IIMARLOWE

I shallpreface what I have to say of Marlowe with a few words as to the refinement which had been going on in the language, and the greater ductility which it had been rapidly gaining, and which fitted it for the use of the remarkable group of men who made an epoch of the reign of Elizabeth. Spenser was undoubtedly the poet to whom we owe most in this respect, and the very great contrast between his “Shepherd’s Calendar,” published in 1579, and his later poems awakens curiosity. In his earliest work there are glimpses, indeed, of those special qualities which have won for him the name of the poet’s poet, but they are rare and fugitive, and certainly never would have warranted the prediction of such poetry as was to follow. There is nothing here to indicate that a great artist in language had been born. Two causes, I suspect, were mainly effective in this transformation, I am almost tempted to say transubstantiation, of the man. The first was his practice in translation (true also of Marlowe), than which nothing gives a greater choice and mastery of one’s mother-tongue, for one must pause and weigh and judge every word with the greatest nicety, and cunningly transfuse idiom into idiom. The other, and by far the more important, was hisstudy of the Italian poets. The “Faerie Queene” is full of loving reminiscence of them, but their happiest influence is felt in his lyrical poems. For these, I think, make it plain that Italy first taught him how much of the meaning of verse is in its music, and trained his ear to a sense of the harmony as well as the melody of which English verse was capable or might be made capable. Compare the sweetest passage in any lyric of the “Shepherd’s Calendar” with the eloquent ardor of the poorest, if any be poor, in the “Epithalamion,” and we find ourselves in a new world where music had just been invented. This we owe, beyond any doubt, to Spenser’s study of the Italian canzone. Nay, the whole metrical movement of the “Epithalamion” recalls that of Petrarca’s noble “Spirto gentil.” I repeat that melody and harmony were first naturalized in our language by Spenser. I love to recall these debts, for it is pleasant to be grateful even to the dead.

Other men had done their share towards what may be called the modernization of our English, and among these Sir Philip Sidney was conspicuous. He probably gave it greater ease of movement, and seems to have done for it very much what Dryden did a century later in establishing terms of easier intercourse between the language of literature and the language of cultivated society.

There had been good versifiers long before. Chaucer, for example, and even Gower, wearisome as he mainly is, made verses sometimes not only easy in movement, but in which the language seemsstrangely modern. That most dolefully dreary of books, “The Mirror for Magistrates,” and Sackville, more than any of its authors, did something towards restoring the dignity of verse, and helping it to recover its self-respect, while Spenser was still a youth. Tame as it is, the sunshine of that age here and there touches some verse that ripples in the sluggish current with a flicker of momentary illumination. But before Spenser, no English verse had ever soared and sung, or been filled with what Sidney calls “divine delightfulness.” Sidney, it may be conjectured, did more by private criticism and argument than by example. Drayton says ofhim:—

“The noble Sidney with this last arose,That heroë for numbers and for prose,That throughly paced our language as to showThe plenteous English hand in hand might goWith Greek and Latin, and did first reduceOur tongue from Lilly’s writing then in use.”

“The noble Sidney with this last arose,

That heroë for numbers and for prose,

That throughly paced our language as to show

The plenteous English hand in hand might go

With Greek and Latin, and did first reduce

Our tongue from Lilly’s writing then in use.”

But even the affectations of Lilly were not without their use as helps to refinement. If, like Chaucer’sfrere,—

“Somewhat he lisped, for his wantonness,”

it was through the desire

“To make his English sweet upon his tongue.”

It was the general clownishness against which he revolted, and we owe him our thanks for it. To show of what brutalities even recent writers could be capable, it will suffice to mention that Golding, in his translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, makes a witch mutter the devil’s pater-noster, and Ulysses express his fears of going “to pot.” I should liketo read you a familiar sonnet of Sidney’s for itssweetness:—

“Come, Sleep: O Sleep! the certain knot of peace,The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release,The indifferent judge between the high and low;With shield of proof, shield me from out the pressOf those fierce darts despair at me doth throw;O make in me those civil wars to cease:I will good tribute pay if thou do so.Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,A chamber deaf to noise and blind to light,A rosy garland, and a weary head:And if these things, as being thine of right,Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me,Livelier than elsewhere, Stella’s image see.”

“Come, Sleep: O Sleep! the certain knot of peace,

The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,

The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release,

The indifferent judge between the high and low;

With shield of proof, shield me from out the press

Of those fierce darts despair at me doth throw;

O make in me those civil wars to cease:

I will good tribute pay if thou do so.

Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,

A chamber deaf to noise and blind to light,

A rosy garland, and a weary head:

And if these things, as being thine of right,

Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me,

Livelier than elsewhere, Stella’s image see.”

