Marlowe And The Popular Tradition: Innovation In The English Drama Before 1595 (paperback Or Softback)

Synopsis

Marlowe and the Popular Tradition turns away from popular stereotypes to consider Marlowe as a popular dramatist who inherited an audience with certain expectations and shared experiences. This work explores Marlowe's engagement with the traditions of the popular stage in the 1580's and early 1590's. It offers a new approach to his major plays in terms of staging and audience response, as well as providing a new account of the English drama in these important but largely neglected years.

Booknews

By paying too much and too little attention to Marlowe's (1564-1893) prologue to , Lunney (U. of Newcastle, Australia) says critics fail to recognize the true innovations he introduced to English theater. She argues that he was the first of his contemporaries to privilege the experience of the audience over the moral or didactic message of the play, and that critics should consider the impact of his plays as a whole rather than mining the texts for references to current events. Distributed in the US by Palgrave. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)