The World of Christopher Marlowe [Hardcover]

David Riggs (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 9, 2004

The definitive biography: a masterly account of Marlowe's work and life and the world in which he lived

Shakespeare's contemporary, Christopher Marlowe revolutionized English drama and poetry, transforming the Elizabethan stage into a place of astonishing creativity. The outline of Marlowe's life, work, and violent death are known, but few of the details that explain why his writing and ideas made him such a provocateur in the Elizabethan era have been available until now. In this absorbing consideration of Marlowe and his times, David Riggs presents Marlowe as the language's first poetic dramatist whose desires proved his undoing.

In an age of tremendous cultural change in Europe when Cervantes wrote the first novel and Copernicus demonstrated a world subservient to other nonreligious forces, Catholics and Protestants battled for control of England and Elizabeth's crown was anything but secure. Into this whirlwind of change stepped Marlowe espousing sexual freedom and atheism. His beliefs proved too dangerous to those in power and he was condemned as a spy and later murdered. Riggs's exhaustive research digs deeply into the mystery of how and why Marlowe was killed.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Riggs (Ben Jonson: A Life), an English professor at Stanford University, traces the life of Elizabethan poet, playwright and spy Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593), placing him in the context of the institutions that both fostered his keen intellect and reinforced his awareness of his lowly class origins (his father was a shoemaker). Riggs suggests that Marlowe, Shakespeare's great contemporary, author of Tamburlaine and Dr. Faustus, may have sought to overcome those origins through his unusual and dangerous career path. Working in the New Historicist vein most recently mined by Stephen Greenblatt in Will in the World, Riggs evokes the pedagogical preoccupations of Marlowe's school and university education, revealing layers of intricate detail in Marlowe's formation as a literary artist: his study and translation of Ovid, his innovations in blank verse, and the substance and reception of all of his plays and poetry. While downplaying Marlowe's disputed sexuality, Riggs pays careful attention to the homoerotic and homophobic aspects of his plays, most notably Edward II, considering each in its contemporary moral and political setting. Riggs concludes with fresh insights into the mysterious circumstances of Marlowe's violent death. This study balances close literary readings with lucidly presented historical context to give us a portrait of a brilliant but volatile enigma who shunned convention in favor of risk and marginality. 50 b&w illus.
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* A biography of Shakespeare's greatest forebear in the Elizabethan theater must be the product of considerable grubbing and decoding. No portrait of Marlowe (1564-93) exists; he is referred to by several names (e.g., Morley, Merlin) that are spelled and, one would think, pronounced differently; and he had reasons to be untraceable, including the disesteem in which playwrights were held and his work-for-hire as a secret agent, maybe even a double agent, of the factions contending for power in England. Those contestants were the queen and high-church Protestants; the disestablished English Catholic Church and Catholic aristocrats at home and expatriate; and the rising Puritans, who could practically ally with the Catholics. Intelligent young lower-class men like Marlowe, the Cambridge scholarship-student son of an originally itinerant worker, functioned with enormous fluidity among those factions. Basically, Marlowe was a queen's man, but he was often arrested and ultimately murdered, Riggs shows, because he was suspected of being, or about to become, an atheist collaborator with the Catholics. His plays, as Riggs very persuasively parses them, argue that he was indeed atheist; with his reported behavior--rambunctious and blasphemous--they argue that he was antinomian and antiauthoritarian, too. Outstanding social history, detective work, literary analysis, and portrayal of a truly dangerous time and place--Elizabethan London. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; First Edition edition (December 9, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805077553
• ISBN-13: 978-0805077551
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #512,128 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The play's the thing, March 6, 2005

By 

John C. Landon "nemonemini" (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The World of Christopher Marlowe (Hardcover)

This is a very absorbing, sometimes astonishing, short bio of the playwright Christopher Marlowe, with a lot of detail of the time and place. The harshness of the times, the austere educational system that Marlowe survived all the way to an MA, his mysterious activities as a spy, all make for an exotic picture of a world that seems, for all its lingering barbarism, more attuned to poetry that our own. This has to be one of the most seminal eras of history, soon to produce the rarest of the rare periods of tragic drama. In that emerging sequence, Marlowe stands out for his bold embrace of the iambic pentameter, the at first poor cousin of the Latin hexameter, yet soon to shine in Shakesperean glory. Marlowe's short but brilliant career ends ambiguously, his murder more than what appears on the surface, perhaps a government assassination. The image of Faust.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Remarkable Book, October 26, 2005

By 

M. Golding (Las Vegas, NV USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The World of Christopher Marlowe (Hardcover)

Christopher Marlowe, the Elizabethan poet and playwright, was one of the most talented members of his generation. He helped pioneer the use of blank verse in dramatic poetry and used it to produce five masterpieces while William Shakespeare--who was only two months younger than Marlowe--was still finding his dramatic footing. Who can say how great he might have become if he were not cut down (possibly on orders of the Queen, herself) at the age of 29.

As a man, Marlowe was the "unShakespeare". Where Shakespeare was a prudent man who invested his money wisely and was careful not to offend authority, Marlowe was a risk-taker both in his personal life and in his plays. In an age where not toeing the official ine was punishable by death, Marlowe never met a line he was not tempted to cross. If this is what got him killed, it also makes him a fascinating person to read about.

David Riggs weaves Marlowe's personal tragedy into an exciting volume that I found as hard to put down as any thriller. It is a book I can heartily recomend.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars great for english lit...but skim some, September 3, 2005

By 

J. A. Haverstick (Lancaster, PA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The World of Christopher Marlowe (Hardcover)

I agree with the reader who says the book is often abstruse. The chapter on double-agenting had my eyes rolling and I was constantly looking back pages to see who's who. Add to this the fact that these Brits (or their elite) can be referred to by a seemingly endless list of tiles each (and, then, their names, as well) and that the minor functionaries and offices of government aren't on everyone's tongue and one often feels mired in the mud. I think this could have been alleviated with chapter introductions or summaries or just a more prudent handling of the proper nouns. Anyway, when I get to that point in any book, I just try to make sure I'm getting the main point and head thru at a trot.... Life is short, and there's so much to read!

What I got that was positive from this book, and it was very positive indeed, was a sense of M's contribution to blank verse and the development of Elizabethan drama. I went to my shelves to look at some earlier stuff, and yeppir, there's Marlowe at the dividing line. This certainly gave me a whole new appreciation of him as a figure in English literature and has got me back to sampling some other Elizabethan writing, including his ,comparing and contrasting, which is a nice trip. Very interesting to see how these boy's classical education trained them to snap off large amounts of magnificent English poetry. (The last British governor of Chad remarked in the NYRB that he had zero training when assigned, but the underlying assumption of his superiors was that if you translate Latin poetry to Greek poetry ad lib you could surely run a country! I suppose history has dimmed that conceit, but as a liberal artser, I liked it anyway.)

The historical/political background was already well known to me and as far as who might have or could have done this or that, I like my speculation with the facts.

(The book is unfortunatly cheaply produced, though not more so than many, and and the illustrations are really muddy. A book can be handsomely done for $30. Check out, for instance, Who Murdered Chaucer - St. Martin's Press - for a sad contrast in book production, also a $30 dollar item.)