Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival

by Stephen Greenblatt

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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Shakespeare, Audiobook, Biography Memoir, British Literature

334 pages, Hardcover

First published September 9, 2025

About the author

Stephen Greenblatt (Ph.D. Yale) is Cogan University Professor of English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University. Also General Editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Eighth Edition, he is the author of nine books, including Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare; Hamlet in Purgatory; Practicing New Historicism; Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World; Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture; and The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. He has edited six collections of criticism, is the co-author (with Charles Mee) of a play, Cardenio, and is a founding coeditor of the journal Representations. He honors include the MLA's James Russell Lowell Prize, for Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England, the Distinguished Humanist Award from the Mellon Foundation, the Distinguished Teaching Award from the University of California, Berkeley. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in Vermont.

Stephen Jay Greenblatt is a Pulitzer Prize winning American literary critic, theorist and scholar.

Greenblatt is regarded by many as one of the founders of New Historicism, a set of critical practices that he often refers to as "cultural poetics"; his works have been influential since the early 1980s when he introduced the term. Greenblatt has written and edited numerous books and articles relevant to new historicism, the study of culture, Renaissance studies and Shakespeare studies and is considered to be an expert in these fields. He is also co-founder of the literary-cultural journal Representations, which often publishes articles by new historicists. His most popular work is Will in the World, a biography of Shakespeare that was on the New York Times Best Seller List for nine weeks.

Reviews

[None Ofyourbusiness Loves Israel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A biographical sprawl through the rat-infested, plague-perfumed, deliciously murderous maze that was Christopher Marlowe's brief and blazing existence.

Picture, if you will, late Elizabethan England: a realm where paranoia served as survival skill, and where the difference between patriot and traitor was often decided by which way the political wind happened to be blowing on execution day. This was a time when London simultaneously reeked of sewage and sang with theatrical genius, where plague and poetry walked hand in hand down cobblestoned streets, and where the Queen's spies outnumbered honest men roughly three to one (the honest men being remarkably easy to count, as most had already been hanged).

Into this charming tableau stumbled young Christopher Marlowe in 1564, the very same year that William Shakespeare decided to make his earthly debut.

Marlowe was born to a Canterbury shoemaker, which in the great English tradition meant he was destined either for greatness or the gallows. As it happened, he managed both.

Our Kit (for so his friends called him, those friends who were busy informing on him to the authorities) climbed the greasy pole of Elizabethan social mobility with the determination of a man who knew that scholarship beats starvation, even if it occasionally leads to charges of atheism. From King's School Canterbury to Cambridge University he ascended, gathering classical learning like a man collecting firewood, never suspecting he was building his own pyre.

At Cambridge, something curious occurred. Government recruiters, those shadowy gentlemen who collected young minds the way children collect beetles, took notice of young Marlowe. They whispered sweet nothings about serving Queen and country, and Marlowe, being both brilliant and catastrophically naive about the nature of espionage work, appears to have said yes. This decision would prove roughly as wise as accepting a dinner invitation from the Borgias.

Then came the London years, oh what years they were! Marlowe exploded onto the theatrical scene like a cannonball through a church window. His plays (Tamburlaine the Great, Doctor Faustus, The Jew of Malta, Edward II) grabbed audiences by the throat and shook them until their teeth rattled.

Here were heroes who told God to stuff it, who sold their souls for knowledge, who conquered nations before breakfast and committed unspeakable acts before supper. The street urchins had never seen anything like it, and neither had the censors, who developed severe cases of nervous exhaustion trying to keep up.

Marlowe's language was liquid fire poured into blank verse. He took the English tongue and taught it to dance, to sing, to curse with unprecedented eloquence. Shakespeare, watching from the wings, took careful notes.

But Kit Marlowe, genius though he was, possessed the survival instincts of a mayfly at a candle convention. He consorted with spies, forgers, atheists, and political radicals, which in Elizabethan England was rather like collecting poisonous snakes as a hobby.

He openly mocked the church. Never wise when the church owned most of the rope. Even less wise, he questioned Christ's divinity, and allegedly declared his fondness for tobacco and boys over conventional piety. Spectacularly unwise, particularly given that Elizabeth's government viewed such preferences as hanging offenses.

The authorities watched. They always watched. In a world where the wrong word uttered in the wrong ear could lead to an appointment with the rack, Marlowe lived as if surveillance were merely an interesting intellectual exercise rather than a death sentence with paperwork.

May 1593: arrest, interrogation about atheism and sedition, mysterious release on bail. Days later, a tavern in Deptford, a perfectly mundane dispute over the bill, and a dagger between the ribs. Dead at twenty-nine, surrounded by government informers, in circumstances so suspicious they practically wore signs reading "OFFICIAL COVER-UP IN PROGRESS."

The inquest called it manslaughter. History calls it English Monday. What remains is legacy and legend tangled together like lovers in a grave.

Marlowe lived dangerously, thought freely, and wrote with the intensity of a man who sensed his time was short. He shattered the comfortable pieties of Elizabethan theater and opened doors through which Shakespeare would stride to immortality. Yet because he died young and under such deliciously mysterious circumstances, his story reads like what it probably was: a government assassination disguised as a tavern brawl, with all the subtle finesse of a Renaissance-era wet work operation.

