Dark Renaissance

Poor boy. Dark star. Spy. Transgressor. Genius.

This is the extraordinary story of Christopher Marlowe – Shakespeare’s greatest inspiration and rival.

In brutally repressive Elizabethan London, artists are frightened; foreigners are suspect; crowds revel in animal fights and public executions. Into this crude world comes an ambitious boy whose uncanny ear for poetry and radical streak would change England forever.

Enter Christopher Marlowe. A cobbler’s son from Canterbury, by the time of his murder in 1593 Marlowe is the most celebrated playwright of his time, setting the stage for an explosion of artistic creativity. Written by one of our greatest writers on the Elizabethan era, Dark Renaissance tells Marlowe’s story: a thrilling tale of daring, scandal and tragedy which reveals Marlowe to be a blazing talent who helped break England out of the cultural darkness and into the light.

Review

What a magnificently thrilling read ... Dark Renaissance is a dazzling account of a dazzling life -- Stephen Fry

A rigorous and sparkling exploration of what makes an artist, Dark Renaissance conjures the Elizabethan age as a place of instability, succession anxiety, and burgeoning theatrical genius. Essential and addictive reading: Greenblatt's Kit Marlowe leaps from the page with all the élan and immediacy of his plays -- Maggie O'Farrell

This brilliant and riveting book brings Christopher Marlowe out of the shadows, capturing the remarkable and sudden life (and the no less sudden and violent death) of this extraordinary Elizabethan poet and playwright. No critic has done more than Stephen Greenblatt to illuminate Marlowe’s world and work. Dark Renaissance is a worthy successor and companion to Will in the World -- James Shapiro

As evocative as any novel, Stephen Greenblatt takes the reader into the biting cold and dark of the little ice age of Elizabethan England and explores the network of spies, patrons, poets and fraudsters who copied, exploited and trapped Christopher Marlowe. A triumphant piece of story-telling -- Philippa Gregory

A terrific read … as propulsive as that of any spy novel … A thrilling, twisty tale that brilliantly captures the horror and the possibilities of that lost, crepuscular world ― New York Times

A great book ... Riveting and evocative -- Ben Elton ― Daily Express

An unforgettable literary biographical tour de force. Almost single-handed, [Greenblatt] has curated a rehabilitation of Marlowe's reputation as the greatest rival, collaborator and exact contemporary of the glover's boy from Stratford ... Greenblatt nails the playwright's staggering originality ... [A] brilliant portrait of a strangely modern, tragic figure, who's 'fatal genius' became the catalyst for this earthquake in English literature and culture ― Independent

In his riveting new biography, Dark Renaissance, Harvard scholar Stephen Greenblatt explores Marlowe’s short, subversive life and argues that it was he, even more than Shakespeare, who ‘awakened the genius of the English Renaissance’ … Dazzling ― Daily Mail

About the Author

Stephen Greenblatt is Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University.

He is the author of fifteen books, including The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, which won the National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize, as well as the New York Times bestseller Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare and the classic university text Renaissance Self-Fashioning.

A prize-winning author and celebrated scholar, he has been studying, thinking and writing about Renaissance literature for his entire working life.