Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) emerges in most accounts of his life by biographers and critics as a mysterious and sensational action figure, a hapless pawn of circumstance, or a pseudonymous cipher. Constance Brown Kuriyama's new biography reconstructs the eventful life of a radically innovative playwright who flourished briefly and died violently more than four hundred years ago, yet persists in the romantic imagination even today.
Many discoveries about Marlowe's life have emerged over the past hundred years. The author here supplements these findings with new material, placing the dramatist and poet more precisely in his historical milieu. Kuriyama interprets Marlowe's acts of violence—inexplicable though they may seem—as logical consequences of the circumstances he faced. Experience and temperament both accounted for the characteristically brash way he moved through the world.
The stringent constraints of Elizabethan society, which encouraged intense political and religious conflicts, had a great influence on Marlowe's thinking, while his ambitions were stirred by the period's unprecedented opportunities for talented individuals to rise in society. The documentary evidence assembled by Kuriyama—and made available to readers—allows her to show how Marlowe was able to take advantage of Elizabethan social mobility. In the context of Elizabethan education, society, and culture, Marlowe becomes a fully human, three-dimensional figure.
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Christopher Marlowe: A Renaissance Life
Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) emerges in most accounts of his life by biographers and critics as a mysterious and sensational action figure, a hapless pawn of circumstance, or a pseudonymous cipher. Constance Brown Kuriyama's new biography reconstructs the eventful life of a radically innovative playwright who flourished briefly and died violently more than four hundred years ago, yet persists in the romantic imagination even today.
Many discoveries about Marlowe's life have emerged over the past hundred years. The author here supplements these findings with new material, placing the dramatist and poet more precisely in his historical milieu. Kuriyama interprets Marlowe's acts of violence—inexplicable though they may seem—as logical consequences of the circumstances he faced. Experience and temperament both accounted for the characteristically brash way he moved through the world.
The stringent constraints of Elizabethan society, which encouraged intense political and religious conflicts, had a great influence on Marlowe's thinking, while his ambitions were stirred by the period's unprecedented opportunities for talented individuals to rise in society. The documentary evidence assembled by Kuriyama—and made available to readers—allows her to show how Marlowe was able to take advantage of Elizabethan social mobility. In the context of Elizabethan education, society, and culture, Marlowe becomes a fully human, three-dimensional figure.
Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) emerges in most accounts of his life by biographers and critics as a mysterious and sensational action figure, a hapless pawn of circumstance, or a pseudonymous cipher. Constance Brown Kuriyama's new biography reconstructs the eventful life of a radically innovative playwright who flourished briefly and died violently more than four hundred years ago, yet persists in the romantic imagination even today.
Many discoveries about Marlowe's life have emerged over the past hundred years. The author here supplements these findings with new material, placing the dramatist and poet more precisely in his historical milieu. Kuriyama interprets Marlowe's acts of violence—inexplicable though they may seem—as logical consequences of the circumstances he faced. Experience and temperament both accounted for the characteristically brash way he moved through the world.
The stringent constraints of Elizabethan society, which encouraged intense political and religious conflicts, had a great influence on Marlowe's thinking, while his ambitions were stirred by the period's unprecedented opportunities for talented individuals to rise in society. The documentary evidence assembled by Kuriyama—and made available to readers—allows her to show how Marlowe was able to take advantage of Elizabethan social mobility. In the context of Elizabethan education, society, and culture, Marlowe becomes a fully human, three-dimensional figure.
Constance Brown Kuriyama is Professor of English at Texas Tech University. She is the author of Hammer or Anvil: Psychological Patterns in Christopher Marlowe's Plays, coeditor of A Poet and a Filthy Play-maker: New Essays on Christopher Marlowe, and translator and editor of The Intimate Charlie Chaplin.
Table of Contents
Introduction1. A Canterbury Tale2. Fetching Gentry from the University3. Commencing M.A.: Acquaintances, Friends, and Connections4. A Poet's Life in London5. Lord Strange and Thomas Walsingham6. Fortune Turns Base7. A Trim Reckoning8. The Dead Shepherd9. Marlow Lost and FoundAppendix: Transcriptions and Translations of Selected DocumentsReferencesIndex
What People are Saying About This
Maurice Charney
Christopher Marlowe: A Renaissance Life is unlike any biography of Marlowe that I know. It is an indispensable sourcebook as well as a biography. Constance Brown Kuriyama's authoritative book includes documents that have never been reprinted before.
Patrick Cheney
It is not easy to write a temperate biography of a young man reputed to be 'intemperate and of cruel hart,' but Constance Brown Kuriyama does just that. With cool reason and fresh research, she throws water onto the conspiratorial fire that today surrounds Marlowe's life and death, and in the process she makes a splash of her own. The Marlowe she constructs is a more complex and humane historical figure than the one we have inherited. At the center of her narrative is the shift that occurred late in Marlowe's life, a shift reflected in the diminution of his tragic heroes: recognizing that it was impossible to be the superman he had put on the stage, he became resentful, angry, and finally explosive.