Christopher Marlowe - Complete Plays, Poems & Translations

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE (1564-1593) was an English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era, and the foremost tragedian of his day. He greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was born in the same year as Marlowe and who rose to become the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright after Marlowe's early death.

A possible spy with a reputation for atheism who was murdered in mysterious circumstances, Marlowe courted danger throughout his life. A sense of dark forces operating in all social and political relationships underlies his work. In DOCTOR FAUSTUS, a man of great intellect and even greater ambition craves knowledge, and is prepared to sell his soul to the Devil to achieve it. TAMBURLAINE attempts to satisfy his desire for greatness through his domination over an ever-growing empire, while EDWARD II upsets the delicate balance of power in the land and plants the seed of his own murder.

Though best known for his plays, Marlowe was also an accomplished and celebrated poet. The Penguin Classics edition of his poems and translations contains his complete lyric works, from his translations of Ovidian elegies to his most famous poem, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," to the impressive epic mythological poem "Hero and Leander."


* THE COMPLETE PLAYS (Penguin Classics, 2003). Edited by Frank Romany and Robert Lindsey. -- ePUB

* THE COMPLETE POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS (Penguin Classics, 2007). Edited with an Introduction by Stephen Orgel. -- PDF