Marlowe placed upon the stage men who live intensely, terrible men, for the most part, endued with surpassing power for good or evil. Around them he grouped hostile, enchaining circumstances, which they confront fearlessly and, for a time perhaps, master, until the hour comes when they can no longer conquer. Their lips he touched with a live coal from the altar of his muse, so that their words fire the heart with their flaming zeal or sear it with their despair. In the dramas of Peele we lamented the weakness of his characters, his inability to provide a dominant central figure for his action; we also saw how something of the same weakness softened his verse almost to effeminacy. Greene drew the outline of his characters more strongly. But Marlowe alone possessed the power, in its fullest degree, of projecting himself into his chief character, of filling it with his own driving force, his own boundless imagination, his own consuming passion and profound capacity for gloomy emotion. Each of his first three plays—counting the two parts of Tamburlaine as one play—is wholly given up to the presentment of one man; his tongue speaks on nearly every page, his purpose is the mainspring of almost every action; by mere bulk he fills our mental view as we read, and by the fervour, the poetry of his language, he burns the impression of himself upon our memory. It is not by what they do that we remember Marlowe's heroes or villains. Their deeds probably fade into indistinctness. Few of us quite remember what were Tamburlaine's conquests, or Faustus's wonder-workings, or Barabas's crimes. But we know that if we would recall a mighty conqueror our recollections will revive the image of the Scythian shepherd; if we would picture a soul delivered over to the torments of the lost there will rush back upon us that terrible outcry of Faustus when the fatal hour is come; if we would imagine the feelings of one for whom wealth is the joy, the meaning, the whole of life, we shall recite one of the speeches of Barabas.
Marlowe masters us by his poetry, and is lifted by it above his fellows, reaching to the pedestal on which Shakespeare stands alone. It is an astonishing thing to pass from the dramas which occupied our attention in the previous chapter to one of Marlowe's, and then realize that his were written first. Whereas before it was a matter of difficulty to find passages beautiful enough to quote, it now becomes a problem to select the best. It has been said, indeed, that he is too poetical for a dramatist, but a very little consideration of the plays of Shakespeare will tell us how much the greatest dramatic productions owe to poetry. When, therefore, we say that Marlowe's greatness as a dramatist depends on his poetry, that outside his poetry his best known work reveals almost every kind of weakness, we have not denied his claim to be the greatest of Shakespeare's predecessors. Into indifferent material poetry can breathe that quickening flame without which the most dramatic situations fail to satisfy. Marlowe had a supreme gift for creating moments, sometimes extended to whole scenes; he had to learn, from repeated failures, the art of creating plays.
Essentially a man of tragic temperament, if we may venture to peer through the printed page to the author, Marlowe lacked the sense of humour. This has been cast up against him as a serious weakness; but it is possible that just here lies the strength of his contribution to drama. His work in literature was to set a standard in the portrayal of deep emotions, and it may have been as well that the first models (Doctor Faustus excepted) should not be weakened by apparent inconsistencies.
The list of Marlowe's dramas is as follows: The First and Second Parts of Tamburlaine (possibly before 1587), Doctor Faustus (1588), The Jew of Malta (? 1588-90), The Massacre at Paris (about 1590), Edward the Second (about 1590), Dido, Queen of Carthage (printed 1549). Fortunately for the reader, he can now obtain a volume containing all these plays in one of the cheap modern editions of the English classics. There will, therefore, be no attempt here to provide the details of plots with which every student of drama is doubtless well acquainted. A limited number of quotations, however, are supplied for the pleasure of the reader.
The First and Second Parts of Tamburlaine the Great may be discussed together, although they did not appear together, the second owing its existence to the immediate success of the first. Nevertheless there is such unbroken continuity in their representation of the career of the hero, and their style is so uniform, that it will be more convenient to refer to them conjointly under the one title. Reference has already been made to this famous production in the early portion of our discussion of Greene's work. The reader will recall what was said there of its contents, its popularity and influence, and of the meaning of the term Marlowesque, an adjective referring more directly to Tamburlaine than to any other of Marlowe's plays. It is in this play that our ears are dinned almost beyond sufferance by the poet's 'high astounding terms', that the hero most nearly 'with his uplifted forehead strikes the sky': incredible victories are won, the vilest cruelties practised; vast empires are shaken to their foundations, kings are overthrown and new ones crowned as easily as the wish is expressed; everywhere pride calls unto pride with the noise of its boastings. There is no plot, unless we give that name to a succession of battles, pageants and camp scenes. There is not the least attempt at characterization: in their glorious moments Bajazeth, the Soldan of Egypt, Orcanes are indistinguishable from the Scythian shepherd himself. The popularity of Tamburlaine was not won by fine touches, but by spectacular magnificence, by the pomp and excitement of war, and by the thrills of responsive pride and boastfulness awakened in the hearers by the convincing magniloquence of the speeches. This was possibly the first appearance upon the public stage of matured drama as opposed to the moralities and interludes. Udall and Still wrote for school and college audiences; Sackville, Edwards, Hughes and their compeers presented their plays at court; so did Lyly; and it was there that The Arraignment of Paris was acted. But Marlowe, like Kyd, laid his work before a larger, more unsophisticated audience, unrolling before its astonished gaze the full sweep of a five act play, crowded with warriors, headlong in its changes of fortune, and irresistible in its 'drum and trumpet' appeal to man's fighting instincts. From men of humble birth, in that age of adventure and romance, the victorious career of the Scythian shepherd won instant applause; with him they too seemed to rise; they shared in his glory, exulted with him in the chariot drawn by kings, forgave his savage massacres, and echoed his vaunts.
Yet there is something beyond all this, which has a lasting value, and appeals to the modern world as it appealed to Elizabethan England. Through the smoke of 'frantic boast and foolish word' may be discerned the fiery core of an idealized human grandeur. Breathing the intoxicating air of the Renaissance, Marlowe conceives man equal to his loftiest ideals, able to climb to the highest point of his thoughts. Choosing imperial conquest as the most striking theme he bids the shepherd aim at a throne, then bears him on the wings of unwavering resolution straight to his goal. The creation of Tamburlaine is the apotheosis of man on the earth. In such words as these does the conqueror announce his equality with the gods:
The god of war resigns his room to me,
Meaning to make me general of the world:
Jove, viewing me in arms, looks pale and wan,
Fearing my power should pull him from his throne.
These are wild words, chosen from a passage of ridiculous bombast. But the author, magnificent in his optimism, believed in the thought beneath the imagery. The same idea in different guises proclaims itself aloud throughout the play. Sometimes it chooses simple language, sometimes it is clothed in expressions of noble dignity, most often it hurls itself abroad in foaming rant. But everywhere the message is the same, that man's power is equal to the achievement of the aspiration planted within his breast, and that, to realize himself, he must follow it, with undivided effort, until it is reached. Tamburlaine, contemplating the possibility of kingship, says,
Why, then, Casane, shall we wish for aught
The world affords in greatest novelty,
And rest attemptless, faint, and destitute?
Methinks we should not.
Two scenes later, in the hour of triumph, he utters these fine lines, which may be accepted as Marlowe's most deliberate statement of his message: