Dark Renaissance

The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival

By: Stephen Greenblatt

Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Will in the World reveals the daring and subversive life of Christopher Marlowe―Shakespeare’s contemporary, inspiration, and rival.

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.

©2025 Stephen Greenblatt (P)2025 Recorded Books

A superb immersion

A well researched and excellently written and performed immersion in the age and in the sometimes scandalous creations of Christopher Marlowe. Superb.

The synthesis of history, intrigue, intellectual history and literature.

Probably as much as we will ever know of what happened in that small room.

Very well done.

What Greenblatt has done here is fantastic. Presenting all evidence and rather than claiming definitives, shows us all the facets of the diamond in detail. Well done as he is wont to do.

Ballerini is as usual, the perfect narrator.

Interesting and informative

Learned a lot about an author I was unfamiliar with. Enjoyed the entire production. Now must needs go find some more Marlowe to listen to.

Shakespeare’s muse

Fascinating view of 16th century England but the story jumps around a lot and in an effort to include as much information about Marlow as possible, it drones on quite a bit.