Christopher Marlowe

The author challenges two widely-accepted views of Marlowe. He is not the poet and dramatist of heroic energy, nor is he a dogmatic moralist. Instead, he belongs to Merlin's race, as his contemporary Robert Greene suggested. An ironic writer of riddling plays, he does not endorse his characters, but cunningly manipulates our responses to them. Like Erasmus or Rabelais, he uses the knowledge of his audience in a variety of surprising ways. This approach is carefully argued for each play. -- from Book Jacket.