Summary: Intro by Leech and 14 essays incl: Christopher Marlowe (T.S.Eliot); Marlowe’s Map (Ethel Seaton); The Damnation of Faustus (W.W.Greg); Marlowe’s Atheist Lecture (Paul H. Kocher).
*Marlowe: A Critical Study
Author:J.B.Steane
Published: Cambridge University Press 1964; 1970.
Details: Hard cover; Paperback. 390pp.
ISBN: 0521065453; 0521096243
Summary: A brief review of Marlowe’s life (‘Facts & Theories’) followed by critical studies of Marlowe’s 5 main plays (plus a note on The Massacre) and 3 poems (Lucan, Elegies, Hero & Leander)
Reviews: David Cope
Christopher Marlowe: Merlin’s Prophet
Author:Judith Weil
Published: Cambridge University Press 1977.
Details: Hard cover, Paperback (2008). 226pp.
ISBN: 0521215544
Summary: A series of essays on each of the plays challenges common views of Marlowe as a dogmatic moralist, and a dramatist of heroic energy with his outrageous heroes. Rather, argues Weil, he is an ironic writer of riddling plays, cunningly manipulating our responses to his characters.
Summary: Marlowe’s literary career, incl. his use of foreign locations, scholarship, his portrayal of family relations, and the challenge he posed to the establishment.
Summary: An accessible introduction to Marlowe’s plays, exploring themes such as religion, the New World and sexuality. Six chapters cover: life & death; his canon; theatrical context; knowledge; transgressing established values; common critical issues.
Summary: A collection of essays on Marlowe the playwright, covering aspects such as “the anti-theatrical debate”, Machiavellian ideology, violence, addiction and Marlowe’s influence on Shakespeare. Contributors incl. C.B.Kuriyama and Bevington.
Summary: A comprehensive introduction to Marlowe’s most popular play, introducing its critical history, performance history, current critical landscape and new directions in research, and surveys notable stage productions.
Christopher Marlowe (The University Wits)
Author: Robert A. Logan
Published: Ashgate Publishing, 01 Feb 2011.
Details: Hard cover. 554pp.
ISBN: 0754628574
Summary: Examines the characteristics of the six Wits and their influence on Elizabethan drama. Placing Marlowe in their context, and by assessing a selection of important essayson Marlowe, Logan finds his reputation the most prominent.
Summary: Essays under the categories Lives, Stage, and Page explores the idea of Marlowe as a working artist, how he conceives an idea, shapes and refines it, and refashions it further in his writing process. The volume reflects the flourishing state of Marlowe studies in the 21st century. [Read Introduction]
Summary: An unique perspective on the Marlowe canon as Stapleton examines Marlowe’s Elegies in the context of his seven known dramatic works and Hero and Leander, exploring how translating the Amores profited Marlowe as a writer.
[Read Introduction]
Marlowe’s Tamburlaine: A Study in Renaissance Moral Philosophy
Author:Roy W. Battenhouse
Published: Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville, Tennessee 1941, 64, 66.
Details: Hard cover. 226pp.
Summary: “Tamburlaine as Machiavellian hero-villain”
Reviews: David Cope
Christopher Marlowe
Author:Thomas Healy
Published: Northcote House Publishers 1994.
Details: Paperback. 96pp.
ISBN: 0746307071
Summary: A good, brief, critical introduction to Marlowe’s work.
Christopher Marlowe
Series: Longman Critical Readers
Editor:Richard Wilson
Published: Longman 1999.
Details: Hard cover. Textbook. 288pp.
ISBN: 0582237076
Summary: Marlowe’s work considered from a variety of angles, incl. historicism, homosexuality and feminism.
Christopher Marlowe
Author:Roger Sales
Published: MacMillan Palgrave 1991.
Details: Hard cover. 177pp.
ISBN: 0312062397
Contents: Pt I: The Dramatised Society (1) Educational Stage (2) Theatre of Hell (3) Accidental Death of a Spy. Pt II: The Drama (1) Tamburlaine (2) Jew of Malta (3) Edward II (4) Dr Faustus.
Summary: A discussion of Marlowe’s themes, structure, imagery, and stagecraft, and projected psychoanalysis of the author based on his work.
From Mankind to Marlowe: Growth of Structure in the Popular Drama of Tudor England
Author:David Bevington
Published: Harvard UP 1962.
Details: Hard cover. 320pp.
ISBN: 0674325001
Subtitle: Marlowe’s relationship to earlier theatrical forms.
Marlowe and the Politics of Elizabethan Theatre
Author:Simon Shepherd
Published: Prentice-Hall 1988.
Details: Paperback. 256pp.
ISBN: 0710813139
Summary: Marlowe’s plays read in the context of the Elizabethan theatre.
Elizabethan Fustian (Vol I)
Author:Eleanor Grace Clark
Published: NY Oxford Press 1937.
Details: Hard cover. 223pp.
Summary: A study in the social and political backgrounds of the drama, with particular reference to Christopher Marlowe.
*Ralegh and Marlowe
Author:Eleanor Grace Clark
Published: Fordham University Press, New York 1941.
Details: Hard cover. 488pp.
Summary: Links between Sir Walter Ralegh and Marlowe.
Free Will or Destiny in Doctor Faustus
Author:Viktoria Kiss
Published: VDM 2008.
Details: Paperback. 64pp.
ISBN: 9783639037548
Summary: Is human nature conducted by individual impulses or subject to a greater force called destiny? Marlowe analyses this question, says Kiss, but does not try to find Faustus guilty or innocent, rather presenting the pros and cons.
Deathly Experiments: A Study of Icons and Emblems of Mortality in Christopher Marlowe
Author:Clayton G. Mackenzie
Published: AMS Press 15 December 2010.
Details: Hard cover. 152pp.
ISBN: 0404623492
Summary: MacKenzie carefully analyses the carnival of savagery in the Marlowe’s work. The dismembering devils of Dr Faustus, the Mower of Edward II, the suicides in Dido, the gruesome brutalities of The Massacre at Paris – all reflect the popular Elizabethan conviction that death is at the very center of life. [Synopsis/Contents]
* Recommended as indispensible reading.
Note 1: RES – The Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 8, No. 30 (May, 1957), pp. 189-191, review by William A. Armstrong.
