and turn to trivial uses the power that he had purchased at the price of his soul. This and more may be granted; but criticism is silenced when we reflect on the agony of Faustus' final soliloquy and the fervid splendour of his raptures over Helen's beauty. Dr. Faustus is rather a_series of dramatic scenes than a complete drama. Many of these scenes were the work of another hand and may be expunged with advantage. But what remains is singularly precious. The subtler treatment of a later age can never efface from our minds the appalling realism of the catastrophe in Marlowe's play: still our sense is pierced by that last despairing cry of shrill anguish

"Ugly Hell, gape not! come not, Lucifer!
I'll burn my books! Ah, Mephistophilis !"

Goethe's English biographer speaks slightingly of Marlowe's play; but Goethe 1 himself, when questioned about Dr. Faustus, "burst out with an exclamation of praise: How greatly was it all planned! He had thought of translating it."

We have no evidence to enable us to fix precisely the date of the Jew of Malta. The reference in the prologue to the death of the Duke of Guise shows that it was composed not earlier than December 1588. Henslowe's Diary contains numerous entries concerning the play, ranging from 26th February 1591-2 to 21st June

1 H. Crabb Robinson's Diary (ii. 434), quoted in the preface to Cunningham's Marlowe, p. xiv.

1596; and there is a notice in the Diary of its revival on 19th May 1601. On 17th May 1594 it was entered in the Stationers' Books, but it was not published until 1633, when it was edited by Thomas Heywood after its revival at Court and at the Cockpit. In 1608, as Herr Meissner has shown, it was one of the plays performed at Graetz during the Carnival; in the previous year it had been performed at Passau.

The Jew of Malta is a very unequal work. Hallam, the most cautious of critics, gives it as his opinion that the first two acts "are more vigorously conceived, both as to character and to circumstance, than any other Elizabethan play, except those of Shakespeare." This judgment, bold as it appears at first sight, probably represents the truth. (The masterful grasp that marks the opening scene was a new thing in English tragedy. Language so strong, so terse, so dramatic, had never been heard before on the English stage. In the two first acts there is not a trace of juvenility; all is conceived largely and worked out in firm, bold strokes. Hardly Shakespeare's touch is more absolutely true and unfaltering; nor is it too much to say that, had the character been developed throughout on the same scale as in the first two acts, Barabas would have been worthy to stand alongside of Shylock. But in the last three acts vigorous drawing is exchanged for caricature; for a sinister life-like figure we have a (grotesque stage-villain, another Aaron. How this extraordinary transformation was effected, why the poet, who started with such cleareyed vision and stern resolution, swerved so blindly and

helplessly from the path, is a question that may well perplex critics. Was the artist's hand paralysed by the consciousness of an inability to work out in detail the great conception? I think not. It is more reasonable to assume that the play was required by the actors at a very short notice, and that Marlowe merely sketched roughly the last three acts, leaving it to another hand to fill in the details; or it may be that he put the play aside, under stress of more pressing work, with the intention of resuming the half-told story at a later date, an intention which was frustrated by his sudden death. In any case it is a sheer impossibility to believe that the play in its present form represents the poet's finished work. Marlowe is not less guiltless of the extravagance

and buffoonery in the last three acts of the Jew of Malta || than of the grotesque and farcical additions made to u Faustus. Yet it was doubtless to this very extravagance that the play owed much of its popularity.1

It has not yet been discovered where Marlowe procured the materials for his play. Probably he used some forgotten novel; nor is it unlikely that he had been afforded opportunities of personally studying Jewish character. The old notion that there were no Jews in✔ England during the Elizabethan time has been shown by modern research to be wholly untenable.2 Barabas'

1 The extraordinary size of Barabas' nose was long remembered. William Rowley, in his Search for Money, 1609, speaks of the "artificial Jew of Malta's nose."

2 I refer the reader to Mr. S. L. Lee's article on The Original of Shylock (in the Gentleman's Magazine for February, 1880). Mr. Lee VOL. I.

d

devoted love for his daughter is so fully emphasized in the first two acts that we cannot but suppose Marlowe to have been acquainted with at least one leading trait in Jewish character, the intense family-affection which has distinguished the Jews of all ages. Round the person of Barabas, in the two first acts, is thrown such a halo of poetry as circles Shylock from first to last. His figure seems to assume gigantic proportions; his lust of gold is conceived on so grand a scale that the grovelling passion is transmuted, by the alchemy of the poet's imagination, into a magnificent ambition. Our senses are dazzled, sober reason is staggered by the vastness of Barabas' greed :

"Give me the merchants of the Indian mines,
That trade in metal of the purest mould;
The wealthy Moor that in the Eastern rocks
Without control can pick his riches up,
And in his house heap pearl like pebble-stones,
Receive them free and sell them by the weight;
Bags of fiery opals, sapphires, amethysts,
Jacinths, hard topaz, grass-green emeralds,
And seld-seen costly stones of so great price,

As one of them, indifferently rated,

And of a carat of this quantity,

May serve, in peril of calamity,

To ransom great kings from captivity."

Very impressive is the scene where Barabas is shown. pacing beneath the casement, "in the shadow of the

is understood to be engaged on a searching inquiry as to the residence of Jews in England between 1290 and 1655, the dates of their expulsion and return.

silent night," like an unquiet spirit round a spot where treasure has been buried. And what a burst of lyric ecstacy when he clasps once more his money-bags !— "Now, Phoebus, ope the eye-lids1 of the day, And, for the raven, wake the morning lark,

That I may hover with her in the air,

Singing o'er these, as she does o'er her young."

Again and again must we regret that the last three acts were not composed on the same scale as the earlier part of the play.

Edward the Second was entered in the Stationers' Books on 6th July 1593. In the Dyce Library at South Kensington there is a quarto with a MS. titlepage (in a hand of the late 17th century), dated 1593. The first page is in MS., and contains several mistakes, but the text of the printed matter agrees throughout with the quarto of 1598; it may therefore be assumed that the date 1593 is a mistake of the copyist for 1598.2 Warton states that the play "was written in the year 1590," but he adduces no evidence in support of his assertion. It is certainly the most elaborate of Marlowe's works, and it has fortunately descended to us with a text free from any serious corruptions. We can hardly assign an earlier date than 1590 for its composition.

A comparison between Edward II. and Richard II.

1 The expression "eye-lids of the day," recalls the language of Job— By his neesings a light doth shine, and his eyes are like the eye-lids of the morning."

* There are two copies of ed. 1598 in the British Museum, In one or two passages the texts differ, a circumstance not uncommon in copies of the same edition of an old play.