The Companion to Christopher Marlowe. Ed. Patrick Cheney

Students of literature these days are offered a rich choice of “companions”. The first one I used as an undergraduate and soon found indispensable was Sir Paul Harvey’s Oxford Companion to English Literature, first published in 1932, frequently re-issued and thoroughly revised by Margaret Drabble and a whole team of dedicated authors in 1985 (several times updated since). Like the whole family of Oxford Companions that have appeared during the last eighty years, this is in essence a dictionary or encyclopedia, on a clearly defined area, as, for another instance, Douglas Gray’s excellent Oxford Companion to Chaucer, first published 2003, a valuable and handy work of reference. The successful series of Cambridge Companions, launched in 1986 and by now grown to some 180 volumes, targets a different kind of readership and addresses rather more specialized interests. These volumes are not so much tools of reference as introductions to the current state of criticism and scholarship; they are collections of essays by different authors on significant aspects of a particular literary theme. A number of them (about 70) are devoted to certain periods or general themes, like English Renaissance Drama or the Victorian Novels, but the majority (over 110) deal with individual British, North American and European authors. The Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe, edited by Patrick Cheney (published 2004, reprinted 2005), is a good example. It brings together essays by seventeen authors, most of them well-known Renaissance scholars, covering a wide range of biographical, bibliographical, historical, literary and theatrical issues as well as a variety of methods and approaches. Cheney’s fine introduction provides a stimulating survey of Marlowe’s colourful reputation as “arguably the most enigmatic genius of the English literary Renaissance” , in particular “his absolute inaugural power” as “England’s first major poetplaywright”. The organisation of the volume as well as the choice of contributors show the hand of the experienced editor and fair-minded scholar.

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