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Rating: 
Summary: In spite of what the previous reviewer's said...
Review: ...this edition contains both the 1604 and 1616 editions of Dr. Faustus. In all honestly, though, I don't entirely buy the notion that the former should automatically take precedence over the latter. It's entirely possible that the additions made to it were in fact Marlowe's own ideas that were merely added by others. And in any case, I would have to say that, as a whole, the 1616 version is more coherent, with a lot of the threads left hanging in the 1604 cleared up. More is done with the clowns, and the character on whom Faustus inflicts horns goes from an anonymous "knight" to an actual character. The 1604 does have some things to be said for it (the bit about Christ's blood streaming in the firmament has been inexcusably edited out of the 1616, f'rinstance, and there's a brief scene at the end with the scholars that seems superfluous), but as a whole I'd go with it rather than the 1604. If I was going to put on a production of the play, I'd combine the two as I saw fit. Okay then.
Rating: 
Summary: Reviewing Burnett's edition
Review: I also wrote the April 15 review. It should be noted that I was reviewing the Steane edition, while the November reviewer was evidently reviewing the Burnett edition - since both editions have the same titles, Amazon includes the review for one in the other, and vice versa. What I said April 15 applies to Steane, not Burnett.As to theonlytruegeo's disagreement. The B-text additions were almost certainly written in 1602, according to an entry in Henslowe's diary. Marlowe died in 1593; and the play was probably written about 1588, though some disagree. It's quite a stretch to say that Marlowe had ideas about what to include in the play, but they were not incorporated in his lifetime, or for 9 years after his death. The 1616 version may be a little tidier, but it is also almost universally judged inferior. The additions to it (some 1000 lines) are practically all slapstick and special effects. By 1616 Marlowe's play had degenerated from a "tragicall history" into harum scarum. But as to Burnett's edition, which I am reviewing here. It includes all of Marlowe's plays, including the 2 versions of Doctor Faustus. What I don't like is Burnett's editing. He is one of those scholars intuned to faddish critical theory. Notably, instead of considering Marlowe's works as plays, as literature, he sees them merely as "texts," thinly veiled autobiography, something to be dismantled, and so you can expect to get a warped interpretation from him. His quotes of Marlowe are usually taken out of context to prove some point, and his commentary is full of pompous language: "In its atomization of all forms of culturally conditioned distinction lies a key to the play's destabilising importance." How meaningless! He's trying to say that Marlowe picks apart cultural roles and beliefs, but what is the "destabilising importance"? George Orwell wrote an essay about meaningless language; if you write like that, Orwell might set you straight. Burnett is too divorced from the literary values of Marlowe. In one place he praises an essay collection about Marlowe for being "Theoretically informed." No comment on whether their essays are particularly good, or insightful -- they're just "theoretically informed." And in another place: "[Marlowe's]plays are sufficently diffuse in subject matter and wide-ranging in orientation to attract readers of contrasting persuasions, from the critic interested in language and performance to the 'New Historicist' drawn to the representation of subversive types and dissident ideologies." Revealingly, he seems to be unable to see how people might be interested in Marlowe even if they don't have a particular theoretical ax to grind. Burnett seems to have forgetten that people read Marlowe because he is a great poet and playwright; he is an artist; his works are great literature. Yet he can only imagine that people would be interested in Marlowe for the opportunity to tinker on his plays with some pet critical Theory. By all means read Marlowe, but if you can, find another edition.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: I just had a brief comment. I don't consider myself an expert on Elizabethan era literature, but I've read a fair amount of Shakespeare and a number of the other authors of the period, and I have to say I was quite impressed with Marlowe. He certainly deserves to be better appreciated than he is. One of the lines from Richard III has stuck with me. I think I have it more or less correct, and it was this: "...and as for the multitude, they are like sparks--caught up in the embers of their poverty." You have to like an author who can write like that, but unfortunately he's been so overshadowed by the great Will that he doesn't get as much attention as he should. Anyway, by way of doing what I can, however, modest, to increase Marlowe's popularity, I'd like to say he's a damn good playwright, and that I have no qualms about throwing my own not inconsiderable bulk behind his reputation.
