THE MASTER HAND IS HERE.
O what a world of profit and delight,
Of power, of honor, of omnipotence
Is promised to the studious artisan.
—Faustus, i.
Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me,
From my own library, with volumes that
I prize above my dukedom.
—Tempest, i, 2.
The secret oratory of the king held no shadows within its square walls on a most memorable night several months after the trial of Bame. The lamp near the iron-latticed window was burning, and a fire blazed in the chimney-basket. Besides the light, other late additions to the room, contributed to dispel its inborn air of austereness. One of the tapestries from the main chamber had been removed from its hangings, and lay here upon the floor, a violent appropriation to rude uses of a trapping of royalty. Two of the easiest chairs, which had added to the luxuriousness of the same chamber, had also been brought in. But the articles which rendered most assistance in changing the room from a cell to a study, were the books shelved below the square window. These had been contributed, one at a time, by Tamworth and Peele, until a goodly library of Greek and Latin, English, French and Italian books stood against the wall.
For more than a year, in voluntary exclusion from the world, Marlowe had pursued the occupation which he had years since adopted, but in which fate now compelled him to render exclusive and unwavering service. Although he was drinking from the inexhaustible wells of inspired masters in all the provinces of thought, it was the jealous muse of dramatic poetry that alone sat beside him and commanded his powers. The alternating spaces of light and darkness in the flight of time had cut no figure in his moods for work and rest; and thus while the night had fallen upon a day of unflagging industry, he still continued working at his table. While thus engaged, a narrow space of the wall opposite the exedra swung inward, and a familiar face showed itself in the dark opening. It was that of Peele, the dramatist, and with a hearty salutation he entered, closely followed by Shakespere.
“Thou art doubly welcome,” said Marlowe, rising and grasping the outstretched hands of his unexpected visitors.
“So?” questioned Peele, “but I fear that before you hear the news and I advise with thee, this welcome may be thought inappropriate.”
“Never while I am of enough concern to bring thee here,” said Marlowe, feelingly.
“And I, on my part, am here with a message of no pleasing import,” said Shakespere, seriously.
“What! croaking ravens, both of thee?” exclaimed Marlowe, with a smile which in no way tended to scatter their apparent gloom.
“Is the landlord of the Boar’s Head pressing thee, Peele, for two pence for thy last draughts of Malmsey; and has thy absent wife demanded thy immediate return to the foul alleys of Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespere? Or if not, why these sad presaging countenances, more like those of the worshipers at the Tribulation than of honest and fearless men? Would you bring blue devils into this glorious place of mirth to provoke moaning where nothing but laughter prevails? Am I—”
“Come, come,” interrupted Shakespere, “withhold thy attempts at sarcasm. We are not here to get thee to condole with us.”
“But to give thee friendly advice,” continued Peele.
“It is for thy interest,” added Shakespere.
“Ah!” said Marlowe, “why not then begin it with a song?”
“Of course singing is out of the question,” responded Peele, “and song without wine is like meat without salt, so we can have neither, for the nonce at least. But now let me ask: what progress have you made since I was here?”
“I am deep in the third act,” answered Marlowe, picking up a page of the manuscript of Romeo and Juliet, which lay scattered over the top of the table “And what think you of this as the speech of a love-lorn maiden?
Gallop apace you fiery-footed steeds
Toward Phoebus’ mansion; such a waggoner
As Phaeton would whip you to the West,
And-bring in cloudy night immediately.”
He would have continued, but Peele interrupted: “Hold! you have put similar language in the mouth of Edward II, descriptive of his desire for the shortening of time before battle. I recollect it well; thus:
‘Gallop apace, bright Phoebus, through the sky;
And dusky night in rusty iron car,
Between you both shorten the time, I pray,
That I may see that most desired day.’”
“Well?” exclaimed Marlowe.
“You must change it,” said Shakespere.
“Why should I?” retorted Marlowe, “a man cannot commit plagiary on his own writings; and, although the style of composition is similar, and the figure is used in both places to rail against the slowness of time, you must acknowledge that they are both appropriate in their places.”
“Now this has brought me to the very subject which I came here to talk over with you,” responded Peele.
“Ah, so you are the first one to draw the sword? Has the presentment of my latest drama at the Rose awakened thy unfavorable opinion? Was the fault with the players or with myself?”
