Chapter 10

The god of war resigns his room to me,Meaning to make me general of the world:Jove, viewing me in arms, looks pale and wan,Fearing my power should pull him from his throne.

These are wild words, chosen from a passage of ridiculous bombast. But the author, magnificent in his optimism, believed in the thought beneath the imagery. The same idea in different guises proclaims itself aloud throughout the play. Sometimes it chooses simplelanguage, sometimes it is clothed in expressions of noble dignity, most often it hurls itself abroad in foaming rant. But everywhere the message is the same, that man's power is equal to the achievement of the aspiration planted within his breast, and that, to realize himself, he must follow it, with undivided effort, until it is reached. Tamburlaine, contemplating the possibility of kingship, says,

Why, then, Casane, shall we wish for aughtThe world affords in greatest novelty,And rest attemptless, faint, and destitute?Methinks we should not.

Two scenes later, in the hour of triumph, he utters these fine lines, which may be accepted as Marlowe's most deliberate statement of his message:

Nature, that framed us of four elementsWarring within our breasts for regiment,[66]Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds:Our souls, whose faculties can comprehendThe wondrous architecture of the world,And measure every wandering planet's course,Still climbing after knowledge infinite,And always moving as the restless spheres,Will us to wear ourselves, and never rest,Until we reach the ripest fruit of all,That perfect bliss and sole felicity,The sweet fruition of an earthly crown.

We have used the extreme superlative, but in reality a point just below it should have been struck. For the dramatist, sending his imagination beyond earth to heaven, reserves one peak unscalable in the ascent of man towards the summit of his aspirations.

There is one potentate whom even Tamburlaine cannot overcome—Death. Zenocrate dies, nor will 'cavalieroshigher than the clouds', nor cannon to 'batter the shining palace of the sun, and shiver all the starry firmament', restore her. Tamburlaine himself must die, defiantly, it may be, yielding nothing through cowardice, but as certainly as time must pass and age must come. Techelles seeks to encourage him with the hope that his illness will not last. But he brushes the deception aside with scorn.

Not last, Techelles! no, for I shall die.See where my slave, the ugly monster Death,Shaking and quivering, pale and wan for fear,Stands aiming at me with his murdering dart,Who flies away at every glance I give,And, when I look away, comes stealing on!—Villain, away, and hie thee to the field!I and mine army come to load thy backWith souls of thousand mangled carcasses.—Look, where he goes! but see, he comes againBecause I stay!

When we considerDoctor Faustuswe shall see the same thought. In electing to follow his desires to the uttermost Faustus reaps the reward but also incurs the punishment of all who choose the upper road of complete self-expression. He approaches the last gate, confident that his strength will suffice to open it; he finds it locked and keyless. In that hour of bitter disappointment that which is withheld seems more desirable than the total of all that has preceded it.

The dramatic greatness ofTamburlainelies in the perfect harmony of the central figure with the general purpose of the play. Marlowe sought to present a world conqueror and he creates no less a man. Outwardly the shepherd is formed in a mould of strength and grace; his countenance might serve as a model for a bust of Achilles. Inwardly his mind is full of towering ambition, supported by courage and inflexible resolution. Those who meethim are profoundly impressed with a sense of his power. Theridamas murmurs in awe to himself, 'His looks do menace heaven and dare the gods.' Menaphon reports, 'His lofty brows in folds do figure death.' Cosroe describes him as 'His fortune's master and the king of men.' His own speeches and actions reveal no unsuspected flaw, no unworthy weakness; rather they almost defeat their own purpose by their exaggeration of his greatness. It would be possible to show by numerous quotations how Marlowe has everywhere selected epithets and imagery of magnitude to enhance the impressiveness of his hero in proportion to his astounding achievements. We will be content with only one more. It describes Tamburlaine's attitude towards those that resist him, and, by its slow, measured intensification of colour to a terrible climax, forces home resistlessly the suggestion of invincible power and relentlessness.

