Robert Greene, contemporary of Shakespeare and Marlowe and member of the group of six known as the "University Wits," is the subject of this essay collection, the first to be dedicated solely to his work. Although in his short lifetime Greene published some three dozen prose works, composed at least five plays, and was one of the period's most recognized-even notorious-literary figures, his place within the canon of Renaissance writers has been marginal at best. Writing Robert Greene offers a reappraisal of Greene's career and of his contribution to Elizabethan culture. Rather than drawing lines between Greene's work for the pamphlet market and for the professional theatres, the essays in the volume imagine his writing on a continuum. Some essays trace the ways in which Greene's poetry and prose navigate differing cultural economies. Others consider how the full spectrum of his writing contributes to an emergent professional discourse about popular print and theatrical culture. The volume includes an annotated bibliography of recent scholarship on Greene and three valuable appendices (presenting apocrypha; edition information; and editions organized by year of publication).

While Robert Greene was the most prolific and perhaps the most notorious professional writer in Elizabethan England, he continues to be best known for his 1592 quip comparing Shakespeare to "an upstart crow." In his short twelve-year career, Greene wrote dozens of popular pamphlets in a variety of genres and numerous professional plays. At his premature death in 1592, he was a bonafide London celebrity, simultaneously maligned as Grub-Street profligate and celebrated as literary prodigy. The present volume constitutes the first collection of Greene's reception both in the early modern period and in our present era, offering in its poems, prose passages, essays, and chapters that which is most singular among what has been written about Greene and his work. It also includes a complete list of Greene's contemporary reception until 1640. Kirk Melnikoff's wide-ranging and revisionist introduction organizes this reception generically while at the same time situating it in the context of recent critical methodologies.

Edward II: A Critical Reader gives students, teachers and scholars alike an overview of the play's reception both in the theatre and among artists and critics, from the end of the 16th century to the beginning of the 21st. The volume also offers a series of new perspectives on the play by leading experts in the field of early modern history and culture. Bolstered with a timeline tracking Marlowe's life and work, an up-to-date bibliography and an extensive index, this collection is an ideal and definitive guide to Edward II.

Edward II: A Critical Reader gives students, teachers and scholars alike an overview of the play's reception both in the theatre and among artists and critics, from the end of the 16th century to the beginning of the 21st. The volume also offers a series of new perspectives on the play by leading experts in the field of early modern history and culture. Bolstered with a timeline tracking Marlowe's life and work, an up-to-date bibliography and an extensive index, this collection is an ideal and definitive guide to Edward II.

Presenting the first exploration of Christopher Marlowe's complex place in the canon, this collection reads Marlowe's work against an extensive backdrop of repertory, publication, transmission, and reception. Wide-ranging and thoughtful chapters consider Marlowe's deliberate engagements with the stage and print culture, the agents and methods involved in the transmission of his work, and his cultural reception in the light of repertory and print evidence. With contributions from major international scholars, the volume considers all of Marlowe's oeuvre, offering illuminating approaches to his extended animation in theatre and print, from the putative theatrical debut of Tamburlaine in 1587 to the most current editions of his work.

Presenting the first exploration of Christopher Marlowe's complex place in the canon, this collection reads Marlowe's work against an extensive backdrop of repertory, publication, transmission, and reception. Wide-ranging and thoughtful chapters consider Marlowe's deliberate engagements with the stage and print culture, the agents and methods involved in the transmission of his work, and his cultural reception in the light of repertory and print evidence. With contributions from major international scholars, the volume considers all of Marlowe's oeuvre, offering illuminating approaches to his extended animation in theatre and print, from the putative theatrical debut of Tamburlaine in 1587 to the most current editions of his work.

Elizabethan Publishing and the Makings of Literary Culture explores the influence of the book trade over English literary culture in the decades following incorporation of the Stationers' Company in 1557. Through an analysis of the often overlooked contributions of bookmen like Thomas Hacket, Richard Smith, and Paul Linley, Kirk Melnikoff tracks the crucial role that bookselling publishers played in transmitting literary texts into print as well as energizing and shaping a new sphere of vernacular literary activity. The volume provides an overview of the full range of practises that publishers performed, including the acquisition of copy and titles, compiling, alteration to texts, reissuing, and specialization. Four case studies together consider links between translation and the travel narrative; bookselling and authorship; re-issuing and the Ovidian narrative poem; and specialization and professional drama. Works considered include Shakespeare's Hamlet, Thevet's The New Found World, Constable's Diana, and Marlowe's Dido, Queen of Carthage. This exciting new book provides both a complement and a counter to recent studies that have turned back to authors and out to buyers and printing houses as makers of vernacular literary culture in the second half of the sixteenth century.