In repressive Elizabethan England, artists are frightened into conventionality. Into this world of government censorship, comes a writer with an uncanny ear for Latin poetry, Christopher Marlowe. What Marlowe seizes in his opportunity for an education, and what he does with it, brings about a explosion of English literature. His success will nourish the talent of a collaborator and rival, William Shakespeare. DARK RENAISSANCE illuminates Marlowe’s times and significance of his work. Introducing us to Marlowe’s genius, Stephen Greenblatt brings understanding of the literary work to reveal the inner world of the author, bringing to life a homosexual atheist who was tormented, who refused to toe the party line, and who was murdered when he had found love.

One manuscript, plucked from a thousand years of neglect, changed the course of human thought and made possible the world as we know it.