Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival
The book teems with the erudition and wonder that permeates Greenblatt’s Will in the World and The Swerve ... Less a straightforward biography, more an evocation of Marlowe’s milieu, swimming in lush detail, immersing us in England’s social ferment at a hinge moment ... [Greenblatt's] analysis is Shakespearean in spirit, crisp and conversational, tipped with puns and wordplay ... Some of the book’s most vivid chapters chart the artistic collaboration and rivalry between Shakespeare and Marlowe ... A genial tutorial on the vitality of a humanities education ... His generous insights on Marlowe and Shakespeare and their peers are antidotes to our festering obsessions with luxury, technology, and status.
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Stephen Greenblatt’s superb skills as a literary historian and critic are thrillingly on display ... Greenblatt does yeoman’s work untangling the backstabbing, dog-eat-dog network of government spies in which it was all too easy to become ensnared ... Oh, to be a student in one of Greenblatt’s Harvard classes! As a scholar, he earns our trust by backing up his bold accolades with the careful research and astute textual analyses for which he is justly celebrated. But then he goes a step further, and admits when he is unable to nail down details with certainty ... With its mix of fastidious scholarship, storytelling chops, and educated guesswork, Dark Renaissance illuminates a cause for celebration in an age of darkness: the daring life and work of Christopher Marlowe. It also brings home the importance of studying history and the humanities, and serves as a potent reminder of the damage wrought by unchecked power and a society in which 'new frontiers of inquiry were kept shut.'
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Riveting ... [Has a] dazzling effect ... Evok[es] England circa 1580 as an almost dystopian backwater.
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