The first day when he pitcheth down his tents,White is their hue, and on his silver crestA snowy feather spangled-white he bears,To signify the mildness of his mind,That, satiate with spoil, refuseth blood:But, when Aurora mounts the second time,As red as scarlet is his furniture;Then must his kindled wrath be quenched with blood,Not sparing any that can manage arms:But, if these threats move not submission,Black are his colours, black pavilion;His spear, his shield, his horse, his armour, plumesAnd jetty feathers menace death and hell;Without respect of sex, degree or age,He razeth all his foes with fire and sword.

Much has been said of Marlowe's poetry. His originality in the use of blank verse has probably been over-estimated. Quite good blank verse had been used indrama some years before his plays were written.Gorboduc, the 1572 version ofTancred and Gismunda, and at least two long speeches inThe Arraignment of Parisarise in one's mind as containing very creditable examples of it. Moreover it would be wrong to suppose that this earlier blank verse was always stilted and cut up into end-stopt lines and unrhymed couplets. True, the overflow of one line into another was not common, but neither is it so inTamburlaine. Marlowe accepts the end-stopt line almost as naturally as did his predecessors. Overflow may be found inGorboduc. The following passage fromTancred and Gismundais worth quoting to show how far liberty in this respect had been recognized by 1572.

[Tancredprotests against any second marriage of his young widowed daughter,Gismunda.]

Sister, I say, ...Forbear, and wade no farther in this speech.Your words are wounds. I very well perceiveThe purpose of this smooth oration:This I suspected, when you first beganThis fair discourse with us. Is this the endOf all our hopes, that we have promisedUnto ourself by this her widowhood?Would our dear daughter, would our only joy,Would she forsake us? would she leave us now,Before she hath clos'd up our dying eyes,And with her tears bewail'd our funeral?No other solace doth her father craveBut, whilst the fates maintain his dying life,Her healthful presence gladsome to his soul,Which rather than he willing would forego,His heart desires the bitter taste of death.

If the reader will refer to the extract from Diana's speech he will see how completely free Peele was fromany inherited bondage of the couplet measure. It is not easy to define exactly what Marlowe did give to blank verse. His famous Prologue to the First Part ofTamburlainemakes it quite clear that the general public were indebted to him for the introduction of blank verse upon their unpolished stage, it having previously been heard only at court or at the universities. But while this attempt on his part to displace the 'jigging veins of rhyming mother-wits' by the mere roll and crash of his 'high astounding terms' was a courageous step, it cannot be counted for originality in the development of the verse itself. Two features of his verse, however, are original and of his own creation. The first, its conversational ease and freedom, will be found more perfectly developed inDoctor Faustusand the later tragedies. Tamburlaine and the other mighty kings, emperors and captains have little skill in converse; when they speak they orate. This is true of the speeches in the earlier plays. Peele's are long monologues, and when Sackville's or Wilmot's characters discourse it is in the fashion of a set debate. Faustus and Mephistophilis, on the other hand, meet in real conversation, and it is in their question and answer that the flexibility and naturalness of blank verse are shown to advantage for the first time by Marlowe. The second feature is the infusion of pure poetry into drama. Hitherto the opinion seems to have held that dramatic verse must keep as close to prose as possible in order to combine the grace of rhythm with the solid commonsense of ordinary human speech. Nothing illustrates this more remarkably than a comparison of Sackville's poetry in his Induction to theMirror for Magistrateswith his verse inGorboduc. We have remarked before on the tendency of all Senecan dramas to sententiousness and argument, than which nothing could be less poetical.The poetry ofThe Arraignment of Paris, again, is more lyrical than dramatic, harmonizing with the general approximation of that play to the nature of a masque. Marlowe was the first to demonstrate that imagination could riot madly in a wealth of imagery, or soar far above the realms of logic and cold philosophy to summon beautiful and terrible pictures out of the cloud-land of fancy, without losing hold upon earth and the language of mortals. He knew that the unspoken language of the impassioned heart is charged with poetry, however the formality of utterance, the fear of derision and the unreadiness of our vocabulary may freeze its expression on our lips; and he trusted to the hearts of his hearers to understand and appreciate the intense humanness of the feelings that forced themselves to the surface in that form. Nor was he mistaken. His 'raptures' are more truly natural, more sympathetic and truthful expressions of human emotion than the most stately and reasonable declamations of those earlier writers who clung to what they believed to be natural. Often quoted as it has been, Drayton's eulogy of Marlowe may be quoted again—it merits a place in every discussion of Marlowe's verse—as the finest appreciation of his poetry.