Rating:
Summary: Why you should read Chris Marlowe
Review: Shakespeare is thought to be for the general reader and is undergoing a strong cinematic revival these days...perhaps because as a screenwriter in the public domain, Will doesn't talk back and works for free. Marlowe, apart from interest in the homoeroticism of his works, is still in the specialist's domain. But Marlowe in many ways is loads more fun than Shakespeare, although the darkness of his vision is ultimately tiresome. If you like fustian, if you like the sound of the rant, Marlowe is your boy: "Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships /And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?" "We'll lead you to the stately tent of war/To hear the Scythian Tamburlaine/Threatening the world with high astounding terms" Marlowe is probably deliberately caricatured in Shakespeare's Henry V as Ancient Pistol, the "braggart soldier": "A foutra for the world, and worldlings base/I speak of Africa and golden joys." Marlowe's development was tragically cut short, possibly by political scheming, or possibly by what we'd now call alcoholism. Even less than Wolfang Aamadeus Mozart (who popped off the astonishing Magic Flute opera after a series of works of a genius that did not break outside the frame of the *galante* musical style) had the chance to be Beethoven, Marlowe never had a real chance to grow into the artist that Shakespeare became. We just don't know, after hundreds of years, whether this was the Earl of Essex's fault or that of the good old booze. To see the opposing forces between the spirit of Shakespeare and that of Marlowe, it is necessary to read the long series of three early plays of Shakespeare, Henry VI, parts 1 to 3 (these have new titles in the new Oxford Shakespeare.) Shakespeare and Marlowe collaborated in these plays and it seems to me (as a nonspecialist) that Shakespeare's influenced waxes in the higher numbered plays of the Henry VI series...despite the fact that Wells and Taylor, the editors of the New Oxford Shakespeare, cast doubts on a simple-minded chronological sequence of authorship. As a general reader I can well imagine Marlowe and Shakespeare BOTH coming up with "hung be the heavens with black", the first speech in Henry VI part one, working in a tavern. And my theory is that the profound ambiguity of the character of King Henry VI, who in a superficial reading is a mad weakling but on a deeper reading (in particular, that of Harold Goddard in 1954) is an almost Taoist king who sees the folly of the Wars of the Roses, can be traced to a collision between Marlowe's pessimistic proto-Nietzchean view of the world, and Shakespeare's kinder and gentler humanism. I prefer Shakespeare's kinder and gentler humanism because it is ultimately, like the Tao, stronger than pessimism. And a reading of Marlowe is relevant to today's issue of gay rights, for it shows that homoeroticism is not a matter of fauns prancing about in Arcady, innocent of the wickedness of the world of the breeders. It shows that homoeroticism has a deeply violent strain. For example, Marlowe's play Edward II (about a mediaeval English king who was deposed because of his "favorites", possibly mediaeval code for "it won't do to have a homosexual king") makes no hero of Edward II. Edward II is just as much a tyrant as his father was and his son Edward III "Longshanks" became, and this is made plain in the play's treatment of his relationship with Isabella. The entire play, one of the worst in Marlowe's short corpus, is one in which a bunch of nasty people hasten to their doom without benefit of character development. Read Marlowe, therefore, as a more modern man than Shakespeare. There are few enough Will Shakespeares on the streets of modern cities: those that are, are snapped up quickly by the more discriminating sorts of ladies. But the streets and taverns are crowded, today, with the spiritual descendents of Kit Marlowe, Edward II and Faust: young men in despair as a consequence of living in a closed world rather than the green and open world of Shakespeare (a world where forgiveness is possible.) One spirit of the Renaissance was power over nature, but a darker spirit was power over men by men (this was identified by C. S. Lewis.) As a direct consequence, many educated and sophisticated young fellows today live in a world foreclosed of laughter and surprise...a world that their sisters can access, with the result that over the past 20 years, men's overall situation has been in decline. By not being able to grow past a certain point as does Lear and the always astonishing Hamlet, in Marlowe's own words, "cut is the branch that might have grown full straight." Read superficially, Dr Faustus is a simple morality tale: don't sell yer silly soul to the devil. This misses the self-reflexive character of the end in which the character realizes his own inability to grow beyond a certain point. Self-knowledge is not enough. And note, that contrary to today's excitements about "identity politics", the same sort of personality can be found in gay bars and breeder bars. "Identity politics" has managed to obscure in the public mind the fact that quite apart from whether one is gay or straight, the old questions remain. It is of course evil to judge gay people like Dr Laura, and the most pernicious aspect of Dr Laura is the fact that if you're fool enough to believe her, being gay means you're damned, and you might as well party on. Marlowe does reveal the inescapability of the question and implies the existence of the green world simply by painting himself into a corner.