Here is ease and simplicity; but in such a phrase as “baiting-place of wit” there is also a want of that perfect discretion which we demand of the language of poetry, however we may be glad to miss it in the thought or emotion which that language conveys.Baiting-placeis no more a homespun word than the wordinn, which adds a charm to one of the sweetest verses that Spenser ever wrote; butbaiting-placeis common, it smacks of the hostler and postilion, and commonness is a very poor relation indeed of simplicity. But doubtless one main cause of the vivacity of phrase which so charms us in our earlier writers is to be found in the fact that there were not yet two languages—that of life and that of literature. The divorce between the two took place a century and a half later, and that process of breeding in and in began which at last reduced the language of verse to a kind of idiocy.

Do not consider such discussions as these otiose or nugatory. The language we are fortunate enough to share, and which, I think, Jacob Grimm was right in pronouncing, in its admirable mixture of Saxon and Latin, its strength and sonorousness, a better literary medium than any other modern tongue—this language has not been fashioned to what it is without much experiment, much failure, and infinite expenditure of pains and thought. Genius and pedantry have each done its part towards the result which seems so easy to us, and yet was so hard to win—the one by way of example, the other by way of warning. The purity, the elegance, the decorum, the chastity of our mother-tongue are a sacred trust in our hands. I am tired of hearing the foolish talk of an American variety of it, about our privilege to make it what we will because we are in a majority. A language belongs to those who know best how to use it, how to bring out all its resources, how to make it search its coffers round for the pithy or canorous phrase that suits the need, and they who can do this have been always in a pitiful minority. Let us be thankful that we too have a right to it, and have proved our right, but let us set up no claim to vulgarize it. The English of Abraham Lincoln was so good not because he learned it in Illinois, but because he learned it of Shakespeare and Milton and the Bible, the constant companions of his leisure. And how perfect it was in its homely dignity, its quiet strength, the unerring aim with which it struck once nor needed to strike more! The language isalive here, and will grow. Let us do all we can with it but debase it. Good taste may not be necessary to salvation or to success in life, but it is one of the most powerful factors of civilization. As a people we have a larger share of it and more widely distributed than I, at least, have found elsewhere, but as a nation we seem to lack it altogether. Our coinage is ruder than that of any country of equal pretensions, our paper money is filthily infectious, and the engraving on it, mechanically perfect as it is, makes of every bank-note a missionary of barbarism. This should make us cautious of trying our hand in the same fashion on the circulating medium of thought. But it is high time that I should remember Maître Guillaume of Patelin, and come back to my sheep.

In coming to speak of Marlowe, I cannot help fearing that I may fail a little in that equanimity which is the first condition of all helpful criticism. Generosity there should be, and enthusiasm there should be, but they should stop short of extravagance. Praise should not weaken into eulogy, nor blame fritter itself away into fault-finding. Goethe tells us that the first thing needful to the critic, as indeed it is to the wise man generally, is to see the thing as it really is; this is the most precious result of all culture, the surest warrant of happiness, or at least of composure. But he also bids us, in judging any work, seek first to discover its beauties, and then its blemishes or defects. Now there are two poets whom I feel that I can never judge without a favorable bias. One is Spenser,who was the first poet I ever read as a boy, not drawn to him by any enchantment of his matter or style, but simply because the first verse of his great poemwas,—

“A gentle knight was pricking on the plain,”

and I followed gladly, wishful of adventure. Of course I understood nothing of the allegory, never suspected it, fortunately for me, and am surprised to think how much of the language I understood. At any rate, I grew fond of him, and whenever I see the little brown folio in which I read, my heart warms to it as to a friend of my childhood. With Marlowe it was otherwise. With him I grew acquainted during the most impressible and receptive period of my youth. He was the first man of genius I had ever really known, and he naturally bewitched me. What cared I that they said he was a deboshed fellow? nay, an atheist? To me he was the voice of one singing in the desert, of one who had found the water of life for which I was panting, and was at rest under the palms. How can he ever become to me as other poets are? But I shall try to be lenient in my admiration.

Christopher Marlowe, the son of a shoemaker, was born at Canterbury, in February, 1563, was matriculated at Benet College, Cambridge, in 1580, received his degree of bachelor there in 1583 and of master in 1587. He came early to London, and was already known as a dramatist before the end of his twenty-fourth year. There is some reason for thinking that he was at one time an actor. He waskilled in a tavern brawl, by a man named Archer, in 1593, at the age of thirty. He was taxed with atheism, but on inadequate grounds, as it appears to me. That he was said to have written a tract against the Trinity, for which a license to print was refused on the ground of blasphemy, might easily have led to the greater charge. That he had some opinions of a kind unusual then may be inferred, perhaps, from a passage in his “Faust.” Faust asks Mephistopheles how, being damned, he is out of hell. And Mephistopheles answers, “Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.” And a little farther on he explains himselfthus:—

“Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribedIn one self place; for where we are is hell,And where hell is there must we ever be;And, to conclude, when all the earth dissolves,And every creature shall be purified,All places shall be hell that are not heaven.”

“Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed

In one self place; for where we are is hell,

And where hell is there must we ever be;

And, to conclude, when all the earth dissolves,

And every creature shall be purified,

All places shall be hell that are not heaven.”

Milton remembered the first passage I have quoted, and puts nearly the same words into the mouth of his Lucifer. If Marlowe was a liberal thinker, it is not strange that in that intolerant age he should have incurred the stigma of general unbelief. Men are apt to blacken opinions which are distasteful to them, and along with them the character of him who holds them.

This at least may be said of him without risk of violating the rule ofne quid nímis, that he is one of the most masculine and fecundating natures in the long line of British poets. Perhaps his energy was even in excess. There is in him an Orientallavishness. He will impoverish a province for a simile, and pour the revenues of a kingdom into the lap of a description. In that delightful story in the book of Esdras, King Darius, who has just dismissed all his captains and governors of cities and satraps, after a royal feast, sends couriers galloping after them to order them all back again, because he has found a riddle under his pillow, and wishes their aid in solving it. Marlowe in like manner calls in help from every the remotest corner of earth and heaven for what seems to us as trivial an occasion. I will not say that he is bombastic, but he constantly pushes grandiosity to the verge of bombast. His contemporaries thought he passed it in his “Tamburlaine.” His imagination flames and flares, consuming what it should caress, as Jupiter did Semele. That exquisite phrase of Hamlet, “the modesty of nature,” would never have occurred to him. Yet in the midst of the hurly-burly there will fall a sudden hush, and we come upon passages calm and pellucid as mountain tarns filled to the brim with the purest distillations of heaven. And, again, there are single verses that open silently as roses, and surprise us with that seemingly accidental perfection, which there is no use in talking about because itself says all that is to be said and more.

There is a passage in “Tamburlaine” which I remember reading in the first course of lectures I ever delivered, thirty-four years ago, as a poet’s feeling of the inadequacy of the word to theidea:—

“If all the pens that ever poets heldHad fed the feeling of their masters’ thoughts,And every sweetness that inspired their hearts,Their minds, and muses on admired themes;If all the heavenly quintessence they stillFrom their immortal flowers of poesy,Wherein, as in a mirror, we perceiveThe highest reaches of a human wit;—If these had made one poem’s period,And all combined in beauty’s worthiness,Yet should there hover in their restless headsOne thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least,Which into words no virtue can digest.”

“If all the pens that ever poets held

Had fed the feeling of their masters’ thoughts,

And every sweetness that inspired their hearts,

Their minds, and muses on admired themes;

If all the heavenly quintessence they still

From their immortal flowers of poesy,

Wherein, as in a mirror, we perceive

The highest reaches of a human wit;—

If these had made one poem’s period,

And all combined in beauty’s worthiness,

Yet should there hover in their restless heads

One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least,

Which into words no virtue can digest.”

Marlowe made snatches at this forbidden fruit with vigorous leaps, and not without bringing away a prize now and then such as only the fewest have been able to reach. Of fine single verses I give a few as instances ofthis:—

“Sometimes a lovely boy in Dian’s shape,With hair that gilds the water as it glides,Shall bathe him in a spring.”

“Sometimes a lovely boy in Dian’s shape,

With hair that gilds the water as it glides,

Shall bathe him in a spring.”

Here is a couplet notable for dignity of poise describingTamburlaine:—

“Of stature tall and straightly fashioned,Like his desire, lift upward and divine.”“For every street like to a firmamentGlistered with breathing stars.”“Unwedded maidsShadowing more beauty in their airy browsThan have the white breasts of the queen of Love.”

“Of stature tall and straightly fashioned,Like his desire, lift upward and divine.”

“Of stature tall and straightly fashioned,

Like his desire, lift upward and divine.”

“For every street like to a firmamentGlistered with breathing stars.”

“For every street like to a firmament

Glistered with breathing stars.”

“Unwedded maidsShadowing more beauty in their airy browsThan have the white breasts of the queen of Love.”

“Unwedded maids

Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows

Than have the white breasts of the queen of Love.”

This from “Tamburlaine” is particularlycharacteristic:—

“NatureDoth 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 restUntil we reach the ripest fruit of all.”

“Nature

Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.

Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend

The 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.”

One of these verses reminds us of that exquisite one of Shakespeare where he says that Love is

“Still climbing trees in the Hesperides.”

But Shakespeare puts a complexity of meaning into his chance sayings, and lures the fancy to excursions of which Marlowe never dreamt.

But, alas, a voice will not illustrate like a stereopticon, and this tearing away of fragments that seem to bleed with the avulsion is like breaking off a finger from a statue as a specimen.

The impression he made upon the men of his time was uniform; it was that of something new and strange; it was that of genius, in short. Drayton says of him, kindling to an unwonted warmth, as if he loosened himself for a moment from the choking coils of his Polyolbion for a largerbreath:—

“Next Marlowe bathèd in the Thespian springsHad 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 retainWhich rightly should possess a poet’s brain.”

