The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus.

THERE is no trace of an edition of this Play being printed during the lifetime of its author. Mr. Hazlitt in his valuable Handbook of Early English Literature has enumerated three editions of this drama not known to Mr. Dyce, and thinks it highly probable that there may have been an earlier impression than any yet discovered.

1. The Tragicall History of D. Faustus. As it hath been acted by the Right Honourable the Earl of Nottingham his servants. Written by Ch. Marl. London: Printed by V. S., for Thomas Bushell, 1604. 4to. Bodleian.

[This edition, with the palpable errors corrected, will be found at p. 288 of this volume.]

2. The Tragicall History of D. Faustus, &c. London. John Wright, and are to be sold at Christ Church Gate. Hamburgh Public Library.

Printed by G. E. for 1609. 4to, 32 leaves.

3. London: Printed by G. E., for John Wright. 1611. 4to. There was a copy in Heber's Library.

4. The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus. Written by Ch. Mar. Printed for John Wright, and are to be sold at his shop without Newgate, at the signe of the Bible. 1616. 4to. British Museum. [This is the impression followed in the first version given in this volume.]

5, 6, 7, 8. Quartos printed respectively in 1620, 1624, 1631, and 1663.

P. 59 a.

"

Not marching in the fields of Thrasymene,
Where Mars did mate the warlike Carthagens.

"Mate," says Mr. Dyce in his note to this passage, is "to confound-to defeat,' which would have been an excellent interpretation if the warlike Carthagens had been confounded or defeated in the fields of Thrasymene. On the contrary the action at the lake of Thrasymenus was only second to that of Cannæ among the victories of Hannibal. The word mate in this passage must, therefore, mean "to marry. We use the same metaphor still, for when Marlowe poetically says that Mars did mate-i.e., did marry the Carthaginians, we should call it espoused their cause. In Tamburlaine, see Note 2 b, the word had been used in its other sense. I am not aware that any of our Elizabethan commentators have ascertained what dramas are alluded to in these opening lines, or in those which follow regarding the "Courts of kings where state is overturned."

P. 59 a.

P. 60 a.

In courts of kings, where state is overturned.

What doctrine call you this! Che sera, sera.

The well-known motto of the Russell family. Sera was an old form of sara.

So the 4to of 1616. Other editions read gain for get, but get in the sense of grow to seems more intelligible than the other reading.

P. 60 b.

Yea, stranger engines for the brunt of war,
Than was the fiery keel at Antwerp bridge.

It is evident from innumerable passages that Marlowe had a great turn for the mili-
tary art; and the siege of Antwerp in its day was something more than the siege of
Sebastopol has been in our own time. The engineers on both sides were Italians,
and in the attack and defence exhausted all the resources of their art. The Prince
of Parma occupied both banks of the Scheldt below the city, and had constructed
an enormous work, half embankment, half bridge, to connect the two sides, and to|
cut off all communication with the sea. The citizens made the most strenuous
efforts to destroy this barrier, but without any success until the engineer, Giambelli,
prepared a fire-ship, which even in these days would be considered a masterpiece
of destruction, and in 1585 was regarded as a more than mortal work. Its explo-
sion was admirably timed, and its effects were prodigious. The bridge was burst
through, the embankments with their cannon and their machinery of all kinds
thrown into the air, eight hundred men and officers killed upon the spot, and the
Prince of Parma himself struck down by a beam. The river too, forced from its
bed by the force of the explosion, sent a vast wave over each bank which washed
away the earthworks which had flanked the bridge. Such was the "fiery keel,"
which Faustus was to surpass.

P. 61 a.

Shall make all nations to canonize us.

Mr. Dyce accentuates this line

Shall make all nations to canònize us.

This surely has a very awkward sound. Is it not simpler to pronounce nations as a trisyllable, and canonize in the ordinary way?

P. 61 a.

And bear wise Bacon's and Albertus' works.

