anrighteousness, his glow of imaginatior unhallowed save by its own energies." Whether his muse cleave the upper air, or draggle in the dirt, it ever gives unity of impression. In Lust's Dominion, or the Lascivious Queen, the rapid movement of the man's mind is very characteristic,— rattling recklessly on through scenes of murder, cruelty, and lust, now striking off “burning atoms" of thought, and now merely infusing fire into fustian, his faculties at times stretched on the rack, writhing in fearful contortions, and smiting the ear with the wild screams of a tortured brain,-—but still marching furiously forward, daring everything, and playing out the game of tragedy freely and fearlessly. In this play he somewhat reminds us of the actor who blacked himself all over when he performed Othello, and called that "going thoroughly into the part." Marlowe scatters lust and crime about in such careless profusion, that they cease to excite horror. His Muse must too often have appeared to him in some such form as the hideous phantom in Clarence's dream, "A shadow like an angel, with bright hair But amidst all his spasmodic and braggart lines in the vein of King Cambyses, his mind continually gives evidence of possessing pathos, sweetness, and true power. Imaginations of the greatest beauty and majesty will sometimes rush up, like rockets, from the level extravagance of his most ranting plays, "streaking the darkness radiantly; -as in that celebrated passage in TamDurlaine, which Shakspeare condescended to ridicule through the lips of Ancient Pistol: * Enter Tamburlaine, drawn in his chariot by Trebizon and Soria, with bits in their mouths, reins in his left hand, in his right hand a whip, with which he scourgeth them. "Tamb. Holla, ye pampered jades of Asia! As you, ye slaves, in mighty Tamburlaine." From the same play, which has passed into a synonyme of bombast and "midsummer madness," but which contains lines that Beaumont and Milton have not hesitated to appropriate, Leigh Hunt extracts the following exquisite passage: "If all the pens that ever poet held Had fed the feeling of their master's thoughts, And all combined in beauty's worthiness; Yet should there hover in their restless heads One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the best, The description of Tamburlaine's person has a rude Titanic grandeur, which still tells on the ear and brain as in the lines, — "Of stature tall, and straightly fashioned; n the whole description, Marlowe's predominating desire to accumulate round his characters images of strength and majesty, and to dwarf all other men in comparison, is finely exemplified. Tamburlaine is his "Pale of complexion, wrought in him with passion ;” eyes are "piercing instruments of sight," "Whose fiery circles bear encompassed A heavea of heavenly bodies in their spheres." The breath of heaven "delights" to play with his curls of "amber hair;" his bent brows "figure death," their smoothness, "amity and life;" his "kindled wrath can only be quenched in blood;" and he is "in every part proportioned like a man" who has the right divine to subdue the world. We are astonished that Carlyle has not yet puffed Tamburlaine as made after Marlowe's image. The Scythian shepherd deserves a proud place among his heroes. Most of Marlowe's powerful scenes are well known. His best plays are The Rich Jew of Malta; Edward the Second, the "reluctant pangs of whose abdicating royalty," says Lamb, "furnished hints which Shakspeare improved in Richard the Second;" and the Tragical History of the Life and Death of Dr. Faustus, which is his greatest and most characteristic performance, sadly disfigured, however, by bathos and buffoonery, and in Scarce spired in part by the very imp of mischief. Barabbas, the Jew, has been mentioned as suggesting Shylock. The character, however, has little resemblance to Shakspeare's Jew. It is Marlowe all over. In the celebrated scene where Barabbas gloats over his vast wealth, his imagination glows like his own "fiery opals." The death-scene in Edward the Second, according to Lamb, moves pity and terror beyond any scene, ancient or modern," with which he is acquainted. We think this praise altogether too extravagant, affecting as the scene undoubtedly is. 66 We take leave of Marlowe with an extract from the last scene in Faustus. The verse has the sinewy vigor and sonorous chime which generally distinguish his style. It is, however, intensified by the agony ne might feel on viewing his own name traced in flam ng characters on the black rolls of the damned. "FAUSTUS alone.-The clock strikes eleven. Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, A year, a month, a week, a natural day, O lente, lente currite, noctis equi! The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike Where is it now? 't is gone! And see, a threatening arm, and angry brow! O half the hour is past! 't will all be past anon. Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul? All beasts are happy, for when they die, It strikes, it strikes; now, body, turn to air, [Thunder, and enter the Devils.] |