passage of the Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels, 1635, Heywood writes :—

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,
Had in him those brave translunary things
That the first poets had; his raptures were
All air and fire which made his verses clear;
For that fine madness still he did retain,
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 joys 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

1

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. 2 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;
But natheles manie lines ar good and strong;

Of Paris Massaker such was the fate;

A perfitt coppie came to hand to late."

A very ridiculous piece of forgery!

been so insensate as to attribute the authorship to MarHere is a fair sample of the writing:

lowe.

"Father, I swear by Ibis' golden beak

More fair and radiant is my bonny Kate
Than silver Xanthus when he doth embrace
The ruddy Simois at Ida's feet.

And care not thou, sweet Kate, how I be clad;
Thou shalt have garments wrought of Median silk
Enchased with precious jewels fetched from far
By Italian merchants that with Russian stems
Plough up huge furrows in the Terrene main."

This passage is patched up from the First Part of Tamburlaine: cf. I, 2 ll. 95-6, 191–2. The reference to "Ibis' golden beak" (in imitation of 1 Tamb. iv. 3, 1. 37) is delightfully ludicrous. In another passage we have a mention of

"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
Which late adorned the Afric potentate."

Occasionally lines are filched from Faustus:

"And should my love, as erst did Hercules,
Attempt to pass the burning vaults of Hell,
I would with piteous looks and pleasing words,
As once did Orpheus with his harmony

And ravishing sound of his melodious harp,
Entreat grim Pluto," &c.

The italicised line is from scene vi. (l. 29) of Faustus.

In my judgment the anonymous writer was sometimes engaged in imitating Marlowe and sometimes in burlesquing him. But be this as it may, the absurdity of attributing the piece to Marlowe is flagrant. The author of the Taming of a Shrew was a genuine humourist; and Mr. Swinburne is speaking within bounds when he calls him "Of all the pre-Shakespeareans incomparably the truest, the richest, the most powerful and original humourist." Marlowe had little or no humour.

We may therefore safely dismiss the Taming of a Shrew; but with Titus Andronicus the case is different. As I re-read this play after coming straight from the study of Marlowe, I find again and again passages that, as it seems to me, no hand but his could have written. It is not easy in a question of this kind to set down in detail reasons for our belief. Marlowe's influence permeated so thoroughly the dramatic literature of his day, that it is hard sometimes to distinguish between master and pupil. When the master is writing at his best there is no difficulty, but when his work is hasty and illdigested, or has been left incomplete and has received additions from other hands, then our perplexity is great. In our disgust at the brutal horrors that crowd the pages of Titus Andronicus, we must beware of blinding ourselves to the imaginative power that marks much of the writing. In Aaron's soliloquy at the opening of act ii., it is hard to believe that we are not listening to the young Marlowe. There is the ring of Tamburlaine in such lines as these :—

"As when the golden sun salutes the morn,