Next Marlowe, bathed in the Thespian springs,Had in him those brave translunary thingsThat the first poets had; his raptures wereAll air and fire, which made his verses clear;For that fine madness still he did retain,Which rightly should possess a poet's brain.(An Elegy: Of Poets and Poesie.)

(An Elegy: Of Poets and Poesie.)

FromTamburlaineone could extract passages to illustrate Marlowe's fondness for classical allusions, his use—Miltonic, if we may anticipate the term—of the sonorous effect of names, his introduction of sustained similes, histrick of repeating a sound at intervals (a trick borrowed by Greene later), his habit of letting a speaker refer to himself in the third person (Tamburlaine loves to boast the greatness of Tamburlaine), and his occasional slovenliness, especially in the insertion of a few lines of prose into the midst of his verse. All these and others are minor features which the student will search out for himself. Some of them, however, may be detected in the following excerpt from the Second Part:

[Tamburlaineis in his chariot drawn by captive kings.Techelleshas just urged that the armies should hasten to the siege of Babylon.]

Tamburlaine.We will, Techelles.—Forward, then, ye jades!Now crouch, ye kings of greatest Asia,And tremble, when ye hear this scourge will comeThat whips down cities and controlleth crowns,Adding their wealth and treasure to my store.The Euxine sea, north to Natolia;The Terrene, west; the Caspian, north north-east;And on the south, Sinus Arabicus;Shall all be loaden with the martial spoilsWe will convey with us to Persia.Then shall my native city, Samarcanda,And crystal waves of fresh Jaertis' stream,The pride and beauty of her princely seat,Be famous through the furthest continents;For there my palace royal shall be placed,Whose shining turrets shall dismay the heavens,And cast the fame of Ilion's tower to hell:Thorough the streets, with troops of conquered kings,I'll ride in golden armour like the sun;And in my helm a triple plume shall spring,Spangled with diamonds, dancing in the air,To note me emperor of the three-fold world;Like to an almond tree y-mounted highUpon the lofty and celestial mountOf ever-green Selinus, quaintly deckedWith blooms more white than Erycina's brows,Whose tender blossoms tremble every oneAt every little breath that thorough heaven is blown.Then in my coach, like Saturn's royal sonMounted his shining chariot gilt with fireAnd drawn with princely eagles through the pathPaved with bright crystal and enchased with stars,When all the gods stand gazing at his pomp,So will I ride through Samarcanda-streets,Until my soul, dissevered from this flesh,Shall mount the milk-white way and meet him there.To Babylon, my lords, to Babylon!

The Tragical History of Doctor Faustussets forth the well-known story of the man who sold his soul to the devil in return for complete gratification of his desires during his life on earth. Something of its fame is due to its association, through its main plot, with Goethe's masterpiece; something may be attributed to the fascination of its theme; something must be granted to the terrible force of one or two scenes. It is hard to believe that its own artistic and dramatic qualities could have secured unaided the reputation which it appears to possess among some critics. More even thanTamburlaine, this play hangs upon one central figure. There is no Bajazeth, no Soldan, no Orcanes, no Zenocrate to help to bear the weight of impressiveness. The low characters, who are intended to be humorous, drag the plot down instead of buoying it up. Other figures are hardly more than dummies, unable to excite the smallest interest. Mephistophilis deserves our notice, but his is a shadowy outline removed from humanity. One figure alone stands forth to hold and justify our attention; and he proves himself unfit for the task. Those who insist on tracing one guiding principle in all Marlowe's plays have declaredthat Faustus is the personification of 'thirst for knowledge' or of 'intellectualvirtù', just as Tamburlaine personifies, for them, the 'thirst for power' or 'physicalvirtù'. Surely, if this is so, Marlowe has failed absolutely in his presentment of the character; in which case the play may be condemned out of hand, seeing that the character of Faustus is its all in all. But the more we study Marlowe's other principal figures, the more convinced we become of his absorption in them while they are in the making. With Tamburlaine he himself grows terrible and glorious; the spirit of pride and conquest colours every phrase, speech and description, so that, as we have pointed out, the character of Tamburlaine is masterfully consistent and attuned to the purpose of the play. It is better, then, to examine the character of Faustus, as revealed in his desires, requests, and prominent actions, and thence educe the purpose of the play, than, by deciding upon this purpose, to discover that the central figure is in continual discord with it.

