Dark Renaissance - The Dangerous Time and Fatal Genious of Shakespeare's Greatest 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.

About the author

Stephen Greenblatt is Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. He has written extensively on English Renaissance literature and acts as general editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature and The Norton Shakespeare. He is the author of fourteen books, including The Swerve, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, and Will in the World, a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

Product details

• Authors: Stephen Greenblatt
• Publisher: Norton and Co Ltd
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 09.09.2025
• EAN: 9780393882278
• ISBN: 978-0-393-88227-8
• Dimensions: 160 mm x 235 mm x 30 mm
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Modern era up to 1918; Non-fiction book; Europe, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Literary Figures, Biography: literary, European History, LITERARY CRITICISM / Renaissance, British & Irish history, United Kingdom, Great Britain, Literary studies: general, Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700, Biography: writers, c 1500 to c 1600, European history: Renaissance, 1485–1603 (Tudor period), HISTORY / Europe / Renaissance, Literary studies: c 1400 to c 1600