seems to have been an earlier play on a similar subject; but as the play is lost, all conjectures built on it are of no moment. This is undoubtedly Marlowe's best acting play, as Faustus is perhaps his literary masterpiece. The plot is wildly improbable, like most of the works of Shakespeare; but it is steadily interesting, and crowded with action. The critics seem mostly to have decided that the first two acts are fine, and that the last three indicate a sad falling off. With this judgment I find it impossible to agree. The interest in the story is maintained steadily to the powerful and unexpected conclusion; and the climax is of that kind that has particularly delighted spectators in all ages of theatrical history, "for 'tis the sport to have the enginer Hoist with his own petar."

With reference to the literary value of The Jew of Malta much wordy war has been waged. Swinburne says, "Only Milton has surpassed the opening soliloquy. This is exaggerative, for Shakespeare has surpassed it fifty times, as have other English poets, including Marlowe himself. It does not compare for an instant with several passages in Tamburlaine, nor with the apostrophe to Helen in Faustus. Indeed, I think that the Jew's soliloquy at the beginning of the second act is poetically superior. It is interesting, however, to compare this first "key-note" speech with the opening lines of Jonson's Volpone, spoken also in worship of the golden calf. Jonson's verse is noble, stately, and regular; but it is carefully constructed, and smells of the lamp. Marlowe's is careless in a royally splendid way.

This drama historically has its place in the Tragedy of Blood school that runs like a red stream through

the entire course of Elizabethan drama. The Tragedy of Blood began with Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, and Titus Andronicus, powerfully affected Marlowe and Chapman, reached a climax in Webster, and an anticlimax in Ford. Not only do the majority of the dramatis personæ die violently in the works of this school, but there is usually a hired assassin who believes in crime for crime's sake. He takes a joyous and artistic delight in deeds of the most revolting nature. The scoundrel Aaron, in Titus Andronicus, is typical of this stock figure:

"Even now I curse the day—and yet I think
Few come within the compass of my curse
Wherein I did not some notorious ill:

As kill a man, or else devise his death;
Ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it;
Accuse some innocent, and forswear myself:
Set deadly enmity between two friends:
Make poor men's cattle break their necks:
Set fire on barns and haystacks in the night,
And bid the owners quench them with their tears:
Oft have I digg'd up dead men from their graves,
And set them upright at their dear friends' doors.
Even when their sorrows almost were forgot:
And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,
Have with my knife carved in Roman letters,
'Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.'
Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things
As willingly as one would kill a fly:
And nothing grieves me heartily indeed,
But that I cannot do ten thousand more."

Now Ithamore, in The Jew of Malta, fills this rôle acceptably; for Barabas, to test him, describes some of the playful avocations of his own leisure moments:

"As for myself, I walk abroad o' nights
And kill sick people groaning under walls:
Sometimes I go about and poison wells."

To which virtuous sentiments Ithamore cheerfully replies:

"One time I was an ostler in an inn,

And in the night-time secretly would I steal

To travellers' chambers, and there cut their throats."

The fact is, that the theatrical villain of the Tragedy of Blood had the same zest in crime that the small boy of all time has in the perpetration of practical jokes on respectable citizens.

Marlowe in this play did not scruple to appeal to the popular prejudice against Jews by representing Barabas as an hellish monster; but just as Milton made a hero out of Satan, so Marlowe created a Jew of such colossal force, both in cunning and in courage, that one feels admiration for his vast ambition and tremendous power, without any sympathy. But Marlowe apparently does not love the Christians any more than the Jews; they too are represented as devoid of truth, honour and probity. The only decent people 1 in the play are the heathen, intentionally or not.

A comparison of The Jew of Malta with The Merchant of Venice is even more damaging to Marlowe's reputation than the comparison of Faustus with Goethe's masterpiece; for Shakespeare wrote his play under conditions precisely similar to Marlowe's, and not far from the same time. The fundamental difference in the result is that whereas Barabas is an impossible monster, Shylock is wonderfully human. I do not believe for a moment that Shakespeare sym

pathized with Shylock, or meant his audience to do so. I feel certain that the downfall of the man was greeted with tremendous applause. But none the less, he is a real character, a sharply defined individual, not a racial caricature; and Shakespeare allows him to speak cleverly and powerfully in his own defence, in the method later adopted by Browning. Where Shakespeare excels Marlowe is in his vastly superior power of psychological analysis, to say nothing of the glorious poetry of the conclusion, which ends in beautiful moonlight and harmonious laughter in Portia's gardens. Shakespeare had one artistic virtue simply unknown to Marlowe - moderation. In the felicitous words of William Watson:

"Your Marlowe's page I close, my Shakespeare's ope. How welcome after gong and cymbal's din The continuity, the long slow slope

And vast curves of the gradual violin!"

Marlowe's influence on Shakespeare was in all probability very great; but it is interesting to cite a single famous passage from the latter poet, where it is easy to see which are the lines written in the Marlowesque and which those in the true Shakespearian manner.

"Where should Othello go? Now, how dost thou look now? O ill-starr'd wench! Pale as thy smock! when we shall meet at compt, This look of thine will hurl my soul from heaven, And fiends will snatch at it. Cold, cold, my girl? Even like thy chastity.

O cursed, cursed slave!

Whip me, ye devils,

From the possession of this heavenly sight!
Blow me about in winds! roast me in sulphur!
Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire!”

There are certain striking similarities in the three plays, Tamburlaine, Faustus, and The Jew of Malta. In all three, the emphasis is laid on one character; the others are merely sketched in. Concentration on a single hero was the aim, conscious or unconscious, of the dramatist. And in each instance, this hero is the personification of some mad, devouring ambition. The living breath of aspiration vitalizes not only this chief character, but sets the whole play aglow with poetic fire. In Tamburlaine, the desire is for earthly power: he will bestride the narrow world like a colossus, and the petty men must walk under his huge legs, and peep about to find themselves dishonourable graves. The critics have generally agreed that the splendid speech of Tamburlaine:

"Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend
The wondrous architecture of the world,"

ends in a lamentable anticlimax:

"Until we reach the ripest fruit of all,
That perfect bliss and sole felicity,

The sweet fruition of an earthly crown."

But Tamburlaine did not think so; nor, I am convinced, did the poet. The critics seem to be completely mistaken here; for they approve of the early part of the speech, with which modern thought would sympathize, and condemn the conclusion, because it grates harshly on latter-day ears. But in the days of

Queen Elizabeth and Philip II, when royalty was surrounded with the panoply of supreme majesty, was it not brave to be a king? A god was not so glorious as a king.