“Next Marlowe bathèd in the Thespian springs

Had in him those brave translunary things

That the first poets had; his raptures were

All air and fire, which made his verses clear;

For that fine madness still he did retain

Which rightly should possess a poet’s brain.”

And Chapman, taking up and continuing Marlowe’s half-told story of Hero and Leander, breaks forth suddenly into this enthusiasm ofinvocation:—

“Then, ho! most strangely intellectual fireThat, proper to my soul, hast power to inspireHer burning faculties, and with the wingsOf thy unsphered flame visit’st the springsOf spirits immortal, now (as swift as TimeDoth follow motion) find the eternal climeOf his free soul whose living subject stoodUp to the chin in the Pierian flood.”

“Then, ho! most strangely intellectual fire

That, proper to my soul, hast power to inspire

Her burning faculties, and with the wings

Of thy unsphered flame visit’st the springs

Of spirits immortal, now (as swift as Time

Doth follow motion) find the eternal clime

Of his free soul whose living subject stood

Up to the chin in the Pierian flood.”

Surely Chapman would have sent his soul on no such errand had he believed that the soul of Marlowe was in torment, as his accusers did not scruple to say that it was, sent thither by the manifestly Divine judgment of his violent death.

Yes, Drayton was right in classing him with “the first poets,” for he was indeed such, and so continues,—that is, he was that most indefinable thing, an original man, and therefore as fresh and contemporaneous to-day as he was three hundred years ago. Most of us are more or less hampered by our own individuality, nor can shake ourselves free of that chrysalis of consciousness and give our “souls a loose,” as Dryden calls it in his vigorous way. And yet it seems to me that there is something even finer than that fine madness, and I think I see it in the imperturbable sanity of Shakespeare, which made him so much an artist that his new work still bettered his old. I think I see it even in the almost irritating calm of Goethe, which, if it did not quite make him an artist, enabled him to see what an artist should be, and to come as near to being one as his nature allowed. Marlowe was certainly not an artist in the larger sense, but he was cunning in words and periods and the musical modulation of them. And even this is a very rare gift. But his mind could never submit itself to acontrolling purpose, and renounce all other things for the sake of that. His plays, with the single exception of “Edward II.,” have no organic unity, and such unity as is here is more apparent than real. Passages in them stir us deeply and thrill us to the marrow, but each play as a whole is ineffectual. Even his “Edward II.” is regular only to the eye by a more orderly arrangement of scenes and acts, and Marlowe evidently felt the drag of this restraint, for we miss the uncontrollable energy, the eruptive fire, and the feeling that he was happy in his work. Yet Lamb was hardly extravagant in saying that “the death scene of Marlowe’s king moves pity and terror beyond any scene, ancient or modern, with which I am acquainted.” His tragedy of “Dido, Queen of Carthage,” is also regularly plotted out, and is also somewhat tedious. Yet there are many touches that betray his burning hand. There is one passage illustrating that luxury of description into which Marlowe is always glad to escape from the business in hand. Dido tellsÆneas:—

“Æneas, I’ll repair thy Trojan shipsConditionally that thou wilt stay with me,And let Achates sail to Italy;I’ll give thee tackling made of rivelled gold,Wound on the barks of odoriferous trees;Oars of massy ivory, full of holesThrough which the water shall delight to play;Thy anchors shall be hewed from crystal rocksWhich, if thou lose, shall shine above the waves;The masts whereon thy swelling sails shall hangHollow pyramides of silver plate;The sails of folded lawn, where shall be wroughtThe wars of Troy, but not Troy’s overthrow;For ballast, empty Dido’s treasury;Take what ye will, but leave Æneas here.Achates, thou shalt be so seemly cladAs sea-born nymphs shall swarm about thy shipsAnd wanton mermaids court thee with sweet songs,Flinging in favors of more sovereign worthThan Thetis hangs about Apollo’s neck,So that Æneas may but stay with me.”

“Æneas, I’ll repair thy Trojan ships

Conditionally that thou wilt stay with me,

And let Achates sail to Italy;

I’ll give thee tackling made of rivelled gold,

Wound on the barks of odoriferous trees;

Oars of massy ivory, full of holes

Through which the water shall delight to play;

Thy anchors shall be hewed from crystal rocks

Which, if thou lose, shall shine above the waves;

The masts whereon thy swelling sails shall hang

Hollow pyramides of silver plate;

The sails of folded lawn, where shall be wrought

The wars of Troy, but not Troy’s overthrow;

For ballast, empty Dido’s treasury;

Take what ye will, but leave Æneas here.

