Kit Marlowe was the Brian Wilson of Elizabethan drama. Doctor Faustus features scads of demons, pyrotechnics, a painstakingly detailed cosmology, a would-be pope crossing continents on flying horseback, Helen of Troy rising from the grave, and plenty of gore and erudite ambition, but I couldn't find a single captivating, sexy or sympathetic character in the entire play. Unless, of course, you count Marlowe himself: Cambridge graduate, dramaturgist, poet, member of the School of Night, secret agent, tavern brawler, sodomite, and rabid tobacco enthusiast. 
Ah, dead shepherd, they don't make 'em like they used to.
RATING: Better than I'll ever be, but still no Shakespeare%
(Image from www.history.neu.edu.)
Being stabbed to death in the eye is as good a literary death as any.
ReplyDeleteI also like Virginia Woolf filling her pockets with stones and walking into the river and Wilfred Owen being killed in trench warfare.
Plath: head in the oven. Shakespeare: a surfeit of wine.
ReplyDeleteDavid Foster Wallace: auto-erotic asphyxiation(?)
Glenn: ??
Viking Andrew: ??
I wish that pope was my grandfather.
ReplyDeletemy fav lit death was stephen king who died of being run over by a car
ReplyDelete(hes also the only writer i know beside glen)
ReplyDeleteR Kelley is my favorite mystery commenter.
ReplyDelete