CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE. (1564-1593.) "Christopher Marlowe, a kind of second Shakespeare (whose contemporary he was), not only because he rose, like him, from an actor to be a maker of plays, though inferior both in fame and merit; but also because, in his begun poem of Hero and Leander, he seems to have a resemblance of that clear and unsophisticated wit which is natural to that incomparable poet."* The poet thus heralded (conjecturally) by Milton was born at Canterbury, the son of a shoemaker there, in Feb. 1564. For his earlier education he was indebted to the King's School at Canterbury, whence, in 1581, he proceeded to Benet College, Cambridge,-whether as a Parker Scholar, or aided by the munificence of some local patron (Sir Roger Manwood, Chief Baron of the Exchequer, whose seat was at St. Stephen's, near Canterbury, is suggested by Mr. Dyce), does not clearly appear. Marlowe, however supported at college, took the degree of B.A. in 1583, and that of M.A. in 1587. It is assumed that his original destination was the church; and Mr. Dyce conceives that it may have been the sceptical opinions which afterwards rendered him so mournfully notorious, that, arising while he was yet at college, diverted him from the sacred function. As, however, he had produced Tamburlaine the Great before 1587, it is quite probable that an overpowering passion for the drama may have been the occasion of his abandoning the idea of the church as a profession. When he quitted the University, presumably in 1587, he is stated by Phillips and others to have commenced actor, "whence he rose to be a maker of plays;" and Warton figures him as “often applauded, both by Queen Elizabeth and by James I., as a judicious player." But Malone is of opinion that Marlowe was never an actor at all, grounding his opinion on the circumstance that he is not mentioned in that capacity by any of his contemporaries; and Mr. Dyce shows that, if ever an actor, our poet was such but for a brief period, and that after he had achieved eminence as a dramatist. A doggrel poem, written after his death, tells us that "He had alsoe a player beene Upon the Curtaine stage; But brake his leg in one lewd scene, When in his early age." The accident thus described to have befallen Marlowe at the Curtain Theatre may of itself account for his not having become * Phillips: Theatrum Peelarum. more prominently and more permanently connected with the stage. However this may have been, we know that before 1587 Marlowe had become known in the dramatic world as the author of Tamburlaine the Great, the first play in which blank verse was ever used by our caterers for the stage. This tragedy, which was first printed (with considerable, and which appear very judicious curtailments of the acted drama) in 1590, the accomplished editor of Marlowe's works thus characterises: "With very little discrimination of character, with much extravagance of incident, with no pathos where pathos was to be expected, and with a profusion of inflated language, Tamburlaine is nevertheless a very impressive drama, and undoubtedly superior to all the English tragedies which preceded it:-superior to them in the effectiveness with which the events are brought out, in the poetic feeling which animates the whole, and the nerve and variety of the versification. Marlowe was yet to show that he could impart truthfulness to his scenes; but not a few passages might be gleaned from Tamburlaine, as grand in thought, as splendid in imagery, and as happy in expression, as any which his later works contain." In 1587, also, Marlowe is said to have produced a translation of Coluthus' Rape of Helen; but if so, the poem is lost. Next appeared (soon after Tamburlaine, though the exact date is not known) the Life and Death of Dr. Faustus, Marlowe's greatest work: it met at once with complete success, and was reprinted many times. Next (probably in 1590) appeared The Jew of Malta, which, however fine in its first two acts, is, Mr. Dyce conceives, "in the latter part so inferior in every respect, that we rise from a perusal of the whole with a feeling akin to disappointment." On the next production of Marlowe's muse, Edward the Second, Lamb thus writes, in relation to its two principal scenes: "The reluctant pangs of abdicating royalty in Edward furnished hints which Shakespeare scarce improved in his Richard II.; and the death-scene of Marlowe's king moves pity and terror beyond any scene, ancient or modern, with which I am acquainted." Marlowe's last play was the Massacre at Paris, produced by Henslowe's company 30th Jan. 1593. His premature death, a few months afterwards, extinguished mental powers which, had Marlowe lived to mature them, would have qualified him to take rank amongst the very foremost men of the age of Elizabeth. "The dramatists who preceded him," writes Mr. Dyce, “had no dominion over the passions; they were extravagant and bombastic, instead of being pathetic and natural. Peele and Greene, the friends and contemporaries of Marlowe, exhibited only slight and occasional indications of feeling in their dramatic compositions. Marlowe was the first who made any impression on the hearts of the audience. He possessed more genius and refinement, and drew his materials from a purer source, than any former dramatic poet." We know little further of the personal history of Marlowe, than the heavy imputations to which his moral and religious character was subjected by contemporary and succeeding writers of a particular class, and the terrible catastrophe of his death, which, to the stern moralists who denounced him, seemed an immediate judgment from heaven upon his impiety. Thomas Beard, the noted Puritan, in his Theatre of God's Judgments, and William Vaughan, in his Golden Grove, distinctly charge it upon Marlowe, that "he fell (not without just desert) to that great outrage and extremity, that