I'm reading the second book in the All Souls Trilogy and as much as Harkness' portrayal of Marlowe pains me, it just conjured a hilarious scene in my mind. If you don't know the plot, the heroine travels back in time and meets The School of Night (🙄🙄🙄). So I thought about the possibility of her telling Marlowe that he's remembered in the future, but that there is one playwright more famous than him. Imagine his absolute disbelief if he named all his unlikely temporaries and then finally learned it's the hyperactive kid that spits out plays like kids today do fanfiction 😆 in my head he has a mini stroke, tries to come up with a solution, lands on killing Shakespeare, then realizes that might not work because artists tend to get more famous when they die, and finally he's like "oh my god you almost got me! Good joke!"

When Marlowe writes in Tamburlaine of the " jigging veins of rhyming mother-wits, And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay", whose plays do you think he was referring to?

I feel like I'm whistling in the wind here, but nevertheless, someone will come along at some stage - probably one of my students, lol ...

Harry Levin, Christopher Marlowe: The Overreacher (Faber & Faber: Land, 1967)

The book has a decent overview of each of Marlowe's works, and some contextual information, although it is not a biography in the way that David Riggs' work is - see my other post.

Overall, I think they complement each other well for any student of Marlowe.

Just on the off-chance. I'm about to begin teaching it to two classes as part of their UK A Level studies, years 12 and 13.

I'm familiar with the play, having studied it at Uni and taught it at A Level in the past. Just wondered if anyone was dying to talk about it ... :)

Just thought I'd pass this on. Really informative, and I thought, objective.

Anyone got any other recs. for books about Marlowe?

UK teacher here: KS3-5 (ages 11-18).

I studied (and loved) Edward II about 7 years back as an undergraduate, and I'm about to teach it to 17-18 year olds after Christmas, which led me to this sub ...

Anyone here?

My Norton Critical Edition of Doctor Faustus entitles the play as a tragedy yet after reading Text-A I laughed at the assumption. When I started to read Text-B, edited by William Bird and Samuel Rowley, these two playwrights started to make it a tragedy.

Do you think this play is a tragedy?

Hi guys! I'm just starting my MA dissertation on Marlowe, and stumbled across this sub. It looks like it's a bit quiet at the moment, so I would love to see who else is on here.

For my part, I got into studying Marlowe in my undergraduate and am looking to complete a dissertation on death and dying in the dramatic works. What is everyone else interested in?

The challenge is not that I have to address every instance (I decided to skip the obvious reflexives and demonstrative pronouns that are taken as simple elongations of the object that could otherwise just be "him" etc. No, the challenge is that I need to keep it under 650 words.

Anywho, below is what I came up with:

The word “self” appears thirty-two times in Marlowe’s play Edward II, but never alone; it is always accompanied by a qualifying prefix (i.e. “myself,” “himself,” “herself,” etc.). The first instance is found in the first scene in which Gaveston dismisses three poor men in search of employment: “I have some business; leave me to myself” (47), he tells them, and once alone he ruminates on what type of men he would prefer to employ—“wanton poets, pleasant wits, / Musicians,” etc. (50-51)—instead of these men. This first instance is significant because it sets the theme of the play, that of self-interest above interest in the good of the state.

When King Edward greets Gaveston he treats him as an equal and beyond that he treats him as a second King Edward: “knowest thou not who I am? / Thy friend, thy self, another Gaveston!” (141-142). Gaveston, now convinced of his worth in the King’s valuation, affirms, “I think myself as great / As Caesar riding in the Roman street / With captive kings at his triumphant car” (171-173). Gaveston means that he places himself beside Edward in this metaphor, but the danger lies in the dramatic irony—since Edward is so conquered in love, he may well be one of those “captive kings.” The nobility hears such pretense in Gaveston’s speech (whether or not it is there) and banishes him for his potential danger, and in his farewell Edward says to his friend, “Thou from this land, I from my self, am banished” (iv.118).

When the less-than-faithful Queen Isabella is scorned and banished by Edward, she understands that only by reinstating Gaveston will she herself be allowed in Edward’s court. Thus the equivalency that Edward places between himself and Gaveston, each calling the other his own self, is imposed on Queen Isabella; when Lancaster tries to dissuade her from giving in and pleading on behalf of Gaveston, she replies that “’Tis for myself I speak, and not for him” (219). This model of love as equivalency of selfhood is furthered when Mortimer agrees to call Gaveston back on the Queen’s behalf: Lancaster rebukes him, “dishonor not thyself” (244) but can’t grasp the paradox that Mortimer must dishonor himself to honor his other self, Isabella. This bond of theirs is affirmed when she calls him aside to persuade him: “none shall hear it but ourselves” (229).

The rift between Edward and Isablla is never more apparent than when they are in proximity with Isabella’s foil Gaveston. When Edward boldly insults the Queen who has pled for Gaveston, Gaveston rebukes Edward for his impolitic nature—“I forgot myself” (vi.257), says the king, and that “myself” which can speak fair to the queen he was reminded of by Gaveston who says, “My lord, dissemble with her” (256). Gaveston acts as an outward self for the king in this instance, a self that knows how to hide emotion under the rhetoric demanded by his position and circumstances.

Forced to abdicate and having lost Gaveston, the King feels self-negation. He asks for death or, failing that, “let me forget myself” (xx.111). Kent, delivering the news of Edward’s abdication, says, “I hear of late he hath deposed himself” (xxi.82). Although this use of “himself” is akin to those dramatic reflexive pronouns and those that simply lengthen regular object pronouns (e.g. “him” interchangeable with “himself”), which I have not addressed here, Kent’s words summarize the play: the King deposed himself, but it was not his free choice; he was deposed when his other self, Gaveston, was denied him. The notion of selfhood in this play is intriguing from the early modern perspectives of love as metaphysics and politics as based fundamentally on a strictly regulated code of appearances.

Read Edward II as an undergrad, loved it. Faustus is a close second.