He embodies the dark underbelly of that glittering age: proof that the Renaissance, for all its artistic glory, remained fundamentally a time when brilliant minds could be snuffed out as easily as matches, when creativity bloomed under the constant threat of the headsman's axe, and when free thought carried a price tag that few could afford to pay.

Christopher Marlowe: cobbler's son, Cambridge scholar, government spy, theatrical revolutionary, suspected atheist, and corpse. In any sensible universe, this would be a tragedy. In ours, it's just another day in the surveillance state.

[Brendan (History Nerds United) · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a bit of a "tell" in the subtitle of Stephen Greenblatt's Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival. Please notice that it doesn't bother to name the subject of the book, Christopher Marlowe, probably because Shakespeare sells lots of books while Marlowe will not.

This is not to say that Marlowe wasn't a talented individual. However, the biggest problem about Marlowe is that we know almost nothing concrete about him. Yes, where he was born, grew up, went to college, and his plays. Was he a "rival" to Shakespeare? Not as far as I can see. We don't know for sure. It is highly likely they did and perhaps even collaborated. But like the vast majority of this book, Greenblatt needs to couch nearly every sentence with "probably" or "possibly." In fact, he even conjures an entire conversation between Shakespeare and Marlowe.

My criticism isn't meant to question Greenblatt's scholarship but merely his storytelling choices. He never passes off a supposition as fact. There are very little facts, though, and it made me wonder why bother writing on, for all intents and purposes, a man lost in the fog of history. It doesn't help that like the Shakespeare conversation, Greenblatt will sometimes conjecture so hard that it shows the points he's trying to make as opposed to telling a compelling story.

If you want to learn a bit about English society around the time of Marlowe and some entertaining literary criticism, then you may enjoy this book. Those looking for the book to deliver on its subtitle will be very disappointed.

(This book was provided as an advance copy by NetGalley and W. W. Norton & Company.)

[Sarah-Hope · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who doesn't want to read more about Kit Marlowe? Not just a brilliant playwright and contemporary of Shakespeare, but also involved in the intelligencing (we would call it espionage) that became a significant force in England during the reign of Elizabeth I. I don't think I'm being unfair if I describe Marlowe as a loose cannon. He liked pushing buttons, he liked shocking, he liked getting away with the outré. He died young and violently—and the attempt to understand how he ended up dead has been a matter of scholarly research and conspiracy theories ever since.

The problem here is that the historical record from the time is spotty—and the historical record as regards Marlowe is spottier still. So Marlowe biographers have to find a way to stretch that spottier record into a coherent, purposeful narrative. Greenblatt's biography is full of "may haves" and "perhapses," which is disappointing for those who want all the specifics, but may haves and perhapses are necessary tools for biographers who don't want to start making presenting speculation as certainty.

What Greenblatt does is identify some of Marlowe's most salient characteristics—button pushing, shocking, espousing the outré—and then examining his plays to see the ways those characteristics are evidenced in his work. Greenblatt sees each of Marlowe's plays as a further step in his confronting of Elizabethan morés.

Tamburlaine examines issues of power in ways that strip off the "decorative niceties" of Marlowe's era. Greenblatt suggests that in some ways Tambulaine is a staged version of the values espoused in Machiaveli's The Prince, which was banned in England at that time.

Greenblatt argues that The Jew of Malta—not surprisingly given that Jews were expelled from England in 1290, so defaming a Jew was easy enough to do—is an exploration of unbridled avarice. There was plenty of avarice in Elizabethan times, but most of it was cloaked in claims of class surperiority.

As interpreted by Greeblatt, Doctor Faustus was simultaneously critiquing the class divisions of Marlowe's time and pushing the limits of Elizabethan orthodoxy. Faustus, like Marlowe, had his start as a scholarship student who was kept conscious of the great gap between his original world and the world of Academia. Although Elizabeth I claimed she had no desire to see into men's souls, "official" English Protestantism was rigid in its resistance to Catholicism and to Quakers and other further-left expressions of faith. Faith could quickly become a matter of life or death when unorthodox views could be equated with treason.

For Greenblatt, Richard II is the most transgressive of Marlowe's plays. In Elizabethan England, sodomy was punishable by death, but at the same time devoted male friendships that included physical expressions of affection were celebrated, and shared beds were common. In focusing on the relationship between Edward II and Piers Galveston, Marlowe took an opportunity to demonstrate a truth about the tensions between sodomy and devoted male friendships that most Elizabethans would have preferred not to confront.

Greenblatt is a brilliant prose stylist, so Dark Renaissance is a very satisfying read for that reason alone. But reading Dark Renaissance left me nearly aching with a desire to go back and reread Marlowe's works to consider Greenblatt's interpretations of them and to pursue my own as well. It's been a long time since any one book left me so hungry to devour more through both rereadings and new texts.

If you have any interest in Elizabethan politics and/or faith and/or drama this is a book should should be picking up the moment it's released in September 2025. It may not result in your feeling more certain about the specifics of Marlowe's life but the possibilities it opens up are fascinating.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via Edelweiss; the opinions are my own.

[Fred Jenkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first time I have read a book on Marlowe that isn't a novel. I liked Alison Epstein's A Tip for the Hangman and Anthony Burgess' A Dead Man in Deptford, but both are speculative reconstructions.

