and the feeling that he was happy in his work. Yet Lamb was hardly extravagant in saying that "the death scene of Marlowe's king moves pity and terror beyond any scene, ancient or modern, with which I am acquainted." His tragedy of "Dido, Queen of Carthage," is also regularly plotted out, and is also somewhat tedious. Yet there are many touches that betray his burning hand. There is one passage illustrating that luxury of description into which Marlowe is always glad to escape from the business in hand. Dido tells Æneas:

"Æneas, I'll repair thy Trojan ships

Conditionally that thou wilt stay with me,
And let Achates sail to Italy;

I'll give thee tackling made of rivelled gold,
Wound on the barks of odoriferous trees;
Oars of massy ivory, full of holes

Through which the water shall delight to play;
Thy anchors shall be hewed from crystal rocks
Which, if thou lose, shall shine above the waves;
The masts whereon thy swelling sails shall hang
Hollow pyramides of silver plate;

The sails of folded lawn, where shall be wrought
The wars of Troy, but not Troy's overthrow;
For ballast, empty Dido's treasury;

Take what ye will, but leave Æneas here.
Achates, thou shalt be so seemly clad

As sea-born nymphs shall swarm about thy ships

And wanton mermaids court thee with sweet songs,

Flinging in favors of more sovereign worth
Than Thetis hangs about Apollo's neck,
So that Æneas may but stay with me."

But far finer than this, in the same costly way, is the speech of Barabas in the "Jew of Malta," ending with a line that has incorporated itself in the language with the familiarity of a proverb:

"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,
Jacynths, hard topaz, grass-green emeralds,
Beauteous rubies, sparkling diamonds,
And seld-seen costly stones of so great price
As one of them, indifferently rated,

May serve in peril of calamity

To ransom great kings from captivity.

This is the ware wherein consists my wealth:

Infinite riches in a little room.

This is the very poetry of avarice.

Let us now look a little more closely at Marlowe as a dramatist. Here also he has an importance less for what he accomplished than for what he suggested to others. Not only do I think that Shakespeare's verse caught some hints from his, but there are certain descriptive passages and similes of the greater poet which, whenever I read them, instantly bring Marlowe

to my mind. This is an impression I might find it hard to convey to another, or even to make definite to myself; but it is an old one, and constantly repeats itself, so that I put some confidence in it. Marlowe's "Edward II." certainly served Shakespeare as a model for his earlier historical plays. Of course he surpassed his model, but Marlöwe might have said of him as Oderisi, with pathetic modesty, said to Dante of his rival and surpasser, Franco of Bologna, "The praise is now all his, yet mine in part.' But it is always thus. The pathfinder is forgotten when the track is once blazed out. It was in Shakespeare's "Richard II." that Lamb detected the influence of Marlowe, saying that "the reluctant pangs of abdicating royalty in Edward furnished hints which Shakespeare has scarce improved upon in Richard." In the parallel scenes of both plays the sentiment is rather elegiac than dramatic, but there is a deeper pathos, I think, in Richard, and his grief rises at times to a passion which is wholly wanting in Edward. Let me read Marlowe's abdication scene. The irresolute nature of the king is finely indicated. The Bishop of Winchester has come to demand the crown; Edward takes it off, and says:

66

Here, take my crown; the life of Edward too:

Two kings of England cannot reign at once.

But stay awhile: let me be king till night,

That I may gaze upon this glittering crown;
So shall my eyes receive their last content,
My head the latest honor due to it,

And jointly both yield up their wishèd right.
Continue ever, thou celestial sun;

Let never silent night possess this clime;
Stand still, you watches of the element;
All times and seasons, rest you at a stay -
That Edward may be still fair England's king!
But day's bright beam doth vanish fast away,
And needs I must resign my wished crown.
Inhuman creatures, nursed with tiger's milk,
Why gape you for your sovereign's overthrow ?-
My diadem, I mean, and guiltless life.
See, monsters, see, I'll wear my crown again.
What, fear you not the fury of your king?

I'll not resign, but, whilst I live, be king!"

Then, after a short further parley :

"Here, receive my crown.

Receive it? No; these innocent hands of mine
Shall not be guilty of so foul a crime:

He of you all that most desires my blood,
And will be called the murderer of a king,

Take it. What, are you moved? Pity you me?
Then send for unrelenting Mortimer,

And Isabel, whose eyes, being turned to steel,
Will sooner sparkle fire than shed a tear.

Yet stay, for rather than I'll look on them,

Here, here! Now, sweet God of Heaven,

Make me despise this transitory pomp,

And sit for aye enthronizèd in Heaven!

Come, Death, and with thy fingers close my eyes,
Or, if I live, let me forget myself."

Surely one might fancy that to be from the 'prentice hand of Shakespeare. It is no small distinction that this can be said of Marlowe, for it can be said of no other. What follows is still finer. The ruffian who is to murder Edward, in order to evade his distrust, pretends to weep. The king exclaims:

Weep'st thou already? List awhile to me,
And then thy heart, were it as Gurney's is,
Or as Matrevis', hewn from the Caucasus,
Yet will it melt ere I have done my tale.
This dungeon where they keep me is the sink
Wherein the filth of all the castle falls,
And there in mire and puddle have I stood
'This ten days' space; and, lest that I should sleep,
One plays continually upon a drum;

They give me bread and water, being a king;
So that, for want of sleep and sustenance,
My mind 's distempered and my body numbed,
And whether I have limbs or no I know not.
O, would my blood dropt out from every vein,
As doth this water from my tattered robes!
Tell Isabel the queen I looked not thus,
When, for her sake, I ran at tilt in France,
And there unhorsed the Duke of Clerëmont.”

This is even more in Shakespeare's early manner than the other, and it is not ungrateful to our feeling of his immeasurable supremacy to think that even he had been helped in his schooling. There is a truly royal pathos in They give me bread and water”; and “Tell Isabel the queen," instead of "Isabel my queen,"