Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

contemporaries, are now universally regarded with admiration as the first springings forth of that rill of dramatic literature which afterwards gathered strength and became a broad and mighty river.

Hallam has left us an opinion of "Tamburlaine the Great," the tragedy which called forth the animadversions of Nash, which may fitly be referred to here. Considering the calm balance of mind usually preserved by that careful and discriminating writer, the praise accorded to Marlowe's early work is indeed lofty, though, as we hope presently to see, not too lofty when the merits of the tragedy are fully considered. He says: "This play has more spirit and poetry than any which, upon clear grounds, can be shown to have preceded it. We find also more action on the stage, a shorter and more dramatic dialogue, a more figurative style, with a far more varied and skilful versification. If Marlowe did not reëstablish blank verse, which is difficult to prove, he gave it at least a variety of cadence and an easy adaptation of the rhythm to the sense, by which it easily became in his hands the finest instrument that the tragic poet has ever employed for his purpose, less restricted than that of the Italians, and falling occasionally almost into prose; lines of fourteen syllables being very common in all our old dramatists, but regular and harmonious at other times, as the most accurate ear could require." The "Tragical History of Dr. Faustus," which was Marlowe's next play, avoided some of the faults observable in its predecessor, partly owing to the fact that the author himself had doubtless become conscious that his style must not be allowed to degenerate into rant, and partly because the nature of the subject itself forbade the use of so extravagant a diction. It is said - and there is no reason, judging from internal evidence, for thinking the supposition is incorrect that a number of interpolations have been made in the text of "Faustus" for which Marlowe is not responsible, and which are in no wise germane to his genius. Of his other dramatic works more remains still to be said, as they are dealt with in their proper order; but a passing reference may be made to the effect produced upon the writers of his own day by the beautiful poem on the old but never wearisome legend of the loves of Hero and Leander." So popular was this composition that the Water Poet and his brother scullers upon the Thames used to sweeten their toil by singing or reciting favorite passages from it. And we have few richer treasures of its kind to linger lovingly over now.

But the thread of our biographical narrative is in danger of being interrupted. What had become of the dramatist during the construction of these plays which we have mentioned, and others which we must yet enumerate? The only facts of a definite nature in his personal history to be relied upon are, first, that he tried his fortune upon the stage, where he had no long run; and, secondly, that his reputation was of a most objectionable description: then, finally, the violent end of a violent life, of which we have spoken, must not be forgotten. Being in a tavern at Deptford, carousing with individuals of the lowest strata of society, he received an insult which his choleric temper could ill brook. In endeavoring to avenge it, by some chance his own weapon was turned against himself in the scuffle, and he received a mortal wound. Whether the facts be exactly as stated or no, he undoubtedly perished in this same brawl; but those who profess to apportion the blame, and fix a stigma on Marlowe, only do so upon posthumous evidence said to have been based upon contemporary statements which statements, nevertheless, were made, as already seen, by persons inimical to the dramatist. So much for the tragedy of Marlowe's own life. Short as it was, it seems to have been passed amidst a great deal of physical excitement, not unmingled with excess. But that the last few years of his life were a prolonged orgy, is an assertion which may be at once dismmissed as base and unfounded. Periods of calm and leisure were essential to his genius; and these periods must have been obtained, since the monuments which were the result of them are still existing. The eulogy passed upon Marlowe by his illustrious contemporary dramatist was not earned without effort, we

may be sure; and when it is remembered that those who traduced him hated him most of all on religious grounds, we should be doubly cautious in the reception of statements which, if believed, would make him a Faust and a Mephistopheles combined.