“Your work improves with every line you write,” said Peele, enthusiastically, “but still with all the increase of learning displayed, the growing compactness of expression, the sustained fire, the maturity of thought, the diverseness of opinion, the wondrous expanse of human horizon disclosed,—thy style is stamped indisputably upon every passage.”
“So! I have labored to change it.”
“Marry, but thou hast not” [[note 41]].
“Then it is like my skin, a part of me.”
“No more to be changed than thy countenance, it seems, which with age and experience may get new lines and grow wiser looking, but still shows the old familiar expressions with every change of feeling.”
“Then there is no help.”
“But thou must change thy methods of treatment of some subjects.”
“Again I ask, why should I?”
Peele surveyed him like a father might his recreant son, and Shakespere slowly shook his head as though the case were one beyond all cure, exclaiming as he did so: “Why, man, for thine own safety.”
“Is that in danger?”
“It will be,” continued Peele, “Gabriel Harvey and George Chapman were in my hearing discussing the drama of Titus Andronicus as presented by the Earl of Sussex’ actors at the Rose, a week since; and, although the play was sold to Henslowe, as one written by Shakespere, Harvey swore it must be thine.”
“And what said Chapman,” interrupted Marlowe.
“He said, ‘Most damnably like Marlowe’s, but certain it is that it was not among his posthumous effects, and it was never presented under his name, nor before his death.’”
“And what said Harvey?”
“He said truly that if thou didst not write it, then this fellow Shakespere had caught thy very trick of hand.”
At this remark, Shakespere laughed so heartily that even the others had to join with him.
“Apt critics, these,” said Marlowe, “’tis strange that they should see resemblances between that play and any of my acknowledged works.”
“Bah,” returned Peele, “no one so blind as a mother to the faults of her child. Strange? Why that play is full of thine old spirit. Here, give me thy copy of it, and of thy Jew of Malta.”
Marlowe turned to a chest beside his table and drew forth two rolls of manuscript. He handed them to Peele, who opened the Jew of Malta at the second act, and read:
“As for myself I walk abroad o’ nights
And kill sick people groaning under walls:
Sometimes I go about and poison wells:
* * * * *
And always kept the sexton’s arms in ure
With digging graves and ringing dead men’s knells:
* * * * *
And every moon made some or other mad,
And now and then one hang himself for grief.
Pinning upon his breast a long great scroll
How I with interest tormented him.”
“And now,” he continued, “see how thou hast imitated thy early and immature work almost to an echo.”
He unrolled the manuscript of Titus Andronicus at the fifth act, and read:
“Oft have I digged up dead men from their graves
And set them upright at their dear friends’ doors,
Even when their sorrows almost were forgot;
And on their skins as on the bark of trees,
Have with my knife carved in Roman letters,
‘Let not your sorrow die though I am dead.’
Tut! I have done a thousand dreadful things,
As willingly as one would kill a fly.”
“Now in this same play, thou hast given us the very echo of Tamburlaine and his queen Zenocrate. The scene where Tamora first appears to the emperor is couched in identical language with the one where Zenocrate is given the crown by the king; and again in the first act of the first part of Henry VI you treat the death of Joan in the same manner as you do the death of Zenocrate. No servile imitator could have more carefully copied his master.”
“His very trick of hand,” drawled Shakespere.
Marlowe did not reply, but continued a rapt listener while his friend went on with increasing ardor:
“In act II of Titus Andronicus you write of the golden sun galloping ‘the zodiac in his glistening coach,’ as though in your ears still rattled ‘ugly darkness with her rusty coach,’ as you have described the night in act V of the first part of Tamburlaine and again in Edward II. If thou must take the most striking passages of thy Tamburlaine, and cut from them scraps and pieces upon which to pad out these later dramas, thou should be more circumspect in their use. If thou art not, one of two things will surely follow, thy friend here, who stands as thy mask, will be dubbed a plagiarist of vilest sort, or all these plays will be proclaimed thine.”
“Save me from such a calumny,” exclaimed Shakespere, “and Peele speaks truth, for a tempest has already begun to brew. But that is my story, and I must not break the thread of Peele’s argument.”
“Well! And what if the plays are proclaimed mine as you mention?” asked Marlowe.
“Why, thy existence will be discovered, for both Chapman and Nash know the full list of your works. Perhaps more know it. The report of thy death is loose and has not been widely circulated. Harvey attributed it to the plague.”
