Marlowe's Empery: Expanding His Critical Contexts

Although numerous admirable studies have probed every facet of performance in Shakespeare's plays, the theatricality of Marlowe's plays, as well as their influence on the development of the English drama, has been largely ignored. The second section of this collection shifts from the theatrical to the cultural sphere of Marlowe's poems and plays. Few scholars would deny that Marlowe was a creator and subverter of genre par excellence, but, particularly in the past decade, very little scholarship has addressed this aspect of his genius. The essays in the third section of this collection place Marlowe's plays within their social and historical context.