Marlowe, CHRISTOPHER, Shakespeare's greatest predecessor in the English drama, a shoemaker's son, was baptised at Canterbury, 26th February 1563-64. From the King's School, Canterbury, he was sent to Benet College (now Corpus Christi), Cambridge; proceeded B.A., 1583, and commenced M.A., 1587. How he employed himself after taking his bachelor's degree is not known. A ballad printed from MS. by J. P. Collier asserts that he was an actor at the Curtain Theatre, and 'brake his leg in one lewd scene when in his early age;' but the ballad is evidently spurious. Colonel Cunningham suggests that he may have served as a soldier in the Low Countries.
The earliest of Marlowe's extant plays is Tamburlaine the Great, in two parts, first printed in 1590, and probably produced in 1587. In spite of its bombast and violence it is infinitely superior to any tragedy that had yet appeared on the English stage. By his energy and fervour, his aspiring imagination and majestic utterance, he confounded his rivals and won immediate supremacy. Very noticeable is the proud self-confidence displayed by the young poet in the prologue :
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.
Earlier dramatists had employed blank verse, but it had been stiff and ungainly : Marlowe was the first to discover its strength and variety. The popularity of Tamburlaine was extraordinary. A ludicrous line in the Scythian conqueror's address to the captive monarchs whom he has harnessed to his chariot—'Holla, ye pampered jades of Asia !'—was constantly parodied for half a century. Doubtless the extravaganza of the play contributed to its success. The part of Tamburlaine was originally taken by the famous actor, Edward Alleyn, who afterwards personated Faustus and Barabas.
The Tragic History of Dr Faustus was probably produced soon after Tamburlaine. The earliest edition is dated 1604; in the edition of 1616 additional comic matter is inserted by an inferior hand, but it also appears to preserve some genuine passages that were dropped from the earlier edition. Faustus, as it has come down, is rather a series of detached scenes than a finished drama; and some of these scenes are evidently not by Marlowe. One playwright after another was employed to furnish 'additions.' But the nobler scenes are marvellously impressive; nowhere is Marlowe's genius shown more vividly than in Faustus's glorious description of Helen's beauty and in the terrible soliloquies that prepare us for the catastrophe. Faustus held the stage, and was revived at the Restoration. Edward Phillips, Milton's nephew, quaintly remarks that 'Of all that Marlowe hath written to the stage his Dr Faustus hath made the greatest noise, with his devils and such like tragical sport.' A German version was acted by English players at Graz during the carnival in 1608, and at Dresden in 1626. Goethe expressed his admiration for Marlowe's work.
The Jew of Malta, produced after December 1588, was first published in 1633, with a prologue by Thomas Heywood. It is a very unequal play. The first two acts are conducted with masterly skill and vigour; but the last three are absurdly extravagant, degenerating into vulgar caricature. If Marlowe's hand had not faltered, if the later part had been equal to the earlier, Barabas would have been worthy to stand alongside of Shylock.
Edward II., produced about 1590, is the maturest of Marlowe's plays. It has not the magnificent poetry that we find in Faustus and in the first two acts of The Jew of Malta, but it is planned and executed with more firmness and solidity—in a more temperate and patient spirit. The various characters are skilfully discriminated, and the action is never allowed to flag. Many critics have preferred it to Shakespeare's Richard II.; it is certainly no whit inferior. Charles Lamb declared that 'the reluctant pangs of abdicating royalty in Edward furnished hints which Shakespeare scarce improved in his Richard II. ; and the death-scene of Marlowe's king moves pity and terror beyond any scene, ancient or modern, with which I am acquainted.'
The Massacre at Paris is the weakest of Marlowe's plays, and has descended in a mutilated state. It was written after the assassination of Henry III. of France (2d August 1589), and was probably one of the latest plays. An early MS., a fragment of an original playhouse transcript, preserves part of scene xix.; and a comparison of the MS. text with the text of the printed copy shows that the play was mangled in passing through the press.
