A collection of the four major plays by Christopher Marlowe: Tamburlaine, Parts 1 and 2, The Jew of Malta, Edward II and Dr Faustus, with a new introduction by Brian Gibbons. All of these plays are widely studied at both A and undergraduate level.
Christopher Marlowe (1564-93) was an English playwright and poet,
who through his establishment of blank verse as a medium for drama
did much to free the Elizabethan theatre from the constraints of
the medieval and Tudor dramatic tradition. His first play
Tamburlaine the Great, was performed that same year, probably by
the Admiral's Men with Edward Alleyn in the lead. With its
swaggering power-hungry title character and gorgeous verse the play
proved to be enormously popular; Marlowe quickly wrote a second
part, which may have been produced later that year. Marlowe's most
famous play, The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, based on the
medieval German legend of the scholar who sold his soul to the
devil, was probably written and produced by 1590, although it was
not published until 1604. Historically the play is important for
utilizing the soliloquy as an aid to character analysis and
development. The Jew of Malta (c. 1590) has another unscrupulous
aspiring character at its centre in the Machiavellian Barabas.
Edward II (c. 1592), which may have influenced Shakespeare's
Richard II, was highly innovatory in its treatment of a historical
character and formed an important break with the more simplistic
chronicle plays that had preceded it. Marlowe also wrote two lesser
plays, Dido, Queen of Carthage (date unknown) and The Massacre at
Paris (1593), based on contemporary events in France. Marlowe was
killed in a London tavern in May 1593. Although Marlowe's writing
career lasted for only six years, his four major plays make him
easily the most important predecessor of Shakespeare.
Brian Gibbons is a distinguished scholar and editor of Shakespeare
and other early modern dramatists. He is the author of many
critical studies and a General Editor of the New Mermaids and the
New Cambridge Shakespeare series.
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