The Elizabethan society into which Christopher Marlowe was born, in 1564, was no place for the fainthearted. In London, animal cruelty was the acme of high-concept entertainment, with large crowds paying to see a horse with a monkey on its back attacked by fierce dogs; in the same streets, foreigners were advised to keep schtum so as not to provoke rampant xenophobia; sporadic outbursts of bubonic plague ushered in what is now quaintly called social distancing; and women deemed to be scolds were swiftly muzzled with a dastardly device called a “brank.” It is from this savage world that Stephen Greenblatt, in his new book, Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival, contends that a new, subversive spirit of creativity arose in England, one that counted Marlowe as its most determined and devil-may-care pioneer.
Marlowe’s rise to prominence as a playwright and poet to rival William Shakespeare—the men were born in the same year—was nothing short of miraculous. As the son of a humble Canterbury cobbler, his prospects were hardly the stuff of dreams, but in 1579 he won a scholarship to the King’s School Canterbury, and then repeated the feat to enter Cambridge University two years later.