The Tragedy of Dido is stated on the title-page of the first edition (1594) to have been written by 'Christopher Marlow and Thomas Nash, Gent.' Probably it was left in a fragmentary state by Marlowe and was finished by Nash. It is of slight value; but contains some fanciful poetry (and extraordinary bombast). There can be little doubt that Marlowe had a hand in the three parts of Henry VI.; and it is probable that he was concerned in the authorship of Titus Andronicus. A wild, shapeless tragedy, Lust's Dominion, was published in 1657 as the work of Marlowe. It deals with historical events that happened after Marlowe's death, but may nevertheless have been adapted from one of Marlowe's lost plays.
The unfinished poem, Hero and Leander, composed in heroic couplets of consummate beauty, was first published in 1598; a second edition, with Chapman's continuation, followed in the same year. Ben Jonson is reported to have said that Marlowe's verses were examples fitter for admiration than for parallel. From a passage in the Third Sestiad it appears that Marlowe had enjoined upon Chapman the task of finishing the poem; but neither Chapman nor any other poet could have taken up the story with any hope of success. Hero and Leander passed through numerous editions, and won universal applause. Shakespeare quoted in As You Like It the line, 'Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?' and feelingly apostrophised the poet as 'Dead Shepherd.' Nash, in Lenten Stuffs, speaks of 'divine Musæns, and a diviner poet than him, Kit Marlowe.' The watermen sang couplets from it as they plied their sculls on the Thames. Henry Petowe, a poor versifier but enthusiastic admirer of Marlowe, tells how
Men would shun their sleep in still dark night
To meditate upon his golden lines.
Marlowe's translations of Ovid's Amores and of the first book of Lucretius's Pharsalia add nothing to his fame. The pastoral ditty 'Come, live with me and be my love,' to which Sir Walter Raleigh wrote an answer, was imitated, but not equalled, by Herrick, Donne, and others. Izaak Walton pronounced it to be 'choicely good.' It was first printed in The Passionate Pilgrim (1599), without the fourth and sixth stanzas. In England's Helicon (1600) it appeared complete, with the author's name, 'C. Marlowe,' subscribed. Another anthology, Allot's England's Parnassus (1600), preserves a fragment by Marlowe, beginning 'I walked along a stream for pureness rare.'
In May 1593, at the age of twenty-nine, Marlowe met a violent death in a quarrel (about a courtesan, it is stated) with one Francis Archer, a serving-man. The burial-register of the parish church of St Nicholas, Deptford, has the entry: 'Christopher Marlow, slain by ffancis Archer [the name is not quite clear in the register], the 1 of June 1593.' Highly-coloured accounts of his death were given by Puritanical writers. Thomas Beard, in the Theatre of God's Judgement, declares that 'hee even cursed and blasphemed to his last gaspe, and together with his breath an oath flew out of his mouth.' There can be no doubt that Marlowe had led an irregular life. In Harleian MS. 6853 is a note 'contayninge the opinion of one Cristofer Marlye concernyng his damnable opinions and judgment of Relygion and scorne of Gods worde,' drawn up (shortly before Marlowe's death) by a certain Richard Baine, who was hanged at Tyburn, 6th December 1594. This scandalous document, which in parts is quite unfit for publication, was printed in full by Ritson. There is evidence that Sir Walter Raleigh and Thomas Kyd the dramatist were accused of sharing Marlowe's views.
Had his life been lengthened, Marlowe would doubtless have written more perfect tragedies, but he could hardly have left a better poem than Hero and Leander. Comedy he would never have attempted; he had no humour. In tragedy he prepared the way for Shakespeare, on whose early work his influence is firmly stamped.
Dyce's scholarly edition of Marlowe's works has not been superseded. It was issued in 1850, 3 vols., by Pickering; revised edition, 1 vol. 1858. Cunningham's edition (1 vol.) is useful but inaccurate. In 1885 the present writer brought out an edition (3 vols.). Marlowe's best plays are included in the 'Mermaid' series, ably edited by Mr Havelock Ellis. Dr Faustus has been elaborately edited by Professor A. W. Ward. In Germany Messrs Hermann, Breyermann, and Albrecht Wagner are engaged in reproducing the old texts, with the original orthography and exhaustive lists of variae lectiones. In 1888 it was resolved to erect a monument to Marlowe's memory on the Dane John, Canterbury. No authentic portrait is extant.