Faustus is introduced to us by the Chorus at the commencement of the play as a scholar of repute, 'glutted now with learning's golden gifts,' and about to turn aside to the study of necromancy. Accordingly he appears in his study rejecting logic as no end in itself, law as servile, medicine because he has exhausted its possible limits, divinity because it tells him that the reward of sin is death. Upon sin his mind is set all the time, so that the reminder from Jerome's Bible annoys him. He flings the book aside because it warns him of what he affects to disbelieve and would be glad to forget. Magic wins him by its unknown possibilities 'of profit and delight, of power, of honour, and omnipotence'.

Lest we should suppose that his choice has anything heroic in it, that he is deliberately accepting a terribledebt of eternal torment in exchange for what necromancy can give, we are informed that he has no belief in hell or future pain, that to him men's souls are trifles. Deep down in his conscience he has a fear of 'damnation', which only makes itself felt, however, in unexalted moments. Such thoughts are set aside as 'mere old wives' tales' in the triumphant hour of his signing the contract.

With curiosity and longing, then, he enters unshudderingly into a bargain that will give him what he seeks. We can readily discover, from his own lips, what that is. He exults over the prospect of having spirits to do his bidding:

I'll have them fly to India for gold,Ransack the ocean for orient pearl,And search all corners of the new-found worldFor pleasant fruits and princely delicates;I'll have them read me strange philosophy,And tell the secrets of all foreign kings.

Many other things his fancy pictures. But we observe that philosophy stands below wealth and feasting in his wishes. He dismisses Mephistophilis back to Lucifer with this report of himself:

Say, he surrenders up to him his soul,So he will spare him four and twenty years,Letting him live in all voluptuousness.

For a moment his enthusiastic outlook upon limitless capacity wakens in him a desire for military glory: he would be 'great emperor of the world', he would 'pass the ocean with a band of men'. But from what we know of his subsequent career he never attempted to win such renown. No; in his heart he confesses,

The god thou servest is thine own appetite.

Mephistophilis, with a profound and melancholy insight into the reality of things, sees hell in every place where heaven is not. Faustus, on the other hand, with flippant superficiality laughs at the idea. An intellectual, a moral hell is to him incomprehensible.

Nay, an this be hell, I'll willingly be damned:What! sleeping, eating, walking, and disputing!But, leaving this, let me have a wife,The fairest maid in Germany;For I am wanton and lascivious,And cannot live without a wife.

Sometimes conscience forces him to listen to its fearful whispers, and then suicide offers its dreadful means as a silencer of their disturbing warnings. Why does he not accept the relief of rope or dagger?

—Long ere this I should have done the deed,Had not sweet pleasure conquered deep despair.Have not I made blind Homer sing to meOf Alexander's love and Oenon's death?And hath not he, that built the walls of ThebesWith ravishing sound of his melodious harp,Made music with my Mephistophilis?Why should I die, then, or basely despair?I am resolved; Faustus shall not repent.

The mood of fear and regret passes. He plunges back to the gratification of his senses.

Whilst I am here on earth let me be cloyedWith all things that delight the heart of man:My four-and-twenty years of libertyI'll spend in pleasure and in dalliance.

The end is drawing near. Appetite is becoming sated: rarer and rarer delicacies are needed to satisfy his craving.Repentance!—that is thrust aside, postponed to a later hour.

One thing, good servant, let me crave of thee,To glut the longing of my heart's desire—That I may have unto my paramourThat heavenly Helen which I saw of late,Whose sweet embraces may extinguish cleanThose thoughts that do dissuade me from my vow.

When at last the hour to fulfil his part of the contract arrives, he confesses in bitterness of spirit, 'for the vain pleasure of four-and-twenty years hath Faustus lost eternal joy and felicity.'

