exceeds measure as equally as do the passions of the personages who express themselves. Revenge for blood that has been shed is equivalent for crimes that have been committed is their fundamental idea. It is interesting to observe how two of these works, the Spanish Tragedy by Kyd, and its continuation by another hand, called Jeronymo, influenced Shakespeare's Hamlet, an influence shown in certain coincidences which cannot be the result of chance. The Spanish Tragedy opens with a scene in which appears a certain Andrea, who has been murdered, in company with Revenge, who plays the part of chorus. A certain Balthasar committed the murder, for which he is pursued by the vengeance of Andrea's sweetheart. This same person also murders the second lover of the girl, Horatio; therefore he is pursued by the vengeance of Jeronymo, the father of his last victim. To him appears the ghost of his murdered son, and calls upon him to avenge him on his murderer, for which end Jeronymo feigns madness.

At last, by means of a theatrical performance, he is able to satisfy his vengeance. In the same way all the horrors which appear in Titus Andronicus spring from the passion of revenge. It seems incredible that the bloody horrors of this tragedy could be surpassed, but yet they were. Marlowe's Jew of Malta, which appeared in 1590, contains some that are still more awful. The cruelly treated Jew invents, for the satisfaction of his burning hatred against his Christian tormentors, the most inconceivable and outrageous acts of revenge, so terrible as to surpass anything ever yet produced in this line in dramatic poctry.

I would like to examine a little more closely at least one of the works of that poet who influenced the English public before Shakespeare and prepared the way for his advent. For this purpose I have chosen Marlowe's Faust, interesting because of its resemblance to that of Goethe, and

also because this drama is distinguished from the larger number of the works of this group of poets in not treating of deeds of blood, nor is it filled with horrible and revengeful actions. Excepting some rough and farcical scenes, it is written in a dignified tone, worthy of its serious theme. It does not lose itself in bombastic pathos, but is occupied with a grave problem, with the efforts of man to win for himself knowledge in a realm that Superior Wisdom has eternally closed to him, and with the punishment which follows such effort. The tragedy of Doctor Faustus, as Marlowe calls his play, is manifestly the most important work of Shakespeare's most distinguished predecessor. Its material is drawn from the English translation of the oldest German Faust book, and follows closely this ancient literary monument of the German Faust legend. Of the Gretchen episode, Goethe's most individual creation, there is no trace. The contents are the monologue of Faust in his study, the poet with Mephistopheles, the brilliant career of Faust as a magician, leading him, as does Goethe, to the court of the Emperor, and his death under the claws of the Devil. Marlowe's Faust is constructed on large and fine lincs, but the poet does not rise above some pathetic strains. The close imitation of the rough German chapbook, and still more a regard for public taste, betrayed him into several low farcical scenes, and above all, into a superficial conception of the Faust legend, whose real worth was not hidden from him, as is proved in more than one instance in his play. But he was writing for audiences hungry for action and strong theatrical effects. Rough jokes, like the transformation of a horse into a bundle of straw, and the devouring by Faust of a whole stack of hay, perhaps conduced more than aught else to the success of the piece. The work opens, like Goethe's, with a monologue in Faust's study, and this gives scope for an interesting comparison with Goethe's introduction. I give an extract from this scene, which is attractive also in Marlowe's hands:

ACT i. Scene 1.

(FAUSTUS alone in his study.)

Faust. Settle thy studies, Faustus, and begin
To sound the depth of that thou wilt profess:
Having commenc'd, be a divine in shew,
Yet level at the end of every art,

And live and die in Aristotle's works.

Sweet Analytics, 'tis thou hast ravish'd me!
Bene disserere est finis logices.

Is, to dispute well, logic's chiefest end?

Affords this art no greater miracle?

Then read no more; thou hast attain'd that end:

A greater subject fitteth Faustus' wit:

Bid Economy farewell, Galen come :

Seeing, Uli desinit philosophus, ibi incipit medicus:
Be a physician, Faustus; heap up gold,
And be eterniz'd for some wondrous cure.
Summum bonum medicine sanitas,
The end of physic is our body's health.

