ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -Writers and playwrights working in the same era as Shakespeare included Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Middleton, John Webster, Ben Jonson and Thomas Dekker.

Detailed explanation-2: -Shakespeare (1564-1616), a respected Elizabethan playwright and poet, was a contemporary of Christopher Marlowe. Scholars believe Marlowe and Shakespeare likely knew each other because the worked in same field and their plays were produced around the same time.

Detailed explanation-3: -There are many similarities in their literary styles; so many, in fact, that it has often been speculated that Marlowe wrote some of Shakespeare’s plays. Marlowe definitely had an influence on Shakespeare. One of the most obvious similarities between the two was that they both wrote in blank verse.

Detailed explanation-4: -Aside from the university wits, Shakespeare’s most important contemporary was Ben Jonson, a bricklayer’s son and self-taught writer whose best plays were as popular as Shakespeare’s.

Detailed explanation-5: -Sidney Berger, who pointed out that the two playwrights who created the National Theaters for England and Spain, respectively – Shakespeare and Lope de Vega – were contemporaries during a period in which the public theater became the most popular entertainment form available.