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Shakespeare's Salieri
Jan. 23rd, 2011 05:34 pmJun 2010
The Plays - Christopher Marlowe - Wordsworth Classics, 2000
* *
Imagine, if you would, a play by Shakespeare written when he was having a very off day. There is drama, certainly, and a supple use of iambic pentameter that blows Milton's Paradise Lost out of the water, but the humanity, psychological depth and richly imaginative imagery that characterise his best work are missing.
This is what reading a play by Christopher Marlowe is like. Regardless of the intrinsic merits of his work (and there are some), you are constantly thinking of his genius contemporary. Comparisons are always unfair, but there it is. Marlowe is Salieri to Shakespeare's Mozart.
( Read more... )
The Plays - Christopher Marlowe - Wordsworth Classics, 2000
* *
Imagine, if you would, a play by Shakespeare written when he was having a very off day. There is drama, certainly, and a supple use of iambic pentameter that blows Milton's Paradise Lost out of the water, but the humanity, psychological depth and richly imaginative imagery that characterise his best work are missing.
This is what reading a play by Christopher Marlowe is like. Regardless of the intrinsic merits of his work (and there are some), you are constantly thinking of his genius contemporary. Comparisons are always unfair, but there it is. Marlowe is Salieri to Shakespeare's Mozart.
( Read more... )