The Complete Plays

Dido, Queen of Carthage/Tamburlaine the Great, Parts One and Two/The Jew of Malta/Doctor Faustus/Edward the Second/The Massacre at Paris

‘When I behold the heavens, then I repent,
And curse thee, wicked Mephistopheles’

Christopher Marlowe – a possible spy with a reputation for atheism who was murdered in mysterious circumstances – courted danger throughout his life. A sense of dark forces operating in all social and political relationships underlies his work. In Dr Faustus, a man of great intellect and even greater ambition craves knowledge, and is prepared to sell his soul to the Devil to achieve it. Tamburlaine attempts to satisfy his desire for greatness through his domination over an ever-growing empire, while Edward II upsets the delicate balance of power in the land and plants the seed of his own murder. All the plays here show Marlowe’s fascination with the tension between weak and strong, sacred and profane.

Frank Romany’s introduction relates the plays to Marlowe’s turbulent religious world. The fully modernized texts have been newly edited from the earliest editions, and the full commentary on each play is supplemented with a glossary and an appendix of mythological and historical allusions.