The problem with writing about Marlowe is that we don't know much about his life. We know he went to King's School, Canterbury, to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, was a spy for Walsingham, and wrote the plays. But almost all of details beyond this are uncertain. Greenblatt does a very good job of threading the needle between scholarship and speculation. He covers the known facts and provides a lot of interesting background on sixteenth-century English society, education, espionage, and theater. Then he carefully offers speculations put forward by others or his own for the reader's consideration. For example, in the chapter on Marlowe at King's School, Greenblatt speculates on whether or not Marlowe had access to the master's extensive library. While he offers some interesting circumstantial evidence, the bottom line is that we don't and probably never will really know. The brief coda on Marlowe's mysterious death likewise presents the known facts (relatively few) and then rehearses the speculations of various scholars.

The chapters about Marlowe's works cover all of the major plays, along with Hero and Leander. Dido and the Massacre at Paris get short shrift. Greenblatt connects each play (Tamburlaine, The Jew of Malta, Doctor Faustus, Edward the Second) to events in Marlowe's life, to his patrons at the time, and considers its likely influence on Shakespeare. The two overarching themes in his discussions are indeed the interrelation of Marlowe's life and art and his influence on Shakespeare. A good example is his discussion of Doctor Faustus. He argues that Faustus reflects Marlowe's own recruitment into Walsingham's service and that the homoerotic overtones of Faustus' relationship with Mephistopheles reflects Marlowe's own orientation. He also suggests Marlowe's use of soliloquies in Doctor Faustus was a major influence on Shakespeare.

Greenblatt's discussions of the plays reminds me of what David Sansone, one of my grad school professors, said long ago: "all the best literary criticism points out what is obvious once you see it."

[Theo Logos · Rating 4 out of 5]

”For the cultural life of England to move forward someone had to come along and break through the suffocating carapace of inherited dogma. A cobbler’s son from Canterbury without any elite support or resources or sense of family entitlement seems an unlikely candidate for this role, and yet perhaps this very unlikelihood was part of what it took. Marlowe had no stake in the system to begin with, nothing to lose, except of course, his life.”


Christopher Marlowe’s death, like much of his life, was a tantalizing mystery. Murdered in what the official finding declared to be self defense in a squabble over a dinner bill, Marlowe’s violent demise has long been suspected of being far more nefarious. This book, though it enumerates the theories, will not clear up the mystery of his death at all. And that is fitting, as it also leaves most of his life a mystery.

The hard truth is there is precious little solid information on Kit Marlowe’s life beyond the work he left behind. We know his family. And we know his education (unusual in a time where working men’s sons rarely had access to higher education). It is likely that he was part of Sir Francis Walsingham’s spy network, but the very nature of such work cloaks it in shadow.

In light of this paucity of hard information, Stephen Greenblatt focuses first on Marlowe’s world. He maps out its political/religious and cultural elements along with the known individuals who acted as Marlowe’s patrons. This makes for fairly interesting reading. But the true power of this book is in Greenblatt’s focus on the works, wherein he attempts to illuminate Marlowe’s minds through close examination of his startling plays. This literary examination (not quite a traditional close reading) is where the true value of Dark Renaissance lies, and the primary reason you may want to read it.

[Leo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Got the audiobook for review.

The narration was good and while the book was interesting and was easy to get invested in. It didn't stand out much and didn't give me more then 3 stars. Don't have much to say about the book.

[Michael -- Justice for Renee & Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Dark Figure Behind the Dark Renaissance

When requesting a review copy of this book, I understood it featured the legendary playwright Christopher Marlowe, but I assumed it was going to be a work of historical fiction. He always struck me as a romantic, mythical figure about whom, like William Shakespeare, we just did not know enough about. “Dark Renaissance” is, in fact, Stephen Greenblatt’s effort to portray the real figure, the man who “kick-started the English Renaissance."

What I found was a brilliant biography, informative and unafraid of admitting to educated speculations, always supported by clear reasoning. It traces his humble beginnings, education in Canterbury, alleged involvement as a spy for Queen Elizabeth, and the dangerous lifestyle he led. The book examines various theories surrounding his death, from the well-known bar bill dispute to the suggestion of Queen Elizabeth's ordered execution.

Marlowe's plays are deeply rooted in their historical context, vividly reflecting the violent Catholic versus Protestant turmoil and other political and religious clashes of his era. Greenblatt's insights into Marlowe's intended messages within several of his works have, in turn, inspired me to revisit my old copy of “Doctor Faustus” and to discover “Tamburlaine.”

A good book that breathes fresh life into the Elizabethan era.

Thank you to W.W. Norton and Company, Edelweiss, and NetGalley, for providing an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review. #DarkRenaissance #NetGalley

[Faith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found that I wasn’t as interested in Christopher Marlowe as I thought I would be. I did enjoy all of the details about England at that time. I was also intrigued by the discussion of Marlowe’s plays and the comparisons drawn to true events and to Marlowe’s life. I lot of the book seemed extremely speculative (like his possible spying) but I suppose that is to be expected.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

[Nel · Rating 3 out of 5]

aside from the fact that kitkat singlehandedly launched england - a cultural backwater at the time - into a renaissance of her own, not much is known about him. and would we have that any other way? well...yes but what can u do. all i know he was the best renaissance boi and no fan of shakespeare will ever tell me otherwise!