“Yes,” said Shakespere, “he wrote that ‘gogle-eyed sonnet’ about you in September, 1593, containing the line, ‘He and the plague contended for the game,’ and how the ‘graund disease’ smiled at your ‘Tamburlaine contempt,’ and ‘sternly struck home.’”
“Enough of that!” exclaimed Marlowe, impatiently, “I shall yet get even with that villainous sonneteer.”
“But to return to that description of night in act V of the first part of Tamburlaine,” said Peele, “there, the horses that drag the night, ‘from their nostrils breathe rebellious winds and dreadful thunder claps;’ while in the second part of Henry VI, the same old horses ‘from their misty jaws breathe foul contagious darkness in the air.’ The method of description and the figures of speech are the same, and you personify the same objects.”
“Well, it is a favorite description of mine for night, and as my attention is called to it, I now remember that in my Hero and Leander, ‘the night * * * heaved up her head and breathed darkness forth.’[28] This is the last time that I shall use the figure.”
“Well, that passage from Henry VI,” resumed Peele, “that I have just alluded to is also like another in Tamburlaine, beginning: ‘Black is the beauty of the brightest day’” [[note 42]].
“Possibly they are open to criticism. I shall revise, and in future labor toward perfection in word condensation,” said Marlowe, “but I cannot destroy all the well turned lines. For instance, there is the same spirit breathing through the verses for the friar Laurence, beginning ‘The grey-eyed morn smiles on the frowning light;’ but how can I curtail, how remodel with hope of preserving their beauty? You may assert that such lines echo with the music of Hero and Leander, and with them draw a close parallel to the passage in the latter, where Apollo’s golden harp aroused Hesperus, but I shall not change them. The critics may have food for thought and they may grow strong enough upon it to be formidable, but so long as I write of love, the lines must be cast in the purest mould that I am capable of using.”
“Then destroy thy Ovid and Homer, and go back to Seneca; read Plutarch and Holinshed. Thou hast written love tragedies and historical plays; take thy Faustus for the model of a drama of stern and darkened life.”
“Shall it be tragedy?”
“Yes, the darkest picture of thy mind.”
“My own bitter experiences.”
“Have it so if thou wilt,” returned Peele, “it is only he who has drained the cup of deepest sorrow and felt the tooth of adversity, that can draw such a picture.”
And so the figure of the melancholy Dane arose, the perfect embodiment at that period of the oppressed writer. Not at one stroke did it rise into its present almost palpable form, but under the labor of years in which the less intense plays were produced.
It was now suggested that the remainder of the evening be spent in Tamworth’s room, and as it then appeared too late for any of the lawyer’s friends to seek admittance, the three men passed into the king’s chamber. It was empty, but the burning lamp showed that Tamworth had withdrawn for a short time only. After having admitted Peele and Shakespere, he had gone to a neighboring ordinary for a late repast. The fire had smoldered to ashes on the hearth, but its recent blaze had so cut the chill of the room that it was on an even temperature with that of the fire-lighted oratory. They gathered around the black table below the suspended lamp.
“Now,” said Marlowe, addressing Shakespere, “what is thy report from Henslowe upon the two acts of Romeo and Juliet and its proposed completion?”
“Unfavorable,” answered Shakespere, “he has flatly refused to accept it.”
“Why, ’tis surely stronger and more dramatic than Titus Andronicus, for which he paid us ten pounds, and that has now been on the boards of the Rose for two months. It must be that Henslowe is not only losing the little ability of criticism he once possessed, but his business sense as well. What has brought about the change? Hast thou any idea?”
“I went in to him, as heretofore,” began Shakespere, “and in great easy chairs, where full the blazing light of a crackling chimney-fire fell upon them, sat Henslowe and the late strolling-player, Jonson. I know not by what means Jonson hath the ear, and aye, the heart, of the manager of the Rose; but clear proof of it was shown. Henslowe waved me to a chair, but Jonson ignored my presence.” ‘Mr. Shakespere,’ said Henslowe, nodding to Jonson, and then the latter said, ‘I have heard of him,’ and I, ‘Ben Jonson, late returned from the Low Countries,’ and at that Jonson glared at me as though my presence were scarcely sufferable and my voice intolerable.