Achates, thou shalt be so seemly clad

As sea-born nymphs shall swarm about thy ships

And wanton mermaids court thee with sweet songs,

Flinging in favors of more sovereign worth

Than Thetis hangs about Apollo’s neck,

So that Æneas may but stay with me.”

But far finer than this, in the same costly way, is the speech of Barabas in “The Jew of Malta,” ending with a line that has incorporated itself in the language with the familiarity of aproverb:—

“Give me the merchants of the Indian minesThat trade in metal of the purest mould;The wealthy Moor that in the Eastern rocksWithout control can pick his riches up,And in his house heap pearl like pebble-stones,Receive them free, and sell them by the weight;Bags of fiery opals, sapphires, amethysts,Jacynths, hard topaz, grass-green emeralds,Beauteous rubies, sparkling diamonds,And seld-seen costly stones of so great priceAs one of them, indifferently rated,* * * * *May serve in peril of calamityTo ransom great kings from captivity.This is the ware wherein consists my wealth:* * * * *Infinite riches in a little room.”

“Give me the merchants of the Indian mines

That trade in metal of the purest mould;

The wealthy Moor that in the Eastern rocks

Without control can pick his riches up,

And in his house heap pearl like pebble-stones,

Receive them free, and sell them by the weight;

Bags of fiery opals, sapphires, amethysts,

Jacynths, hard topaz, grass-green emeralds,

Beauteous rubies, sparkling diamonds,

And seld-seen costly stones of so great price

As one of them, indifferently rated,

* * * * *

May serve in peril of calamityTo ransom great kings from captivity.This is the ware wherein consists my wealth:

May serve in peril of calamity

To ransom great kings from captivity.

This is the ware wherein consists my wealth:

* * * * *

Infinite riches in a little room.”

This is the very poetry of avarice.

Let us now look a little more closely at Marlowe as a dramatist. Here also he has an importance less for what he accomplished than for what he suggested to others. Not only do I think that Shakespeare’s verse caught some hints from his,but there are certain descriptive passages and similes of the greater poet which, whenever I read them, instantly bring Marlowe to my mind. This is an impression I might find it hard to convey to another, or even to make definite to myself; but it is an old one, and constantly repeats itself, so that I put some confidence in it. Marlowe’s “Edward II.” certainly served Shakespeare as a model for his earlier historical plays. Of course he surpassed his model, but Marlowe might have said of him as Oderisi, with pathetic modesty, said to Dante of his rival and surpasser, Franco of Bologna, “The praise is now all his, yet mine in part.” But it is always thus. The path-finder is forgotten when the track is once blazed out. It was in Shakespeare’s “Richard II.” that Lamb detected the influence of Marlowe, saying that “the reluctant pangs of abdicating royalty in Edward furnished hints which Shakespeare has scarce improved upon in Richard.” In the parallel scenes of both plays the sentiment is rather elegiac than dramatic, but there is a deeper pathos, I think, in Richard, and his grief rises at times to a passion which is wholly wanting in Edward. Let me read Marlowe’s abdication scene. The irresolute nature of the king is finely indicated. The Bishop of Winchester has come to demand the crown; Edward takes it off, andsays:—

“Here, take my crown; the life of Edward too:Two kings of England cannot reign at once.But stay awhile: let me be king till night,That I may gaze upon this glittering crown;So shall my eyes receive their last content,My head the latest honor due to it,And jointly both yield up their wishèd right.Continue ever, thou celestial sun;Let never silent night possess this clime;Stand still, you watches of the element;All times and seasons, rest you at a stay—That Edward may be still fair England’s king!But day’s bright beam doth vanish fast away,And needs I must resign my wishèd crown.Inhuman creatures, nursed with tiger’s milk,Why gape you for your sovereign’s overthrow?—My diadem, I mean, and guiltless life.See, monsters, see, I’ll wear my crown again.What, fear you not the fury of your king?* * * * *I’ll not resign, but, whilst I live, be king!”

“Here, take my crown; the life of Edward too:

Two kings of England cannot reign at once.

But stay awhile: let me be king till night,

That I may gaze upon this glittering crown;

So shall my eyes receive their last content,

My head the latest honor due to it,

And jointly both yield up their wishèd right.

Continue ever, thou celestial sun;

Let never silent night possess this clime;

Stand still, you watches of the element;

All times and seasons, rest you at a stay—

That Edward may be still fair England’s king!

But day’s bright beam doth vanish fast away,

And needs I must resign my wishèd crown.

Inhuman creatures, nursed with tiger’s milk,

Why gape you for your sovereign’s overthrow?—

My diadem, I mean, and guiltless life.

See, monsters, see, I’ll wear my crown again.

What, fear you not the fury of your king?

* * * * *

I’ll not resign, but, whilst I live, be king!”

