Narrative Poems: 'Hero and Leander' by Christopher Marlowe

'Hero and Leander' was published in 1598, and anyone who came across it in a stationer’s shop in Elizabethan London would have known that its author was dead, killed in a brawl in Deptford in 1593. Christopher Marlowe’s sensational life as playwright and spy is matched by the wit, sophistication and eroticism of his eccentric retelling of Ovid’s myth, based on a sixth-century version by Musaeus. Seamus and Mark begin their new series by looking at the playful but often troubling treatment of desire in a poem that contains one of the most explicit depictions of sex in English poetry. This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecryt In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsyt Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk ABOUT CLOSE READINGS Close Readings is a multi-series podcast subscription from the London Review of Books which looks at different periods and themes in literature through selections of key texts, covering poetry, fiction, history and philosophy from Ancient Greece to the present day. Find more episodes here:    • Close Readings   Subscribe: https://lrb.me/closereadingsyt LRB AUDIOBOOKS Discover audiobooks from the LRB: https://lrb.me/audiobookscip