Thank you to RB Media, W. W. Norton & Company, and NetGalley for ARCs of both the print and audiobook in return for an honest review.

Many years ago, I earned a B.A. in English Literature, during which time I studied Shakespeare for two semesters. I also had the opportunity to spend a semester focused solely on the works of Christopher Marlowe. (All three courses taught by the instructor.) That experience left me with the lasting impression that Marlowe is, in many ways, the superior poet and playwright, so I was very excited to read this book.

Christopher Marlowe’s life and work are almost always overshadowed by his more famous contemporary, some guy you might have heard of named William Shakespeare.

The book is more than a biography; it’s an exploration of the world, the culture, and the society in which Marlowe lived and in which he found the inspiration for his plays and poetry. Weaving in the limited details known about Marlowe’s life, with the known history of Elizabethan England, Stephen Greenblatt showcases his method of literary criticism known as New Historicism to finally give Marlowe’s life and work much-deserved time in the spotlight.

I highly recommend listening to the audiobook edition in addition to reading a print copy of the book. Plays and poems are meant to be heard, and the narrator, Edoardo Ballerini, brings life and depth to Marlowe’s words. I wish even more excerpts of his plays and poetry had been included. The printed book features images that enhance the story being presented.

#DarkRenaissance #NetGalley

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 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.

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.

Sixteenth-century England was a time of great change. There were religious changes as the crown passed from one member of the Tudor family to another. Wars and illnesses like the plague and the sweating sickness were rampant. However, this was also a time of an explosion of the arts, particularly of the theatre. We see men like William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson rise from obscurity to write plays that would propel them to become phenomena. There was a third playwright who should be included in this list. He was the son of a cobbler who was educated at Cambridge University. A brilliant man who wrote groundbreaking plays while he was a spy for her majesty Queen Elizabeth I, his cause of death when he was only in his twenties would remain a mystery for centuries. Christopher (Kit) Marlowe’s story is told in Stephen Greenblatt’s latest book, “Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival.”

I would like to thank W. W. Norton & Company and Net Galley for sending me a copy of this book. I will be honest. Although I do spend a lot of time studying the 16th century, I don’t read a lot of plays by Shakespeare or Marlowe. So, when I saw this book and its premise, it piqued my curiosity. I knew that Marlowe was a famous playwright, he was a spy, and that he died young, but that’s all I knew before reading this book. I wanted to know more about Kit Marlowe and his world.

Christopher Kit Marlowe was the son of John Marlowe, an immigrant shoemaker, and his wife, Katherine Arthur. As their only son, it was believed that Kit would become a cobbler, but he had different skills that were more academically inclined. The cobbler’s son would study the classical writers of Ancient Greece and Rome, while learning Latin and debating theology. Kit would find himself at Cambridge University, and he paid for his education on a scholarship. While the main focus of these chapters is Marlowe, Greenblatt does show the lives of the scholars and fellow students who would shape Marlowe’s writings and his path in life.

Just as Marlowe was about to complete his Master of the Arts degree, his attendance dropped, and he was seen in Rheims in France. He was beginning to establish connections to the Elizabethan spy network with William Cecil, Lord Burghley, and Sir Francis Walsingham. This is the stage of life where we not only see Marlowe get in trouble with the law, but we also get to see Marlowe become a playwright who would rival Shakespeare himself. Greenblatt takes his time to analyze Marlowe’s works, including Tamburlaine the Great, Edward II, The Jew of Malta, and Doctor Faustus. Finally, Greenblatt examines Marlowe’s death on May 30, 1593, and who might have been responsible for his murder.

I found this book extremely informative, not only when it comes to the life of Christopher Kit Marlowe, but also the worlds of Elizabethan higher education, the theatrical community, the divides on religious beliefs, and the spy world. Marlowe is one of those figures who challenged what it meant to be a playwright through his rather controversial works, which inspired others like William Shakespeare. If you want a book about a playwright with a tragic end who doesn’t get a lot of attention, I highly recommend you read “Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival” by Stephen Greenblatt.

Excellent intersectional study of what is "known" about the life and death of Christopher Marlowe and how it manifests in his plays. The book is a wonderful combination of history and literary studies and an admirable addition to some extraordinary scholarship on the life, works and murder of one of the world's most intriguing literary figures.

I had never thought of Christopher Marlowe and how he was used in Shakespeare's time, so this book was everything that I was wanting and enjoyed learning about him and the rest of the time-period. Stephen Greenblatt has a strong writing style and was able to create something that I was wanting to read this.

More interesting as a social and cultural history of its time and a work of literary criticism than as a life of a shadowy figure, but full of lots of interesting tidbits and some fascinating analysis.

