess (A DEAD MAN IN DEPTFORD) and have created quite a fanciful life for the poet. It makes for good reading but often distorts what little truth there is. Constance Brown Kuriyama in her well documented book is able to show us what is known and then gives us the luxury of making our own observations. Of course she draws her own conclusions but unlike most other Marlowe biographies (and I have read a number of them) she lets the facts speak for themselves without a lot of embellishment. Marlowe emerges as a powerful personality whose ideas as presented in his few plays show him to be one of the most original thinkers and observers of the Elizabethan age. His early and violent death continue to strike a resonant chord to this day as we think on what was lost and on the impact he had on other writers who followed him. If you are interested in Elizabethan drama beyond Shakespeare and the effect of the Renaissance in England then you really need to be acquainted with Christopher Marlowe and this is the ideal place to start. The book is easy to follow without dumbing down the material and almost half of it consists of documents and other details that ground the proceedings in a reality that few others can match. Thank you Constance Brown Kuriyama for a job well done.

the definitive story
If you're going to buy one book on Marlowe, this should be it.Kuriyama does an extraordinary job of sifting through the mystery and garbage to tell the story of Marlowe.Too many writers have sensationalized and distorted the facts, whereas Kuriyama not only provides the evidence but interprets them analytically and beautifully.Also, this is the only book where you'll find all the original source documents in one place.Plus, she knows how to keep you interested, writing in a well-thought out style that doesn't insult your intelligence, but doesn't lose you either.Well worth the read. ... Read more

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Marlowe's Counterfeit Profession presents the first comprehensive reading of the Marlowe canon in over a generation.The occasion for Patrick Cheney's rereading is a primary discovery: Marlowe organized his canon around an "Ovidian" career model, or cursus, which turns from amatory poetry to tragedy to epic.Ovid had advertised this cursus only in his inaugural poem,the Amores, where its purpose was to counter the Virgilian cursus of pastoral,georgic, and epic.Marlowe was the first writer to translate the Amores, and thus the first to make the Ovidian cursus literally his own.

Marlowe inscribes this cursus not simply to participate in the Renaissance recovery of classical authors, but in particular to contest the national authority of the 'Virgil of England,' Edmund Spenser.Using an Ovidian cursus to contest Spenser's Virgilian cursus, Marlowe enters the generational project of writing English nationhood.Unlike Spenser, however, Marlowe writes a 'counter-nationhood' - a nonpatriotic form of nationhood that subverts royal power with what Ovid calls libertas.

By discovering the original project organizing an otherwise fragmentary canon, Cheney aims to change the most basic lens through which critics have viewed Marlowe: 'Shakespearean drama'.This lens cannot account for two of the most striking features of Marlowe's canon: his scholarly use of translation and his writing of epic.Cheney proposes that a theatrical, Shakespearean model has prevented critics from discovering the original context within which Marlowe produced his art: a multimedia, multi-genre Spenserian model of Ovidian counter-nationhood. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

How to Win Friends and Massacre People
"You shall have honors as your merits be," Tamburlaine promises the Persian turncoat, Theridimas (1.2.254).Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine makes no apologies for the rise of his shepherd to the heights of power, and frustrates the traditional tragedy by letting a ruthless character with an arsenal of tragic flaws fly through the play untouched.For readers, the boundless Tamburlaine becomes almost absurd, but a theme of the play resonates with the modern world, as Tamburlaine operates like an rogue entrepreneur who leaves the farm to become the owner of Persia, all while rejecting the forms of entitlement common to his age and redefining the rules of the game.He pulls himself up by his own bootstraps, like various modern leaders of the 20th century.However, his goal has no mapped out ideal behind it, other than the blind ambition and ruthless tactics he needs to uproot the status quo.
The play begins with infighting among the Persian nobles, with Cosroe tormenting his brother, the king, Mycetes.At first sight, their banter seems comedic, but the subtext of the opening scene leads to further simplicities and exposes the single-minded holes in the mindset of the aristocracy, as the royal brothers beset themselves with power plays and infighting.They represent the entitled party, the assuming elite, and they label Tamburlaine as a "fox," a "thief" who "robs your merchants," he is "incivil," and operates through "barbarous arms" (1.1.31-40).
The initial portrayal of a fox contrasts with the following scene, where the characterization changes to a "lion" (1.2.52).Techelles, who at first seems a pandering subordinate, believes in Tamburlaine: "Methinks I see kings kneeling at his feet" (1.2.55).Likewise, Usumcasane praises his lord Tamburlaine, pledging his life to the cause, with the contract being his own promotion to king.These first compliments to Tamburlaine feel like gross ambition, like ruthless men willing to cut throats simply for power.And soon enough we realize that the goal of Tamburlaine has no admirable literary novelty propelling it; no, this is blind ambition, and Tamburlaine seeks men to work with him of the same mindset.
To retreat to the first scene again, the tone of the play begins with Mycetes and Cosroe bickering over the throne, and by allowing the initial treatment of Tamburlaine to come from a royal court, the reader's perception of Tamburlaine sails off with a handicap of condescension.As a petty shepherd, he challenges the highest authorities, without cause.However, what precedes the play remains in the background.Mycetes, an inept leader, enjoys the fruits of one of his ancestor's ambition, and whoever founded the power that he enjoys, surely did not come to his position by goodwill.