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think my favorite nonfiction reads are the ones that cover topics that I had no idea I'd be interested in. I knew next to nothing about Christopher Marlowe before reading this book, and as it turns out the historical record only gives us a bit more. But Stephen Greenblatt does an outstanding job with what's available, and the historical context around Marlowe's short life is fascinating. He lived in a perilous word for free thinkers, and his free thinking may have been the reason for murdering him at the age of 29. Because of the paucity of information about Marlowe, the author engages in considerable speculation about both his probable career as a spy, and the links between his life and his plays. Normally, that might annoy me but somehow it all works.

Thanks to Norton and Netgalley for providing me with a copy for pre-publication review.

[Samantha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well. I have the same problem regarding Marlowe after reading this book that I had before reading it, which is that I know very little about him.

And that, of course, is the issue with writing a book focused on Marlowe: We just don’t have enough information about him to say anything definitive. Scholars are mostly just making educated guesses. And that’s fine, I suppose, but it does make a full nonfiction book on the subject a bit of a tough sell.

To Greenblatt’s credit, he’s not claiming to know anything he can’t prove about Marlowe. But the maybes and the probablys and the allegedlys are doing a lot of heavy lifting here, and it makes it hard to sell the concept of the book to a reader hoping to learn more.

Obviously it isn’t Greenblatt’s fault that information on Marlowe is so scanty, and of course we want to know as much as we can about his life and work, whether we can prove it or not. But he’s always going to play second fiddle to Shakespeare simply because we have less information about him, and the information we do have supports that it’s exactly how we should view him. Please miss me with your conspiracy-driven “Marlowe wrote all of Shakespeare’s plays” takes.

All of that said, Greenblatt is a very good storyteller, and knows how to write the kind of narrative nonfiction that is exceptionally readable. And he’s very good at slice of life content, which has rescued many a book that otherwise wasn’t doing much for me as a reader, and did with this book as well.

*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.*

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first visited Corfe Castle in the early 70s and loved it! As a kid of primary school age with a fascination for all things medieval, the sight of its looming pale ramparts and its prominent hilltop position overlooking the surrounding area as a steam train made its way to Swanage, was one to remember.
I didn't return for another thirty years, this time with a family of my own, and was struck by the additional features that had been excavated since my first visit. Imagine that! All that undiscovered 'history' had lain beneath my 8 year old feet three decades before.
In a similar way, research into the brief life of Christopher Marlowe has moved on dramatically since I last obsessed over this enigmatic, brilliant contemporary of Shakespeare in 1983. I can be certain of the date because, on reopening my dusty Penguin collection of Marlowe's plays, I found a yellowing clipping from the Guardian from that year reporting on one Calvin Hoffman who believed that he was on the cusp of discovering incontrovertible proof that, rather than dying a violent death in Deptford in 1593, he went on to write the complete works of Shakespeare and survived in Padua for another 34 years! Poor old Calvin gets no mention in Greenblatt's book but plenty of newly discovered detail regarding Marlowe's life has been uncovered. Like my second visit to Corfe Castle, revisiting the life and career of Kit Marlowe has revealed once buried nuggets of information.
A fascinating and fast moving book! well recommended.

[Thomas George Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

Until the hit movie, 'Shakespeare in Love' was released in the 1990's, I was unfamiliar with Christopher Marlowe.

Since then I have read many of his poems and plays; very little of which were released in his lifetime.

"The Passionate Shepherd to His Love":

Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle.

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull,
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold.

A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs,
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my love.

The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning.
If these delights they mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love."

Such was the genius of Kit Marlowe.

Professor Greenblatt is a distinguish scholar in English literature, and he has, in my opinion, written the definitive biography of the lost genius of Christopher Marlowe.

[Mervyn Whyte · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not too sure about this one. Alright, I'm writing this not having finished the book. But I've only got three chapters to go. And from my perspective, I'm wondering - is there anything really new here? Judging by the endnotes, I'm not sure there is. Plus, I'm not really getting a very clear picture of who Christopher Marlowe was. The biographical details are sketchy. Which just leaves the works. And this is really what this book is about: Greenblatt's interpretation of the plays and the poems. They're not without interest, but they're not exactly groundbreaking either. To be fair, I'm not an expert on this subject, so maybe I'm missing something. But having read a couple of biographies of Marlowe prior to this one, I can't see what Greenblatt is adding. Maybe someone can tell me. The blurbs on the back of the book - by some extremely eminent people - are ecstatic. So, it must be me.

[Tom Mathews · Rating 3 out of 5]

l have long been interested in learning more about the life of Christopher Marlowe, and thought that this book, written by a Harvard English professor, would be the perfect opportunity. The problem, though, was that, well, it was a book about Christopher Marlowe written by a Harvard professor. Granted, Stephen Greenblatt probably knows as much about Marlowe as anybody, but after 400 years, almost nothing is known for sure, and being a Harvard professor, Greenblatt qualified almost every statement as speculation. Marlowe could have been a spy. He might have collaborated with Shakespeare. He was thought to be an atheist.
I realize that an academic is bound to write as precisely as possible but I think I'd be better off reading something a bit more speculative.

[Kyle C · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is an incredible amount of documentation around Christopher Marlowe's life: we know his father was a cobbler; we can read his father's will with its full listing of all his property and belongings; we know Marlowe had eight siblings and we can even trace their marriages; we know that Marlowe won a scholarship to the King's School in Canterbury and then went to Cambridge; we can even read what food he paid for and consumed in the "Buttery Book"; we know he travelled to Rheims during his MA degree, was denied his degree but then ultimately granted it at the munificent intervention of the Privy Council in exchange for some act of service (possibly spying on English Catholic seminarians in France); his later arrest for possessing heretical documents is public record; the circumstances of his death (a pub-brawl over an unpaid bill) is described in detail in a coronial inquest. For such a short life, over four hundred years ago, much can—surprisingly—be known.

