Focusing upon Christopher Marlowe as playwright, the essays in this collection position the dramatist's plays within the dramaturgical, ethical, and sociopolitical matrices of his own era. The volume also examines some of the most heated controversies of the early modern period - including the anti-theatrical debate, the relations between parents and children, and the discourse of addiction. Some of the chapters also explore the influence of Marlowe on Shakespeare.

Introduction, Sara Munson Deats, Robert A. Logan; Part 1 Marlowe and the Theater; Chapter 1 "Mark this show", Sara Munson Deats; Chapter 2 Marlowe's Edward II and the Early Playhouse Audiences, Ruth Lunney; Chapter 3 Edmund Kean, Anti-Semitism, and The Jew of Malta, Stephanie Moss; Part 2 Marlowe And The Family; Chapter 4 The Hopeless Daughter of a Hapless Jew, Lagretta Tallent Lenker; Chapter 5 A Study in Ambivalence, Joyce Karpay; Chapter 6 Masculinity, Performance, and Identity, Merry G. Perry; Part 3 Marlowe, Ethics, and Religion; Chapter 7 Almost Famous, Always Iterable, Rick Bowers; Chapter 8 Misbelief, False Profession, and The Jew of Malta, William M. Hamlin; Chapter 9 Doctor Faustus and the Early Modern Language of Addiction, Deborah Willis; Chapter 10 Rhetorical Strategies for a locus terribilis, Christine McCall Probes; Chapter 11 Barabas and Charles I, John Parker; Part 4 Marlowe and Shakespeare; Chapter 12 Marlowe, Shakespeare, and the Theoretically Irrelevant Author, Constance Brown Kuriyama; Chapter 13 "Glutted with Conceit", Robert A. Logan; Chapter 14 Christopher Marlowe, David Bevington;