Brought up to believe fallacies regarding power, Cosroe complains, "What means this devilish shepherd to aspire / With such a giantly presumption, / To cast up hills against the face of heaven / And dare the force of angry Jupiter" (2.6.1-4).In other words, he thinks that Tamburlaine should step back and follow the old adage, "know thyself."
In reading the play, Tamburlaine's own words seem like ominous foreshadowing, as time and again he refers to death.In recruiting the traitor of Persia, Theridimas, Tamburlaine says, "And sooner shall the sun fall from its sphere / Than Tamburlaine be slain or overcome" (1.2.175-176).We wait for the sun to fall somehow, yet it doesn't.Next to Theridimas he says, "Thus shall thy heart be still combined with thine / Until our bodies turn to elements" (1.2.234-235).We wait for a cardiac event, but none arrives.

Unlike a traditional tragedy, Tamburlaine rides out the end as if the play were a comedy: he gets married to beautiful and noble Zenocrate, who he met via a kidnapping.In a traditional tragedy, Tamburlaine would have to suffer an awful death for his actions, yet Marlowe ignores a full deck of tragic flaws, and lets his hero exit as a king who enjoys a mutual love with Zenocrate, his queen.

The play has a lot of action, but gets very repetitive.The minor characters are not that interesting, except for Mycetes and Cosroe, who don't live for very long.

Frickin' great!
I love the "Tamburlaine" of Christopher Marlowe, because I've read it and couldn't resist it. The story is not melodramatically forced,but rather follows in a smooth and epic line, giving it the texture of adocumentary. As a tragedy it's weird, encompassing all drifts ofliterature: darkly humorous, rhetorical, romantic, violent and deep, withan indescribable grandeur. People commenting on Marlowe's work usuallyregard him as psychologically shallow, but in this play the terrifying herois so charismatically evoked in his language, sometimes rhetoric andsometimes commonplace, that I left the book with a queer sense of somethingbetween love and dread. Even Tamburlaine's worst deeds, like his cursoryhumiliation of the captive kings, gain an odd flavour of predestination:they're more of the hijinx of a power-drunk teenager than the actions of acynical tyrant. Everyone should read this work, in which the dark-tintedwonders of the mediaeval Orient are called up in some of the moststeelishly beautiful poetry I've ever read. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

No work of the devil, this...
'Was this the face that launched a thousand ships...' There are so many great lines in this play! The greatness of Marlowe was recognised in his own time (a gentle modern reminder of this came in the film 'Shakespeare in Love', when almost every actor auditioning chose a bit from Marlowe, and all of those defaulted to this play).

It is somewhat ironic that if Shakespeare and Marlowe were writing today, they should most like be charged with plagiarism and copyright infringement; 'The Tragedy of Doctor Faustus' is likewise not an entirely original construct of Marlowe's, but rather derives from an anonymously penned German poem translated into English shortly before Marlowe recast it for his play. The German poet Goethe was influenced by the same anonymous source, and perhaps knew of Marlowe's play during his writing.