But almost everything in this book is speculative. Greenblatt devotes the majority of this book to describing Elizabethan culture, elite schooling, religious persecution, court politics, and then making tenuous conjectures about Marlowe's role and place in this world. As cultural history, it is fascinating; as biography, it is fanciful. Take, for example, Chapter 4 "The Master's Books". It's a curious chapter which looks at the books listed in the private collection of Marlowe's head schoolmaster, John Gresshop. Gresshop had a typical range of classical authors (Cicero, Ovid, Sophocles), pedagogical works and grammars, and biblical commentaries, as well as some more surprising contemporary works such as Thomas Moore's Utopia; Greenblatt then notes the influence of Lucian on Marlowe's works and wonders whether his school teachers exposed him to this Greek author (even if Lucian in not listed in the schoolmaster's collection). From there, Greenblatt reads into Marlowe's Dido and its opening scene in which Jupiter flirts with Ganymede—an audacious display of homoerotic foreplay. Greenblatt suggests that Marlowe must have been exposed to this kind of mythography outside the classroom, perhaps in Gresshop's private quarters. "Is it so difficult," he asks, "to imagine the solitary schoolmaster drawn to a remarkable fifteen-year-old? Or the fifteen-year-old avid reader using his seductive powers to gain access to books?"

There's every reason to see Marlowe and Shakespeare in a more transgressive, more heterodox light—as outré rebels rather than avatars of Elizabethan sensibility. But no, there is no reason to think Marlowe seduced his teachers and I'm not sure why Greenblatt raised that particular question (couldn't Marlowe have stolen books?) Too often Greenblatt commingles archival facts with erratic guesswork. Was Marlowe a spy on Catholic ministers? Did Marlowe co-write or edit Shakespeare's Henriad? Was Marlowe consorting with magicians and heretics? Working with intriguing, but scanty, records, Greenblatt tends to choose the most provocative line of interpretation. I think Dido is a sensationally camp text but this is hardly evidence of pederasty in Marlowe's schooling; I think Doctor Faustus evinces a powerful critique of the vanity of knowledge and the dangers of ill-gotten contracts but this is not evidence of Marlowe looking back on a career of espionage and regretting the knowledge he gleaned from the friends he betrayed. Greenblatt isn't joining dots; he's smudging the whole picture.

To recommend the book, it is so much more interesting as a study of Elizabethan England, a surprising place where: college dons and students slept in the same rooms and might even share the same bed; where male friends held hands and even kissed affectionately; where college students might be beaten up for their interruptions and disrespect during public disputations and examination vivas; where audiences might be so moved by theatrical performances that they believed a ghost or demon was actually present; where Catholic renegades would have their legs and arms broken and then, after a day or two of agony, be hung. It was a place of feuds, intrigue, paranoia, underhand cunning and double-crossing, a Machiavellian country in which Machiavelli was, ironically, not allowed to be read. England was puritanical, its verses were bawdy, its churches were monitored but its theaters were indulged. As the book convincingly shows, Renaissance England was, if not dark, then deeply unfamiliar.

[Dan Trefethen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Christopher Marlowe's life is even more mysterious in many ways than his contemporary's, William Shakespeare. Marlowe came first, though, and created plays that broke the mold and that Shakespeare and others benefited from.

While Shakespeare came from rural gentry and had some early education, Marlowe's family was dirt poor and dissolute. How he came to be able to read when neither parent did is a mystery, but his intelligence gained him a scholarship for the poor to Oxford. That's where he gained his real education.

His Oxford education gave him Latin and Greek which helped him with the aristocracy. He came to the attention of powerful people in government. While it is pretty clear he provided some services to the government, we don't really know its nature, whether it was true espionage or simply acting as a courier for sensitive materials from Europe.

This book is best at showing how Marlowe's personality infused his plays, leading to important 'firsts' like writing in blank verse and creating soliliquies (both used by Shakespeare). His plays like 'Tambourlaine the Great' and 'Doctor Faustus' had shocking scenes and dialogue. Indeed, Marlowe seemed to like to shock people. He was called a “sudden man”, meaning he would blurt out shocking statements. It's these utterances that may have led him into trouble.

There's just so much we don't know about Marlowe. The author acknowledges this by commenting on how often he says 'may have' or 'could have been' in the text. It can't be helped though - Marlowe's personality and closeness to certain aristocratic figures (as well as neer-do-wells) leads to plenty of tempting speculation.

It's pretty well known how repressive Elizabethan England was, how sensitive to criticism of the queen and to support of Catholicism. Marlowe's plays are laced with intriguing lines that can be read as critical of scripture and of power. Dangerous topics, but which probably led to full theaters.

Marlowe famously died in a 'bar brawl' over a bill. Was that really the reason, or was it the government's agents finally dealing with this outspoken playwright who fell under suspicion? We'll never know. His life ended as dramatically as he lived, and his relatively short life and modest output (eight plays) is a benchmark in the history of Elizabethan theater, and an important precursor to the man credited as the greatest writer in the English language. This makes him important and a fascinating biographical subject, even though his plays may not be performed much anymore today.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating book! A great Shakespeare scholar turns his attention to Christopher Marlowe, and the result is very compelling. Not being any sort of literary scholar myself, I learned a lot, which is why I gave the book 5 stars and recommend it highly to anyone with the slightest interest in the topic.

