THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE THE PASSIONATE SHEEPHEARD TO HIS LOUE . THE NIMPH'S REPLY TO THE SHEEPHEARD INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. On the 26th day of February, 1564, says the register of the parish church of St. George the Martyr, in the ancient city of Canterbury, was christened Christofer the sonne of John Marlowe; and exactly two months afterwards, on the 26th of April, 1564, the register of the church of Stratford-upon-Avon records the baptism of Gulielmus, filius Johannis Shakspere. So few days intervened between the births of these two children, one of whom was destined to lead the way in showing what an English Play ought to be, and the other to carry the English Drama to the highest conceivable pitch of excellence and glory. But although they came into the world so nearly together, there was an interval of many years between their deaths. Marlowe perished suddenly before he was twenty-nine, and Shakspeare went quietly to his rest at the age of fifty-two. Had their fates been reversed how different an aspect would our literary history have borne. It is idle to speculate on what Marlowe might have performed if twenty-three years had been added to the narrow span of his working existence; but it is quite safe to assert that, if Shakspeare had died in 1593, the name, which now fills the whole wide world with its renown, must have been content with a narrow niche in Specimens of Poets of the Age of Elizabeth.* John Marlowe, the father of Christopher, is stated in a scurrilous ballad of uncertain date to have followed a "trade;" and in two scribbles,‡ "in a very old hand," in the margins of volumes, themselves not printed for some years after the poet's death, the particular trade is fixed as that of a "shoemaker." From a more reliable source we learn that he survived his son, and the entry of his funeral in 1605 describes him as "clarke of St. Maries." He had two other sons, Thomas and John, and two daughters, * "Marlowe was buried on June 1, 1593, and there is reason to suppose that previous to that year Shakspeare had done little more than improve the three parts of Henry VI. (if indeed he touched the third part of Henry VI. at all), and had written The Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Comedy of Errors. His Richard II. has generally been assigned to the year 1593."— Collier's Memoirs of Alleyn, p. 10. "Had he been brought up to the trade His father followed still, This exit he had never made Nor playde a part so ill."-Appendix A, p. 370. + ""Marlowe a shooe makers sonne of Cant,' MS. note in a very old hand, on the margin of a copy of Beard's Theatre of God's Judgments, 1598, which, when I saw it, belonged to Mr. B. H. Bright. 'His father was a shoemaker in Canterburie,' MS. note in a copy of Hero and Leander, ed. 1629, now in the possession of Mr. J. P. Collier."-Mr. Dyce's Note. A Mary and Margaret. The poet appears to have been the second child and first son of his parents. The earlier entry of 1548 I take to refer to an aunt, not a sister.* It was a great advantage in those days, and not at all a bad thing now, to be born in a cathedral city. There was always the certainty of a good school, and the probability that among the numerous clergy who battened in the shadow of the ancient Minster, (men of greater culture and more abundant leisure than their fellows), some particular individual might haply be found with discernment to discover and taste to appreciate any instance of distinguished merit which might crop up among the boys who were educated at their doors. There is something, too, in the daily sight of one of these "vast abbayes" which rains as much poetic influence on the soul of a youthful genius as all the shaggy woods, brown heaths, fountains, and floods between the Land's End and John o' Groats. In the next generation the "antique pillars, massy proof," of Powles, and the "storied windows, richly dight," of the Minster on Thorney Island, were found to be meet nurses for the poetic child of a scrivener in Bread Street; while, nearer to our own time the grimy tower and gloomy record chamber of an old church in Bristol were the Helicon and Hippocrene of Thomas Chatterton. Canterbury, even now, with the single exception of Oxford, is the most interesting city in England, and in the sixteenth century it was possessed of still greater relative importance. For the sordid spirit of the "little beagle," Robert Cecil, had not yet turned its buildings into quarries for his palace in the Strand; the shrine of its ambiguous archbishop had not ceased to be regarded by at least one-half of the people as the holiest spot in the island; and the venerable town was still as it were an ante-city to the metropolis, the halting-place of every foreign prince and ambassador who sought the court of the great Elizabeth. Strange emotions must have stirred the soul of the schoolboy who ten years afterwards was to write Doctor Faustus and Edward II. when he ascended the pilgrim-worn steps which led to the shrine of Becket, or looked up at the sword and shield, and helmet and surcoat, which overhung the stately tomb of the Black Prince. There is something that requires clearing up about Marlowe's stay at the King's School at Canterbury. Mr. Dyce details the "great difficulty" which he experienced in * 1548. The 28th day of December was christened Marget the daughter of John Marlow. 1566. The 10th day of December was buried Simon the sonne of Thomas Marlow. 1568. The 28th day of August was buried 1570. The 7th day of August was buried Thomas the sonne of John Marlow. 1604. John Marloe, Clarke of St. Maries, was buried the 26th of January. The existing register is only a copy from the lost original, and the blanks arose from the transcriber's inability to decipher the names. † See the Calendars of State Papers, Domestic Series. A |