Poor boy. Dark star. Spy. Transgressor. Genius.

This is the thrilling and subversive life story of Christopher Marlowe – Shakespeare’s inspiration and rival, who helped to bring England out of the cultural darkness and into the light.

’Sparkling, addictive reading' MAGGIE O'FARRELL
'Brilliant' JAMES SHAPIRO
'As evocative as any novel' PHILIPPA GREGORY
'An unforgettable literary biographical tour de force' INDEPENDENT

In brutally repressive Elizabethan England, artists are frightened; foreigners are suspect; popular entertainment largely consists of coarse spectacles, animal fights, and hangings. Into this crude world comes an ambitious cobbler’s son from Canterbury with an uncanny ear for Latin poetry – which to him is a secret portal to beauty, visionary imagination, transgressive desire, and dangerous scepticism.

What Christopher Marlowe finds on the other side of that door, and what he does with it, brings about a spectacular explosion of English literature, language, and culture, enabling the success of many others, including his contemporary and collaborator William Shakespeare. By the time of his murder in a Deptford tavern in 1593, the 29-year-old Marlowe will be the most celebrated dramatist of his time.

Stephen Greenblatt grippingly reconstructs the involvement with the queen’s spy service that shaped Marlowe’s brief, troubling life and helped fashion his masterpieces. Along the way we discover how the people Marlowe knew, and the transformations they wrought, gave birth to the economic, scientific, and cultural power of the modern world – involving Faustian bargains with which we reckon still.

Dark Renaissance is a scintillating life of a writer whose blazing talent catapulted England from cultural backwater to crucible of creativity.

"An unforgettable literary biographical tour de force. Almost single-handed, [Greenblatt] has curated a rehabilitation of Marlowe's reputation as the greatest rival, collaborator and exact contemporary of the glover's boy from Stratford ... Greenblatt nails the playwright's staggering originality ... [A] brilliant portrait of a strangely modern, tragic figure, who's 'fatal genius' became the catalyst for this earthquake in English literature and culture" - Independent

"In his riveting new biography, Dark Renaissance, Harvard scholar Stephen Greenblatt explores Marlowe’s short, subversive life and argues that it was he, even more than Shakespeare, who ‘awakened the genius of the English Renaissance’ … Dazzling" - Daily Mail

"This gripping biography focuses on Marlowe's brief, brilliant life ... Greenblatt fills [the book] with lively descriptions of the world that shaped this remarkable mind" - The Times

"This is a good, solid and well-informed biography. Greenblatt has an excellent sense of what came before Marlowe… [and] vividly evokes the London of the time… Dark Renaissance is readable and trustworthy" - Spectator

"Right on cue comes the first major biography of Marlowe in two decades, written by the unquestioned eminence of Shakespearean new historicism … In its sweep, pace and scholarship, this book vividly contextualises Marlowe’s brilliance as a dissident thinker and wildly innovative writer" - Literary Review

"In previous books, including Will in the World, his best-selling biography of Shakespeare, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Swerve, Greenblatt emphasised the importance of cultural context in understanding literature, the so-called new historicism. In Dark Renaissance, he does so with dazzling effects, evoking England circa 1580 as an almost dystopian backwater" - Associated Press

"In Dark Renaissance, Greenblatt tells this murky but exhilarating tale with pace and gusto ... No one can speculate with greater authority than Mr Greenlatt" - Wall Street Journal

"Elegant, engrossing ... From aristocrats to shopkeepers to 'bawdy baskets' (prostitutes), Greenblatt captures the crowds that cut across classes. His analysis is Shakespearean in spirit, crisp and conversational, tipped with puns and wordplay" - Boston Globe

"In Greenblatt's hands, literary scholarship, too, has taken a great leap forward. A scintillating biography of Christopher Marlowe by one of America's leading humanities scholars" - Kirkus

"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" - Booklist