This man is not one consumed with a thirst of knowledge. Once he asks Mephistophilis a few questions on astrology; at another time he evinces some curiosity concerning Lucifer and Hell, idle curiosity because he regards it all as foolishness. We aretoldof a journey through the heavens and of voyages about the world, but weseehim exercising his supernatural gifts in the most puerile and useless fashion. It is impossible, therefore, to regard his ambition as a lust for knowledge in the usual meaning of that term, differentiating it from sensual experience. If Faustus is to be labelled according to his dominant trait, then let us describe him as the embodiment of sense-gratification. He is a sensualist from the moment that he takes up the book of magic and ponders over what it may bring him. A degraded form of him has been sketched in the Syriac scholar of a modern work of fiction, who cherished, side by side with a world-wide reputation for learning, a bestial appetite for profligacy. The message ofTamburlaineholds as true in the pursuit of pleasure as in that of conquest. Faustus denies that there is a limit to pleasure, and the horror of his career grows darker as his mounting desires bear him furtherand further on, far beyond the reach of less eager minds, to the impassable point whence he may only see the heaven beyond. That point is the hell which once he laughed at as an old wives' tale.

The weakness ofDoctor Faustusappears exactly whereTamburlaineis strongest. In spite of his prodigious boasting and his callous indifference to suffering, Tamburlaine appeals to us most powerfully as the right titanic figure for a world-conqueror; his soul is ever above his body, looking beyond the victory of to-day to the greater conquests of the future: there is nothing sordid or commonplace about him. Unfortunately, though it is given to few of us to be conquerors, it is possible for all of us to gratify our senses if we will. Tamburlaine gathers golden fruit, Faustus plucks berries from the same bush as ourselves: only, he must have them from the topmost boughs. The following passage has probably never been surpassed in its magic idealization of that which is essentially base and carnal:

[EnterHelen,passing over the stage between twoCupids.]

Faustus.Was this the face that launched a thousand shipsAnd burnt the topless towers of Ilium?—Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.—[Kisses her.]Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies!—Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,And all is dross that is not Helena.I will be Paris, and for love of thee,Instead of Troy, shall Wittenberg be sacked;And I will combat with weak Menelaus,And wear thy colours on my plumed crest;Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel,And then return to Helen for a kiss.O, thou art fairer than the evening airClad in the beauty of a thousand stars;Brighter art thou than flaming JupiterWhen he appeared to hapless Semele;More lovely than the monarch of the skyIn wanton Arethusa's azured arms;And none but thou shalt be my paramour!

Poetry such as this has power to blind us for a moment to the underlying meaning: Faustus enjoys a temporary transfiguration. But Marlowe's muse flags in the effort to sublimate dross. Such a character as Faustus is unfitted to support tragedy. His creator inspires him with his own Bohemian joy in mere pleasure, his own thirst for fresh sensations, his own vehement disregard of restraint—a disregard which brought Marlowe to a tragic and unworthy end. But, as if in mockery, he degrades him with unmanly, ignoble qualities that excite our derision. His mind is pleased with toys that would amuse a child: at the conclusion of an almost incredibly trivial Show of the Seven Deadly Sins he exclaims, 'O, how this sight doth delight my soul!' His practical jokes are unworthy of a court jester. The congealing of his blood agitates his superstitious mind far more than the terrible frankness of Mephistophilis. Miserably mean-spirited, he seeks to propitiate the wrath of the fiend by invoking his torments upon an old man whose disinterested appeal momentarily quickened his conscience into revolt. Finally, when we recall the words with which Tamburlaine faced death, what contempt, despite the frightful anguish of the scene, is aroused by Faustus's screams of terror at the approach of Lucifer to claim him as his own! Instinctively we think of Byron's Manfred and his scorn of hell and its furies. It is his cowardice that spoils the effect of the backward glances and twinges of conscience, the intention of which has been rightly praised by somany. Marlowe probably wished to represent the strife of good and evil in a man's soul. Under other circumstances it is fair to suppose that he would have achieved success, and so have anticipated Goethe. But his Faustus moves on too low a level. Of a moral sense, independent of the dread of punishment, he knows nothing. Four times his Good Angel suggests to him a return to the right path; once an Old Man warns him; twice Mephistophilis says that which might fairly have bid him pause; twice, at least, his own conscience advises repentance. Yet only on two occasions is there any real revolt, and then only because his cowardice has been enlisted on the side of righteousness by the sudden thought of the devils that will tear him in pieces or of the hell that 'claims his right, and with a roaring voice says, "Faustus, come".' In proof of this we see his hesitation scared away by the greater terrors of a present devil, a Lucifer clothed in horror, or a threatening Mephistophilis. In his vacillations we see, not the noble conflict of good and evil impulses, but an ignoble tug-of-war between timidity and appetite.

