Christopher Marlowe, Renaissance Dramatist

Renaissance Dramatists

Series Editor, Sean McEvoy

An invaluable resource for all students of Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre, each volume in the series provides an authoritative and up-to-date survey of a major dramatist's work with a focus on the plays in performance on stage and screen.

Each guide provides:

* An informative account of the writer's entire dramatic output, with an emphasis on those plays most frequently studied at university, college and school

* Detailed and relevant contextual information on history, culture, politics and biography

* A lucid survey of important recent criticism

* Original critical readings of the major plays

Christopher Marlowe, Renaissance Dramatist

Lisa Hopkins

This book offers a comprehensive and accessible introduction to all of the plays of Christopher Marlowe. It explores Marlowe as a playwright whose work taps into the central concerns of his age, and our own: religious uncertainty, the clash between Islam and Christianity, the discovery of America, ideas of sexuality and gender identity, and the rôle of the marginalised inidividual in society.

Each of the six chapters focuses on a specific aspect of Marlowe's work and its cultural contexts: Marlowe's life and death; the Marlowe canon; the theatrical contexts and stage history of the plays; Marlowe's distinctive interest in old and new branches of knowledge; the ways in which he transgresses against established norms and values; and the major issues which have been raised in critical discussions of his plays. Each chapter allows the reader to see the significance, scope and distinctive contribution made by Marlowe in all his plays, and his place in the development of Renaissance drama.

Lisa Hopkins is Professor of English at Sheffield Hallam University.

Contents; 1. Marlowe's Life and Death; 2. The Marlowe Canon; 3. Marlowe on Stage, 1587-2007: Theatrical Contexts and Dramaturgical Practice; 4. Marlowe as Scholar: Old and New Knowledges in the Plays; 5. Marlowe the Horizon-Stretcher: Daring God out of Heaven and conquering new worlds; 6. Critical Issues.