the term art-master' contemptuously, and I apprehend that it has reference to some individual who had set himself up as a sort of rival of Greene, or, in the phrase of Nash, to outbrave a better pen.' The prefatory matter to one of the productions of Greene, which was published in the year following that in which Nash's address to the Gentlemen Students of both Universities' was printed, may enable us to decide to whom the term 'art-master' alludes.

Greene's Perimedes, the Blacksmith, appeared in 1588; and in the epistle to the Gentlemen readers,' after stating that he still keeps his old course to palter up something in prose,' he goes on to mention, that the motto he usually prefixed to his productions, omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci, had been 'had in derision' by two gentlemen poets,' because (says Greene) I could not make my verses jet on

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the stage in tragical buskins, every word filling the 'mouth like the faburden of Bow-Bell, daring God out Heaven with that atheist Tamburlan, or blaspheming with the mad priest of the sun.' Farther on he laughs at the 'prophetical spirits' of those who set the end of scholarism in an English blank-verse,' and who had accused him of not being able to write it. Greene, at this date, was a highly popular author of pamphlets, if not of plays; and it is a curious fact, to be gathered from what he adds, that his incapacity in the last respect was then important enough to have been even brought in some way upon one of the theatres :-'If I speak darkly, Gentle

men' (he proceeds), and offend with this digression, I crave pardon, in that I but answer in print what 'they have offered on the Stage* Greene seems to have felt very sore at the charge, that he could not write blank-verse, and make it 'jet in tragical buskins' as well as some of his contemporaries; and it is, therefore, fair to infer that prior to the date when he was writing, 1588, he had made the attempt. He particularly specifies two plays of this kind that had been successful-one in which the mad priest of the sun' was exhibited, and the other Tamburlaine, the author of which was Christopher Marlow. It is to be observed that Marlow took his degree of Master of Arts in the very year when Nash was unable to do so in consequence of being obliged to quit Cambridge in disgrace. I apprehend that it is to Marlow Nash alludes, under the term 'art-master,' in the quotations already made from his address prefixed to Greene's Menaphon, 1587.

I thus arrive at the conclusion, that Christopher Marlow was our first poet who used blank-verse in dramatic compositions performed in public theatres— that Tamburlaine was the name of the play in which the successful experiment was made, and that it had been acted anterior to 1587. The two parts of Tamburlaine the Great are extant, but nothing is now

* Perhaps something in the same way that Ben Jonson subsequently, in his Case is Altered, brought Anthony Munday on the stage in the character of Antonio Balladino, 'Pageant Poet of the City of Milan.' See Act i. Sc. 1.

known of any piece of that date in which the Priest of the Sun' formed a character.

There are three pieces of evidence to show that Marlow was the author of Tamburlaine the Great, two of which have never yet been noticed. The most conclusive is the subsequent entry in Henslowe's MS. Diary, preserved at Dulwich College, which escaped the eye of Malone.

Pd. [paid] to Thomas Dekker, the 20th of Desember, 1597, for adycyons to Fosstus twentye shellinges, and fyve shellinges more for a prolog to · Marloes Tamburlan: so in all I saye payde twentye fyve shellinges.'

Here we see Marlow's Tamburlaine mentioned in connection with his Faustus, to the latter of which Dekker had made some additions, and written a new prologue for the former. The date of the entry seems to show that the Lord Admiral's players had been required to act at court during the festivities of Christmas, 1597, and that two of Marlow's plays having been selected by the Master of the Revels, Dekker was called upon to contribute some novelty to both. This testimony may be considered decisive, and it is a known fact that other dramatists were often required to furnish new matter, in the shape of additions and prologues, to the dramatic works of preceding authors. Gabriel Harvey also (the antagonist of Nash), in 1593, just after the death of Marlow in June of that year, speaks of him by the name of Tamberlaine, when there could be no reason for chusing that

VOL. III.

I

designation, but that he was the author of the play. It is in the New Letter of Notable Contents,' 1593, which notices the untimely fate of both Greene and Marlow in reference to the latter, a sonnet appended, entitled, Gorgon or the wonderful Year,' ends with the following line :

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'Weep, Pauls: thy Tamberlaine vouchsafes to die.' The third proof depends upon the authority of Thomas Heywood, who, according to Henslowe's Diary, had written a play in 1596, and who, though young, might have been contemporary with Marlow. He published the Jew of Malta, in 1633, with an occasional prologue of his own, on its revival at the Cockpit theatre, in which he attributes that play, as well as Tamburlaine and Hero and Leander, to Marlow, whose name at length is inserted in the margin opposite*. Malone's crude notion that Tamburlaine was possibly written by Thomas Nash, (founded

* Heywood's lines are the following; and their meaning seems quite plain and intelligible, although the editor of the recent reprint of Marlow's Works (Vol. I. p. xx.), by misplaced ingenuity has endeavoured to torture the words to a different construction.

"We know not how our play may pass this stage,
But by the best of poets [Marlo] in that age,

The Malta Jew had being and was made;

And he then by the best of actors [Allin] play'd.

'In Hero and Leander one did gain

A lasting memory; in Tamburlaine,

'This Jew with others many: th' other wan

'The attribute of peerless, being a man

'Whom we may rank with (doing no one wrong)

'Proteus for shapes, and Roscius for a tongue.'

Heywood here first speaks of the poet as the author of Hero and

upon an ambiguous expression in The Black Book, 1604,) is thus refuted on all sides. Had Nash been the author of it, Greene would scarcely have abused it by name, in 1588, without laying any stress upon the allusion to it by Nash himself, in the year preceding.

The most reasonable ground for resisting the claim of Marlow to the two parts of Tamburlaine the Great, arises out of some obvious defects in its style-that it is turgid and bombastic-that the language is not pure, and that the thoughts are sometimes violent and unnatural. Those who have raised this objection, have never taken into consideration the purpose of the author; and to adduce Tamburlaine as our earliest popular dramatic composition in blank-verse is to present it in an entirely new light, most important in considering the question of its merits and defects.

The probability seems to be, that Marlow was likewise the writer of the play, in which the Priest of the Sun' prominently figured; but putting that point out of sight, as we are without any means of deciding it, we may assert that when writing Tamburlaine, Marlow contemplated a most important change and improvement in English dramatic poetry. Until it appeared, plays upon the public stages were written, sometimes in prose, but most commonly in rhyme; and the object of Marlow was to substitute blankLeander, Tamburlaine, The Jew of Malta,' with others many,' and secondly, of the player, who in his department had been peerless. It is not to be understood that Marlow had written a play on the story of Hero and Leander: Heywood alludes to the paraphrase of Musæus, commenced by Marlow and finished by Chapman.