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 :

He

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. 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 blank

Leander, 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.

verse. His genius was daring and original: he felt that prose was heavy and unattractive, and rhyme unnatural and wearisome; and he determined to make a bold effort, to the success of which we know not how much to attribute of the after excellence of even Shakespeare himself. We cannot suppose, that had Marlow never lived, Shakespeare would have remained content in the clinking shackles of rhyme; but it is certain that in his earlier dramatic compositions, he shows a greater degree of fondness for it than some of his contemporaries. In an alteration of this kind, a great deal must always depend upon the spirit of the age, which will be sure to find its own instruments to effect it. The expressions Marlow uses in his short prologue, to the first part of Tamburlaine the Great, are important.

'From jigging veins of rhyming mother wits, 'And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay, 'We'll lead you to the stately tent of war,

'Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine

Threatening the world with high astounding terms,

And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword.
View but his picture in this tragic glass,

And then applaud his fortunes as you please

The meaning of these lines, in other words, is that the author was about to abandon the use of rhyme, and low conceits fit only for clowns, in order to substitute blank-verse, and heroic deeds told in language

* It was for this prologue, obviously ill adapted to the court in the year 1597, that Dekker was required by Henslowe to substitute another, and for which that poet was paid five shillings.

On this

to which the audience was not accustomed. account, he incurred the unmerited ridicule of the two friends, Nash and Greene; the first, in 1587, charging him withoutbraving better pens with the swelling bombast of bragging blank-verse;' and the last, in 1588, accusing him of employing words which filled the mouth like the fa-burden of Bow-bell.' Marlow had a purpose to accomplish; he had undertaken to wean the multitude from the jigging veins of rhyming mother-wits,' which, according to Gosson, were SO attractive; and in order to accomplish this object it was necessary to give something in exchange for what he took away. Hence the swelling bombast' of the style in which much of the two parts of Tamburlaine the Great is written. Marlow did not set the end of scholarism in an English blank-verse;', but he thought that the substitution of blank-verse for rhyme would be a most valuable improvement in our drama; and many lines full of sound and fury,' were not inserted in his experimental play because he thought them good, but because he hoped the audience would think them so he wrote ad captandum, and it is unfair to try him by the ordinary rules of good taste and sound criticism.

He brought everything he could render available to his aid upon this occasion, which may in some degree excuse him for adopting the following simile of the almond-tree from Spenser.

And in my helm a triple plume shall spring,
Spangled with diamonds dancing in the air,