The definitive biography: a masterly account of Marlowe's work and life and the world in which he lived Shakespeare's contemporary, Christopher Marlowe revolutionized English drama and poetry, transforming the Elizabethan stage into a place of astonishing creativity. The outline of Marlowe's life, work, and violent death are known, but few of the details that explain why his writing and ideas made him such a provocateur in the Elizabethan era have been available until now. In this absorbing consideration of Marlowe and his times, David Riggs presents Marlowe as the language's first poetic dramatist whose desires proved his undoing. In an age of tremendous cultural change in Europe when Cervantes wrote the first novel and Copernicus demonstrated a world subservient to other nonreligious forces, Catholics and Protestants battled for control of England and Elizabeth's crown was anything but secure. Into this whirlwind of change stepped Marlowe espousing sexual freedom and atheism. His beliefs proved too dangerous to those in power and he was condemned as a spy and later murdered. In The World of Christopher Marlowe, Riggs's exhaustive research digs deeply into the mystery of how and why Marlowe was killed.

Dr Peter Orford and his editing team have collected articles from the next generation of Shakespeare scholars to offer a glimpse into the future of Renaissance Studies. The essays included were presented at the International British Graduate Shakespeare Conference and represent research from around the globe, either exploring new territory, or redefining the work of those before them. In his foreword, Professor Stanley Wells states that ‘The essays printed here demonstrate that the future of early modern dramatic scholarship and criticism is in good hands.” The articles included are: • “Seldom Seene: Observations from Editing The Launching of the Mary, or the Seaman’s Honest Wife” by Matteo Pangallo • “Thomas Heywood and the Construction of Taste in the Repertory of Queen Henrietta’s Men” by Eleanor Collins • “Bawdiness, Crime and Low Characters in Late Elizabethan Comedy” by Shelly Hsin-Yi Hsieh • “Print and Elizabethan Military Culture” by Dong-Ha Seo • “Actors, Audiences and Authors: The Competition for Control in Brome’s The Antipodes” by Audrey Birkett • “Shakespeare’s King Richard III: The Perverted Machiavel” by Conny Loder • “Women in the Shakespearean Audience – Recognition and Authority” by Brian Schneider • “Dis-playing History: The Case of Shakespeare’s Globe” by Kelly Jones • “‘Ever Holy and Unstained’: Illuminating the Feminist Cenci Through Mary Wollstonecraft and Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus” by Kristine Johansan • “Narcissus and Modernity in Shakespeare’s Sonnets” by Will McKenzie • “Cowboys and Romans: Cymbeline and Paradigmatic Change in the Theatre” by Miles Gregory

This volume examines the proliferation of popular romances, their vilification by elite writers, and the ultimate opposition of "popular" and "literary" fiction. Using Robert Greene's "Pandosto" (1585), an Elizabethan prose romance that inspired Shakespeare's late play "The Winter's Tale" as a case study, Newcomb demonstrates that versions of the two texts repeatedly converge, resisting simple high/low division. Because Shakespeare's works are considered timeless literary achievements, critics have distanced his plays from their romance sources--a separation that until now has gone largely unquestioned. Newcomb challenges this assumption, providing a fascinating account of an early best-seller's incarnations over 250 years of literary history.