Product Description

This book gathers all seven of the dramas of Christopher Marlowe, in which the lure of dark forces drives the shifting balances between weak and strong, sacred and profane. Supported by textual notes and featuring modern punctuation and spelling, they include:
- Dido, Queen of Carthage
- Tamburlaine the Great, Part One
- Tamburlaine the Great, Part Two
- The Jew of Malta
- Doctor Faustus
- Edward the Second
- The Massacre at Paris

With a critical introduction, a chronology of Marlowe’s life, extensive commentary, and a glossary, this will remain the authoritative anthology of Marlowe’s plays for years to come.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #70893 in Books
• Published on: 2004-01-06
• Released on: 2003-12-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 752 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780140436334
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From the Publisher
Founded in 1906 by J.M. Dent, the Everyman Library has always tried to make the best books ever written available to the greatest number of people at the lowest possible price. Unique editorial features that help Everyman Paperback Classics stand out from the crowd include: a leading scholar or literary critic's introduction to the text, a biography of the author, a chronology of her or his life and times, a historical selection of criticism, and a concise plot summary. All books published since 1993 have also been completely restyled: all type has been reset, to offer a clarity and ease of reading unique among editions of the classics; a vibrant, full-color cover design now complements these great texts with beautiful contemporary works of art. But the best feature must be Everyman's uniquely low price. Each Everyman title offers these extensive materials at a price that competes with the most inexpensive editions on the market-but Everyman Paperbacks have durable binding, quality paper, and the highest editorial and scholarly standards.

From the Inside Flap

About the Author
Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) was educated at Cambridge. A possible spy with a reputation for atheism, he was murdered at the age of twenty-nine in a tavern in Deptford.

Robert Lindsey is associate editor of the journal Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England and teaches at the Central School of Speech and Drama, London.

Frank Romany teaches English at St. John’s College, Oxford.

Customer Reviews

Good accessible edition
This is a generally good and easily available, inexpensive edition of Marlowe's plays. My only reservation about it is Steane's edition of Dr. Faustus. He makes the worst of both major texts, taking the general outline from the 1616 text but throwing in a lot of corrupt scraps from the 1604 edition for the clown scenes. I would advise anyone who wants to read Dr. Faustus to look elsewhere. I'm convinced that the 1604 version is on the whole a corrupt and truncated version of the play, but if you prefer it you might look into the Folger Library edition. If on the other hand you would rather read the play more or less as I think Marlowe wrote it, try the Signet edition edited by Sylvan Barnet.

The other plays present no major textual problems (except for The Massacre at Paris, which is pretty hopeless) and this is a fine place to meet them.

Reviewing Burnett's edition
I also wrote the April 15 review. It should be noted that I was reviewing the Steane edition, while the November reviewer was evidently reviewing the Burnett edition - since both editions have the same titles, Amazon includes the review for one in the other, and vice versa. What I said April 15 applies to Steane, not Burnett.

As to theonlytruegeo's disagreement. The B-text additions were almost certainly written in 1602, according to an entry in Henslowe's diary. Marlowe died in 1593; and the play was probably written about 1588, though some disagree. It's quite a stretch to say that Marlowe had ideas about what to include in the play, but they were not incorporated in his lifetime, or for 9 years after his death.

The 1616 version may be a little tidier, but it is also almost universally judged inferior. The additions to it (some 1000 lines) are practically all slapstick and special effects. By 1616 Marlowe's play had degenerated from a "tragicall history" into harum scarum.

But as to Burnett's edition, which I am reviewing here. It includes all of Marlowe's plays, including the 2 versions of Doctor Faustus. What I don't like is Burnett's editing. He is one of those scholars intuned to faddish critical theory. Notably, instead of considering Marlowe's works as plays, as literature, he sees them merely as "texts," thinly veiled autobiography, something to be dismantled, and so you can expect to get a warped interpretation from him. His quotes of Marlowe are usually taken out of context to prove some point, and his commentary is full of pompous language: "In its atomization of all forms of culturally conditioned distinction lies a key to the play's destabilising importance." How meaningless! He's trying to say that Marlowe picks apart cultural roles and beliefs, but what is the "destabilising importance"? George Orwell wrote an essay about meaningless language; if you write like that, Orwell might set you straight.

Burnett is too divorced from the literary values of Marlowe. In one place he praises an essay collection about Marlowe for being "Theoretically informed." No comment on whether their essays are particularly good, or insightful -- they're just "theoretically informed." And in another place: "[Marlowe's]plays are sufficently diffuse in subject matter and wide-ranging in orientation to attract readers of contrasting persuasions, from the critic interested in language and performance to the 'New Historicist' drawn to the representation of subversive types and dissident ideologies." Revealingly, he seems to be unable to see how people might be interested in Marlowe even if they don't have a particular theoretical ax to grind. Burnett seems to have forgetten that people read Marlowe because he is a great poet and playwright; he is an artist; his works are great literature. Yet he can only imagine that people would be interested in Marlowe for the opportunity to tinker on his plays with some pet critical Theory. By all means read Marlowe, but if you can, find another edition.

Not quite Shakespeare, but good--great Compliation
The Complete Plays includes all of Marlowe's plays (well, obviously.) As a bonus it includes the rather fragmentory Massacre at Paris (which many critics theorize is a corupt, unfinished, or damaged text) in a scene division only format and both editions of Doctor Faustus.

Marlowe's plays, while not on the same level as Shakespeare's best, are far and away superior to any other Renaisance era dramatist (See also, Thomas Kyd, Ben Johnson, or Richard Wharfinger--if you can find him hehe.)

The best thing about Marlowe's plays is the level of respect for the audience. Judgement of the characters is (for the most part) left to the reader. Tamburlaine can be viewed as hero and/or villian.

And, it being Renaisance drama, there are some spectacular death scenes--Edward II's anal cruxifiction, Brabas's boiling alive, Faustus's dismemberment, and the Admiral's hanging/shooting to name a few.

One complaint, and this is really more of a preference, but the textual notes are in endnote format, rather than footnote format, and they're not numbered notes--all of which makes finding latin translations a little more time consuming.
But, for fans of the genre, this is the way to go.