Stephen Greenblatt with Oskar Eustis: Dark Renaissance

Pulitzer Prize-winning literary historian Stephen Greenblatt — author of the bestselling Shakespeare biography Will in the World — joins us for the launch of Dark Renaissance, his riveting new biography of Shakespeare’s chief rival, Christopher Marlowe, in conversation with Oskar Eustis.

Stephen Greenblatt’s Will in the World transformed our understanding of the Bard. And in Dark Renaissance, Greenblatt turns to the brief and tumultuous life of Shakespeare’s friend, collaborator and rival, Christopher Marlow — author of Tamburlaine, Faustus, and some of the most remarkable drama and poetry ever written.

In brutally repressive 16th century England, artists had been frightened into dull conventionality, foreigners were suspect, and popular entertainment consisted of animal fights and hangings. Into this world came Marlowe, a cobbler’s son with an uncanny ear for Latin poetry, who navigated the treacherous environment to create works that led to a spectacular explosion of English literature and culture, and enabled the success Shakespeare. With propulsive narrative flair, brilliant literary criticism, and keen historical insight, Greenblatt explores how the people Marlowe knew, and the transformations they wrought, birthed the economic, scientific, and cultural power of the modern world — involving Faustian bargains with which we reckon still.

Who was Christopher Marlowe? Why was his legacy overshadowed by Shakespeare’s? What makes his writing so enduringly relevant for our time? In celebration of Dark Renaissance’s launch, join us as Greenblatt — a national treasure, crucial to our understanding of the history of English literature — brings Marlowe to life.

“Brilliant and riveting.” — James Shapiro

“I cannot think of a more effortlessly gripping and unputdownable non-fiction I’ve read in the last decade or so. Absolutely masterful.” — Neel Mukherjee