Constructing Christopher Marlowe

From Greene’s ‘mad and scoffing poet’ to Greenblatt’s flaunter of his ‘society’s cherished orthodoxies’, Marlowe’s putative personality has licensed and informed disparate and often conflicting readings of his writings. This book illustrates and challenges the ways in which the writer has been constructed by the prejudices of readers, critics and directors. Taking nothing on trust, the contributors to this volume review what is known about Marlowe’s life, the publication of his plays, conditions in Elizabethan theatre, and his reputation among his contemporaries and late twentieth-century critics. Their essays will challenge some preconceptions about Marlowe by tackling major aspects of his dramaturgy, his use of magic, the homoeroticism of the plays, his female characters, twentieth-century performances of his plays, and the radical nature of his narrative poem Hero and Leander. Together they contribute to the critical effort to construct a fuller understanding of the poet and playwright.