Marlowe Research Paper

THE UNIVERSITY WITS: The growing popularity and diversity of the drama, its secularization, and the growth of a class of writers who were not members of holy orders led in the 16th century to a new literary phenomenon, the secular professional playwright. The first to exploit this situation was a group of writers known as the University Wits, young men who had graduated at Oxford or Cambridge with no patrons to sponsor their literary efforts and no desire to enter the Church. They turned to playwriting to make a living. In doing so they made Elizabethan drama more literary and more dramatic--and they also had an important influence on both private and public theaters because they worked for each. They set the course for later Elizabethan and

He was born in Canterbury and educated there at Cambridge and adopted literature as a profession. Marlowe's plays, all tragedies were written within a short span of five years (1587-92). He had no bent for comedy and the comic parts found in some of his plays are always inferior. As a dramatist Marlowe had serious limitations. Only in "Edward the Second" does he show any sense of plot construction, while his characterization is of the simplest and lack the warm humanity of Shakespeare. All the plays except "Edward the Second" revolve around one figure drawn in bold outlines. Indeed to appreciate Marlowe properly we must put aside conventional ideas of the drama and view his play as the representation of a poetic vision, the typically Renaissance quest for power combined with the quest for beauty. Each of his plays has behind it the driving force of this vision, which gives it an artistic and poetic unity. His verse is notable for its burning energy, its splendor of direction and its sensuous richness. Full of bold primary colours, his poetry is crammed with imagery from the Classics. "Tamburlaine the Great" centered on one inhuman figure, is on a theme essentially undramatic in that the plot allows no possibility for complication. The play is episodic and lacking any cohesion. Yet it contains much of Marlowe's best blank verse. "The Second part of Tamburlaine the Great" is inferior to its

He was born in Norwich, educated at Cambridge and at Oxford, and then took to a literary life in London. We can refer only to his thirty-five prose tracts, which are probably the best of his literary work for; they reveal his intense though erotic energy, his quick malicious wit and his powerful imagination. Among his plays are "Alphonsus", "King of Aragon", easily his best work and containing some fine representations of Elizabethan life. "Orlando Furioso", adapted from an English translation of "Aristo". Greene is weak in creating characters and his style is not of outstanding merit. But his humour is somewhat genial in his plays and his methods less austere than those of the other