Page images
PDF
EPUB

THE LIFE

ОР

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE.

MARLOWE was the only dramatic poet who obtained any great degree of celebrity previously to the appearance of Shakespeare's plays; we hardly meet with a single scene in the dramatic productions of Mar. lowe's predecessors which is calculated to call forth the passions of grief, or terror, or astonishment. They are all written either in the dry didactic style of Ferrex and Porrex, or in the extravagant vein of King Cambises. The dramatists, indeed, who preceded himn had no dominion over the passions—they were extravagant and bombastic, instead of being pathetic or natural. Peele and Greene, the friends and contemporaries of Marlowe, exhibited only slight and occasional indications of feeling in their dramatic compositions. Marlowe was the first who made any impression upon the hearts of the audience. He possessed more genius and refinement, and drew his materials from a purer source, than any former

dramatic poet. His career was melancholy and brief, but he has left sufficient testimonies of power to convince us that if he had lived longer he would have contested the palm with the most celebrated poets of the age of Elizabeth, who, in the dramatic art, must be considered rather as his successors than contem!poraries. Marlowe had the honour of being the first to adopt a more natural and chaste model, and that is no slight praise at a time when taste wavered between extravagance and pedantry. Notwithstanding the backward state of tragedy in England before Marlowe's time, it is remarkable that comedy had made considerable progress. The dramatic writings of John Heywood are of a most facetious and comic kind, and Gammer Gurton's Needle is exquisitely droll and humorous.

The time of Marlowe's birth is matter of conjecture, but is placed by Mr. Ellis in 1562, and by Malone, with greater appearance of probability, about 1565.* Oldys on the contrary carries it as far back as the former part of the reign of Edward VI. He was entered of Bennet's College, Cambridge, and took his Bachelor's degree in 1583, and that of Master of Arts in 1587. Marlowe, on leaving the University, came to London, and, like many of the

*MS. Notes to the collection of Marlowe's Plays in the Bodleian Library.

scholars of his age, became, according to Phillips and Warton, at once an actor and a writer for the stage. Malone, however, is of opinion, that there is no sufficient authority for the assertion, that Marlowe was ever on the stage, as he is not mentioned as an actor by any of his contemporaries. He has been equally the subject of high panegyric, and the sport of scurrilous abuse, esteemed for his verse and hated for his life-the favorite of the learned and witty, and the horror of the precise and religious. The praise applies to his intellectual and the censure to his moral character; what the latter really was may be difficult at this time to determine with accuracy, although the accusations are not of a nature to be entitled to any great weight. Marlowe's familiar appellative was Kit, which may be considered as evidence of a kind disposition, or a companionable nature. "That elemental wit Kit Marlowe" is the expression of one writer, and Thomas Heywood, in his Hierarchy,' informs us that

[ocr errors]

"Marlowe renowned for his rare art and wit,,
Could ne'er attain beyond the name of Kit."

The testimonies of his contemporary poets in his favour are numerous and highly laudatory. Nash, speaking of Hero and Leander, expresses himself thus:-" Of whom divine Museus sung, and a

« PreviousContinue »