Dark Renaissance
The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival
9 September 2025
Territory Rights — Worldwide including Canada, Singapore and Malaysia, but excluding the British Commonwealth.
Description
Poor boy. Spy. Transgressor. Genius.
In repressive Elizabethan England, artists are frightened into dull conventionality; foreigners are suspect; popular entertainment largely consists of coarse spectacles, animal fights, and hangings. Into this crude world of government censorship and religious authoritarianism comes an ambitious cobbler’s son from Canterbury with a daring desire to be known—and an uncanny ear for Latin poetry. A torment for most schoolboys, yet for a few, like Christopher Marlowe, a secret portal to beauty, visionary imagination, transgressive desire, and dangerous skepticism.
What Marlowe seizes in his rare opportunity for a classical education, and what he does with it, brings about a spectacular explosion of English literature, language, and culture. His astonishing literary success will, in turn, nourish the talent of a collaborator and rival, William Shakespeare.
Dark Renaissance illuminates both Marlowe’s times and the origins and significance of his work—from his erotic translations of Ovid to his portrayal of unfettered ambition in a triumphant Tamburlaine to Doctor Faustus, his unforgettable masterpiece about making a pact with the devil in exchange for knowledge. Introducing us to Marlowe’s transgressive genius in the form of a thrilling page-turner, Stephen Greenblatt brings a penetrating understanding of the literary work to reveal the inner world of the author, bringing to life a homosexual atheist who was tormented by his own compromises, who refused to toe the party line, and who was murdered just when he had found love. Meanwhile, he explores how the people Marlowe knew, and the transformations they wrought, gave birth to the economic, scientific, and cultural power of the modern world including Faustian bargains with which we reckon still.
Reviews
"The magic of Dark Renaissance, the usual Greenblatt magic, is the way he uses the individual life to illuminate corners of the surrounding culture." — Tablet Magazine
"A rigorous and sparkling exploration of what makes an artist. Essential and addictive reading: Stephen Greenblatt’s Kit Marlowe leaps from the page with all the élan and immediacy of his plays." — Maggie O'Farrell, author of Hamnet
"Brilliant and riveting. . . . No critic has done more than Stephen Greenblatt to illuminate Marlowe’s world and work." — James Shapiro, author of 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare
"A thrilling portrait of the English theatre’s great transgressor. Stephen Greenblatt gives brilliant life to Marlowe's vaunting intellect, his reckless sexuality, his double-dealing with the security services and above all his theatrical imagination, which exploded out of nowhere to transform the Elizabethan stage." — Sir Nicholas Hytner, former Artistic Director of London’s National Theatre
"The era- and genre-transforming radicalism of Christopher Marlowe’s work has never been examined more cogently. . . . In gorgeous, gracefully authoritative prose, Stephen Greenblatt makes the miracle of artistic genius inhabit a recognizably human plane." — Tony Kushner, Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of Angels in America
"A staggering achievement in character study, about the man who could have been king of the poets had Shakespeare not supplanted him. . . . From the formidable twenty-first-century mind of Stephen Greenblatt, this is an all-inclusive exploration of one of the sixteenth century’s most consequential and extraordinary talents." — John Douglas Thompson, Tony Award-nominated actor in Tamburlaine, Parts I and II
"A vivid back-stage tour of the turbulent world from which Marlowe emerged and what may have been his enduring impact on early modern culture. Essential reading." — Farah Karim-Cooper, director, Folger Shakespeare Library
"Stephen Greenblatt’s writing is effortless, his humor superb, his arguments unanswerable. He brings to life Marlowe in the way that he did Shakespeare. . . . In short, he has done it again: written a totally engrossing, compelling read." — Eric Idle, Grammy Award-winning lyricist, and co-creator of the Monty Python comedy group
"Effortlessly gripping and unputdownable." — Neel Mukherjee, author of Choice
"As evocative as any novel, Stephen Greenblatt takes the reader into the biting cold and dark of the little ice age of Elizabethan England and explores the network of spies, patrons, poets and fraudsters who copied, exploited and trapped Christopher Marlowe. A triumphant piece of storytelling." — Philippa Gregory, author of The Other Boleyn Girl
"This is such a gleeful piece of writing. Greenblatt writes with his customary exuberance - which, of course, perfectly suits his principal subject, the life and work of Christopher Marlowe." — Simon Russell Beale
"A scintillating biography of Christopher Marlowe by one of America’s leading humanities scholars." — Kirkus (starred review)
"Greenblatt excels at immersing the reader in that time and place and has an ear for the delectable turn of phrase. The rich historical detail, thriller-like pacing, and an abundance of intrigue keep the pages turning." — Bill Kelly, Booklist
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