also an horrible and fearefull terror to all that beheld him. But herein did the justice of God most notably appeare, in that hee compelled his owne hand, which had written those blasphemies, to bee the instrument to punish him, and that in his braine which had deuised the same." So the passage stands in the later editions. It is not unimportant to notice that in the first edition, 1597, for "So it fell out," &c. we find, "It so fell out that in London Streets as he purposed to stab," &c. The vague mention of "London Streets" shows that Beard had no exact information when he put together his highlycoloured description of the poet's last moments. Francis Meres in Palladis Tamia, 1598, writes:-"As the poet Lycophron was shot to death by a certain rival of his, so Christopher Marlowe was stabd to death by a bawdy serving-man, a riual of his in his lewde love" (fol. 286). From Vaughan's Golden Grove, 1600, Dyce quotes a somewhat different account :- "Not inferiour to these was one Christopher Marlow, by profession a play-maker, who, as it is reported, about 14 yeres agoe wrote a booke against the Trinitie. But see the effects of God's justice! It so happened that at Detford, a little village about three miles distant from London, as he meant to stab with his ponyard one named Ingram that had inuited him thither to a feast and was then playing at tables, hee quickly perceyving it, so avoyded the thrust, that withall drawing out his dagger for his defence, hee stabd this Marlow into the eye, in such sort that, his braynes comming out at the daggers point, hee shortly after dyed. Thus did God, the true executioner of diuine iustice, worke the end of impious atheists" (sig. c. 4, ed. 1608). I must now direct the reader's attention to a strange "Sonet" and stranger "Postcript" and "Glosse," printed at the end of Gabriel Harvey's Newe Letter of Notable Contents, 1593. Dyce (following Collier) quoted the last line of the "Sonet," but none of Marlowe's editors has referred to the "Postcript" and "Glosse;" so I make no apology for giving the pieces in full. "SONET. GORGON OR THE WONDERFULL YEARE. St. Fame dispos'd to cunnycatch the world What now auailes, quoth She, my ballance weight: The Christian Neptune Turkish Vulcane tames. Navarre wooes Roome, Charlmaine giues Guise the Phy: L'ENUOY. The hugest miracle remains behinde, The second Shakerley Rash-Swash to binde. The Writers Postcript, or a friendly Caueat to the second Shakerley of Powles. SONET. Slumbring I lay in melancholy bed Magnifique Mindes bred of Gargantuas race I mus'd awhile, and, having mus'd awhile, What bile or kibe? (quoth that same early spright) GLOSSE. Is it a Dreame? or is the Highest minde That plague themselves: for faint harts plague themselves. Oh how it dominer's in Coward Lane! So Surquidy rang out his larum knell When he had girn'd at many a dolefull bell. The graund Disease disdain'd his Toade Conceit And mountes of Glory rear'd in towering witt- L'ENUOY. Powles steeple, and a hugyer thing is downe; Fata immatura vagantur." Harvey's Newe Letter is dated September 1593, and Marlowe died in the June preceding. The drift of the "goggle-eyed sonet of Gorgon" (as Nashe terms it) and "L'enuoy" plainly is,-" Marlowe is dead; it remains to muzzle Nashe." The epitaph in the "Postcript" certainly refers to Marlowe, and the meaning of the extraordinary lines "I mus'd awhile," &c., is the same as in the previous sonnet. But what are we to make of the Glosse? The only sense to be got out of the lines is that Marlowe had fallen a victim to the plague. We know that the plague was raging at that time in the metropolis. Probably Gabriel Harvey was staying in the country, to be out of the reach of infection,1 when he wrote his Newe Letter. Hearing the report of Marlowe's death he had taken it for granted, when he raised his whoop of exultation, that the poet had died of the plague. We may be sure that, if he had been acquainted at the time with the true account of Marlowe's tragic end, he would have gloated over every detail with ghoul-like ferocity. Though Marlowe took no active part, so far as we know, in supporting Nashe, he seems not to have attempted to 1 His antagonist Nashe had removed to the country in 1592, for safety as we learn from the Private Epistle to the printer prefixed to the first authorised edition of Pierce Penilesse. conceal his contempt for the Harveys. In Have with you to Saffron Walden, Nashe reports a saying of Marlowe's about Gabriel's younger brother, the Rev. Richard Harvey:" Kit Marloe was wont to say that he was an asse, good for nothing but to preach of the Iron Age." If Marlowe was accustomed to deliver his opinion about the Harveys after that fashion, the doctor's animosity is explicable. In Pierce's Supererogation (p. 62) the vindictive writer exclaims:-"His [i.e. Nashe's] gayest flourishes are but Gascoigne's weedes or Tarleton's trickes, or Greene's crankes or Marlowe's bravadoes." In the same tract he uses the term "Marloweism" in the sense of "irreverence." It must be frankly conceded that Marlowe not only abandoned Christianity, but had the reputation of leading a vicious life. In the Returne from Pernassus, an anonymous academical play, printed in 1606, but acted before the death of Queen Elizabeth, while high praise is paid to his genius, regret is expressed for the disorderliness of his life : "Marlowe was happy in his buskin['d] Muse, Alas, unhappy in his life and end! Pitty it is that wit so ill should dwell, Wit lent from heaven, but vices sent from hell. A tragick penman for a driery plot." Among the Harleian MSS. (6853, fol. 520) is a Note 1 "contayninge the opinion of one Christofer Marlye, 1 First printed by Ritson in his Observations on Warton's History of English Poetry. The "Note" will be found in an appendix to Vol. III. |