If Faustus himself falls short of success as a tragic character, if his aspirations are too mean, his qualities too contemptible to win our sympathy save at rare moments of transcendent poetry, what shall be said of the setting provided for the story of his career? Once more we are offered the stale devices of the Moralities, the Good and Bad Angels, the Devil, the Old Man (formerly known as Sage Counsel), the Seven Deadly Sins, Heaven, Hell, and the carefully-pointed moral at the end. Even the Senecan Chorus has been forced into service to tell us of Faustus's early manhood and of the marvellous journeys taken in the intervals. There are no acts, but that is not a great matter; they were added later in the edition of 1616.What does matter very much is the introduction of stupid scenes of low comedy into which Faustus is dragged to play a common conjuror's part and which almost succeed in shattering the impression of tragic intensity left by the few scenes where poetry triumphs over facts. Here again, however, our criticism of the author is softened by the knowledge that Dekker and Rowley made undefined additions to the play, and may therefore be responsible for the crudities of its humour. Nevertheless, even with this allowance, Marlowe must be blamed for the utter incongruity of so many scenes with high tragedy. The harmony which rules the construction ofTamburlaine, giving it a lofty coherence and consistency, is lamentably absent fromDoctor Faustus.

Doctor Faustusis not a great play. Yet it will never be forgotten. Though mismanaged, it has the elements of a tremendous tragedy. In discerning the suitability of the Teutonic legend for this purpose Marlowe showed a far truer understanding of what tragedy should be, of the superior terrors of moral over material downfall, than he displayed in his more successful later tragedy.

Most of the poetry is of a less fiery kind, it flares less, than the poetry ofTamburlaine. There is also more use of prose. But at least two purple passages exist to give immortality to Faustus's passion and despair. The first has already been quoted at length. The second is the even more famous soliloquy, the terror-stricken outcry rather, of Faustus in his last hour of life. With frightful realism it confirms the fiend's scornful prophecy of a scene of 'desperate lunacy', when his labouring brain will beget 'a world of idle fantasies to overreach the devil, but all in vain'.

Marlowe's adaptation of blank verse to natural conversation has been spoken of as one of his contributions to theart of dramatic poetry. The following passage illustrates this:

[The compact has just been signed.]

Meph.Speak, Faustus; do you deliver this as your deed?Faustus.Ay, take it, and the devil give thee good of it!Meph.So, now, Faustus, ask me what thou wilt.Faustus.First I will question with thee about hell.Tell me, where is the place that men call hell?Meph.Under the heavens.Faustus.Ay, so are all things else; but whereabouts?Meph.Within the bowels of these elements,Where we are tortured and remain for ever.Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribedIn one self-place; but where we are is hell,And where hell is, there must we ever be:And, to be short, when all the world dissolves,And every creature shall be purified,All places shall be hell that are not heaven.Faustus.I think hell's a fable.Meph.Ay, think so still, till experience change thy mind.Faustus.Why, dost thou think that Faustus shall be damned?Meph.Ay, of necessity, for here's the scrollIn which thou hast given thy soul to Lucifer.Faustus.Ay, and body too; and what of that?Thinkest thou that Faustus is so fond to imagineThat, after this life, there is any pain?No, these are trifles and mere old wives' tales.Meph.But I am an instance to prove the contrary,For I tell thee I am damned and now in hell.Faustus.Nay, an this be hell, I'll willingly be damned.

Meph.Speak, Faustus; do you deliver this as your deed?

Faustus.Ay, take it, and the devil give thee good of it!

