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The essential lyric works of the great Elizabethan playwright-newly revised and updated Though best known for his plays-and for courting danger as a homosexual, a spy, and an outspoken atheist-Christopher Marlowe was also an accomplished and celebrated poet. This long-awaited updated and revised edition of his poems and translations contains his complete lyric works-from his translations of Ovidian elegies to his most famous poem, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," to the impressive epic mythological poem "Hero and Leander."
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PENGUIN (Q) CLASSICS THE COMPLETE POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE (b. 1564) was the eldest son of Canterbury shoemaker John Marlowe, and his wife, Katherine. He was elected to the King~s School Canterbury at the age of fourteen, and within two years had secured a scholarship that took him to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he was supposedly destined for a career in the Anglican Church. He successfully completed his BA examinations in 1584, and continued his studies as a candidate for the MA. During this period his absences from Cambridge stirred rumors that he was about to flee to the Catholic seminary at Rheims in France. In 1587 the Privy Council took the unusual step of persuading the University authorities to grant Marlowe his MA since he had been employed "in matters touching the benefit of his country"; this has fuelled speculation that he was working as a government agent. Marlowe probably began his writing career at Cambridge, composing translations of Ovid's Amores, and Lucan's Pharsalia, as well as producing Dido Queen of Carthage fot the Children of the Chapel in 1586 (possibly cowritten with Thomas Nashe). In I 587-88 he acquired his reputation as one of the leading new talents on the London stage with Tamburlaine the Great. This was followed by The Jew of Malta (c. I590), Edward the Second, and The Massacre at Paris (both c. 1592). His best known play, Doctor Faustus, was written in I592. The erotic epyllion Hero and Leander was probably written in 1592-93 when the plague forced the theaters to close. Throughout this period, Marlowe was frequently in trouble with the authorities, though for his actions and not his playwriting. He and the poet Thomas Watson were briefly imprisoned in September 1589 for their involvement in the death of William Bradley; in 1592 Marlowe was deported from Flushing, Holland, having been implicated in a counterfeiting scheme. He acquired a dangerous reputation as an atheist, and the following year he was summoned to appear before the Privy Council on charges of blasphemy, arising from evidence provided by Thomas Kyd, the author of the hugely popular play The Spanish Tragedy. Several days later, on May 30, 1593, Christopher Marlowe was fatally stabbed in Deptford. STEPHEN ORGEL is the Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor in Humanities at Stanford and general editor of the Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture. The most recent of his many books are Imagining Shakespeare (2.003) and The Authentic Shakespeare (2.002.). He has edited editions of Shakespeare's plays for Oxford, as well as works by Jonson, Marlowe, Milton, Trollope, and Edith Wharton. He is the general editor of the Pelican Shakespeare series and edited the individual Pelican editions of King Lear, The Taming of the Shrew, Pericles, Macbeth, and The Sonnets. CHRISTOPHEI{ MARLOWE The COll1plete PoelTIS and Translations Edited with an Introduction by STEPHEN ORGEL PENGUIN BOOKS 1'1!!\GUIN nOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Pengnin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, N~w York IOOI4. U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Egiinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4 P "-Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Lcd, 80