Dr. Faustus may have been based on a brilliant professor in Germany a generation or two prior to Marlowe. In any event, the idea of the seduction of the power of knowledge was (and continues to be) inspiring. The idea of selling one's soul to get the object of one's desire is also not a unique concept. Knowledge in the ancient world often always involved the spiritual realm, which had both its light and dark sides (one has but to think of the Star Wars saga to see how such concepts remain firmly rooted in our own time). Faustus becomes a conjurer, and strikes a deal with Lucifer to maintain power and knowledge in return for his soul after 24 years.

Despite the temptations to repent, Faustus in Marlowe's text never manages to break free of the temptations. 'My heart's so hardened I cannot repent. / Scare can I name salvation, faith, or heaven, / But fearful echoes thunder in mine ears: / "Faustus, thou art damned." ' Even recognising this, in the span of this one monologue, Faustus talks himself out of despair with the temptations of knowledge and secret power. Unfortunately for Faustus, he spends so much of his time and power doing ultimately useless tricks that he ends up in a worthless position despite his deal, and pays the ultimate price for his deal with the devil.

Marlowe had great appeal to the play-going audience of his day, and his words were considered very powerful art, indeed. One story bears repeating, dealing with the performance history of the play: 'A legend developed that during a performance in Exeter, in one scene in which Faustus called up devils, the actors counted one more devil than the scene called for and realised that Satan himself was in the their midst. In terror, they stopped the play; the audience bolted from the playing place; and the actors quitted the town the next morning.' Such was the power of Marlowe's rendering, that his language was thought to have magical conjuring power.

This edition is designed both for students as well as for those who might want to do the play in performance for class. There are generous notes for the changes in the text versions (there was a publication of this text in 1604 and again in 1616 with changes and revisions), and this text argues that the two cannot be easily conflated, as is often done. This text also includes many stage-direction and theatrical notes to give a good sense of how the play is performed.

Don't let the devil fool you - this is a good text.

Excellent edition of Marlowe's problematic play.
Professors Bevington and Rasmussen have produced an excellent, critical edition of Christopher Marlowe's most famous, and perhaps, most problematic play, Doctor Faustus. As you are probably aware, there's an "A" and "B" text of this play. The A-text, as the editors explain, was published in 1604, and it may well be the authoritative text. The B-text was published in 1616, and contains some seemingly weird/comic/nonsensical scenes, which most scholars attribute to the efforts of lesser playwrights. The textual debate rages still; the editors have provided both texts (the A-text first, then the B-text).

One of the advantages of this edition is that all the spellings have been modernized, but the syntax has been left alone. Thus, you get a wonderful sense of Marlowe's metre, without the headache of reading through the Elizabethan spellings.

The Introduction of this edition is thorough and insightful. In fact, it is over 100 pages long. Written in a very engaging, and reasonable style, the Introduction gives a thorough account of the religious debate surrounding the play (is Marlowe promoting a n orthodox agenda, or a heterodox one?), the historical background of Marlowe and the legend of Dr. Marlowe, as well as different ways to read the play.

As for the play itself--it's strange and wonderful. The "hero" Faustus brazenly rejects his humanist learning, and turns to pagan magic books to summon the devil, Mephistopheles. In exchange for his soul, Fautus will become the master of Mephistopheles for a period of 24 years. Why 24 years? I don't know. Through a series of parallel scenes, we see Faustus being visited by Good and Evil Angels, and a series of short, counterpoint scenes between the fools which subvert and complicate the main plot in significant ways. Then in a powerful last scene, Faustus is condemned to hell.

In short, if you are interested in Renaissance drama, and you're not looking for just any edition of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, but a critical and accurate edition, then I would recommend this book.

Professor Ramussen teaches at the University of Illinois-Chicago, and Professor Bevington teaches at the University of Chicago. ... Read more

Book Description
This work focuses on Marlowe's works as an index of the major transformation of Elizabethan theatrical practices. In the opening chapter, Cole reviews the unusually intriguing historical record of Marlowe's life outside the theatre. The body of the book addresses Marlowe's individual plays as experiments in extending and redefining the traditional concepts and techniques of tragic drama, and suggests how his contemporaries and followers made use of his innovations. Intended as an introduction to the subject, this book provides an insightful approach to Marlowe's work and the study of Elizabethan thought and theatre. ... Read more

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No descriptive material is available for this title. ... Read more