Then, after a short furtherparley:—

“Here, receive my crown.Receive it? No; these innocent hands of mineShall not be guilty of so foul a crime:He of you all that most desires my blood,And will be called the murderer of a king,Take it. What, are you moved? Pity you me?Then send for unrelenting Mortimer,And Isabel, whose eyes, being turned to steel,Will sooner sparkle fire than shed a tear.Yet stay, for rather than I’ll look on them,Here, here!—Now, sweet God of Heaven,Make me despise this transitory pomp,And sit for aye enthronizèd in Heaven!Come, Death, and with thy fingers close my eyes,Or, if I live, let me forget myself.”

“Here, receive my crown.

Receive it? No; these innocent hands of mine

Shall not be guilty of so foul a crime:

He of you all that most desires my blood,

And will be called the murderer of a king,

Take it. What, are you moved? Pity you me?

Then send for unrelenting Mortimer,

And Isabel, whose eyes, being turned to steel,

Will sooner sparkle fire than shed a tear.

Yet stay, for rather than I’ll look on them,

Here, here!—Now, sweet God of Heaven,

Make me despise this transitory pomp,

And sit for aye enthronizèd in Heaven!

Come, Death, and with thy fingers close my eyes,

Or, if I live, let me forget myself.”

Surely one might fancy that to be from the prentice hand of Shakespeare. It is no small distinction that this can be said of Marlowe, for it can be said of no other. What follows is still finer. The ruffian who is to murder Edward, in order toevade his distrust, pretends to weep. The kingexclaims:—

“Weep’st thou already? List awhile to me,And then thy heart, were it as Gurney’s is,Or as Matrevis’, hewn from the Caucasus,Yet will it melt ere I have done my tale.This dungeon where they keep me is the sinkWherein the filth of all the castle falls,And there in mire and puddle have I stoodThis ten days’ space; and, lest that I should sleep,One plays continually upon a drum;They give me bread and water, being a king;So that, for want of sleep and sustenance,My mind’s distempered and my body numbed,And whether I have limbs or no I know not.O, would my blood dropt out from every vein,As doth this water from my tattered robes!Tell Isabel the queen I looked not thus,When, for her sake, I ran at tilt in France,And there unhorsed the Duke of Clerëmont.”

“Weep’st thou already? List awhile to me,

And then thy heart, were it as Gurney’s is,

Or as Matrevis’, hewn from the Caucasus,

Yet will it melt ere I have done my tale.

This dungeon where they keep me is the sink

Wherein the filth of all the castle falls,

And there in mire and puddle have I stood

This ten days’ space; and, lest that I should sleep,

One plays continually upon a drum;

They give me bread and water, being a king;

So that, for want of sleep and sustenance,

My mind’s distempered and my body numbed,

And whether I have limbs or no I know not.

O, would my blood dropt out from every vein,

As doth this water from my tattered robes!

Tell Isabel the queen I looked not thus,

When, for her sake, I ran at tilt in France,

And there unhorsed the Duke of Clerëmont.”

This is even more in Shakespeare’s early manner than the other, and it is not ungrateful to our feeling of his immeasurable supremacy to think that even he had been helped in his schooling. There is a truly royal pathos in “They give me bread and water”; and “Tell Isabel the queen,” instead of “Isabel my queen,” is the most vividly dramatic touch that I remember anywhere in Marlowe. And that vision of the brilliant tournament, not more natural than it is artistic, how does it not deepen by contrast the gloom of all that went before! But you will observe that the verse is rather epic than dramatic. I mean by this that its every pause and every movement are regularly cadenced. There is a kingly composure in it, perhaps, but were thepassage not so finely pathetic as it is, or the diction less naturally simple, it would seem stiff. Nothing is more peculiarly characteristic of the mature Shakespeare than the way in which his verses curve and wind themselves with the fluctuating emotion or passion of the speaker and echo his mood. Let me illustrate this by a speech of Imogen when Pisanio gives her a letter from her husband bidding her meet him at Milford-Haven. The words seem to waver to and fro, or huddle together before the hurrying thought, like sheep when the collie chases them.

“O, for a horse with wings!—Hear’st thou, Pisanio?He is at Milford-Haven: read, and tell meHow far ’t is thither. If one of mean affairsMay plod it in a week, why may not IGlide thither in a day?—Then, true Pisanio—Who long’st like me to see thy lord; who long’stO, let me ’bate—but not like me—yet long’st—But in a fainter kind:—O, not like me;For mine’s beyond beyond: say, and speak thick,—Love’s counsellor should fill the bores of hearing,To the smothering of the sense,—how far it isTo this same blessed Milford: and, by the way,Tell me how Wales was made so happy asTo inherit such a haven: but, first of all,How we may steal from hence.”

“O, for a horse with wings!—Hear’st thou, Pisanio?