he denied God and his Son Christ, and not only in word blasphemed the Trinity, but also (as is credibly reported) wrote books against it;" and a passage in Robert Greene's Groatsworth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance is considered as confirming the imputation that, at all events, Marlowe had doubts on the subject of religion. There can be no question that the circumstances of his death were as discreditable as they were deplorable, and manifest a manner of life far remote from the moral. He was carousing with "some loose-legged Lais," in a tavern at Deptford, on 1st June, 1593, when Francis Archer, a serving-man, “a rival of his lewd love," entered the room. An affray ensued, in which Archer, having by superior agility gained an opportunity of strongly grasping Marlowe's wrist, plunged the poet's dagger, raised to strike his adversary, into his own eye, "in such sort that his brains coming out at the dagger's point, he shortly after died." This most striking scene is the subject of a masterly dramatic sketch by one of our finest living poets-Richard Henry Horne. Besides the tragedies already mentioned, another play that passes under his name, Dido, Queen of Carthage, though commenced by him, was completed and published by Thomas Nash. Marlowe is also said to have joined Day in the comedy of The Maiden's Holiday, which was one of the manuscripts burned by Warburton's servant. Lust's Dominion, or the Lascivious Queen, though originally printed with Marlowe's name to it, is by Mr. Collier identified with The Spanesche More's Tragedy, written by Dekker, Houghton, and Day. Marlowe at his death left incomplete a translation of The Loves of Hero and Leander, the eloquent production of an unknown sophist of Alexandria, but commonly ascribed to the ancient Museus. This palm was published in 1598; and Malone conceives that had Marlowe lived to finish it, he might perhaps have contested the palm with Shakespeare in his Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. Our poet's translation of The Elegies of Ovid was first printed at Middleburgh, without date: an VOL. I. edition was printed in England in 1596; a later impression-there "Next Marlowe, bathed in the Thespian springs, For that fine madness still he did retain, THOMAS NASH. (1564-1600.) "And thou, into whose soul, if ever there were a Pythagorean metempsychosis, the raptures of that fiery and inconfinable Italian spirit were bounteously and boundlessly infused, then some time secretary to Pierce Penniless, and master of his requests,-ingenious, ingenuous, fluent, facetious T. Nash; from whose abundant pen honey flowed to thy friends, and mortal aconite to thy enemies; thou that made the Doctor (Harvey) a flat dunce, and beat him at two sundry tall weapons-poetry and oratory, sharpest satire; luculent poet, elegant orator, get leave for thy ghost to come from her abiding, and to dwell with me awhile!" So apostrophises Thomas Dekker; and we could almost desire the presence of the same ghost, so that we might learn more of Tom Nash in the flesh. He appears to have been descended from a family in Herefordshire, and to have been born at Lowestoft, in Suffolk, about 1564. He was educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, where, in 1584, he became B.A. His progress to M.A. was abruptly closed by his expulsion, in 1584, for having, in conjunction with Gabriel Harvey (who was also expelled for the same offence), written a piece called Terminus et non Terminus, which the collegiate authorities took in dudgeon. What became of him immediately after he quitted college does not appear; but, between 1584 and 1587, he, somehow or other, contrived to travel about, especially in Ireland and in Italy, with the literature of which latter country he shows himself well acquainted. In his An Almond for a Parrot (1589) he gives an account of a circumstance that had occurred to him "last summer, at Bergamo, on his way homeward from Venice." He commenced professional author in London, in 1589, as the assailant of Martin Mar-Prelate (John Penry), whom he mauled in his Counter Cuff to Martin Junior, with infinite force and effect, bringing wit and satire to bear to far more purpose than the lumbering weapons of scholastic controversy which had been previously used in the fight. As a dramatist, the only work of his unassisted pen (with an exception to be presently stated) is Summer's Last Will and Testament, a show rather than a play, which was represented before Queen Elizabeth in the autumn of 1592. He had previously, in 1590, assisted Marlowe in the composition of the tragedy of Dido, Queen of Carthage. The only other play which he produced was a satirical piece, entitled The Isle of Dogs (the Isle of Dogs was at that time a sort of Alsatia), which gave such offence to the government, that the play was prohibited, and the author committed for some time to the Fleet prison, as we find from the diary of skin-flint Henslowe, the manager. Nash was one of the choice wits and boon companions of his day. If he originally possessed any patrimony, it was soon consumed in the dissipations of a town life; and he was reduced to dependence on literary patronage and the produce of his pen. That the latter was fertile enough must be allowed; but its fruits were not sufficient to supply his wants. He commences his Pierce Pennilesse his Supplication to the Devil with a very touching description of his situation: Having," says he, "spent many years in studying how to live, and lived a long time without money; having tired my youth with folly, and surfeited my mind with vanity,-I began at length to look back to repentance, and addressed my endeavours to prosperity; but all in vain. I sat up late and rose early, contended with the cold and conversed with scarcity; for all my labours turned to loss: my vulgar muse was despised and neglected; my pains not regarded, |