When it comes to popular histories of the Renaissance, there’s no one who can hold a candle to Stephen Greenblatt. He’s one of those writers who wears his prodigious learning lightly, and I’ve yet to read a book of his that wasn’t anything less than brilliant. In his newest book, Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival he gives us a fascinating portrait of Christopher Marlowe. In this accessible but deeply researched and eloquently argued book, Greenblatt immerses us in the world of Elizabethan England, a time that was very different than our own but, thanks to his incisive prose, comes to feel almost as familiar as the one in which we now live.

It’s Marlowe’s misfortune that he happened to be writing at almost exactly the same time as Shakespeare, and while the glover’s son from Stratford-Upon-Avon became the most famous playwright and writer in the world, Marlowe has always played second fiddle. As Greenblatt makes clear, however, this is truly unfortunate, because Marlowe was an undoubted genius. He was one of those literary figures who was both very much a product of his own era and yet, thanks to his risky behavior and his even riskier artistic endeavors, pushed drama into new and exciting forms, even as he did the same for the culture at large.

As he has in his previous works, Greenblatt excels at immersing us in the heady, dangerous, beautiful, and cruel world of Elizabethan England. The 16th century was without a doubt a period of significant ferment, one in which Protestantism and Catholicism were still vying for supremacy, and one in which established truths were in constant danger of being overthrown by new ways of thinking and seeing the world. This gave the authorities, including Queen Elizabeth I and her various courtiers, many headaches, and they often resorted to desperate efforts in order to keep people and ideas in their appointed places. For all that they sought to control what people could read and what they could see, however, there were ways of thwarting them, and few were as adept, or as committed, to pushing the boundaries and flirting with disaster as Christopher Marlowe.

Marlowe, arguably even more than Shakespeare, was uniquely positioned to take advantage of the brave new world that was slowly opening up. In part this stemmed from the fact that, unlike Shakespeare, he managed to procure a very good education, even going so far as to earn a Master of Arts degree from Cambridge. Throughout his career as a playwright Marlowe would put this education to magnificent use, and in some important ways he paved the way for Shakespeare, including in his use of blank verse.

He also moved among some very rarefied company. In addition to Shakespeare–with whom he probably collaborated on several works–Marlowe also rubbed shoulders with some very powerful (and very dangerous) men, among whom two of the most notable were Francis Walsingham and Sir Walter Raleigh. Both of these men were very prominent parts of Elizabeth’s court, with Walsingham serving as her chief spymaster and a true maestro when it comes to the arts of spycraft. Greenblatt firmly aligns himself with those who believe that Marlowe was on Walsingham’s payroll, and he is quite convincing in his argument. There’s quite a lot of evidence to point in this direction, not the least of which is the fact that the government intervened to ensure that he got his Master of Arts degree.

While Greenblatt is keen to situate Marlowe in his historical circumstances–he remains, as he has always been, one of the finest practitioners of new historicism working today–he also offers rich, textured, and compelling readings of Marlowe’s poetry and plays. These range from Tamburlaine the Great and Edward II, both with their reflections on leadership and conquest (and, in the latter’s case, with the specter of same-sex eroticism) to The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus and its engagement with the limitations and weariness of knowledge and its toying with atheism The Jew of Malta and its themes of revenge and bloodshed. In his art as in his life, Marlowe was always willing to go where others feared to tread, and it’s easy to see why his works became so popular, even as they tended to earn the opprobrium of those in authority (after all, flirting with atheism and same-sex relations was always a recipe for condemnation in a place like Elizabethan England).

Marlowe, in other words, was brilliant precisely because he managed to take what was around him and turn it into sublime stage and poetic art. The flip side of this was that Marlowe was often playing with fire when it came to his life, his beliefs, and his drama. As Greenblatt demonstrates time and again, he was always putting his toe right on what was deemed acceptable and, very often, he was putting it over it. After all, you don’t play around with controversial figures like Walter Raliegh and Henry Percy–the latter of whom was known as the Wizard Earl for his dalliances in the occult–without putting yourself in danger. The same was even more true of someone like Walsingham, who played very dangerous games when it came to politics.

To be sure, as Greenblatt himself acknowledges, much of what we know about Marlowe’s life is a matter of speculation. This includes the circumstances of his death, which are just as cloudy now as they were in the 16th century when he perished in a brawl with several other men. Here too Greenblatt draws on all of the evidence at his command, and the later portions of the book are as compulsively readable as any spy novel.

I emerged from Dark Renaissance having learned a great deal about both Marlowe and the world that produced him. This is a rich and fascinating book that combines the best of literary criticism with rigorous historical knowledge. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Be sure to buy it or check it out from your local library when it releases in September!

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me an ARC to review.

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.

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.)