He is at Milford-Haven: read, and tell me

How far ’t is thither. If one of mean affairs

May plod it in a week, why may not I

Glide thither in a day?—Then, true Pisanio—

Who long’st like me to see thy lord; who long’st

O, let me ’bate—but not like me—yet long’st—

But in a fainter kind:—O, not like me;

For mine’s beyond beyond: say, and speak thick,—

Love’s counsellor should fill the bores of hearing,

To the smothering of the sense,—how far it is

To this same blessed Milford: and, by the way,

Tell me how Wales was made so happy as

To inherit such a haven: but, first of all,

How we may steal from hence.”

The whole speech is breathless with haste, and is in keeping not only with the feeling of the moment, but with what we already know of the impulsive character of Imogen. Marlowe did not, for he could not, teach Shakespeare this secret, nor has anybody else ever learned it.

There are, properly speaking, no characters inthe plays of Marlowe—but personages and interlocutors. We do not get to know them, but only to know what they do and say. The nearest approach to a character is Barabas, in “The Jew of Malta,” and he is but the incarnation of the popular hatred of the Jew. There is really nothing human in him. He seems a bugaboo rather than a man. Here is his own account ofhimself:—

“As for myself, I walk abroad o’ nights,And kill sick people groaning under walls;Sometimes I go about and poison wells;And now and then, to cherish Christian thieves,I am content to lose some of my crowns,That I may, walking in my gallery,See ’em go pinioned by my door along;Being young, I studied physic, and beganTo practise first upon the Italian;There I enriched the priests with burials,And always kept the sexton’s arms in ureWith digging graves and ringing dead men’s knells;And, after that, was I an engineer,And in the wars ’twixt France and Germany,Under pretence of helping Charles the Fifth,Slew friend and enemy with my stratagems.Then, after that, was I an usurer,And with extorting, cozening, forfeiting,And tricks belonging unto brokery,I filled the jails with bankrupts in a year.And with young orphans planted hospitals;And every moon made some or other mad,And now and then one hang himself for grief,Pinning upon his breast a long great scrollHow I with interest tormented him.But mark how I am blest for plaguing them—I have as much coin as will buy the town.”

“As for myself, I walk abroad o’ nights,

And kill sick people groaning under walls;

Sometimes I go about and poison wells;

And now and then, to cherish Christian thieves,

I am content to lose some of my crowns,

That I may, walking in my gallery,

See ’em go pinioned by my door along;

Being young, I studied physic, and began

To practise first upon the Italian;

There I enriched the priests with burials,

And always kept the sexton’s arms in ure

With digging graves and ringing dead men’s knells;

And, after that, was I an engineer,

And in the wars ’twixt France and Germany,

Under pretence of helping Charles the Fifth,

Slew friend and enemy with my stratagems.

Then, after that, was I an usurer,

And with extorting, cozening, forfeiting,

And tricks belonging unto brokery,

I filled the jails with bankrupts in a year.

And with young orphans planted hospitals;

And every moon made some or other mad,

And now and then one hang himself for grief,

Pinning upon his breast a long great scroll

How I with interest tormented him.

But mark how I am blest for plaguing them—

I have as much coin as will buy the town.”

Here is nothing left for sympathy. This is the mere lunacy of distempered imagination. It isshocking, and not terrible. Shakespeare makes no such mistake with Shylock. His passions are those of a man, though of a man depraved by oppression and contumely; and he shows sentiment, as when he says of the ring that Jessica had given for a monkey: “It was my turquoise. I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor.” And yet, observe the profound humor with which Shakespeare makes him think first of its dearness as a precious stone and then as a keepsake. In letting him exact his pound of flesh, he but follows the story as he found it in Giraldi Cinthio, and is careful to let us know that this Jew had good reason, or thought he had, to hate Christians. At the end, I think he meant us to pity Shylock, and we do pity him. And with what a smiling background of love and poetry does he give relief to the sombre figure of the Jew! In Marlowe’s play there is no respite. And yet it comes nearer to having a connected plot, in which one event draws on another, than any other of his plays. I do not think Milman right in saying that the interest falls off after the first two acts. I find enough to carry me on to the end, where the defiant death of Barabas in a caldron of boiling oil he had arranged for another victim does something to make a man of him. But there is no controlling reason in the piece. Nothing happens because it must, but because the author wills it so. The conception of life is purely arbitrary, and as far from nature as that of an imaginative child. It is curious, however, that here, too, Marlowe should have pointed the way to Shakespeare. But there is noresemblance between the Jew of Malta and the Jew of Venice, except that both have daughters whom they love. Nor is the analogy close even here. The love which Barabas professes for his child fails to humanize him to us, because it does not prevent him from making her the abhorrent instrument of his wanton malice in the death of her lover, and because we cannot believe him capable of loving anything but gold and vengeance. There is always something extravagant in the imagination of Marlowe, but here it is the extravagance of absurdity. Generally he gives us an impression of power, of vastness, though it be the vastness of chaos, where elemental forces hurtle blindly one against the other. But they are elemental forces, and not mere stage properties. Even Tamburlaine, if we see in him—as Marlowe, I think, meant that we should see—the embodiment of brute force, without reason and without conscience, ceases to be a blusterer, and becomes, indeed, as he asserts himself, the scourge of God. There is an exultation of strength in this play that seems to add a cubit to our stature. Marlowe had found the way that leads to style, and helped others to find it, but he never arrived there. He had not self-denial enough. He can refuse nothing to his fancy. He fails of his effect by over-emphasis, heaping upon a slender thought a burthen of expression too heavy for it to carry. But it is not with fagots, but with priceless Oriental stuffs, that he breaks their backs.