Perhaps the most striking quality observable in Marlowe is his breadth. Whatever defects may be alleged against his execution, and however faulty may be his style, his conceptions are gigantic. He revels in his strength like a giant. He reminds us in his wildness and grandeur of those heights of the Brocken, where Faust is supposed to have sealed his compact with the Evil One. Tempestuous to a degree, he is, as compared with the other writers of his age, what the surging and ever restless ocean is to the still pool. Take up any of his works, and they will be found distinguished by a uniform greatness of conception. The imagination from which they proceeded is lofty, strong, and impassioned. Excrescences cannot hide his greatness; the mountain summit is not always obscured by black, absorbing clouds. A free and daring spirit is stamped upon all that he has done: a spirit that knew no fear of man, and, it is to be assumed, felt little awe of God. His works are the most unrestrained exhibition of power of which we have any knowledge. Other dramatists may have exhibited the same recklessness, but then they have not possessed the same strength. As regards Shakespeare, note here one of those points in which he is king of the poets. There was the same power as in Marlowe, but he also possessed a quietude which gives us an idea of what we should call the unexpended forces of his nature. To draw an analogy from the physical world around us, and apply it to Shakespeare, we should say he was equally at home in painting the flower as in wielding the earthquake. He was, at pleasure, self-infused with the spirit of a child, or the iron will of a Julius Cæsar. It is just this capacity of instituting a close relation between himself and any unit of humanity whatsoever, that separates him from the rest of his kind. Marlowe was great and sublime, but not from this all-enfolding point of view. His greatness was a plain and palpable one, and not a suggestive greatness. He has given us royal spirits, royally conceived; but we ask in vain for his Falstaffs, his Bardolphs, his Juliets, and his Portias. What types he has drawn are as true and accurate (not all, but most of them) as those of his great successor; and perhaps we are a little unjust in demanding from him more, when we consider the brief span of his existence. It is possible that had his life been prolonged we should have received from him work worthy of being compared with much of Shakespeare's own. There was in him the outline of a transcendent genius, but the opportunity failed him of filling up its wonderful proportions.

Another distinguishing peculiarity of this dramatist is his power over the passions. "Dr. Faustus" is sufficient evidence of the gift he possessed in this respect. Mark the alternations of feeling in the mind of the leading character, and see how boldly they are drawn; whilst at the end the absorbing sentiment of the reader is one of admiration, not unmingled with sorrow, for Faustus, even in the great climax of his fate. The same power is carried into several of the scenes in "Edward the Second," one especially being as pathetic a passage as can be discovered almost anywhere. And the passion is not the simulated passion of the writer of books, but of the reader of men. The counterfeit is not perceptible here. It is genuine passion genuinely depicted. The whole vocabulary of grief seems to have been in Marlowe's possession. The hell of a miserable mind has been penetrated with deep and searching vision. Beneath the demoniacal fury which appears to utterly envelop many of his characters, is to be seen a more complicated series of passions than would at first sight strike the beholder. The demon has but one element, but one feeling, but one plan of action; but the humanity which Marlowe has drawn has the real strife of elements. He shows the secret workings of good against evil, and vice versâ; and he has chosen for treatment men in whom the volcano of passion is forever surging and emitting its mixed products of stones and lava. Marlowe

is a superb Byron. Upon the nineteenth century poet has been superadded, to the violence and the darkness of profound passion, its true dignity. Marlowe is greater, more splendid in his rage and his denunciation, probably from the fact that his soul, though more unbelieving, had yet a larger sincerity than Byron's. Manfred appears a fearful individuality; but if we come to look at him very closely, we shall find that he is a gentleman of whom we have very often heard before the man who defies God and makes a great deal of noise about it, but who has not the true elements of a mighty personal being within himself. Very different is the Faustus of Marlowe. Many a man could become a Manfred; but Faustus is as rare a creation as Iago, while of a totally different type. So great is Marlowe's conception of this character, that he has not been able to do justice to it. He has had glimpses of the veritable being himself, with all his enormous thoughts and desires, but has failed to reduce him altogether into shape. But, indistinct as he sometimes appears, the glimpses we do get of him fully attest what a magnificent being he is. And herein, we think, lies the difference between Marlowe's tragedy and Goethe's. The latter work is the history of a soul and something more. We are attracted partly by the paraphernalia of the drama, and not overwhelmed by the individual creation. In Marlowe's tragedy we see little but Faustus; but he is enough. He covers the canvas with his great and sombre presence, awful in the vastness of his wishes and the daring of his imagination. And this is but one of the characters which the dramatist has left us. Little inferior in vividness of drawing is the Jew of Malta, the predecessor of a still more notorious Jew, and therefore the more original. In all his conceptions Marlowe was never afraid of carrying the passions to their utmost height and fulness. It is the mark of the strong writer when he reaches this perfection. Irresolution and weakness have no place in characters which they mean to be the embodiments of human feeling: they know their ends and pursue them. It may be objected to Marlowe that the range of his vision is somewhat limited, looking to the number of his individual creations; but it is apparent to any one, nevertheless, that his capacity of representation of what he has set himself to depict knows little if any limitation. That he has not left a larger gallery of portraits behind him is not a reproach to his genius, but the result of the interference of the ill-fated hand of Death; the painting of such of those as he has drawn is more distinct than Vandyke's and bolder than Rembrandt's.