I enjoy the idea of Shakespeare being impressed with Marlowe's skill, talent, and daring, while also keeping his head down in a way that Marlowe apparently chose not to do, likely at the cost of his life. Even so, the author points out where Shakespeare paid tribute to Marlowe in his own work, which he didn't do for any other contemporary.

Seems Marlowe may have been an atheist who took the risk of letting others know more often than was safe. But we can't actually know if this is what got him killed, or some other transgression that is not in the records. Since it seems clear he was a spy for the government, perhaps he misjudged how much protection that offered? Apparently another spy had it in for Marlowe, so that may have been his downfall, rather than his own indiscretion.

One of the themes running through the book is the notion that Marlowe had seen religion as a scam used by the powerful to keep the poor in line, and since a freethinking playwright would be a danger to that system, Marlowe was a threat that could not be tolerated. That makes a certain sense. But I can't help wondering how many ordinary non-elite people were perfectly aware of that, and were not so much awed by religion as aware that open defiance of authorized religion would get them killed. We know this sometimes erupted into open rebellions, but since those usually resulted in massacre for the peasants, it's not hard to imagine pretending to be a simple believer in the currently-authorized version of the Truth as more of a survival tactic than a deep devotion to any particular dogma. Not saying this would be true for everyone, plenty of folks could believe deeply in their faith (of whatever persuasion), just can't help wondering how many ordinary people thought along the lines that Marlowe gave such eloquent expression to in his work.

But none of my speculation takes anything away from the remarkable work that Marlowe wrote in his short life, and the author of this book makes his incredible innovation and daring very clear. So I highly recommend this book to any and all readers curious about this important figure in the history of English theater. Fellow queers may be particularly interested, but you don't have to be queer to appreciate Marlowe or this book.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not, it should be stressed, a biography of Christopher Marlowe; given the dearth of information we have on his short life, I don't even know if it's possible to write a proper biography of Christopher Marlowe. What Greenblatt does here instead is try to construct a rough timeline from the cast of characters who Marlowe might have interacted with (Walter Raleigh, Henry Percy, John Caius, Robert Browne) and, based on that, extrapolate the themes Marlowe explored in his work. As such, a lot of this book is speculative, and it's ironically on its most solid footing when it's analyzing Marlowe's plays. But that analysis is interesting, and Greenblatt makes a convincing case that Marlowe's body of work was, if not the inciting incident for the beginning of the English Renaissance, then at least the first one through the door.

[Dodi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was disappointed in Dark Renaissance. In a book purportedly about the life of Christopher Marlowe, Stephen Greenblatt brings nothing new to the table. Greenblatt speculates on possibilities. I enjoy reading British history from this time period (Elizabethan), and that carried me through.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think it lost me a little bit in the end. I feel like it spent an excessive amount of time explaining how Marlowe wrote Faustus as a stand in for himself and explaining the parallels between their lives. While interesting, without having read Faustus I don’t know that I needed that much page time dedicated to it. I may reread those pages sometime after I get a chance to reread Marlowe’s plays.

That being said, I otherwise very much enjoyed this. Marlowe was a fascinating character. Someone who went against the grain. An atheist in a time of religious upheaval and persecution. Greenblatt explains how he often explored gender fluidity and sexuality into his plays, hiding it in plain sight in order to accommodate Elizabethan audiences.

It dives into his “rivalry” with Shakespeare (of which it seems there really wasn’t much of one, but perhaps a mutual respect). Talks about service he may have provided to the Queen and brushes up with the law.

Overall he had a short but fascinating life and it’s clear Greenblatt holds Marlowe in high regard.

That being said, because very little documentation actually survives of Marlowe’s life, it does sometimes feel like we’re exploring his life by reading between the lines of others lives. Which was sometimes frustrating.

I get it, you can only work with what you’ve got when we’re talking about a relatively obscure figure from 400 years ago, but it was still a little frustrating. I did find a lot of parallels to draw to modern day. (Conservatives sure haven’t changed much, have they?) And I feel like he painted a vivid portrait of the time period.

I also have Greenblatt’s Will in the World and I’m excited to read that one as well.

[Holdyn Estes · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
A good and interesting look at the life and times of a lesser known contemporary of Shakespeare. Marlowe was certainly a genius whose life was cut far too short. I feel like the reading of this one didn’t come to me at the right time—glad to be done with it.

[Benjamin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was engaging and accessible, and I think the very best and most exciting thing I’m taking away from this book is motivation to engage with Marlowe’s plays and poems

[Philip Reari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Greenblatt makes the most of what little is known of this trailblazing writer to tell a highly believable and compelling story about this contemporary and collaborator of Shakespeare’s.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

So happy to read this preview copy from NetGalley.