Marlowe’s “Dr. Faustus” interests us in anotherway. Here he again shows himself as a precursor. There is no attempt at profound philosophy in this play, and in the conduct of it Marlowe has followed the prose history of Dr. Faustus closely, even in its scenes of mere buffoonery. Disengaged from these, the figure of the protagonist is not without grandeur. It is not avarice or lust that tempts him at first, but power. Weary of his studies in law, medicine, and divinity, which have failed to bring him what he seeks, he turns tonecromancy:—

“These metaphysics of magiciansAnd necromantic books are heavenly.* * * * *Oh, what a world of profit and delight,Of power, of honor, of omnipotence,Is promised to the studious artisan!All things that move between the quiet polesShall be at my command. Emperors and kingsAre but obeyèd in their several provinces,Nor can they raise the winds or rend the clouds;But his dominion that exceeds in thisStretcheth as far as doth the mind of man;A sound magician is a mighty god:Here, Faustus, tire thy brains to gain a deity.”

“These metaphysics of magiciansAnd necromantic books are heavenly.

“These metaphysics of magicians

And necromantic books are heavenly.

* * * * *

Oh, what a world of profit and delight,Of power, of honor, of omnipotence,Is promised to the studious artisan!All things that move between the quiet polesShall be at my command. Emperors and kingsAre but obeyèd in their several provinces,Nor can they raise the winds or rend the clouds;But his dominion that exceeds in thisStretcheth as far as doth the mind of man;A sound magician is a mighty god:Here, Faustus, tire thy brains to gain a deity.”

Oh, what a world of profit and delight,

Of power, of honor, of omnipotence,

Is promised to the studious artisan!

All things that move between the quiet poles

Shall be at my command. Emperors and kings

Are but obeyèd in their several provinces,

Nor can they raise the winds or rend the clouds;

But his dominion that exceeds in this

Stretcheth as far as doth the mind of man;

A sound magician is a mighty god:

Here, Faustus, tire thy brains to gain a deity.”

His good angel intervenes, but the evil spirit at the other ear tempts him with poweragain:—

“Be thou on earth as Jove is in the sky,Lord and commander of these elements.”

“Be thou on earth as Jove is in the sky,

Lord and commander of these elements.”

Ere long Faustus begins to think of power for baseruses:—

“How am I glutted with conceit of this!Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please,Resolve me of all ambiguities,Perform what desperate enterprise I will?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.”

“How am I glutted with conceit of this!

Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please,

Resolve me of all ambiguities,

Perform what desperate enterprise I will?

I’ll have them fly to India for gold,

Ransack the ocean for orient pearl,

And search all corners of the new-found world

For pleasant fruits and princely delicates;

I’ll have them read me strange philosophy,

And tell the secrets of all foreign kings.”

And yet it is always to the pleasures of the intellect that he returns. It is when the good and evil spirits come to him for the second time that wealth is offered as a bait, and after Faustus has signed away his soul to Lucifer, he is tempted even by more sensual allurements. I may be reading into the book what is not there, but I cannot help thinking that Marlowe intended in this to typify the inevitably continuous degradation of a soul that has renounced its ideal, and the drawing on of one vice by another, for they go hand in hand like the Hours. But even in his degradation the pleasures of Faustus are mainly of the mind, or at worst of a sensuous and not sensual kind. No doubt in this Marlowe is unwittingly betraying his own tastes. Faustus is made tosay:—

“And long ere this I should have slain myselfHad not sweet pleasure conquered deep despair.Have I not made blind Homer sing to meOf Alexander’s love and Œnon’s death?And hath not he that built the walls of ThebesWith ravishing sound of his melodious harpMade music with my Mephistophilis?Why should I die, then? basely why despair?”

“And long ere this I should have slain myself

Had not sweet pleasure conquered deep despair.

Have I not made blind Homer sing to me

Of Alexander’s love and Œnon’s death?

And hath not he that built the walls of Thebes

With ravishing sound of his melodious harp

Made music with my Mephistophilis?

Why should I die, then? basely why despair?”

This employment of the devil in a duet seems odd. I remember no other instance of his appearing as a musician except in Burns’s “Tam o’ Shanter.” The last wish of Faustus was Helen of Troy. Mephistophilis fetches her, and Faustus exclaims:

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