"Tamburlaine the Great" is a drama in two parts, in which the writing is very unequal in strength. Charged occasionally with all the commanding eloquence which the dramatist well knew how to use, many of the scenes, taken in the bulk, are not worthy of his genius, but are disfigured by faults which we can only too clearly see it was but natural should lay him open to censure. The first part is introduced to the reader by a prologue in which Marlowe displays his contempt for the "jigging veins of rhyming mother wits, and such conceits as clownage keeps in pay,' and he goes on to promise a very different class of entertainment from that which these same poor wits generally provided. We are inclined to be somewhat doubtful whether the promise will be redeemed when we find the King of Persia — from whom we should certainly have expected more exalted language - addressing his brother in these exceedingly commonplace terms in the very first lines of the play :

Brother Cosroe, I find myself aggrieved,
Yet insufficient to express the same.

The drama soon moves on, fortunately, to more important matter, and in the second scene we are presented with a very effective interview between Tamburlaine and his beautiful captive Zenocrate, the daughter of the Soldan of Egypt, in which the former unfolds his prophecies of the career which shall end by filling the earth with his dreaded The Persian Theridamas, who was afterwards persuaded to forsake his sovereign through the persuasiveness of Tamburlaine, well describes the terror of the world in these lines:

name.

Tamburlaine! A Scythian shepherd so embellished
With nature's pride and richest furniture!
His looks do menace heaven, and dare the gods;
His fiery eyes are fixed upon the earth,
As if he now devised some stratagem,

Or meant to pierce Avernus' darksome vaults, To pull the triple-headed dog from hell. Equally successful in love and war, the daring adventurer and warrior pursues his destiny. Resolution to obtain possession with him means instant fruition; and his hot and boundless ambition, which nothing mortal could satisfy, is graphically traced by the plastic pen of the narrator. The aspiring shepherd holds that a god is not half so glorious as a king; and in words which have been altered by Milton only to the extent of taking the nether regions instead of paradise for his fine declaration, Tamburlaine proceeds to say,

I think the pleasure they enjoy in heaven
Cannot compare with kingly joys in earth.

It is more than probable that these, and the immediately succeeding lines in the drama, rang in the later bard's ears when he wrote that it was

Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.

The insatiable lust of power, and its gradual absorption of the entire being, were never better depicted than in Marlowe's delineation of Tamburlaine. He is in every sense a great warrior, whose conceptions of campaigns and conquests are equalled by his prodigious executive ability. He declares that he has no room to entertain the thought of defeat; if he is moved to obtain the Persian crown, he attains his object with ease. What is in the grasp of man to accomplish shall be achieved by him, for he is penetrated with the sense of his superiority over mankind, and of his equality with the gods. His ideas, plans, swift and whirlwindlike movements, and indomitable courage fully attest that he is no mere boaster, but one who will ride the age as its master and its monarch. The play is admirable for the manner in which this apotheosis is worked out, and Tamburlaine lifted out of the vulgar category of ordinary humanity. His secret passions are dissected with that psychological insight for which the dramatist is remarkable, and the mind, as well as the deeds, of the great scourge of Asia is laid bare to our gaze. With all its inflation and bombast, the play is very forcible, and in certain parts very beautiful. This passage, put into the mouth of the warrior himself, is large in thought, daring, and instinct with rugged and striking oratory :

Now clear the triple region of the air,

And let the majesty of heaven behold
Their scourge and terror tread on emperors.
Smile, stars, that reigned at my nativity,

And dim the brightness of your neighbor lamps !
Disdain to borrow light of Cynthia!

