Christopher Marlowe

185 Pages·1991·17.27 MB·English

by  Roger Sales (auth.)

ENGLISH DRAMATISTS
Series Editor:
Bruce King
ENGLISH DRAMATISTS
Series Editor: Bruce King
Published Titles
Richard Cave, Ben Jonson
Christine Richardson and Jackie Johnston, Medieval Drama
Roger Sales, Christopher Marlowe
Forthcoming titles
Susan Bassnett, Shakespeare: Elizabethan Plays
Laura Bromley, Webster and Ford
John Bull, Vanbrugh and Farquhar
Philip McGuire, Shakespeare: Jacobean Plays
Kate McLuskie, Dekker and Heywood
Max Novak, Fielding and Gay
David Thomas, William Congreve
Cheryl Turner, Early Women Dramatists
Albert Wertheim, Etherege and Wycherley
Martin White, Middleton and Tourneur
Katharine Worth, Sheridan and Goldsmith
ENGLISH DRAMATISTS
CHRISTOPHER
MAIL OWE
Roger Sales
Lecturer in English Studies, University of East Anglia
M
MACMILLAN
© Roger Sales 1991
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First published 1991
Published by
MACMILLAN EDUCATION LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire R021 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
Typeset by TecSet Ltd, Wallington, Surrey
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Sales, Roger
Christopher Marlowe. - (Macmillan English dramatists)
I. Title
822.3
ISBN 978-0-333-45352-0 ISBN 978-1-349-21577-5 (eBook)
5
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-21577-5
In memory of Raymond Williams
Contents
Editor's Preface viii
Acknowledgements and Textual Notes
IX
PART ONE: THE DRAMATISED SOCIETY
1 The Educational Stage 3
2 The Theatre of Hell 11
3 The Accidental Death of a Spy 33
PART TWO: THE DRAMA
4 Tamburlaine the Great: Parts One and Two 51
5 The Jew of Malta 84
6 Edward II 111
7 Doctor Faustus 133
Selected Bibliography 161
Index 175
Editor's Preface
Each generation needs to be introduced to the culture and great
works of the past and to reinterpret them in its own ways. This
series re-examines the important English dramatists of earlier
centuries in the light of new information, new interests and new
attitudes. The books are written for students, theatre-goers and
general readers who want an up-to-date view of the plays and
dramatists, with emphasis on drama as theatre and on stage, social
and political history. Attention is given to what is known about
performance, acting styles, changing interpretations, the stages
and theatres of the time and theatre economics. The books will be
relevant to those interested in or studying literature, theatre and
cultural history.
BRUCE KING
Acknowledgements and Textual Notes
I am very grateful to Bruce King for asking me to write this book
and for his sound advice during its various stages. I have also been
helped by a group of Renaissance teachers at the University of
East Anglia: David Aers, Sarah Beckwith (now at Duke Univers
ity), Tony Gash, Vic Morgan and Peter Womack. I have benefited
as well from discussions with a number of undergraduate and
postgraduate students at East Anglia: Albert Chua, Gail Ching
Liang Low, Himansu Mohapatra, Jane Rondot and John Twyn
ing. It is also a pleasure to acknowledge the institutional and
intellectual support that I have received within my department
while writing this book from Patricia Hollis and Roger Fowler.
Anne, William and Jessica Sales have all helped in their own very
special ways. The existence of the Royal Shakespeare Company's
Swan Theatre has meant that there are now more opportunities to
see Marlowe's plays in performance. It was fortunate that the
period of my research and writing coincided with productions at
Stratford of The Jew of Malta, Doctor Faustus and Edward II. The
librarians at East Anglia and Cambridge have given me a lot of
assistance, particularly those dealing with inter-library loans at
East Anglia and rare books at Cambridge. I have dedicated this
book to Raymond Williams in memory of the stimulating conver
sations we used to have about relationships between drama and
dramatised societies.
Quotations from Marlowe's plays are taken from the 1971
Oxford University Press complete edition by Roma Gill, The Plays
x Acknowledgements and Textual Notes
of Christopher Marlowe. The date in brackets after all plays cited
refers to their first performance rather than to their publication.
Many of these dates have to be based on guesswork. Spelling and
punctuation have usually been modernised in the quotations from
prose texts. References are given within the argument itself rather
than in footnotes. Most prose quotations have been provided with
a conventional page number. There are nevertheless a few occa
sions when Elizabethan pagination, a letter followed by a number,
has had to be used. The following abbreviations have been used:
APC John Roche Dasent (ed.), Acts of the Privy Council of
England (1901, reprinted by Kraus Reprint, Nendelnl
Liechtenstein, 1974), volumes 14 and 24.
CH Millar Maclure (ed.), Marlowe: The Critical Heritage
1588-1896 (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1979).
HC Raphael Holinshed, Holinshed's Chronicles of En
gland, Scotland and Ireland (1587, reprinted by AMS
Press Inc., New York, 1965) 6 volumes.
ST William Cobbett (ed.), Cobbett's Complete Collection
of State Trials and Proceedings for High Treason and
other Crimes and Misdemeanors from the Earliest Pe
riod to the Present Day (R. Bagshaw, London, 1809),
33 volumes, volume I.
Wernham R. B. Wernham, 'Christopher Marlowe at Flushing in
1592', English Historical Review, 91,1976, pp.344-5.
The bibliography is divided into three sections. The first one
identifies the texts that have been used and therefore fills in some
of the gaps created by what I hope will be seen as the welcome
absence of footnotes. The second section lists some of the second
ary sources that have been used in the reconstruction of Elizabe
than society. It also includes books and articles on Marlowe which
are primarily of biographical rather than critical importance. Many
students might wish to go straight to the third section, which lists
some of the books and articles on Marlowe's plays and the