Greenblatt as always writes with clarity and an engaging tone. The life of Christopher Marlowe holds so much mystery, but there is no question that this genius was complex, elusive and brilliant. Greenblatt links Marlowe’s breakthrough poetry and subject matter to the works of Shakespeare, but Marlowe is always the star of the show, and deservedly so. Of course, as with the life of Shakespeare, so much needs to be surmised here- there is a lot of ‘perhaps’ and ‘it’s possible that’. This is not an issue for me. Greenblatt never reaches and never gives the idea that he is imposing his idea of Marlowe’s life or grasping at straws. We know that both Marlowe and Shakespeare came from humble origins, and their lives would not have been documented. Playwrights were not stars, their works not published for posterity and their lives need to be pieced together through painstaking research. We are beyond lucky that Shakespeare had friends to publish his works in the First Folio. Sadly, Marlowe only wrote 7 or so plays before his murder at the age of 29, and there exist no original manuscripts or complete works like the First Folio. His short life was exciting & mysterious. We have a picture of a brilliant young boy who managed to win scholarships, earn an MA from Cambridge and pen works of such originality and brilliance that even Shakespeare hustled to keep up with. That he inspired Shakespeare illustrates his brilliance. For anyone interested in Elizabethan England, Shakespeare, most of all the elusive Marlowe and a deep dive into the literature and society of the time, this book is a real treat.

[Jesse · Rating 2 out of 5]

If it weren't for the portrait of Christopher Marlowe on the dust jacket, you may be forgiven if you read the title Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival and believed the book is about Ben Jonson. As another reviewer has pointed out, the fact that Marlowe's name is absent from this twelve-word title foreshadows the book's contents: it is hardly a biography of the poet at all. Although Greenblatt writes with the politely readable prose of a popular scholar, the book is more of a study of Elizabethan England during Marlowe's lifetime (1564–1593), wherein details about other people's lives, such as John Gresshop, Richard Baines, Henry Percy, and the Walsinghams, smother details about Marlowe's own. Perhaps this is due to the paucity of primary sources about Marlowe; Dark Renaissance is the only Marlowe biography I've read, so maybe I expected the impossible from it. However, Greenblatt's reliance on brief explorations of what Marlowe "may" have done throughout his life grows frustrating when all the conjecture is juxtaposed with long, detailed accounts of those who operated in Marlowe's eclectic social circles. Against these people, Marlowe stands at arm's length in his own biography.

Throughout the book, Greenblatt is also insistent about Marlowe's homosexuality, even at times when there is no tangible proof of it whatsoever. For example, in Chapter 5, he writes about Marlowe's time at Cambridge, where male students, as was customary, shared beds:

Getting into bed with each other every night in the pitch-black room, Marlowe and his fellow students were aware that the practice of sodomy, whether consensual or not, was punishable by death. In theory, it is possible that in such circumstances bedfellows enjoyed no sexual arousal and no pleasure at all; in theory, anything is possible. But it is overwhelmingly likely that a very large number of them must have experienced for themselves various forms of what was called “forbidden and unlawful fleshliness.”

I shared rooms with men in college, too. Does this mean my biographers would automatically assume that I was having sex with them? Of course, some of Marlowe's works, such as the poem "Hero and Leander," do slyly explore homoeroticism, but I found Greenblatt's eagerness to read homosexuality in all aspects of Marlowe's life—including another time when the playwright escaped the plague in London by visiting Thomas Walsingham at his Scadbury estate, where Greenblatt posits the two men likely had "a happy affair"—more the result of the queer-obsessed literary zeitgeist than anything the historical record actually confirms. If you're looking for it, of course you'll find it. It strikes me as academically disingenuous, providing more "mights" and "mays" in a book that is already too fantastical with its narrative assertions for my taste.

[Matt McCormick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Greenblatt writes so well. Dark Renaissance does more than tell the story of Marlowe's death. In fact, the murder is a very small part of the story. This is really a tale that tells the transformative impact of Marlowe on English literature while delving into his personality and culture. Professor Greenblatt is clearly impressed by the writer's talent and his courage. What courage it took to bring out a play in a totally new verse, to address the arrogance and duplicity of those in power, and to speak more frankly than anyone before on the English stage of homosexuality.

As other reviewers have pointed out Greenblatt uses a lot of suppositions; few hard facts remain over 400 years. Other books on the subject, such as Nicholl's The Reckoning, seem to place the clues of what happened at the murderous meal much more squarely in a pretense of fact. However, for me, Stephen Greenblatt's admitted assumptions were insightful as they come from a thoughtful and deep-thinking scholar. I can imagine and accept the probability of what Marlowe might have been reading at college or how he might have come in contact and interacted with members of the nobility.

Greenblatt's most impressive contribution is his analysis of the various Marlowe plays and how those plays and poems fit with the writers personality and his life experiences. Tamburlaine, The Jew of Malta, Edward II, Hero and Leander, The Passionate Shepperd are all better understood with Greenblatt's wit and wisdom. Marlowe's "mighty line" becomes more potent, more beautiful under Greenblatt's explanations.

"Is it not passing brave to be a king. And ride in triumph through Persepolis?"
"O, thou art fairer than the evening air, Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars."
"Come live with me, and be my love, And we will all the pleasures prove"

[Michael Reilly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) lived hard and died young. He was born the son of a shoemaker in Canterbury, England. Against all odds, when he died at age 29, he was a literary star in London.

He was a brilliant playwright. He popularized the use of iambic pentameter which Shakespeare immortalized in his plays. Marlowe wrote or co-wrote six plays before he died in a barroom brawl at the age of 29. His plays were wild tales of tyrants, violence, the devil, and massacres. They were big hits.

He was arrested for blasphemy. He almost certainly acted as a spy in several European countries for England's top spymaster. There is strong evidence that he had homosexual relationships, at a time when that was a capital offense. He was suspected of being an atheist, which was also a capital offense.

