"This collection seeks to expand the critical perspectives of Marlowe scholarship by bringing together essays that examine diverse aspects of Marlowe's artistry, while simultaneously embedding his poems and plays within their theatrical, cultural, and social milieux. The essays in the first section of the collection adopt theater history and performance theory to position Marlowe's plays within the theatrical context of both his day and our own.

Although numerous admirable studies have probed every facet of performance in Shakespeare's plays, the theatricality of Marlowe's plays, as well as their influence on the development of the English drama, has been largely ignored. The second section of this collection shifts from the theatrical to the cultural sphere of Marlowe's poems and plays. Few scholars would deny that Marlowe was a creator and subverter of genre par excellence, but, particularly in the past decade, very little scholarship has addressed this aspect of his genius. The essays in the third section of this collection place Marlowe's plays within their social and historical context.

However, although employing a critical methodology that has become increasingly popular during the past decade, the essays in this section also seek to discover new relationships between Marlowe's plays and their social environment."--BOOK JACKET.