occasional close resemblance to his Edward the Second are confirmative of that supposition, however little such parallelisms might be thought to weigh, if they formed the only grounds for it: "I tell thee, Poull, when thou didst runne at tilt And stolst away our ladaies' hearts in France," &c. "Tell Isabel the queen, I look'd not thus, Edward the Sec. vol. ii. 282. "Madame, I bring you newes from Ireland; First Part of the Cont. Sig. E. "The wild Oneil, with swarms of Irish kerns, Edward the Sec. vol. ii. 208. "Sterne Fawconbridge commands the narrow seas." "The haughty Dane commands the narrow seas." Edward the Sec. vol. ii. 208. "Thus yeelds the cedar to the axes edge, Whose armes gaue shelter to the princlie eagle." "A lofty cedar-tree, fair flourishing, The True Tragedie, Sig. E 2. Edward the Sec. vol. ii. 201. On whose top-branches kingly eagles perch." "What, will the aspiring bloud of Lancaster Sinke into the ground? I had thought it would have mounted." one himself of those who were thus preyed upon. But the greater part of the plays in question is in the judgment, I conceive, of all competent critics, far above the powers either of Greene or Peele, and exhibits a much greater share of the spirited versification, called by Jonson the mighty line,' of Christopher Marlowe." Introd. to the Lit. of Europe, ii. 171, ed. 1843. "Frown'st thou thereat, aspiring Lancaster?" Edward the Sec. vol. ii. 169. [And], highly scorning that the lowly earth Id. ibid. 257. Besides The First Part of the Contention and The True Tragedie,* some other play or plays, of which Greene was either the sole or joint author, and in which Marlowe had no concern whatever, may perhaps be comprehended in the expression, our feathers:" but an inquiry into that point 66 would be irrelevant here. Two old plays are yet to be mentioned, which have been ascribed to Marlowe, and which Shakespeare remodelled,— The Troublesome Raigne of King John, in Two Parts, and The Taming of a Shrew. Be it observed, however, that to neither of these plays, even supposing them to have been really written by Marlowe, could we refer the above-cited allusion of Greene in 1592; for at the date Shakespeare, unless his commentators are greatly mistaken, had not produced his King John and his Taming of the Shrew. In support of Marlowe's claim to The Troublesome Raigne, it has been urged: --First, that the Prologue to the earliest * I may notice, that while Shakespeare was remodelling The First Part of the Contention and The True Tragedie, he had sometimes in his recollection plays which we know for certain to be by Marlowe ; "She bears a duke's revenues on her back." Sec. Part of Henry VI, act 1. sc. 3. "He wears a lord's revenue on his back." Edward the Sec. vol. ii. 196. "These arms of mine shall be thy winding-sheet; Third Part of Henry VI., act II. sc. 5. "What sight is this? my Lodovico slain ! The Jew of Malta, vol. 1. 289. 4to seems to solicit the favour of the audience for a piece which had been composed by the author of Tamburlaine ; "You, that with friendly grace of smoothed brow A warlike Christian and your countryman." Secondly, that the play has two passages coincident with lines in The First Part of the Contention and The True Tragedie,- to both which dramas, as already observed, there is good reason to believe that Marlowe was a large contributor; "Then, good my lord, if you forgiue them all, Lift vp your hand in token you forgiue. King John, farewell! in token of thy faith, The Troublesome Raigne, Sig. M, ed. 1622. "Lord Cardinal, If thou diest assured of heauenly blisse, Hold vp thy hand, and make some signe to vs. [The Cardinall dies. Oh, see, he dies, and makes no signe at all! Oh, God, forgiue his soule!" First Part of the Cont. Sig. F, ed. 1594. "Let England liue but true within itselfe." The Troublesome Raigne, Sig. M 2. "Let England be true within itselfe.” The True Tragedie, Sig. D 4, ed. 1595. But, on the other hand, there are many things throughout The Troublesome Raigne* so materially at variance with the * It has not been observed, that when Shakespeare opened style of Marlowe, that, while I admit the probability of his co-operation in the play, I cannot assent to the critical dictum* which would attribute the whole of it to him. As to The Taming of a Shrew, which was both entered in the Stationers' Books and printed in 1594,—it abounds in passages that either strongly resemble or directly correspond with passages in the undoubted plays of Marlowe. These were first pointed out by an ingenious American critic, and, together with his arguments to prove that the comedy was written by Marlowe, may be seen in the second volume of Mr. Knight's Library edition of Shakespeare. I shall, as briefly as possible, declare my reasons for believing that Marlowe was not the author of The Taming of a Shrew.†― Among the less striking parallelisms just mentioned is the following one; 'And hewd thee smaller then the Libian sandes." The Taming of a Shrew, p. 42, ed. Shake. Soc. "Or hew'd this flesh and bones as small as sand." Faustus, vol. ii. 135. Now, if we were sure that the resemblance between these two lines was not accidental (and it seems highly probable the sec. scene of the first act of his Richard the Third with "Set down, set down your honourable loud," he remembered a line with which a scene in the Second Part of The Troublesome Raigne begins, "Set downe, set downe the loade not worth your paine." Sig. K 4, ed. 1622. * Malone once supposed it to have been written by Peele or Greene; latterly (Shakespeare, by Boswell, ii. 313) he assigned it to Marlowe. + In a note, vol. i. 83, I have remarked that "there are grounds for believing The Taming of a Shrew to be the work of Marlowe:" but since that note was sent to press, a very careful examination of the play has convinced me that there are none at all. that the former was suggested by the latter), we might at once conclude that the author of The Taming of a Shrew and Marlowe were distinct persons; for the line cited from Faustus belongs to a scene which is not found in the earliest quarto, and which is evidently the composition of a poet whose style was not a little dissimilar to that of Marlowe. But, leaving this particular out of the question, I find enough besides in The Taming of a Shrew to convince me that it was the work of some one who had closely studied Marlowe's writings, and who frequently could not resist the temptation to adopt the very words of his favourite dramatist. It is quite possible that he was not always conscious of his more trifling plagiarisms from Marlowe,-recollections of whose phraseology may have mingled imperceptibly with the current of his thoughts: but the case was certainly otherwise when he transferred to his own comedy whole passages of Tamburlaine or Faustus. In some instances the borrowed matter seems to be rather out of place: in the speech which I now subjoin it is very awkwardly introduced. When the bridegroom Ferando enters " baselie attired, and a red cap on his head," Polidor entreats him to change his apparel before going to church, and offers him the use of his own wardrobe: upon which, Ferando replies, Tush, Polidor, I haue as many sutes The stately legate of the Persian King, And this from them haue I made choise to weare." Surely, we should have wondered at this violent and farfetched comparison of Ferando's "sutes" to a particular massy robe, if we had not known that the writer was, as usual, levying a contribution on Marlowe ; And I sat down, cloth'd with a massy robe Tumburlaine, vol. i. 164. |