Albertus stood as Albanus until corrected by Mr. Mitford. Cornelius saddled Faustus with a heavy burden. The " Works" of Albertus Magnus fill twenty-ore thick folios, and those of Roger Bacon are asserted to have been one hundred and one in number.

P. 62 a. Ut appareat et surgat Mephistophilis Dragon, quod tumeraris.

The last word (or words it may be) is evidently corrupt. Mr. Mitford ingeniously proposed to read quod numen est aeris. Mr. J. Crossley has also exercised his skill on the passage in a communication to Notes and Queries.

It would be easy to prove that Milton was well acquainted with Marlowe's Faustus. He must have had this line in his mind when he wrote

P. 63 b.

Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell.

No, slave, in beaten silk and stavesaker.

I am not aware of the meaning of beaten silk. Staves-acre is a species of larkspur (corrupted from the Greek name staphys agria). The seeds were particularly in repute for destroying vermin in the head. Coles, in his dictionary, calls it herba pedicularis.

So the 4to of 1616; the subsequent 4tos properly had Mephistophilis.

P. 64 b.

I'll fetch thee fire to dissolve it straight.

Fire is here a dissyllable.-See Notes 7 a, 12 a.

P. 65 b.

Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed

In one self place; but where we are is Hell.

Here Milton may be traced again. See Note 62 b. Self is used as self-same. Among archers at the present day a self bow is a bow made of one piece of wood.

P. 66 a.

And men in harness shall appear to thee.

It is almost unnecessary to say that harness means armour.

In the old editions there was here inserted, altogether out of its place, the following lines which come in properly as the speech of the Chorus at 69 a :—

P. 66 b.

Whose terminus is termed the world's wide pole.

The editions of 1616, &c., have termine, which does not suit the metre; the 4to, 1604, has terminine. Most probably Marlowe wrote terminus.

This could never have been written by Marlowe, but must have been a piece of actor's gag. I should like to have omitted it.

P. 69 a.

There saw we learned Maro's golden tomb,
The way he cut an English mile in length, &c.

During the Middle Ages the poet Virgil was regarded in Europe very much as Michael Scott was by the peasantry on the Scottish Border. Mr. Dyce quotes a passage from Petrarch describing the feat to which Marlowe alludes.

P. 69 b.

In one of which a sumptuous temple stands.

The contemporary prose story fixes this as St. Mark's at Venice. "He wondered not a little at the fairnesse of S. Mark's Place, and the sumptuous church standing thereon, called S. Marke, how all the pavement was set with coloured stones, and all the rood or loft of the church double gilded over."

P. 71 6.

A sennet while the banquet is brought in.

Nares describes this as a "word chiefly occurring in the stage directions of the old plays, and seeming to indicate a particular set of notes on the trumpet or cornet different from a flourish." It is spelled in six different ways.

Mr. Dyce says much is here " equivalent to-by no means, not at all. This ironical exclamation is very common in our old dramatists." It was the not if I know it of 1869.

Y

P. 73 6. A shoulder of mutton to supper and a tester in your purse.

Tester is still perhaps occasionally used for a sixpence. The proper name was teston, a French silver coin, and so called from tête, the head upon it. In the same way when the E. I. Company's rupees, with the head of William IV. were first introduced into Central Asia they were called kuldars.

The state was a raised platform on which was placed a chair with a canopy over it. In the "Mermaid" edition of Massinger it was said to "occur, I believe for the last time, in Swift's History of John Bull." Mr. Carruthers pointed out at the time that Arbuthnot's name should be substituted for Swift's.

P. 74 a.

He took his rouse with stoups of Rhenish wine.

The word rouse has been made familiar to every one by Hamlet. In the Gull's Hornbook, which Mr. M'Mullen's excellent reprint has placed within everybody's reach, is a passage which Nares quotes as showing that it is in all probability of Danish origin. It is, therefore, peculiarly appropriate in the mouth in which Shakspeare has placed it.

P. 76 6.

Was this that damned head, whose art conspired.

