His goulden pen had clos'd her so about, That could 'gainst reason force him stoope or bend? His rare conceyts, and sweet-according rimes. Immortal beautie, who desires to heare His sacred poesies, sweete in euery eare: Himnes all diuine to make heauen harmonie. Liue with the liuing in eternitie !" In his preface "To the quick-sighted Reader," Petowe says that his poem was "the first fruits of an unripe wit, done at certaine vacant howers." The poem has little merit, but the young writer's admiration for Marlowe is genuine and striking. Other admirers of Marlowe were not silent. George Peele, in his "Prologue to the Honour of the Garter," written immediately after the poet's death, has these lines: "Unhappy in thine end, "J. M." in a MS. poem written in 1600 (quoted by Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps in his Life of Shakespeare), speaks with tenderness of "kynde Kit Marloe." In a famous passage of the Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels, 1635, Heywood writes: "Marlo, renown'd for his rare art and wit, Merit addition rather." In Michael Drayton's admirable "Epistle to Henry Reynolds of Poets and Poesy," 1627, occur the fine lines which have been so frequently quoted :— "Next 1 Marlow, bathed in the Thespian springs, Which rightly should possess a poet's brain." Much has been written of Marlowe in glowing verse and eloquent prose by writers of our own time; but not even Mr. Swinburne's impassioned praise is finer than the pathetic Death of Marlowe, published nearly half a century ago by the poet who passed so recently, full of years, from the ingratitude of a forgetful generation. Mr. J. A. Symonds has defined the leading motive of Marlowe's work as L'Amour de l'Impossible—“the love or lust of unattainable things." Never was a poet fired with a more intense aspiration for ideal beauty and ideal power. As some adventurous Greek of old might have sailed away, with warning voices in his ears, past the 1 Old ed. "Neat." pillars of Hercules in quest of fabled islands beyond the sun, so Marlowe started on his lonely course, careless of tradition and restraint, resolved to seek and find "some world far from ours" where the secret springs of Knowledge should be opened and he should touch the lips of Beauty. What Marlowe might have achieved if his life had not been so cruelly cut short it were vain to speculate. The enthusiasm which has led some of his admirers to hint that he might have seriously contested Shakespeare's claim to supremacy is uncritical and absurd. Chapman speaks of men "That have strange gifts in nature but no soul Diffused quite through to make them of a piece." All the Elizabethan dramatists, in greater or less degree, possessed these "strange gifts in nature," but in Shakespeare alone was the soul "diffused quite through." Marlowe showed stupendous power in exciting terror and pity; but it is in single situations rather than in the clear-eyed development of the plot that his power is seen at its highest. Shakespeare's sympathy with humanity in all its phases was infinite; Marlowe was a lofty egoist, little moved by the oys and sorrows of ordinary mortals. The gift of radiant humour, which earned for Shakespeare the title of "gentle" among his contemporaries, was denied to Marlowe. There are passages of Marlowe that for majesty and splendour can never be forgotten; but before the magical cadences of Antony and Cleopatra all the voices of the world fall dumb. Shakespeare began his career as a pupil of Marlowe; the lesser poet was self-taught. More than VOL. I. f fifty years of life was granted to Shakespeare; Marlowe went to his grave before he had reached his thirtieth year.1 It remains to discuss briefly certain plays in which critics have alleged that Marlowe was concerned. These are the Taming of a Shrew, 1594; Titus Andronicus; the old King John; and the 3 Parts of Henry VI. The wretched Larum for London,2 and still more wretched Locrine may be at once dismissed as unworthy of the slightest notice. The Taming of a Shrew contains a number of passages that closely resemble, or are identical with, passages in Marlowe's undoubted plays-particularly Tamburlaine. This fact alone would make us suspect that Marlowe was not the author; for poets of Marlowe's class do not repeat themselves in this wholesale manner. But when we see how maladroitly, without the slightest regard to the context, these passages are introduced, then we may indeed wonder that any critic could have 1 Some critics have seen an allusion to Marlowe in Midsummer Night's Dream, v. 1 :— "The thrice three Muses mourning for the death Of Learning, late deceased in beggary." Others suppose that he was the rival to whom Shakespeare refers in the 85th and 86th Sonnets.-There is no evidence to support these theories. Mr. Collier had a copy of this piece with the following doggerel rhymes written on the title-page: "Our famous Marloe had in this a hand, As from his fellowes I doe vnderstand. The printed copie doth his Muse much wrong; Of Paris Massaker such was the fate; A very ridiculous piece of forgery! been so insensate as to attribute the authorship to Marlowe. Here is a fair sample of the writing : "Father, I swear by Ibis' golden beak More fair and radiant is my bonny Kate And care not thou, sweet Kate, how I be clad; This passage "The massy robe that late adorned The stately legate of the Persian king," where (as Dyce remarked) the allusion would be quite unintelligible unless we remembered the lines in 2 Tamb. iii. 2 "And I sat down clothed with a massy robe Occasionally lines are filched from Faustus :— "And should my love, as erst did Hercules, The italicised words are from scene vi. (L. 29) of Faustus. |