Shakespeare's Marlowe: The Influence of Christopher Marlowe on Shakespeare's Artistry

For more than 150 years, literary critics have explored Marlowe and his influence on contemporary English Renaissance theatre, making Marlowe the next important playwright after William Shakespeare. More recently, the new 2016 New Oxford Shakespeare edition made Marlowe the co-author of the three parts of Henry VI. But they did not have the results of modern stylometric methods at their disposal. Their inventory looks quite different. Marlowe’s style, as contained in the Tamburlaine plays, is hardly, if at all, part of the rest of the canon. The Marlowe edition by Kirk Melnikoff and R. Knutson contains the sober observation that Marlowe was not noticed as an author until his death, and he only gained his position through research in the 19th and 20th centuries. The influence on Shakespeare is doubtful. All too often critics have compared young Shakespeare to the more mature. To be followed in Phantom Marlowe: Düren, 2020. Unfortunately only in German.