His death is one of the great historical mysteries. Suspects for the conspiracy leading to his being stabbed in the eye and killed in a barroom include Sir Walter Raleigh or the Earl of Essex or Robert Cecil or Queen Elizabeth or a fellow spy who he double-crossed. There is also the theory that he faked his death to escape being executed for subversive atheism and then wrote plays under the name "William Shakespeare". (To be clear, that is a silly theory.)

Greenblatt does a great job telling the story of Marlowe's life. He is focused on Marlowe as a writer. He outlines the spying and subversive ideas by looking to see how they influenced his plays. Most of his plays deal with dangerous ideas, hidden in historical tales. Deceit and double crossing are major themes in his writing.

Shakespeare and Marlowe were both born in 1564. They both lived in England and wrote plays. There is a fairly well accepted theory, based on computer analysis of the text, that they co-wrote the three Henry VI plays which are traditionally ascribed to Shakespeare. Shakespeare has several lines in various plays that seem to be references to Marlowe. We know nothing about their personal relationship.

It is hard to evaluate the influence of Marlowe on Shakespeare. Around 32 of Shakespeare's 38 plays were written after Marlowe died. Shakespeare wrote a huge variety of plays. Very few of them are similar in plot or style to Marlowe's plays but, as Greenblatt argues, there are some real influences, particularly in the structure of lines and the vividness and action in plots.

This is a first-class picture of a wild time in London. It is an appreciation of Marlowe's plays which have been in Shakespeare's shadow, and it is a well-argued consideration of the influence of Marlowe on Shakespeare.

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always enjoy a Greenblatt joint! This retread a lot of Elizabethan history that I was already familiar with, but I did enjoy learning more about Marlowe, since all I really knew about him was the old “killed in a bar fight in Deptford” chestnut. I love Greenblatt’s literary analysis, & enjoyed being reminded of plays I read in college 20+ years ago now (how did Shapiro not have us read Doctor Faustus in Tudor-Stuart Drama? Crazy! Also really want to dig up that paper I wrote on Edward II). I wish there were a little more certainty in some of his biographical speculations (especially about that famous death), but Marlowe was out there living in the edge, so any number of things could have happened!

[E.M. Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stephen Greenblatt has been writing Shakespeare criticism since the days of my undergrad. I remember my Shakespeare professor (yes, we had a person who only did that), bringing up his insight innumerable times.

Often enough that, when I saw his name and that book cover, the association came swirling back.

Only this time, Greenblatt's subject isn't Shakespeare, but his contemporary, Christopher Marlowe.

I've admired Marlowe's work on Doctor Faustus forever, though his other plays aren't widely read or performed. His infamous 'mighty line' gets referenced more often.

For example, "Is this the face that launched a thousand ships / and burnt the topless towers of Ilium" from Faustus appears in Shakespeare in Love where that speech is used as audition text and Marlowe himself appears as a side character in the story.

Marlowe remains a perplexing and mysterious figure, largely because comparatively little is known about him other than some biographical details (who his family were, where he was born, and the bare bones of his education), and the strange circumstances of his death at 29.

It's clear he was connected to England's privy council enough for them to prevent Cambridge from kicking him out for too many absences. A letter survives, informing them that they should award his master's degree and that he provided some kind of service to the crown.

Denied all that usual biography, Greenblatt makes remarkable inferences about Marlowe's life from the documents that do survive and his understanding of the time.

What Greenblatt's book makes clear is how deep a footprint Marlowe placed on English poetry (there really was no one writing as he did before Marlowe exploded into the theatre scene), and how his ideas opened up new veins of thinking--largely because Marlowe was reckless and not as good at preserving his own neck as someone like Shakespeare was (who lived well into his fifties).

Through that kind of research and textual analysis, he demonstrates why Tamburlaine the Great blew the doors off the nascent Elizabethan theatre scene, and why Doctor Faustus was also a next-level evolution in Marlowe's work that may have set his hard exit at stage left in motion.

Here's an excerpt that crystallizes the psychological realism that Marlowe brings to Faustus' story and its echoes in his own life and choices from Chapter 16:

The genius of Marlowe’s play does not depend on the hoary stage device of the Hellmouth. Its unique power comes not from dragging the doubter off to eternal punishment in the afterworld, but from re-imagining what hell is and relocating it in the here and now. Hell is an awareness of how painfully limited life is. Hell is a progressive loss of interest in the books and subjects that had once seemed so endlessly fascinating. Hell is a vast enterprise of global exploitation that merely produces luxuries for wealthy patrons. Hell is a plan to save one’s country that shrinks into a set of tricks played on minor adversaries. Hell is a craving for access to secrets that, once revealed, shrivel into ennui. Well, I am answered. Hell is the despair produced by the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, a despair constantly fuelled by pious warnings that cannot possibly be followed and by tantalizing hopes that cannot, and will not, be fulfilled. I’ll willingly be damned! The brilliance of the strategy is to make the recruited one, who is after all, frankly informed that he about to ruin his life, actively pursue his own destruction.

There's also an insight about the technology of theatre and the need for content that made me think of the explosions that new social networks like TikTok engender. It's not a new pattern, and its footprint goes back way further than I thought.

I don't often feel excited reading biographical history, but I genuinely was while reading this book. If you're interested in the period, Marlowe, or Shakespeare, I strongly recommend it.