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'But not of kings. The forest deer, being struck, 'Runs to an herb that closeth up the wounds;

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'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 up to the air.'

The last line of this fine quotation is an instance of a verse deficient of a syllable, but not therefore defective in time or measure: the important word 'mounts is to be dwelt upon with peculiar force and emphasis for the length of two inferior syllables, and the harmony of the rhythm is thus preserved.

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It has been asserted by Chalmers, without qualification, and as certainly without proof, that Marlow was the author of The True Tragedie of Richard Duke of York *. He had a copy of this old play in his possession, dated in 1595, two years after the death of Marlow, but it no where appears that he wrote it,

*Supplemental Apology, p. 292.

The story of Marlow's death has been differently related, but it seems now ascertained that he was killed by his rival in love: Marlow found his rival with the lady to whom he was attached, and rushed upon him; but his antagonist, being the stronger, thrust the point of Marlow's own dagger into his head. This event probably occurred at Deptford, where, according to the register of St. Nicholas Church, Marlow was buried on June 1st, 1593, and it is also there recorded that he was slain by Francis Archer.' The following relation of this circumstance, which seems to be mistaken in the locality, has never yet been quoted. It is from The Thunderbolt of God's Wrath against hardhearted and stiffe-necked sinners, &c., by Edm. Rudierde, 1618. 4to. 'We read of one Marlow a Cambridge scholler, who was a poet and a filthy play-maker; this wretche accounted that meeke servant of God,

though it is possible he might be concerned in it. There is, however, as much reason for assigning also to him the history of Henry the Sixth, and the first part of The whole Contention between the two famous Houses, Lancaster and Yorke: they were all three in being before Shakespeare began to write for the stage; and after he commenced his theatrical career, he re-dressed the first part of The whole Contention, &c., and The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York, which now are known by the titles of the second and third parts of Henry VI. It is plausibly conjectured that Shakepeare never touched the first part of Henry VI., as it stands in his works, and that it is merely the old play on the early events of that reign, which was most likely written about 1589. As there is nothing to fix any of these as the property of Marlow, it is needless here to enter into any examination of them, as regards their structure or versification. What Shakespeare contributed to the second and third parts of Henry VI. may be seen by a comparison of them with the two old quartos reprinted by Steevens, in 1766.

Moses, to be but a conjurer, and our sweete Saviour but a seducer and 'deceiver of the people. But harken, ye brain-sicke and prophane " poets and players, that bewitch idle eares with foolish vanities, what fell upon this prophane wretch:-having a quarrell against one 'whom he met in a streete in London, and would have stab'd him; 'but the partie perceiving his villany prevented him with catching 'his hand and turning his owne dagger into his braines, and so blas'pheming and cursing he yeelded up his stinking breath. Marke 'this, ye players, that live by making fooles laugh at sinne and 'wickednesse.'-The substance of this narrative is taken from Beard's Theatre of God's Judgments, 1598.

VOL. III.

L

Greene may possibly have had a hand in the authorship of The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York, and there is a striking coincidence between a passage in that play, and another in Greene's Alphonsus, (not printed until 1599, although written before 1592,) which in this view may deserve notice.-Gloster, in The True Tragedy, &c., while stabbing Henry VI. the second time, exclaims

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If any spark of life remain in thee,

Down, down to hell, and say I sent thee thither.'

In Greene's Alphonsus, the following lines, delivered

on a somewhat similar occasion, are met with.

'Go, pack thou hence unto the Stygian lake;. And if he ask thee who did send thee down,

'Alphonsus say, who now must wear thy crown.'

For reasons already assigned, Lust's Dominion is excluded from the list of Marlow's plays. It was, in fact, the work of Dekker, Haughton, and Day.

ON

ROBERT GREENE AND HIS WORKS.

ROBERT GREENE, who died in September, 1592*, is perhaps entitled to be considered the poet who immediately followed Marlow, in his successful experiment to bring blank-verse into use on the public stage. At least it is quite certain that he attempted dramatic composition in blank-verse, prior to 1588, because he

* His fatal illness was occasioned by eating and drinking immoderately of red-herrings and Rhenish wine. In 1594 appeared a very rare collection of fourteen 'Sonnets' (as the author terms them), under the title of Greene's Funeralls, of which Ritson mentions only an edition in 1604, and which Mr. Park confounds with Greene's Memorial, at the end of Gabriel Harvey's Four Letters &c., 1592. The initials R. B., Gent.,' are on the title-page, which Ritson supposes to mean Richard Barnefield; but Greene's Funeralls is certainly unworthy of Barnefield's pen. R. B. was a most devoted admirer of Greene, as the following lines will show :

'For Judgement Jove, for learning deepe he still Apollo seemde; For floent tongue, for eloquence, men Mercury him deemde; 'For curtesie suppose him Guy, or Guyons somewhat lesse. 'His life and manners, though I would, I cannot halfe expresse : 'Nor mouth, nor mind, nor Muse can halfe declare, 'His life, his love, his laude, so excellent they were.'

It seems strange that R. B. should touch upon Greene's life and manners,' if he deserved the character for vice and profligacy which his enemy, Gabriel Harvey, gave of him, after Greene was dead and could not reply. The only copy of Greene's Funeralls, 1594, that I ever saw, among Bishop Tanner's books at Oxford,

is

so asserts in the prefatory epistle to his Perimides the Blacksmith, which was printed in that year.

He was a poet who obtained an extraordinary reputation at a comparatively easy rate*. He was of Clare-hall Cambridge, from whence he dates the dedication of his Mamilliat, and he probably entered the Church in 1584 we find a person of the name of Robert Greene, in possession of the Vicarage of Tollesbury, in Essex, and in that year he printed an enlargement and moralization upon the story of Su

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Professor Tieck, in the Preface to his Shakespeare's Vorschule, says that Greene had a happy talent, a clear spirit, and a lively imagination,' which, he adds, characterise all his writings.' I can by no means concur in this praise to its full extent, for although some of his productions do display what I should rather term a lively fancy, than ' a lively imagination,' there are others that possess no recommendation of any kind, and were put forth into the world to relieve temporary necessities. By these he certainly ought not to be judged, though they ought to be taken into the account with reference to the facility with which he wrote his best pieces, and the total needlessness of study and effort, which Tieck also attributes to him.

6

The earliest edition of it bears date in 1583; and by some verses signed G. B., in praise of the author and his booke,' which are prefixed, it is clear that it was written, if not published, before Greene left college.

'Greene is the plant, Mamillia is the flowre,

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Cambridge the plat where plant and flower growes.'

My friend, the Rev. A. Dyce, in his beautiful edition of Greene's Works, in two vols. 8vo., also gives the date of 1583 to the publication of the first part of Greene's Mamillia. See vol. I. cviii. The second part of Mamillia was undoubtedly first printed in 1593; and I apprehend that there may be a mistake of a figure on the title of the first part. Greene would hardly write the second part of the same story nearly ten years after the appearance of the first part.

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