Why, Faustus, hast thou not attain'd that end?
Is not thy common talk sound aphorisms?
Are not thy bills hung up as monuments,
Whereby whole cities have escap'd the plague,
And thousand desperate maladies been eas'd?
Yet art thou still but Faustus, and a man.
Could'st thou make men to live eternally,
Or, being dead, raise them to life again,
Then this profession were to be esteem'd.

Jurisprudence and Theology coming off no better than the rest, Faust turns to the fifth faculty, Magic:

These metaphysics of magicians,

And necromantic books are heavenly;

Lines, circles, scenes, letters, and characters;
Ay, these are those that Faustus most desires.
O, what a world of profit and delight,
Of power, of honour, of omnipotence,
Is promis'd to the studious artisan !

All things that move between the quiet poles
Shall be at my command: emperors and kings
Are but obeyed in their several provinces,
Nor can they raise the wind 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.

I must still find room for Faustus' last monologue, which in parts rises to a pitch of stately pathos:

Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,
And then thou must be damn'd perpetually!
Stand still; you ever-moving spheres of heaven,
That time may cease, and midnight never come;
Fair Nature's eye, rise, rise again, and make
Perpetual day; or let this hour be but
A year, a month, a week, a natural day,
That Faustus may repent and save his soul !

O lente, lente currite, noctis equi!

The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The devil will come, and Faustus must be damn'd.

O, I'll leap up to my God !—who pulls me down ?—

See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament!

One drop of blood would save my soul, half a drop: ah, my Christ !—

Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ !
Yet will I call on Him: O, spare me, Lucifer !—
Where is it now? 'tis gone: and see, where God
Stretcheth out his arm, and bends his ireful brows!
Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me,
And hide me from the heavy wrath of God!

(The clock strikes.)

Ah, half the hour is past! 'twill all be passed anon.
O God,

If thou wilt not have mercy on my soul,

Impose some end to my incessant pain;
Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years,
A hundred thousand, and at last be sav'd!
O, no end is limited to damned souls!
Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul?
Or why is this immortal that thou hast ?

Ah, Pythagoras! metempsychosis, were that true,

This soul should fly from me, and I be chang'd
Into some brutish beast.

All beasts are happy, for when they die,
Their souls are soon dissolv'd in elements;
But mine must live still to be plagu'd in hell.
Curs'd be the parents that engender'd me!
No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer
That hath depriv'd thee of the joys of Heaven.
(The clock strikes twelve.)

Chorus. Faustus is gone: regard his hellish fall,
Whose fiendful fortune may exhort the wise,
Only to wonder at unlawful things,

Whose deepness doth entice such forward wits
To practise more than heavenly power permits.

This work of Marlowe's is a distinct advance upon his own bloody tragedies, and those of the men grouped round him. But these latter mark the temper and taste which Shakespeare found prevailing in London when he arrived there, and to which he himself paid tribute in Titus Andronicus, supposing that play to be really his. But Shakespeare is doubly divided from his forerunners by an impassable gulf. He has different intellectual and æsthetic qualities. Even if in the heyday of youth he may have overstepped bounds, still in his worst he was far from employing the confused action, the moral incoherence of the Marlowe-Greene group. From an esthetic point of view, also, Shakespeare early in his career detached himself completely from their uncouth boorishness, and from the bombastic bathos of their language. Indeed, he has bitterly satirised and burlesqued this in the speeches of his bully and boaster Pistol. His early and complete severance from this school is easily established. We have to consider that his first independent works were not bloody tragedies, for Titus Andronicus stands alone (even if we concede its authorship to Shakespeare, which is doubtful), but comedies, and comedies too which not one of the Greene-Marlowe group could have approached for delicacy of conception and treatment. The distinction between Shakespeare and his fore

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