dramatic dexterity. All his warmth of fancy is lavished with incomparable splendour of diction on the opening scene, describing the beauty of the bathing Bathsheba, but at the same time the noble simplicity of the Bible narrative is maintained, and the course and connection of events are brought with consummate skill into the compass of the play. The severity of the moral is enforced by the chorus, which makes its appearance twice, first to announce prophetically David's coming woes, and again after the Ideath of Absalom. These two choruses sufficiently emphasise the distinction between the styles of Peele and Marlowe : - O proud revolt of a presumptuous man, Her pleasant gardens and delightsome parks, So wretched man, displeased with those delights The second chorus moralises on the downfall of the arrogant Absalom : O dreadful precedent of his just doom, Whose holy heart is never touched with ruth Of fickle beauty or of glorious shape, But with the virtue of an upright soul, Humble and zealous in his inward thoughts, Though in his person loathsome and deformed ! 2 Both morals are worked out with so much simplicity and propriety in the action, that we almost forget how very little of his own imagination Peele has put into the play. He has created no character; he has added no 1 Greene and Peele's Dramatic and Poetical Works (Dyce), p. 469. 2 Ibid. p. 482. touch of pathos to the materials with which he deals his merit lies solely in the playwright's craft of having provided a fitting metrical and dramatic form for the historic narrative of the Old Testament. Christopher Marlowe, on the other hand, the great genius who may be justly called the founder of English poetic drama, kept no measure with the ancient traditions. of the stage. Between him and the Puritanic element in the nation the rupture was absolute and complete. Will, or force, or passion, freed from the restraints of Conscience and Law, was the motive of all his dramatic composition, and his work shows at once the strength and weakness which comes from the determined pursuit of a single principle of art. He was the son of John Marlowe, a shoemaker of Canterbury, where he was born in February 1563-64. Educated first at the King's School in that town, he was removed to Cambridge in March 1580-81, and matriculated as Pensioner of Benet, now Corpus Christi, College. He took his B.A. degree in 1583, and that of M.A. in 1587. From a passage in Greene's Groat's-worth of Wit, Marlowe would appear to have come while at Cambridge under the influence of Francis Kett, Fellow of Benet College, who held heretical opinions, for which, eventually, in 1589, he was burned at Norwich. External and internal evidence shows also that Marlowe had closely studied the works of Machiavelli, and had thus settled on a line of thought which he before long found means of expressing in a dramatic form. His first play, Tamburlaine, appears to have been acted before 1587; and it was soon followed by Faustus. The Jew of Malta was produced about 1589 or 1590; Edward II. and The Massacre at Paris were probably the last works that came from his hand. While in London he lived much with Greene, Peele, Lodge and Nash, the band of university scholars who supported themselves by writing for, and sometimes acting on, the public stage. Of his personal habits nothing more is known than can be gathered from Greene's "Address"; and all that seems L certain is, that he came to a violent end in 1594, being stabbed in the eye by one Francis Archer, a serving-man who was his rival in love. His memory, which was peculiarly hateful to the Puritans, has perhaps been blackened to excess by their malignity; but it is likely enough that a man animated by the spirit which breathes in the dramas of Marlowe endeavoured to embody his opinions in his life. His plays have of late years been frequently considered mainly on their technical side, and considering the vast effect produced on the English poetical drama by Marlowe's adoption of blank verse, this is not unnatural. As regards his own genius, however, it is not the right way of judging; for it is plain enough that he made his technical innovation because blank verse was the only vehicle of poetical expression adequate to the character of his thought; we see from Tamburlaine that he regarded eloquence as a means to a practical end; and the style of his dramas therefore cannot be fully appreciated without a full comprehension of the intellectual and imaginative motive which inspired his composition. What was this? Mr. Symonds says it may be described by the phrase L'Amour de l'Impossible. In one sense, measuring the vastness of Marlowe's conceptions and his exaggerated manner of expression by the limits of actual fact, this is true; but in another sense, looking to his philosophy, to his ideas of dramatic creation, and to his view of rhetoric, it is the exact opposite of the truth. Marlowe composed on a principle which was simple, direct, and consistent with itself, but which was distinct from every principle which had hitherto inspired tragic conception, though some approach to it had been made in the tragedies of Seneca. In Marlowe's plays there is no trace of the hereditary curse of sin, which elevates the tone of Sophocles and Æschylus; there is no trace of the doctrine of physical Necessity, which is the ruling thought of Seneca; there is but seldom any trace of the conflict between good and evil, conscience and passion, which prevails in the Miracle Plays 1 Shakspere's Predecessors, pp. 608-622. and Moralities. What we do find in Marlowe is Seneca's exaltation of the freedom of the human will, dissociated from the idea of Necessity, and joined with Machiavelli's principle of the excellence of virtù. This principle is represented under a great variety of aspects; sometimes in the energy of a single heroic character, as in Tamburlaine; sometimes in the pursuit of unlawful knowledge, as in Faustus; again, in The Jew of Malta, in the boundless hatred and revenge of Barabas; in Guise plotting the massacre of the Huguenots out of cold-blooded policy; and in Mortimer planning the murder of Edward II. from purely personal ambition. Incidentally, no doubt, in some of these instances, the indulgence of unrestrained passion brings ruin in its train; but it is not so much for the sake of the moral that Marlowe composed his tragedies, as because his imagination delighted in the exhibition of the vast and tremendous consequences produced by the determined exercise of will in pursuit of selfish objects/ So far from loving grandiosity and extravagance for their own sake, the violence of his conceptions springs from a belief of what is possible to the resolved and daring soul. The first play in which he embodied these ideas was Tamburlaine, the hero of which is evidently meant to be the incarnation of virtù. The development of his character and fortunes is represented with great splendour of description and with finely contrasted effects. Feebleness and imbecility of purpose are in the opening scene vividly portrayed in the person of Mycetes, the idiotic King of Persia, who is very characteristically represented as unable to express himself with dignity, and who is deposed by his own brother Cosroe. Cosroe's vain delight in the mere external grandeur of royalty brings into relief the manly simplicity of Tamburlaine, whose person is thus vividly described :— Of stature tall and straightly fashioned, Pale of complexion wrought in him with passion, His lofty brows in folds do figure death, In every part proportioned like the man Should make the world subdued to Tamburlaine.1 When Cosroe, by the aid of this Scythian shepherd, has acquired the crown of Persia, he thinks that his simple ally will be satisfied with being made regent of Persia and lieutenant-general of his armies, while he himself departs "to ride in triumph through Persepolis." Hardly has he gone when Tamburlaine appeals to his captains— TAMBURLAINE. Why, say, Theridamas, wilt thou be king? THERIDAMAS. TAMB. Nay, though I praise it, I can live without it. Why that's well said, Techelles: so would I, USUMCASANE. What then, my lord? Why then, Casane, shall we wish for aught And rest attemptless, faint, and destitute? Thereupon he marches against Cosroe, defeats, and kills him. Nothing is allowed to stand in the way of his will. He has carried off Zenocrate, daughter of the Soldan of Egypt, and she, though betrothed to the prince of Arabia, falls in love with her captor. Agydas, her faithful attendant, upbraids her for her inconstancy, and incurs the resentment of Tamburlaine, who sends him a dagger after the fashion of the Roman emperors. Agydas understands the message, and displays the stoical virtù of Seneca's philosophical heroes : It says, Agydas, thou shalt surely die, 1 Marlowe's Works (Dyce), p. 13. 2 Ibid. p. 17. |