Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Religious Toleration

Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Religious Toleration is a study of the influence of Christopher Marlowe on William Shakespeare and vice versa, with a focus on how their works interrogate Reformation theology and the construction of masculine identity.

Written by English scholar Ian McAdam, this book contests the idea that Shakespeare was only interested in Marlowe’s theatrical techniques rather than his intellectual reflections, and argues that Marlowe's commercial ambitions reflect deeper cultural and psychological aspects of early modern self-fashioning. McAdam contends the playwrights’ shared drive for social advancement and cohesive identity is explored through their engagement with the Protestant theology of grace, which both intensified and problematized individual agency during the Reformation era.
An insightful intervention for scholars of Shakespeare, Reformation studies, and early modern literature, Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Religious Toleration contextualizes Marlowe’s “blasphemies” as a nuanced religiosity that has been overlooked. The text’s central thesis is that Shakespeare then, in turn, develops a subtler approach to Marlowe’s religious radicalism, producing plays and poems more profoundly influenced by Marlowe’s theological dissent than previously acknowledged.

Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Religious Toleration challenges prevailing assumptions in the field, examining the trajectory and intersections of these two historic playwrights and offering a new perspective on their expressions of religious, gendered, and sexual subjectivity.