Finished reading: Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival by Stephen Greenblatt 📚
As a fan of Stephen Greenblatt’s 2004 bestseller Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, I eagerly bought Greenblatt’s latest book, Dark Renaissance. This time, instead of Shakespeare, Greenblatt describes the tempestuous life of Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe, author of several masterpieces including Doctor Faustus, who was murdered at the age of 29 in suspicious circumstances. While details about Marlowe’s life and violent death are scant, Greenblatt creates a compelling and vivid portrait of Marlowe’s brilliant and all-too-short life by vividly describing the historical, political, and especially religious context of Elizabethan England in the latter decades of the 16th century. To describe those years as “dangerous times” seems an understatement, especially pertaining to the struggle over Catholicism and Anglicanism, and there is evidence that Marlowe was right in the middle of it, serving as a spy for the crown while also involved promoting atheism – dangerous indeed. Greenblatt is not averse to conjecture when necessary to fill in details, but when he does so, it was always used as a way of bringing a moment or issue to life, and I never felt that he was overreaching. The result is as close to a page-turner as you’re likely to find in a book of non-fiction history, and I recommend it without reservation.
