The most compelling characters in modern literature and plays are the ones whose motivations tend to be complex, thus demand a deeper analysis of which part of their conscious their decisions arise from – the impulsive Id, the balancing Ego, or...

The relationship between the body and soul is one obsessed over by playwrights since the morality plays of the medieval period. Renaissance writer Christopher Marlowe and 20th century American playwright Bernard Shaw are no exceptions to this: in...

The Renaissance period in European history oversaw a dramatic disintegration of beliefs that had largely helped to structure contemporary society, such as the belief that the Christian faith should be the epicenter of everyday life. It is...

In both the medieval morality play The Summoning of Everyman, first performed in 1510, and Christopher Marlowe’s Renaissance Drama Doctor Faustus, the search for progress arises through the themes of religion, morality and avarice. In Everyman, ...

The English Renaissance notably developed alongside a volatile political backdrop intertwined with internal conflict, dynastic instability and, perhaps most importantly, religious tension. Religious settlement in the sixteenth and early...

In Christopher Marlowe's narrative poem Hero and Leander, a major obstacle confronts the reader in the form of attempting to separate the narrative voice of the poet Marlowe from that which W.L. Godshalk calls "the sensibility of a dramatized...

On the afternoon of June 11, 1814, at the home of Lady Sitwell, George Gordon, Lord Byron, upon seeing his cousin Lady Anne Wilmot Horton in "a mourning dress of spangled black" (Leung 312), was so moved that by the next day he had written "She...

Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” and Andrew Marvell’s “To his Coy Mistress” offer powerful examples of sensual, carpe diem Renaissance poetry. In both poems, the poet-speakers attempt to spur their beloveds into action...

The poems “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” by Sir William Raleigh, and “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” by Christopher Marlowe have the same central theme, that love and nature are beautiful but don’t last forever. Both authors use...

Although the nature vs. nurture debate seems as though it is a rather contemporary argument, it was actually a common thematic element of Elizabethan literature. Christopher Marlowe, in particular, focused on human behavior and the influences of...

Thomas Campion and Christopher Marlowe have explored the concept of ‘the ideal’ in ‘A Man of Life Upright’ and ‘Come Live with me, and be my Love,’ respectively. Campion delves into the idea that a man may be more content in life by upholding...

“The dominant mode of ethical thinking in the Renaissance argued that the passions should be governed by reason to ensure good order in society.”

A paradox exists in Renaissance ethics: passions – by definition, ‘barely controllable’ – should be...

The gods as depicted in Christopher Marlowe’s Hero and Leander are beings that exist outside of the realm of morality, living near humans but bound by separate rules and ideas. This is especially true in relation to sexuality, and the senses of...

Christopher Marlowe’s Hero and Leander challenges 16th century Christian teaching. Christian teaching on desire stems from Thomas Aquinas’ Natural Law which is a set of moral laws intended to identify God’s purpose for human life. One of the five...

"Religion hides many mischiefs from suspicion" (I, ii, 279-280)

Religion, as Barabas describes in this quotation from The Jew of Malta, acts as a measure in defending one's actions as moral or just. Christopher Marlowe presents this use of...

The genre of revenge tragedy has been both popular and unique in its ability to simultaneously arouse feelings that appear to be unrelated in its audience: vengeance and sympathy. What makes this genre vary from play to play, however, is the...

Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare wrote plays in England during a time when Jews were banned from the country, making it unlikely that Jewish characters in their plays would amount to more than anti-Semitic stereotypes. Both Marlowe’s ...

The issue of religion is a prominent theme throughout Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta. It is the driving force of the events of the play, as Barabas’s quest for total revenge is kicked off with the Christian governor Ferneze singling out...

The period referred to as the Golden Age of English Drama was a revolutionary period when it came to the portrayal of human thought and behavior in society. Some would even argue that this period in Renaissance England was a major influence in the...

Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine was a great milestone in Elizabethan drama and shocked audiences of the time with its unconventional tragedy plot and strikingly successful characters. Marlowe’s unusual approach with the character of Tamburlaine...

Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great, Part 1 is one of the greatest examples of the use of emblematic staging in the early-modern period. The more iconographic style which preceded in the theatres, gave way to a much more fluid visual...