The World of Christopher Marlowe
David Riggs
Henry Holt and Company (2004)

“Our first great poetic dramatist and a defiant rebel against all social norms.” Stanley Wells

Over the years, I have read or re-read several biographies of William Shakespeare (1564-1616), but I knew little (if anything) of any of his contemporaries until I purchased a copy of David Riggs’s The World of Christopher Marlow. Marlowe (1564-1593) is the gravitational center of Riggs’s narrative but the Age of Elizabeth is the book’s context, its frame of reference, as is also true of  Stephen Greenblatt’s biography of Marlowe,  Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival. I highly recommend both.

These are among the questions of greatest interest to me. Riggs addresses all of them:

o What were the forces and influences in Marlowe’s childhood and adolescence that had the greatest impact on his subsequent development?
o To what extent (if any) were his wounds self-inflicted?
o To what extent (if any) did he personify the best and worst of the Elizabethan Era?
o What were the nature and extent of his relationship with Shakespeare?
o What are the defining characteristics of Elizabeth’s leadership during her reign?

o Which of his literary works seems to have had the greatest impact?
o What are the specific circumstances of Marlowe’s death?
o What do his life and death reveal about the dangerous society in which he lived?
o What are Marlowe’s most significant contributions to the theatrical world at that time?
o What (if any) lessons can be learned from his life?

I thought you might appreciate having a few brief excerpts from this superb biography that suggest the thrust and flavor of David Riggs’s lively and eloquent style.

“Christopher Marlowe was born on the threshold of modern theatre, before the words playwright and dramatist had entered the English language…He offered spectators a thrilling repertory of poetic tragedies that spoke to their most urgent concerns — grinding poverty, class conflict, erotic desire, religious dissent, and the fear of hell.  Marlowe’s eight-year career exploded with [four] masterpieces.” (Page 1)

“In writing Dr Faustus, Marlowe projected his predicament on his protagonist. The play registers his awareness that the Church produces sin and damnation for its own ends. ‘Faustus is gone, regard his hellish fall!’ From his perspective, the play performed a cathartic function. Dr Faustus demystifies the Calvinist theology that would and did  condemn Christopher Marlowe to destruction and hellfire. The protagonist’s entrapment is the best measure of the poet’s freedom.” (249)

“Christopher Marlowe, the notorious blasphemer, was another spectacle in the theatre of God’s judgements. The irony here is that the playwright had written so brilliantly about the contrived spectacles of sin and damnation. Now [Thomas] Puckering, right on cue, played the hypocrite to Marlowe’ as atheist ‘and let due praise be given/Neither to fate nor fortune, but to heaven.'”(338)

NOTE: Pucking references; Pages 295, 321, 335, 336-337, 341, and 346.

In As You Like It, “Shakespeare allows the fool to voice the anti-authoritarian impulses that motivate the satirist, but only on the condition that he cloak his rebellion in innocuous jokes. The clown can flout Shakespeare’s ethic of civility because he is, after all, a clown. Such was the lesson of Marlowe’s meteoric career: Teachers of desire play a dangerous game; when they cross the line that separates art from politics, they are in for a reckoning. Marlowe took the risk and paid the price. In the words of his friend Thomas Nashe, ‘His life he condemned in comparison of the liberty of speech.'” (344)

Like all other great historians throughout history dating back to Herodotus and Thucydides, David Riggs and Stephen Greenblatt focus on each key development, on the given WHAT, WHO, WHEN, and (probable) WHY that are most important.

The World of Christopher Marlowe and Dark Renaissance offer excellent cases in point.

Bravo!

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Here are two suggestions while you are reading The World of Christopher Marlowe: First, highlight key passages. Also,  perhaps in a lined notebook kept near-at-hand,  record your comments, questions, and page references. Pay special attention to Riggs’s skillful coordination and assimilation of key persons, their relationships, key events, and dire consequences of interaction between and among the major factors and forces in Christopher Marlowe’s world.

These two simple tactics — highlighting and documenting — will expedite frequent reviews of key material later.