Marlowe's Contemporary, William Shakespeare

The Chandos Portrait of Shakespeare, 1610

Shakespeare (1564-1616), a respected Elizabethan playwright and poet, was a contemporary of Christopher Marlowe.  Scholars believe Marlowe and Shakespeare likely knew each other because the worked in same field and their plays were produced around the same time.  Was Marlowe a spy and assinated at the request of the Crown? Some scholars believe that Marlowe's death was faked and that he went into hiding and, under the patronage of Thomas Walsingham. wrote plays attributed to Shakespeare. This wild theory is called the Marlovian Consipiracy. 

Publication of Dr. Faustus

The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus by Christopher (Kit) Marlowe is based on the Faust story in which a man sells his soul to the devil for unlimited power and knowledge. Doctor Faustus was first published in 1604,  eleven years after Marlowe's death and at least twelve years after the first performance of the play.  Better known is the 1616 version, which may be an adaptation of the play by other playwrights.

If we set this play in a literary history context, Marlowe’s Faust is caught between the Church-dominated consciousness of the Middle Ages (6th to 15th centuries) and the humanism characteristic of the Renaissance (literature primarily written between 1500-1660). Equally, Faust has qualities that harken back to the earlier epic tradition:  he will undertake a journey, as is so with the heroes of traditional epics. 

Industrial Revolution

George Cruikshank, "London Going Out of Town, or, The March of Bricks & Mortar," 1829.

 As England moved from an agrarian society to an urban one, people began to lament the loss of nature.  Leading caricaturist George Cruikshank animates the building blocks of industry--shovels and bricks move into and erode the countryside while personified haystacks look on in horror. Not surprising, the Industrial Revolution had a major impact on Romantic poetry by authors including William Blake and William Wordsworth. Nostalgia for the pastoral also resonates in  literature of the long nineteenth century by authors including Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell. 

William Blake Completes Apprenticeship and Starts Independent Career

In 1779 William Blake completed his apprenticeship and started an independent career as an engraver. In addition to working on his own artwork, he did comission work for other artists, much of it engraving. The conventional method of engraving at this time was copperplate engraving, a very long and tedious process that came about in the 15th century. It required many slow and careful hours of work because any mistakes would be impossible to correct without restarting the piece. Copperplate engraving uses an intaglio printing technique. Lines are carved into the plate and ink is placed into the grooves and then wiped away from the rest of the piece. The plate is then pressed into a humid sheet of paper using a printing press. Copperplate engraving was said to produce more exquisite images than woodcuts, though many famous engravers -- Blake included -- were masters of both techniques. For many of his most famous works, however, Blake used a method of printing that he invented called "illuminated printing," though it is known today as relief etching. This method involved painting the design on the copper plate backwards using an ink that was resistant to nitric acid. When the plate was put in the acid, it would etch away all of the unprotected metal and leave the design raised so that it could be easily printed. 

"Pride and Prejudice" is published!

Although Jane Austen began working on this novel under a different title of "First Impressions," she published it in 1813 to great acclaim. However, she did not reveal her name and published it under "A Lady." 

Birth of Christina Georgina Rossetti

Christina Rossetti was born on 5 December 1830 at 38 Charlotte Street (now 105 Hallam Street) in Marylbone, London to Gabriele Rossetti and Frances Polidori.

Goblin Market and Other Poems Published

"Golden curl by golden curl," title page for Goblin Market

Goblin Market is a Victorian narrative poem written by Christina Rossetti and illustrated by her brother Dante Gabriel. Rossetti felt that the collaboration with her brother was crucial to her overall work, that she deliberately delayed the publication until Dante Garbiel’s illustrations were ready for press. He designed a total of two illustrations, the frontispiece and title page, for The Goblin Market. Both images were pressed using wood engravings, evoking the pre-raphaelite designs popular during the 1860’s. The passages appeal to the senses through vivid descriptions of colours, textures, aromas and taste. Critics assigned the poem to various general categories over the following decades and throughout the twentieth century. It was first viewed as a fairytale but was later viewed as an allegorical piece. Feminist critics often analyzed the poem’s social commentary on gender relations and the relationship between two sisters. Later in the nineteenth century, readers, reviewers, illustrators, and composers began to focus on the poem’s powerful aesthetic qualities. Its sensuous patterns, religious images, and social implications inspired the focus of school studies and as well as musical settings and performances. The power of its visual images, and the two wood-engraved designs by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the poem’s first publication, turned to evoke numerous artistic interpretations, ranging from stained glass windows to gift books.

Curated by Kisha Rendon, Joseph Pereira, and Payton Flood

Public Domain; source: COVE Goblin Market edition by Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, Antony Harrison

New Poems by Christina Rossetti published

Title Page, New Poems by Christina Rossetti (1896)

In 1896, following Christina Rossetti's death in 1894, William Michael Rossetti edited and published New Poems by Christina Rossetti.  The collection included "hitherto unpublished or uncollected" poetry by C. Rossetti, including, notably, the sonnet, "In an Artist's Studio," about her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti's relationship with Elizabeth Siddal.