Meph.So, now, Faustus, ask me what thou wilt.

Faustus.First I will question with thee about hell.Tell me, where is the place that men call hell?

Meph.Under the heavens.

Faustus.Ay, so are all things else; but whereabouts?

Meph.Within the bowels of these elements,Where we are tortured and remain for ever.Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribedIn one self-place; but where we are is hell,And where hell is, there must we ever be:And, to be short, when all the world dissolves,And every creature shall be purified,All places shall be hell that are not heaven.

Faustus.I think hell's a fable.

Meph.Ay, think so still, till experience change thy mind.

Faustus.Why, dost thou think that Faustus shall be damned?

Meph.Ay, of necessity, for here's the scrollIn which thou hast given thy soul to Lucifer.

Faustus.Ay, and body too; and what of that?Thinkest thou that Faustus is so fond to imagineThat, after this life, there is any pain?No, these are trifles and mere old wives' tales.

Meph.But I am an instance to prove the contrary,For I tell thee I am damned and now in hell.

Faustus.Nay, an this be hell, I'll willingly be damned.

The Jew of Maltarepeats the fundamental failure ofDoctor Faustus, but partially redeems it by avoiding its errors of construction. In this play the dramatist has recovered his sense of harmony: he places his centralfigure in circumstances that befit him, and maintains a consistent balance between the strength of his character and the nature of his deeds. The Jew does nothing that really jars on our conception of him as a great villain. Nor in the minor scenes is there anything to disturb the general impression of darkness. The gentleness of Abigail, whose love and obedience alone draw her into the net of crime, only makes her surroundings appear more cruel; while the introduction of the Governor, the Grand Seignior's son, and a Vice-Admiral of Spain raises the level of wickedness to something like dignified rank. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the play is fundamentally unsound. True tragedy should present more than a great change between the first and last scenes; the change should be lamentable. We should feel that a much better ending might, and would, have come but for the circumstance that forms the crisis, or for other circumstances at the beginning of the play. If we consider such tragic careers as those of Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth and Othello we recognize that each might have come to a different conclusion if it had not been for the blight of a father's death or a single act of folly, of ambition or jealousy. These men all excite our sympathy, especially Hamlet, whose tragedy is due not at all to himself but to the overshadowing of another's crime. Macbeth and Othello are each introduced as men of the noblest qualities, with one flaw which events have not yet revealed. But Barabas the Jew is deliberately painted as vile. We learn from his own lips of previous villany atrocious enough in itself, without any of his subsequent crimes, to justify his horrible fate. Moreover, he does not actually lose his wealth. If that were all swept away we could understand resentment boiling up into savage hate. But the truth is, he is so littlehurt financially that soon after the confiscation of his goods he is able to say:

In spite of these swine-eating Christians ...Am I become as wealthy as I was.They hoped my daughter would ha' been a nun;But she's at home, and I have bought a houseAs great and fair as is the governor's.

Hence his action against the governor's son, Lodowick, is inexcusably vindictive, quite apart from the vile share in it which he forces upon his daughter. The nunnery crime, again, is monstrous in its gross injustice to Abigail's constancy and in its Herodian comprehensiveness. After this his other murders and intrigues seem more justified. The two friars, his servant Ithamore and the rest can well be spared by any exit; his betrayal of the town is not unreasonable, considering the treatment meted out to him within it; and his proposed second treachery is based on sound policy.—We may observe, in passing, that the self-righteous governor takes no steps to prevent, by a timely warning, the massacre of the enemy's soldiers, availing himself of the atrocity, instead, to secure a victory for his side.—Consequently, when the final doom does fall upon Barabas, we have begun to be vaguely doubtful whether it is altogether deserved. Yet we feel that it is impossible to let him live. Thus the conclusion, however horrible spectacularly, neither excites pity for the Jew nor entirely satisfies justice. Barabas is victimized by the governor at the beginning of the play; it seems hardly fair that the two men should occupy the same relative positions at the end. It may be urged that the early scenes do present Barabas as meriting our pity, that our compassion does go out to him in his oppression. But the sympathy that is won at first is falsely won by the prominence given to his distresswhen hefearsall is lost: touched by the pain caused by the governor's injustice, we almost overlook the recovery effected by the Jew's cunning.