For I, the chiefest lamp of all the earth,
First rising in the East with mild aspect,
But fixed now in the meridian line,
Will send up fire to your turning spheres,
And cause the sun to borrow light of you.
My sword struck fire from his coat of steel,
Even in Bithynia, when I took this Turk;
As when a fiery exhalation,

Wrapt in the bowels of a freezing cloud,
Fighting for passage, makes the welkin crack,
And casts a flash of lightning to the earth:
But ere I march to wealthy Persia,

Or leave Damascus and the Egyptian fields,
As was the fame of Clymene's brain-sick son,
That almost bent the axle-tree of heaven,
So shall our swords, our lances, and our shot
Fill all the air with fiery meteors:
Then when the sky shall wax as red as blood,
It shall be said I made it red myself,

To make me think of naught but blood and war. This is befitting declamation, loud and trumpet-tongued, to assign to the man who, on another occasion, uttered the following vigorous description of himself :

[ocr errors]

The god of war resigns his room to me, Meaning to make me general of the world:

Jove, viewing me in arms, looks pale and wan,
Fearing my power should pull him from his throne.

The character foreshadowed in these lines is well sustained; the gigantic figure is never dwarfed, nor do his enormous passions ever exhibit the least inclination to satiety. He feasts his eyes upon the woes of Bajazet, who is borne about with him in a cage, and who has the double misfortune of seeing his conqueror march forth to victory after victory, kings falling before him as the tall blades of corn before the hurricane. The woes of the Emperor of the Turks and his faithful empress are related with much pathos, and their self-destruction completed in a scene of strong and natural emotion. At the opening of the second portion of the drama we find Tamburlaine in the zenith of his power and fame. The ever-victorious sovereign has discomfited the great Christian host under Sigismund, and there is nothing more left for him to do, except to enjoy the fruits of his victories. Yet, in the very next scene to that in which his greatest triumph is celebrated, we behold Tamburlaine miserable and dejected. Disease has seized upon the form of Zenocrate, his illustrious consort, and he who had boasted of his invincible might is powerless to arrest its progress. Graphically is the lesson indicated of the rapid succession of joy and despair for all humanity. The conqueror is at last conquered. The captor of one hundred kings watches the gradual advance of an insidious disease in helplessness and anguish. He sees that form, which, had it lived before the siege of Troy, "Helen had not been named in Homer's Iliades," wither and expire, and from that moment his sun of prosperity begins to set. He can, however, wreak his revenge for the loss of Zenocrate in one method, eminently suggestive of his imperious and cruel spirit, and he accordingly consumes with fire the city in which she died. The play moves on with real dramatic interest and energy. The enraged monarch teaches his sons the art of war, in which he would see them become like masters with himself, and because one of them, Calyphas by name, does not take kindly to the occupation of blood, the furious father stabs him to the heart. He makes his son's death the occasion for an outburst of wrath, in which he threatens unheard-of horrors for the world. Being remonstrated with by the kings of Jerusalem, Syria, and Trebizond, for his cruelty, Tamburlaine replies in the following strain, which is one of the most powerful pieces of rhetoric to be found in our author:

Villains! these terrors and these tyrannies
I execute, enjoined me from above,

To scourge the pride of such as heaven abhors;
Nor am I made arch-monarch of the world,
Crowned and invested by the hand of Jove,
For deeds of bounty and nobility:
But since I exercise a greater name,
The scourge of God and terror of the world,
I must apply myself to fit those terms,
In war, in blood, in death, in cruelty,
And plague such peasants as resist in me
The power of heaven's eternal majesty.

[ocr errors][ocr errors]

I will, with engines never exercised,
Conquer, sack, and utterly consume
Your cities and your golden palaces,

And, with the flames that beat against the clouds,
Incense the heavens, and make the stars to melt,
As if they were the tears of Mahomet,
For hot consumption of his country's pride;
And, till by vision or by speech I hear
Immortal Jove say, " Cease, my Tamburlaine,"
I will persist a terror to the world,
Making the meteors (that, like armèd men
Are seen to march upon the towers of heaven)
Run tilting round about the firmament,
And break their burning lances in the air
For honor of my wondrous victories.

