Dark Renaissance

A rigorous and sparkling exploration of what makes an artist, Dark Renaissance conjures the Elizabethan age as a place of instability, succession anxiety, and burgeoning theatrical genius. Essential and addictive reading: Greenblatt's Kit Marlowe leaps from the page with all the élan and immediacy of his plays

Maggie O'Farrell

This brilliant and riveting book brings Christopher Marlowe out of the shadows, capturing the remarkable and sudden life (and the no less sudden and violent death) of this extraordinary Elizabethan poet and playwright. No critic has done more than Stephen Greenblatt to illuminate Marlowe’s world and work. Dark Renaissance is a worthy successor and companion to Will in the World

James Shapiro

As evocative as any novel, Stephen Greenblatt takes the reader into the biting cold and dark of the little ice age of Elizabethan England and explores the network of spies, patrons, poets and fraudsters who copied, exploited and trapped Christopher Marlowe. A triumphant piece of story-telling

Philippa Gregory

A terrific read … as propulsive as that of any spy novel … A thrilling, twisty tale that brilliantly captures the horror and the possibilities of that lost, crepuscular world

New York Times

A great book ... Riveting and evocative

Ben Elton, Daily Express

An unforgettable literary biographical tour de force. Almost single-handed, [Greenblatt] has curated a rehabilitation of Marlowe's reputation as the greatest rival, collaborator and exact contemporary of the glover's boy from Stratford ... Greenblatt nails the playwright's staggering originality ... [A] brilliant portrait of a strangely modern, tragic figure, who's 'fatal genius' became the catalyst for this earthquake in English literature and culture

Independent

In his riveting new biography, Dark Renaissance, Harvard scholar Stephen Greenblatt explores Marlowe’s short, subversive life and argues that it was he, even more than Shakespeare, who ‘awakened the genius of the English Renaissance’ … Dazzling

Daily Mail

Dazzling … vivid … Greenblatt provides a gripping narrative … which does indeed at times read like something out of Le Carré … impeccable

Jonathan Bate, Observer

A brilliant and revelatory life of Christopher Marlowe. Dark Renaissance is a gripping, fascinating portrait, seasoned with Stephen Greenblatt’s superb scholarship. Unsurpassable

William Boyd