The old editions read heart, which, as Mr. Dyce says, is probably right.

P. 776.

Nay fear not, man, they have no power to kill.

In all previous editions this has been printed "we have no power to kill." It appears to me that the change which I have made is absolutely necessary for the sense.

P. 78 a.

Enter Faustus, and the Horse-Courser, and Mephistophilis.

It is natural to suppose that Horse-Courser means Horse-Racer, but it is not so. The compound should be Horse-Scorser-that is, swopper or dealer. Scott understood the word when he made Marmion say to Blount,

P. 81 a.

Mephistophilis brings in Helen; she passeth over the stage.

Mr. Dyce here with great propriety quotes the description of Helen from the contemporary prose history. "This lady appeared before them in a most rich gowne of purple velvet, costly imbrodered; her haire hanged downe loose, as faire as the beaten gold, and of such length that it reached downe to her hammes; having most amorous cole-black eyes, a sweet and pleasant round face, with lips as red as a cherry; her cheeks of a rose colour, her mouth small, her neck white like a swan: tall and slender of personage; in summe there was no imperfect place in her; she looked round about with a rolling hawk's eye, a smiling and wanton countenance, which neere-hand inflamed the hearts of all the students; but that they persuaded themselves she was a spirit which make them lightly passe away such fancies." Oh! Pythagoras' metempsychosis, &c.

P. 84 b.

Mr. Dyce prints these lines

"O, Pythagoras' metempsychosis were that but true
This soul should fly from me, and I be chang'd
Into some brutish beast! all beasts are happy
For when thy die

Their souls are soon dissolved in elements," &c.

Here the first line has fourteen syllables, and the fourth only four. The arrangement which I have ventured upon seems more natural, but still far from satisfactory.

The Jew of Malta.

THE earliest edition is 1633,

which was introduced by Thomas Heywood with the dedication given at p. 86. The following is a copy of the title-page :The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew of Malta. As it was played before the King and Qveene in Her Majesties Theatre at White Hall, by her Majesties servants at the Cock-pit. Written by Christopher Marlo. London: Printed by I. B. for Nicholas Vavasour, and are to be sold at his Shop, in the Inner-Temple neare the Church, 1633. 4to.

P. 86. You have been pleased to grace some of mine own works with your courteous patronage.

In the preceding year Heywood had dedicated his own play of The Iron Age, Part I., to this same Mr. Thomas Hammon.

Censure was employed at least as late as Congreve's time for judgment, opinion.

Best of poets-Best of actors.

P. 87. In the old editions, opposite the first of these is printed Marlo, and after the second Allin. The other actor mentioned is Richard Perkins, a well-known performer.

P. 87.

Here were no bets at all, no wagers laid.

Bets of this kind, says Mr. Collier, "were not uncommon in those days." A document is still preserved at Dulwich College which "relates to a wager which had been laid by some friend of Alleyn, that in the performance of a particular part, which either Bentley or Knell had formerly sustained, he should excel Peele, who, we may perhaps conclude, had plumed himself on his histrionic abilities." Malone has adduced two passages, one from Dekker's Gull's Hornbook and the other from The Knight of the Burning Pestle, to the same effect. We are not told how wagers of this kind were decided. The only possible way was to refer them to the arbitration of some uninterested person.

P: 88 a. Enter Barabas in his counting-house, with heaps of gold before him. Massinger must have had this speech of Barabas in his memory when he wrote the soliloquy of Luke, act iii. scene 3, of The City Madam (p. 441 a). The two passages may be compared with advantage. The geniuses of Marlowe and Massinger were opposite as the poles.

P. 88 b.

Here have I purst their paltry silverlings.

The old editions read silverbings, a misprint which is followed in Dodsley's Old Plays, viii. 253. The word silverling is used in Isaiah vii. 23, apparently as a piece of silver."

P. 88 b.
To tell is to count.

Tell that which may maintain him all his life.

The word occurs again five lines lower down.