If we look for passages of tragic intensity we find a splendid hope weakening to dreary disappointment. The whole of the first act and the opening scene of the second act ring true to tragedy. Nothing could be better planned than the swift transition from the golden harvesting of wealth to its confiscation by the state. The contrast, too, between the dignified resistance of Barabas and the weak surrender of his companions artistically emphasizes the former's splendid isolation. For the brief scene in which the Jew, haunting the vicinity of the nunnery like 'ghosts that glide by night about the place where treasure hath been hid', regains his bags of gold and precious jewels, no praise can be too high. After that, however, the ennobling mantle of human sorrow and pain falls away; the crimes that follow are hideous in their nakedness—murders or massacres, nothing more. Not the least attempt is made to enlist our sympathy for any one of the murdered, except Abigail. If we are asked, then, to define the true nature of the play, we shall call it not a tragedy proper, in the sense in whichMacbethis a tragedy, but rather a narrative play presenting the criminal career of a villain acting under provocation. As has been well pointed out by Mr. Baker in hisDevelopment of Shakespeare, there is a difference between 'the tragic' and 'tragedy'. We might describeThe Jew of Maltaas a tragic narrative play.

In characterization Marlowe has made a distinct advance. With the creation of Barabas he brings upon the stage a person of many commanding qualities. The Jew is great in his own terrible way. He is far-seeing, bold, subtle, relentless. He loves his daughter much, his goldimmeasurably. Tempests of emotion shake his frame when restraint is thrown aside. But at need he can be calm and conciliatory in the face of intense annoyance and blustering threats. In the hour of death he is own brother to defiant Tamburlaine. The points of resemblance between him and Shylock may be searched out by any curious student: the reality of the likeness, scoffed at by a few whose admiration for Shakespeare is inclined to prejudice their judgment, has been effectively demonstrated by Professor Ward.[67]It would be an interesting exercise to pursue Professor Ward's hint at the insincerity of the Jew's recital to Ithamore of his early crimes. We might work back to an initial conception of Barabas as an upright merchant, and so discover a real tragedy in the moral downfall which results from the governor's injustice. Such a point of view is attractive, and would raise the character of the play considerably. But it has many obstacles in its way, not the least being the Machiavellian prologue and the difficulty of believing that any dramatist of the sixteenth century would wish, or dare, to present to an English audience the picture of an honest, ill-treated Jew. The confiscation which we regard as an injustice was probably viewed in that day as an eminently sound and Christian act of political economy.

Leaving Abigail and Ithamore to the liking or loathing of readers of the play, we hasten to conclude this discussion with examples of Marlowe's verse. His poetry is once more the refining element, beautifying the ugly, ennobling the mean, a vein of gold in the quartz. Having grown more generous since the days ofDoctor Faustus, the poet scatters gems with lavish hand throughout the play. Rhymes begin to appear, as though he scorned toseem dependent upon blank verse alone. Extensive as is the choice, it is impossible, in fairness to those readers who have not the play, to omit entirely the often-quoted opening scene of the second act. After it, however, we quote a passage which, almost more than the other, illustrates the purifying influence of the author's imagination: the fact that it is partly in rhyme gives it an additional interest.

(1)[Barabaswanders in the streets about his old home where his treasure lies concealed.]

(1)

[Barabaswanders in the streets about his old home where his treasure lies concealed.]

Barabas.Thus, like the sad-presaging raven, that tollsThe sick man's passport in her hollow beak,And in the shadow of the silent nightDoth shake contagion from her sable wings,Vexed and tormented runs poor BarabasWith fatal curses towards these Christians.The incertain pleasures of swift-footed timeHave ta'en their flight, and left me in despair;And of my former riches rests no moreBut bare remembrance; like a soldier's scar,That has no further comfort for his maim....Now I remember those old women's words,Who in my wealth would tell me winter's tales,And speak of spirits and ghosts that glide by nightAbout the place where treasure hath been hid:And now methinks that I am one of those;For, whilst I live, here lives my soul's sole hope,And, when I die, here shall my spirit walk.

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