The fact that these speeches of Tamburlaine's are disfigured occasionally by outrageous exaggerations and ranting eccentricities does not by any means destroy their effect, whilst they enjoy that great distinction of being the

first really serious attempt to revolutionize contemporary blank verse.

Confessedly, however, "The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus" must be regarded, in accordance with the general verdict, as the chef-d'œuvre of Marlowe. It has a strength and directness of purpose most distinctly traced in every scene, whilst the individuality of the leading character (a quality to which we have previously made some reference) is most striking and complete. It is a drama in which the most intense interest is evoked and sustained. The conception is so vivid, that the whole thing gives us the impression that it might have been written at one sitting. We know, of course, that this is impossible, but the illusion is only a so much stronger tribute to the powers of the writer. Faustus, whose personality has already come before us, may not appear altogether a desirable character, in the matter of detailed drawing and elaboration, but we should search well-nigh in vain to discover a worthy rival to him in the gigantic force of his ruling ideas, and for the admirable manner in which his unappeasable craving for enjoyment has been delineated. In truth, he is almost appalling from his defiance of all the canons of humanity, and for those flights of an uncontrolled and unbridled imagination in which he indulges. Hazlitt well says of him, translating into excellent language what will be the thought of all readers of the tragedy," Faustus, in his impatience to fulfil at once and for a moment, for a few short years, all the desires and conceptions of his soul, is willing to give in exchange his soul and body to the great enemy of mankind. Whatever he fancies becomes by this means present to his sense; whatever he commands is done. He calls back time past, and anticipates the future; the visions of antiquity pass before him. Babylon in all its glory, Paris, and Enone; all the projects of philosophers, or creations of the poet, pay tribute at his feet; all the delights of fortune, of ambition, of pleasure, and of learning, are centred in his person; and from a short-lived dream of supreme felicity and drunken power, he sinks into an abyss of darkness and perdition. This is the alternative to which he submits; the bond which he signs with his blood! As the outline of the character is grand and daring, the execution is abrupt and fearful. The thoughts are vast and irregular, and the style halts and staggers under them. With uneasy steps, such footing found the sole of unblest feet.' There is a little fustian and incongruity of metaphor now and then, which is not very injurious to the subject."

It is a curious fact with regard to this drama, that though written several years before his death, no edition of it was published during the lifetime of its author, while many of the editions now current present Marlowe's text very much mutilated. It may have been the fancied improvements of other hands which resulted in the introduction of those passages that are open to the charge of buffoonery. It is pointed out that there are three editions of the tragedy which were not known to Dyce, and Hazlitt deemed it highly probable that there might have been an earlier impression than any yet discovered. Under these circumstances it would not be safe to assume that the drama as we have received it stands as Marlowe left it; possessing as we do some knowledge of the quality of his powers, we ought not to bind ourselves to more than admiring as his work the grand and majestic conception in its bold and simple outline, and those passages of the play which bear upon them the impress of his perfervid and tremendous genius. The hammer of Vulcan has certainly been employed to weld the joints of the armor in which Faustus is encased. The drama is no child's play, but one of terrible and engrossing import to all men. The lesson of the whole is current in lurid flames upon the surface as we proceed. The dramatist has drunk deep of ecstasies and visions, and made his work living with emotion. He rises to the character of Faustus more perfectly than does the modern artist. His passions and desires are more dramatically if not more poetically treated. The introduction of the Margaret of the later work into the earlier drama would have completely spoilt it. Given the Faust of Goe

the, and Margaret does not seem inadequate as the height of earthly bliss for him; but Marlowe's Faustus is made of sterner stuff. He is cast in a larger mould, and when he demands beauty he must have presented to him Helen of Troy. Charles Lamb even, that gentle being, felt that there would have been an incompatibility between the real Faust and Margaret. Marlowe's hero experienced not the depth of the intellectual difficulties which beset Hamlet, or Goethe's Faust, but he had a more insatiable thirst of heart. Let us look a little at this oldest dramatic form in which

