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Christopher Marlowe: The Man in His Time
Christopher or Kit Marlowe (1564-93), was an English Elizabethan writer who rose from a shoemaker’s son to become a Cambridge scholar, famous playwright, and secret agent of the queen’s court.[1] He was murdered and perhaps assassinated before the age of thirty. In just six short years of production, he influenced Shakespeare and many others and left an indelible mark on English literature. If you know who he was, congratulations on your education, if you were like me before I read this book, I could not have told you hardly anything about him except the name sounded familiar. This is a good book to read about Christopher Marlowe because he was a very interesting and important person in English literature, the author has excellent credentials, and the narrative style is pleasant to read and informative. Marlowe was a very interesting and influential person. One of his most famous quotes is from Doctor Faustus, “Was this the face that launcht a thousand shippes?”[2] This is from the scene where Faustus has Mephistopheles raise Helen of Troy from the dead to be his paramour and he falls helplessly in love. Marlowe rose rapidly in fame in London for his plays. Even after his…
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The Defense of Poesy
Otherwise known as An Apology for Poetry by Sir Philip Sidney Edited with Introduction and Notes by Alfred S. Cook 1890 The actual Defense of Poesy was only 58 pages, however with an introduction of 40 pages and 74 pages of copious notes, I was curious enough to buy this book and read it. Who was Sir Philip Sidney and why had I never heard of him? Sidney (1554-1586) was an Englishman who died young at the age of thirty-one. In that short span of years he traveled throughout Europe, he was appointed as an Ambassador to Germany, was a member of Parliament (twice), knighted by the Queen of England, married, had a daughter who became a Countess, appointed Governor of Flushing (Netherlands), fought, and later died from a wound at the Battle of Zutphen (part of the Eighty Years’ War). He is known to have written Astrophel and Stella, The Lady of May, Arcadia, and the Defense of Poesy. He was an acquaintance of both Edmund Spenser and Sir Francis Drake. This was the Elizabethan Age. What amazed me was the breadth of sources that Sidney uses in this work. He was evidently extremely well read. Not only was he…