Rating:
Summary: Not quite Shakespeare, but good--great Compliation
Review: The Complete Plays includes all of Marlowe's plays (well, obviously.) As a bonus it includes the rather fragmentory Massacre at Paris (which many critics theorize is a corupt, unfinished, or damaged text) in a scene division only format and both editions of Doctor Faustus. Marlowe's plays, while not on the same level as Shakespeare's best, are far and away superior to any other Renaisance era dramatist (See also, Thomas Kyd, Ben Johnson, or Richard Wharfinger--if you can find him hehe.) The best thing about Marlowe's plays is the level of respect for the audience. Judgement of the characters is (for the most part) left to the reader. Tamburlaine can be viewed as hero and/or villian. And, it being Renaisance drama, there are some spectacular death scenes--Edward II's anal cruxifiction, Brabas's boiling alive, Faustus's dismemberment, and the Admiral's hanging/shooting to name a few. One complaint, and this is really more of a preference, but the textual notes are in endnote format, rather than footnote format, and they're not numbered notes--all of which makes finding latin translations a little more time consuming.
But, for fans of the genre, this is the way to go.
Rating:
Summary: Not quite Shakespeare, but good--great Compliation
Review: The Complete Plays includes all of Marlowe's plays (well, obviously.) As a bonus it includes the rather fragmentory Massacre at Paris (which many critics theorize is a corupt, unfinished, or damaged text) in a scene division only format and both editions of Doctor Faustus. Marlowe's plays, while not on the same level as Shakespeare's best, are far and away superior to any other Renaisance era dramatist (See also, Thomas Kyd, Ben Johnson, or Richard Wharfinger--if you can find him hehe.) The best thing about Marlowe's plays is the level of respect for the audience. Judgement of the characters is (for the most part) left to the reader. Tamburlaine can be viewed as hero and/or villian. And, it being Renaisance drama, there are some spectacular death scenes--Edward II's anal cruxifiction, Brabas's boiling alive, Faustus's dismemberment, and the Admiral's hanging/shooting to name a few. One complaint, and this is really more of a preference, but the textual notes are in endnote format, rather than footnote format, and they're not numbered notes--all of which makes finding latin translations a little more time consuming.
But, for fans of the genre, this is the way to go.
Rating:
Summary: NON-ACADEMIC'S TAKE ON MARLOWE
Review: This book is a treat. Very reasonably priced, and it's all there. The plays sweep you along (I always envision darkening Puccini-like chords in the background) images and crackling dialogue abounds. My problem is: 1) I have never seen the plays produced. This is *such* a handicap. I actually yawned through Shakepeare's "Tempest" until I saw a fine production. Now it is hands-down my favorite play and 2)I have to get in the swing of reading Elizabethan English for every reading. Therefore, I do not recommend reading in short snippets if you are also dialect challenged. Do keep in mind Marlowe (as Shakespeare) was trying to make a living, not write for the ages. He's trying to entice you to buy a ticket and be charmed. He succeeds admirably. There is something for everyone: action, derring do, comedy, and sharp insights. Marlowe is your mysterious, wild, sometimes trecherous friend; brilliant, but can you trust him? Probably not. If he was a vintage southern American, he might say "I didn't take you to raise." Would he lie to you? mislead you? Of course. But in everything I have read of Marlowe's I hear his voice; he is *there.* With Shakespeare, I do not have that certainty. Recommend reading "The Reckoning" by Charles Nicholl for an excellent biography on Marlowe. It reads like an excellent mystery, which he was.
Rating:
Summary: Good accessible edition
Review: This is a generally good and easily available, inexpensive edition of Marlowe's plays. My only reservation about it is Steane's edition of Dr. Faustus. He makes the worst of both major texts, taking the general outline from the 1616 text but throwing in a lot of corrupt scraps from the 1604 edition for the clown scenes. I would advise anyone who wants to read Dr. Faustus to look elsewhere. I'm convinced that the 1604 version is on the whole a corrupt and truncated version of the play, but if you prefer it you might look into the Folger Library edition. If on the other hand you would rather read the play more or less as I think Marlowe wrote it, try the Signet edition edited by Sylvan Barnet. The other plays present no major textual problems (except for The Massacre at Paris, which is pretty hopeless) and this is a fine place to meet them.
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