the well-known story of Faust and his compact is presented. Marlowe, in the first act, depicts the learned Dr. Faustus in his study, and after much cogitation we find him delivering the sum of his thoughts in the opinion that" a sound magician is a demi-god," with a greater sovereignty than that of emperors and kings. But how to get this deity embodied in his own person? The daring idea is pursued with the aid of evil spirits who arrive opportunely upon the

scene. Intoxicated with his conceptions he heeds not the warnings of the scholars who remonstrate with him; but in the third scene, by the charm of a Latin invocation, calls up Mephistophilis. An argument takes place between the two, in which the magnate of hell declares that the conjuring of Faust was only the accidental cause of his appear

ance:

For when we hear one rack the name of God,
Abjure the Scriptures and his Saviour Christ,
We fly in hope to get his glorious soul:
Nor will we come unless he use such means
Whereby he is in danger to be damned.
Therefore the shortest cut for conjuring
Is stoutly to abjure all godliness,

And pray devoutly to the Prince of Hell.

Another idea, however, is prevalent at the present day as to the raising of spirits, though whether it is yet sufficiently successful to have caused Mephistophilis to revise his opinions we are unable to say. Returning to Marlowe, in this third scene occurs a passage which the commentators have pointed out as having suggested a striking figure to Milton, though the discovery is one which would be made by any reader of the two poets. After Mephistophilis has informed Faustus that he is forever damned in hell with Lucifer, the following dialogue occurs:

Faust. How comes it, then, that thou art out of hell?
Meph. Why, this is hell; nor am I out of it.

Think'st thou that I that saw the face of God,
And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells
In being deprived of everlasting bliss?

This passage immediately brings to mind familiar lines in "Paradise Lost," but especially the one

Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell.

The idea is thus incontrovertibly supported that Milton, as we have already surmised, was thoroughly versed in Marlowe's works; but, if necessary, other extracts could be given which would make the tale of proof irrefragable. There is one scene in the second act of the drama of "Faustus" that in which is beheld a procession before the Doctor of the Seven Deadly Sins - which must have been one of the interpolations in the text complained of, and not Marlowe's work. The humor is somewhat common and coarse, and various lines, as is the case with other passages which could be cited, are weak and halting. In the third act, we return again to the real author, where Faustus and his infernal tutor play their mad pranks upon the Pope, to the scandal of the cardinals, friars, and bishops. The drama proceeds, very unevenly in merit, it must be confessed, till in the fifth scene Helen of Troy is introduced to Faustus, who thus addresses her: :

Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss,
Her lips suck forth my soul! See where it flies;
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,

And all is dross that is not Helena.
I will be Paris, and for love of thee,
Instead of Troy shall Wittenburg be sacked;
And I will combat with weak Menelaus,
And wear thy colors on my plumèd crest:
Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel,
And then return to Helen for a kiss.
Oh! thou art fairer than the evening air
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars;
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter
When he appeared to hapless Semele.

But the season of voluptuous delights is now fast waning. The hour draws nigh when the final condition of the contract sealed with his blood must be completed, and as it approaches the dramatist makes Faustus already suffer the mental tortures of the lost. A vision of the terrible nature of his fate passes before him, and he comprehends something of its horrors. Nor is this all; the being to

whom he gave the indelible writing laughs at his tears and bids him despair, for such is his fate, since "fools that will laugh on earth must weep in hell." And then comes the rejoicing (which is always depicted as keener than paradisal bliss), that one irremediably doomed and godless soul feels over another whom it has dragged into the same dark and everlasting abyss. All this we behold faithfully and powerfully drawn in the concluding pages of this enthralling drama. Then arrives the final anguish of Faustus before his destruction, when he emits the agonizing cry as he nears that awful midnight,

Oh, I'll leap up to heaven! Who pulls me down?
See where Christ's blood streams in the firmament:
One drop of blood will save me. Oh, my Christ,
Rend not my heart for naming of my Christ;
Yet will I call on him. Oh, spare me, Lucifer!
Where is it now? 't is gone!

And see, a threatening arm, an angry brow!
Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me,
And hide me from the heavy wrath of heaven.
No!

