Stephen Greenblatt — Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival - with Dr. Farah Karim-Cooper - Kostenloses Hörbuch

In brutally repressive sixteenth-century England, artists had been frightened into dull conventionality; foreigners were suspect; popular entertainment largely consisted of coarse spectacles, animal fights, and hangings. Into this crude world came an ambitious cobbler's son with an uncanny ear for Latin poetry--a torment for most schoolboys, yet for a few, a secret portal to beauty, visionary imagination, transgressive desire, and dangerous skepticism. What Christopher Marlowe found on the other side of that door, and what he did with it, brought about a spectacular explosion of English literature, language, and culture, enabling the success of his collaborator and rival, William Shakespeare.

With propulsive narrative flair and brilliant literary criticism, Stephen Greenblatt reconstructs the youthful involvement with the queen's spy service that shaped Marlowe's brief, troubling life and gave us his Tamburlaine and Faustus--dramatic masterpieces on power and its costs. And with detailed 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.

Stephen Greenblatt, PhD, is Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University and general editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature. He is author of the Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning The Swerve.

Dr. Farah Karim-Cooper is the eighth director of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC. Prior to joining the Folger, Dr. Karim-Cooper was Professor of Shakespeare Studies, King’s College London, and Director of Education (Higher Education & Research) at Shakespeare’s Globe, where she worked for 20 years. She has published over 40 chapters in books, reviews, and articles. Her next book, All the World’s Your Stage: Shakespeare for Today, is written specifically for children ages 9–12. It will be published in November 2025 by DK Publishers in the UK and Penguin Random House in the United States.