“‘Prut!’ exclaimed Henslowe, noticing the ill manner of his companion and showing disapproval. Then turning his attention to the servant, he said, ‘Fill one more. Our friend must crush a cup of wine with us.’ This the servant did from a bottle of finest canary from the sideboard which blazed with gilded, silver and gold ware.
“Henslowe had a cup of yellow wine close beside him, and so had Jonson. The face of the former appeared unusually complacent; and nothing, through the medium of his eyes alone could have disturbed his supreme felicity, for thou knoweth the richness of the tapestries of that pleasing den of the opulent manager of the Rose; the works of art upon its walls; the grand display of his costly libraries of unread books; the softness of its Turkish carpets and of its upholstered furniture. The insidious workings of canary wine were for peace and rest.
“I would fain have withdrawn, but being there on thy behalf, I put on a face of unconcern, and sat with back toward Jonson. Methinks the wine had stirred his wits and made him keen for controversy.”
“And fairly gifted he is in such line.”
“As I soon discovered, for before I had time to say to Henslowe the words, ‘To thy good health,’ as I drank, Jonson said, ‘And what cares he for blood when wine will quench his thirst.’ Thus beginning with a sly sneer at Tamburlaine.”
“He evidently considers Shakespere an imitator of the dead Marlowe,” said Peele, looking at Marlowe.
“Not necessarily,” remarked Marlowe, “I hardly think that the passage from Tamburlaine was in his mind. He had evidently just read the first scene of Romeo and Juliet, where the prince rebukes his subjects for quenching their rage ‘With purple fountains issuing from your veins.’”[29]
“Ah! there it is again,” exclaimed Peele.
“Well, I paid no attention to Jonson, but addressed myself to Henslowe. The upshot of the matter was that he wanted no more plays with plots laid in foreign lands.”
“You are right,” interrupted Marlowe, “he is under Jonson’s influence.”
“Jonson had much to say in the conversation. At one time he asked me if I did not think I was following too closely the ‘mighty lines’ of Marlowe to ever be deemed anything more than a mere imitator, and he whipped out this paper, which he said I might keep for future reference, and as a warning that his eyes were open. He either knew that what he had read of Romeo and Juliet was written by thee, Marlowe, or he wanted no thefts to be made from his own plays. This is his arraignment:
‘If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark.’
—Romeo and Juliet, ii, 1.
Love moderately, long love doth so.
—Romeo and Juliet, ii, 6.
Love goes toward love.
—Romeo and Juliet, ii, 2.
And what love can do, that dares love attempt.
—Romeo and Juliet, ii, 2.
Whoever loved that loved not at first sight.
—Hero and Leander.
Love me little, love me long.
—Jew of Malta, iv.
With love and patience let your true love die.
—II Tamburlaine, ii, 4.
‘Poor Poet-Ape, that would be thought our chief,
Whose works are e’en the frippery of wit,
From brockage is become so bold a thief,
As we, the robbed, leave rage, and pity it.’
* * * * *
He marks not whose ’twas first; and after-times
May judge it to be his, as well as ours.
Fool! as if half eyes will not know a fleece
From locks of wool, or shreds from the whole piece!
—Ben. Jonson.”
“Then following this exhibition, Jonson said, ’Thou hast not yet begun to put thyself forward publicly as a dramatist, Mr. Shakespere, for I notice that Titus Andronicus has been printed with no name of author on the title page. Art thou afraid of acknowledging it? Edward II is also out, but Marlowe’s name is on it’ [[notes 27 and 28]]. At this I turned upon him and said, ‘I like not thy insinuations; and thy questions are impertinent. It is too plain that this rejection of my play is due to your influence. Some one is blind to his own interests, and that is you, Henslowe.’ The latter did not stir, and I continued, ‘I know what enormous profits have been reaped upon plays of this character, and there are other theatrical managers, thank God! in London.’”
“Good,” exclaimed Peele.
“And what manager hadst thou in mind,” asked Marlowe.
“Myself,” said Shakespere, quietly.
“Thou!” exclaimed the others.
“Yes. I shall at once lease the Green Curtaine that is now closed, and produce thy plays there, Marlowe. A fortune can soon be reaped from such venture” [[note 43]].
At this moment the sound of a key turning in the lock of the door came to their ears. It was Tamworth returning, they thought. Then, the door swung back, and the figures of four men appeared at the open threshold and crowded into the room.