Then will I headlong run into the earth;
Gape, earth! Oh no, it will not harbor me.
You stars that reigned at my nativity,
Whose influence hath allotted death and hell,
Now draw up Faustus, like a foggy mist,
Into the entrails of yon laboring cloud;
That, when ye vomit forth into the air,
My limbs may issue from your smoky mouths;
But let my soul mount and ascend to heaven.

[The clock strikes the half-hour.
Oh, half the hour is past; twill all be past anon.
Oh, if my soul must suffer for my sin,

Impose some end to my incessant pain.
Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years-

A hundred thousand- and at last be saved;
No end is limited to damnèd souls.
Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul?
Or why is this immortal that thou hast ?

[The clock strikes twelve.
It strikes! it strikes! Now, body, turn to air,
Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell

[Thunder and rain.

O soul, be changed into small water-drops, And fall into the ocean: ne'er be found!

[Enter the devils.

Oh! mercy, heaven, look not so fierce on me! Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while. Ugly hell, gape not! Come not, Lucifer! I'll burn my books! Oh, Mephistophilis ! The crushing eloquence of this stupendous burst of feeling falters a little in the last four lines, but taken altogether it is a prodigious effort. One is rather curious in speculating upon what Shakespeare would have made of this catastrophe, which is, perhaps, the finest single incident in the world for the writer of tragedy; but it is questionable whether even he could have accomplished a more impassioned strain, or one so suitable to the dread conception.

[ocr errors]

The "Jew of Malta" inevitably challenges comparison with "The Merchant of Venice as regards its leading character. Marlowe's play is worth little except for the

strong individuality with which his Jew is put upon the canvas. The avarice of the race to which Barabas belongs is forcibly exemplified, but the exaggerations of the populace respecting the excesses of the Jews which were prevalent in his day have been adopted by the dramatist in order to heighten the effect of his work. The passions of the Jew are greatly distorted, and before Marlowe has arrived at the end of his drama he has lost control over its leading character. From a startling realism with which he is conceived and elaborated in the earlier acts, we pass on to a grotesque exhibition of fiendish traits without truthfulness to nature, till we arrive at a conclusion which, instead of evoking the sense of the sublime, rather excites the sense of the ludicrous. Very different is Shakespeare's method with Shylock, a character whose unity is preserved from his first appearance in the play till the very last. There is some degree of interest created in the daughter of Barabas, but she is too slightly sketched, a fault observable in many of the characters. Occasionally, however, we meet with isolated passages in the play which have a strong touch of the writer's best quality in them. This, for instance, is a striking simile, and one such as the author's genius is very felicitous in producing; it occurs in a soliloquy by the Jew:

Thus, like the sad presaging raven, that tolls
The sick man's passport in her hollow beak,
And in the shadow of the silent night
Doth shake contagion from her sable wings;
Vexed and tormented runs poor Barabas
With fatal curses towards these Christians.

The miser is most thoroughly devoted to his consuming passion, so much so that he affects the daring of appealing to the God of Abraham, " who with the fiery pillar led the sons of Israel through the dismal shades," to lead him safely in the quest of wealth. It is difficult to say, nevertheless, whether this passion, or the hatred of the Christians, is stronger in his breast. His denunciations of the latter are most fierce and acrid, and an idea of their bitterness may be gained from the following lines, in which he vents his feelings towards this "heretical" division of humanity :We Jews can fawn like spaniels when we please, And when we grin we bite, yet are our looks As innocent and harmless as a lamb's.

I learned in Florence how to kiss my hand,
Heave up my shoulders when they called me dog,
And duck as low as any barefoot friar,
Hoping to see them starve upon a stall,
Or else be gathered for in our Synagogue;
That, when the offering basin comes to me,
Even for charity I may spit into it.

