In search of Christopher Marlowe: A pictorial biography

by A.D. Wraight

Genres: Biography

376 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1965

Reviews

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a scholarly coffee table book, Wraight's text being supplemented by very many black-and-white photographs by Stern within an 8.5x11" format. The text is all over the place. It's roughly chronological, but there is no continuous biographical narrative. Rather, author Wraight jumps from topic to topic, all of them related to Marlowe's life, but often only remotely. It is as if the text is dominated by its footnotes, these notes constituting most of the text itself. Thus there are many minibiographies of Marlowe's friends, sponsors and adversaries; lengthy descriptions, with photos, of many of the places he lived in; digressions, often heated, about Shakespeare and his advocates (the author feels Marlowe to have been underrated by them); discussions about what may be extant portraits of the poet; and many, many, often lengthy, extracts from his writings. The impression one gets is that much of Marlowe's life remains a mystery, but one that utterly fascinates author Wraight.

A student of Marlowe or of the period would probably enjoy this book quite a lot, the digressions concerning hot fields of academic debate. The less accomplished reader (I'd only read 'Faust') may find this a chore.

P.S. The big 'mystery' about Marlowe is that surrounding his early, violent death. Wraight claims that nobody accepts the official version, that he started, and lost, a fight, and offers as one plausible alternative to that the prospect of him having faked his death to avoid prosecution for presumed atheism. There's an idea for a novel in that--and perhaps it's been done...