MLA citation:
Briggs, Julia. "Oxford University Press." Oxford University Press. 34.135 (1983): 257-278. Web. 9 Nov. 2012.
+Not well received by critics: "obviously a work of great haste,
and gotup forthepurpose ofgratifyingthevulgarfeelingatthatdate against popery: indeed, it has hardly anythingto recommend it."
" --John Payne Collier (1820)
"a brutal, chauvinistic propagandist', the play 'a prostitution of art" --Wilbur Sanders
+The play was one of the earliest to present recent historical and contemporary political events on the English stage
+the text we have is not that of the play written by Marlowe and first performed by Lord Strange's men, but a garbled and confused memory of that play which must, when complete, have been half as long again.
+As we have it, the text is worryingly fuzzy, its actions confusingly placed and poorly motivated. The Folger Library leaf hints that this was not originally the case.
+In his presentation of the massacre itself he appears to have reproduced with remarkable accuracy forms of ritualized violence peculiar to the French religious wars. (Marlowe's extensive knowledge of wounds??)
+The relation of state religion and the individual conscience was the burning question of the late sixteenth century throughout Europe.
...more to come shortly
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