that the former was suggested by the latter), we might at once conclude that the author of The Taming of a Shrew and Marlowe were distinct persons; for the line cited from Faustus belongs to a scene which is not found in the earliest quarto, and which is evidently the composition of a poet whose style was not a little dissimilar to that of Marlowe. But, leaving this particular out of the question, I find enough besides in The Taming of a Shrew to convince me that it was the work of some one who had closely studied Marlowe's writings, and who frequently could not resist the temptation to adopt the very words of his favourite dramatist. It is quite possible that he was not always conscious of his more trifling plagiarisms from Marlowe,—recollections of whose phraseology may have mingled imperceptibly with the current of his thoughts: but the case was certainly otherwise when he transferred to his own comedy whole passages of Tamburlaine or Faustus. In some instances the borrowed matter seems to be rather out of place: in the speech which I now subjoin it is very awkwardly introduced. When the bridegroom Ferando enters "baselie attired, and a red cap on his head," Polidor entreats him to change his apparel before going to church, and offers him the use of his own wardrobe: upon which, Ferando replies, "Tush, Polidor, I haue as many sutes The stately legate of the Persian King, And this from them haue I made choise to weare." Surely, we should have wondered at this violent and farfetched comparison of Ferando's "sutes" to a particular massy robe, if we had not known that the writer was, as usual, levying a contribution on Marlowe ;— "And I sat down, cloth'd with a massy robe Tamburlaine, vol. i. 164. Throughout the play there is little vigour of thought or expression; the style, when elevated, is laboriously ornate rather than poetical; the many high-flown descriptions of female beauty (which are admired by the American critic) have only an artificial glow; and the versification is monotonous in the extreme. Yet The Taming of a Shrew is by no means a contemptible drama, possessing, as it certainly does, some portion of genuine comic humour; a circumstance which alone would tend to prove that it was not the production of Marlowe, to whom, we have good reason to believe, nature had denied even a moderate talent for the humorous. I may add, that, as The Taming of a Shrew is printed anonymously, its author probably had no intention that his name should transpire, and therefore resorted to plagiarism with the greater boldness. Another word on the subject of plays attributed to Marlowe. It has been conjectured that both Locrine and Titus Andronicus are by him: but, if every old tragedy of more than usual merit, whose author is either doubtful or unknown, must be fathered upon Marlowe, the catalogue of his dramas will presently be swollen to a size not easily reconcilable with the shortness of his life. I have now brought to a close this very imperfect essay concerning one whom Drayton has characterised in the following fervid lines; "Neat [Next] Marlow, bathed in the Thespian springs, Had in him those braue translunary things That the first poets had; his raptures were All ayre and fire, which made his verses cleere; For that fine madnes still he did retaine, Which rightly should possesse a poet's braine."⁕ ⁕ To Henry Reynolds, of Poets and Poesie,—The Battaile of Agincourt, &c. 1627, ed. fol.—Besides the notices of Marlowe which have been already cited from Meres's Palladis Tamia, &c, 1598, (see pp. xxxiv, li), the following passages occur in that work. "As the Greeke tongue is made famous and eloquent by Homer, Hesiod, Euripides, &c.; and the Latine tongue by Virgill, Though immeasurably superior to the other dramatists of his time, he is, like them, a very unequal writer; it is in detached passages and single scenes, rather than in any of his pieces taken as a whole, that he displays the vast richness and vigour of his genius. But we can hardly doubt that if death had not so suddenly arrested his career, he would have produced tragedies of more uniform excellence; nor is it too much to suppose that he would also have given still grander manifestations of dramatic power;—indeed, for my own part, I feel a strong persuasion, that, with added years and well-directed efforts, he would have made a much nearer approach in tragedy to Shakespeare than has yet been made by any of his countrymen. Ouid, Horace, &c.; so the English tongue is mightily enriched, and gorgeouslie inuested in rare ornaments and resplendent abiliments by Sir Philip Sidney, Spencer, Daniel, Drayton, Warner, Shakespeare, Marlow, and Chapman." fol. 280. "As these tragicke poets flourished in Greece, Eschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, &c.; and these among the Latines, Accius, M. Attilius, Pomponius Secundus, and Seneca; so these are our best for tragedie, the Lorde Buckhurst, Doctor Leg of Cambridge, Doctor Edes of Oxforde, Maister Edward Ferris, the authour of the Mirrour for Magistrates, Marlow, Peele, Watson, Kid, Shakespeare, Drayton, Chapman, Decker, and Beniamin Johnson." fol. 283. The passage in Jonson's verses To the memory of Shakespeare, which has been before alluded to (see p. xlviii), may not improperly be quoted here; "For, if I thought my judgment were of years, Thinking, as I do, that Shakespeare is unlike the other dramatists of Elizabeth and James's age, that his method of conceiving and working out character (to say nothing of his diction) is peculiarly his own,—I deny the truth of the following passage in Hazlitt's Lectures on the Dram. Lit. of the age of Elizabeth. "He [Shakespeare] towered above his fellows, in shape and gesture proudly eminent,' but he was one of a race of giants, the tallest, the strongest, the most graceful and beautiful of them but it was a common and a noble brood." p. 12, ed. 1840. |