Christopher Marlowe was a preeminent Elizabethan dramatist and poet, whose work stands alongside William Shakespeare's as a pinnacle of the era. He is renowned for his magnificent blank verse, his overreaching protagonists, and his own mysterious and untimely demise. His plays exhibit a powerful dramatic energy and philosophical depth, cementing his legacy as a master of English tragedy.
Obsessed with revenge after losing his wealth and assets to the government, Barabas becomes embroiled in a web of murder schemes and love stories. Christopher Marlowe's play explores themes of religion, class, and prejudice, featuring intricate characters that drive a gripping narrative. The tension and excitement build throughout the tragedy, making it a captivating exploration of ambition and vengeance.
Their texts fully restored by recent scholarship, Marlowe's astonishing works can now be appreciated as originally written. This edition includes all of Marlowe's plays, including two versions of Doctor Faustus
The essential lyric works of the great Elizabethan playwright newly revised and updated Though best known for his plays and for courting danger as a homosexual, a spy, and an outspoken atheist Christopher Marlowe was also an accomplished and celebrated poet. This long-awaited updated and revised edition of his poems and translations contains his complete lyric works from his translations of Ovidian elegies to his most famous poem, The Passionate Shepherd to His Love, to the impressive epic mythological poem Hero and Leander.
Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), a man of extreme passions and a playwright of immense talent, is the most important of Shakespeare's contemporaries. This edition offers his five major plays, which show the radicalism and vitality of his writing in the few years before his violent death. Tamburlaine Part One and Part Two deal with the rise to world prominence of the great Scythian shepherd-robber; The Jew of Malta is a drama of villainy and revenge; Edward II was to influence Shakespeare's Richard II. Doctor Faustus, perhaps the first drama taken from the medieval legend of a man who sells his soul to the devil, is here in both its A- and its B- text, showing the enormous and fascinating differences between the two. Under the General Editorship of Dr. Michael Cordner of the University of York, the texts of the plays have been newly edited and are presented with modernized spelling and punctuation. In addition, there is a scholarly introduction and detailed annotation.
Key Features: Study methods Introduction to the text Summaries with critical notes Themes and techniques Textual analysis of key passages Author biography Historical and literary background Modern and historical critical approaches Chronology Glossary of literary terms
This classical work explores the tragic tale of Dido, the Queen of Carthage, capturing themes of love, betrayal, and fate. Recognized for its historical significance, the text has been meticulously reformatted and retyped to ensure clarity and readability, making it accessible for contemporary readers. Alpha Editions aims to preserve this important piece of literature for future generations, presenting it in a modern format that honors its original essence while enhancing the reading experience.
The rise of queer theory in the last fifteen years or so has led to a large body of criticism on Edward II , on Marlowe more generally, and indeed on Renaissance literature. This new introduction to the play takes full account of that criticism, offering students a useful and lively overview of the field. While it is often remarked that the writing in Edward II is less 'Marlovian' than his other major plays, no critic has yet fully discussed why this might be the case. The new introduction brings together these topics in order to demonstrate how our understanding of the play is enhanced by considering these aspects of the play together. In addition the introduction also includes a performance history, updating the history given in the previous edition and paying greater attention to Derek Jarman's film, with which the play is often studied. All this ensures the edition meets the needs of students and teachers fully and imaginatively.
Marlowe's play retains its power to shock even today, and this edition gives full value to its three overriding themes of sexual favouritism, political confrontation and sheer cruelty. Critics in the last twenty years, who have focused on the overtly sexual relationship between Edward and his favourite Gaveston, have hailed it as a 'gay classic'; earlier interpretations concentrated rather on the deposition by his subjects of a weak king, reading it in tandem with Shakespeare's Richard II. The introduction shows how the play works to give the audience an equal emotional commitment to opposing points of view and concludes that this is what makes Edward II such an uncomfortable and challenging play.
Tamburlaine the Great, Part One and Part Two are the first plays that Christopher Marlowe wrote for London’s then new freestanding, open-air public playhouses. They trace the progress of Tamburlaine, a Central Asian leader, as he “scourge[s] kingdoms with his conquering sword” and rises to imperial power. The plays were a powerful beginning to Marlowe’s brief career as a public theatre dramatist: the brutally masculine and martial main character immediately captured audiences, and the plays were widely imitated and parodied. Even four hundred years later, Marlowe’s Tamburlaine remains a shocking and seductive figure. The introduction and historical appendices to this new Broadview Edition provide many avenues for readers to understand these plays, presenting other portrayals of Islam from the period, related lives of Tamburlaine from other writers, and material on Marlowe’s scandalous reputation.