This exceedingly pleasant individual is made to overreach himself at the end of the drama in an absurd manner, and such as we should not have predicted upon our first introduction to him. In the fury begotten of his losses he almost loses his reason, and certainly all that cunning and that coolness which are supposed to distinguish his tribe in moments of supremest danger. It is here, we think, that the dramatist has failed. Barabas holds that "it's no sin to deceive a Christian," a doctrine which enables him to become a robber upon principle; but having been deceived in turn he is so beside himself with rage that he is incapable of doing justice to his own principle and of reducing it to practice. So, after a good deal of plotting and counterplotting-in which it must be admitted the Jew very neatly arranges that two of his enemies should kill each other-we arrive at the final stage of the play. Barabas, who had prepared a very clumsy trap for certain of his enemies, falls into a much simpler one himself, and his last words to his fellow-mortals are oaths and execrations. Amidst these he expires, and the Christians feel that they are relieved of a bugbear. The second part of the drama does not display the careful workmanship to be found in the preceding acts; it is as if the artificer had become tired of his work, and having conceived his character, lacked the patience to follow out its proportions.

In every respect a contrast to this tragedy, the drama of

"Edward the Second" is worthy of high commendation, though we scarcely think it warrants the lavish praise bestowed upon it by some critics. The author is again witnessed in his real strength, master of his theme, and his verse marches with all the stateliness that should attach to the subject. As an historical play it may be at once conceded that it has had few equals, while it was the first of such plays of any moment ever produced. The weakness of Edward's character is preserved, and he is not unduly allowed to excite our pity, misfortunes rapidly accumulating upon his head through his mad partiality for the favorite Gaveston. The speeches scattered through the drama attain to a noble expression; witness that of the King to his friend Leicester after he has been placed in captivity, which is full of exalted thoughts and imagery. In his lament Edward says very finely,

The griefs of private men are soon allayed,

But not of kings. The forest deer, being struck,
Runs to an herb that closeth up the wounds;
But when the imperial lion's flesh is gored,
He rends and tears it with his wrathful paw,
And highly scorning that the lowly earth
Should drink his blood, mounts upward to the air.
And so it fares with me, whose dauntless mind
Th' ambitious Mortimer would seek to curb.

The pathos of the concluding portions of this play has been rarely surpassed for its unstrained force and depth, and the drama, taken as a whole, shows what a field might have been open to Marlowe's successful cultivation, haď but the Fates been propitious. He assuredly demonstrates the capacity for imagining the splendors of courts and the regal bearing of kings.

-

Although the next dramatic effort in order of consideration "The Massacre of Paris " complete, disjointed, and unsatisfactory, it contains one of - is but a fragment, inthe most spirited speeches to be found within the range of the author's works; namely, that of the plotting Duc de Guise, the principal instigator of the infamous Bartholomew slaughter. The lines breathe of the cruel and ambitious spirit of this man, who was resolved to rise, although his downfall should possibly be the deepest hell, and who burned to become the great centre of interest with his countrymen, a mark which should be so conspicuous as to cause the world to wonder " as men that stand and gaze against the sun." In every other respect except that of the remarkable individuality of several of the characters, and two or three outbursts of passion, the fragment is almost worthless." Dido, Queen of Carthage," presents a checkered appearance in the workmanship, as though it had been collaborated by a master mind and a poetic buffoon. Much of it is unquestionably Marlowe's, but other passages, which savor of doggerel extraordinary, are as unquestionably not. It is affirmed that the dramatist's old assailant, Nash, had a finger in the completion of this drama, and if so, it is by no means the worst kind of revenge he could have taken upon the great writer, while pretending to make it a compliment. The student, however, will very easily divide the chaff from the wheat, for Marlowe attains to a high excellence here, which only serves to place his assistant's work in a more contemptible light. The illustrious Eneas loses much of the dignity generally associated with his character when we find him addressing Ascanius in these absurdly colloquial terms, which could not fail to arrest the attention of even the most casual reader :

Alas! sweet boy, thou must be still awhile,
Till we have fire to dress the meat we killed;
Gentle Achates, reach the tinder box,
That we may make a fire to warm us with,
And roast our new-found victuals on this shore.

This is not the "mighty line" along which the English drama advanced to perfection. But there are other passages, notably in Act II., where Eneas relates his heroic story to Dido, which could only have proceeded from Marlowe himself: they are full of strength and nervous energy. The passion of Dido, with its tragical ending, is traced with gathering feeling; and the Queen of Carthage

« ПредишнаНапред »