David Riggs is Mark Pigott OBE, Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University. His previous books include Ben Jonson: A Life. He lives in California with his wife, a native of Sussex.
Riggs (Ben Jonson: A Life), an English professor at Stanford University, traces the life of Elizabethan poet, playwright and spy Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), placing him in the context of the institutions that both fostered his keen intellect and reinforced his awareness of his lowly class origins (his father was a shoemaker). Riggs suggests that Marlowe, Shakespeare's great contemporary, author of Tamburlaine and Dr. Faustus, may have sought to overcome those origins through his unusual and dangerous career path. Working in the New Historicist vein most recently mined by Stephen Greenblatt in Will in the World, Riggs evokes the pedagogical preoccupations of Marlowe's school and university education, revealing layers of intricate detail in Marlowe's formation as a literary artist: his study and translation of Ovid, his innovations in blank verse, and the substance and reception of all of his plays and poetry. While downplaying Marlowe's disputed sexuality, Riggs pays careful attention to the homoerotic and homophobic aspects of his plays, most notably Edward II, considering each in its contemporary moral and political setting. Riggs concludes with fresh insights into the mysterious circumstances of Marlowe's violent death. This study balances close literary readings with lucidly presented historical context to give us a portrait of a brilliant but volatile enigma who shunned convention in favor of risk and marginality. 50 b&w illus. Agent, Michael Carlisle. (Jan. 5) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Riggs (English, Stanford Univ.), whose previous work includes the authoritative Ben Jonson: A Life, has drawn together a marvelous biography of the talented and notoriously combative poet, playwright, and spy. As with Marlowe's contemporary Shakespeare, very little is known about the day-to-day details of his short life. We know, in part, that Marlowe received an M.A. from Cambridge, was briefly jailed for his role in the murder of an innkeeper, was then ordered by a court to cease threatening two members of the local constabulary, and that his life was cut short at the age of 29 after being stabbed in the brain by a drinking companion. Riggs successfully deals with the dearth of specific details of Marlowe's life by placing known events in the context of Elizabethan society and institutions. For example, he does a masterful job of discussing the 16th century's grueling higher education system with its focus on dialectic and rhetoric and the influence it had on Marlowe's thought and writing. If this sounds a bit dry, it is a testament to Riggs's skill as a writer that the book doesn't come across that way. These sections are every bit as lively as the author's discussions of espionage, counterfeiting, and court intrigue. This truly impressive work of scholarship, with 50 black-and-white illustrations, is enthusiastically recommended to academic and public libraries.-William D. Walsh, Georgia State Univ., Atlanta Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
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