In the structure of his plots Marlowe forsook the Senecan models and began with the methods of the chronicle play. "Tamburlaine" is a chronicle history, presenting the story of the events of a life and ending with death. Originally the play contained comic scenes, omitted in the published form and evidently of no value in structure or conception. Without these there is enough of a medley, though the amazing succession of conquests, defiances, murders, harangues, battles, funerals, wooings, and horrors is arranged with considerable skill. There is manifest regard for contrast in the alternating exhibitions of Tamburlaine's power and his enemies' weakness; his love for Zenocrate, an addition to the source, is integrated with the main story of conquest; and in Part I the climactical arrangement is emphasized by the division into acts. Each act comprises an important stage in Tamburlaine's career, act v presenting the culmination in the suicide of the Turkish emperor and empress, the conquest of Arabia, Zenocrate's former betrothed, and the submission of her conquered father to her marriage with Tamburlaine. Part II, the prologue implies, was an afterthought due to the popularity of Part I. The climax is carried on somewhat loosely up to the harnessing of the jades of Asia; but the reversal of fortune, though developed in the death of Zenocrate, the unworthiness of the eldest son, and the approach of death to Tamburlaine, is not given effective emphasis. Tamburlaine's death is merely the end of the play, not a tragic catastrophe. Epical and crude though their structure is, the two plays possess a firmer organization and a greater unity than any preceding popular tragedy. Everything centres in the protagonist; he keeps the middle of the stage; his towering passion and incessant declamation fix one's attention; episodes like the deaths of the Turks or of Olympia hardly divert the mind from his titanic personality.
A similar unity governs the structure of "Faustus" and "The Jew." In each there are many actions, some comic, instead of one serious action, and the history of a lifetime instead of a great emotional crisis; but in each the dominant figure and the course of his controlling passion impose a certain unity of structure. Both begin with soliloquies, revealing the protagonists at the height of fortune and about to face crises in their careers; and it is significant of the increased importance given to inner conflict that reflective soliloquies, neglected in "Tamburlaine," play a considerable part, especially in "Faustus." In both plays there is also advance in the clear conception of catastrophe, which now controls the structure. In "The Jew" his thwarted lust for gold drives him through a series of villanous triumphs over difficulties until he is melodramatically hoist with his own petard. In "Faustus" the choice of the devilish magic leads through apparent success, past opportunities for repentance, to final remorse and damnation. In both plays, the domination of the protagonist by a passion, its conflicting joys and sorrows, and its final failure become points for emphasis. The history of a life thus becomes organized into a tragedy.
In "Edward II," Marlowe's masterpiece in structure as in other respects, there is an absence of comedy, for which he seems to have had no aptitude, and adherence to the chronicles is governed by his maturing sense of the structural principles which should proportion the tragic story. Twenty years of confusion are condensed into five acts which attain dramatic organization not only under the direction of the central personality and the inevitable catastrophe, but also from the skillful handling of the counter-force. The play begins with a salient manifestation in the recall of Gaveston of the passion which is to be the king's downfall. The hazardous combination of the two similar careers of Gaveston and Spenser is adroitly managed; it develops the central theme of Edward's weakness and brings into active conflict the counter-force of the barons under the leadership of Mortimer. The alternating triumph and discomfiture of the king in his struggle with the barons leads to the climax of their humiliation at the end of act iii; and thus the turning-point of the action is given an emphasis not found in earlier plays. Henceforth the counter-force is in the ascendant, and the catastrophe is realized with a tremendous power that justifies Lamb's extravagance: "the death scene of Marlowe's king moves pity and terror beyond any scene ancient or modern with which I am acquainted." The play, to be sure, has many faults of structure. It is the product of an immature period of the drama and of crude theatrical conditions; but it indicates clearly how Marlowe was developing tragic movement out of the confused narratives of the chronicles, and was giving to a presentation of diverse and crowded actions principles not altogether unlike those that Aristotle had found in the Attic drama.
It should be added that the manifest excellences of the dramatic treatment lie less in the structure of any one play as a whole than in the handling of the separate scenes. These have, of course, the peculiarities of the popular stage and the chronicle plays. Events are sometimes reported by an intercalary narrative like scene ii, act i, of "Edward II," which consists of four lines by Gaveston, announcing that the nobles have gone to Lambeth, and four words of reply by Kent. Soliloquies are often used to explain action or character. In the task of translating incident into dramatic situation, however, Marlowe had the advantages of centuries of dramatic practice and the traditions of tragic acting, and his genius often worked with facility and power. These qualities are most manifest in the death scenes. Olympia, Bajazeth, Zabina, Zenocrate, all die with at least stage effectiveness; and in the deaths of Faustus and Edward, Marlowe's dramatic power reached its highest mark. Death, synonymous with tragic catastrophe, was revealed to future dramatists as something more than physical horror or the end of existence. Death became the loss of active and glorious living, the negation of individual power, the expiring struggle of the drama of life, its last defiance and its most irresistible appeal to pity and terror.
Characterization, like conception and structure, in Marlowe's tragedy is largely an affair of the protagonist. Minor figures are for the most part mere sketches without any sustained and consistent delineation. Only in "Edward II" does the antagonist receive much attention, and only in that play is the character of the tragic hero free from lapses into caricature and absurdity. The protagonists, as in many tragedies before and since, are evil men intent on evil deeds. They appeal to our sympathy only in misfortune and disaster; in more fortunate circumstances they run counter to moral laws and excite a mixture of admiration, horror, and even contempt. Tamburlaine the atheist and Faust the dealer in magic invited a greater condemnation in every Christian then than now. Barabas is conceived, under the inspiration of Machiavelli and perhaps also of stage practice, as an intriguing villain with all the accompaniments ever since familiar in drama and fiction. He is the source of all evil and utterly without conscience; he avows his villany to the audience and he works by crafty intrigue with the aid of an equally conscienceless accomplice. Edward II, on the other hand, is of the type of tyrants, weak, vacillating, and self-indulgent, and he offers the difficult dramatic problem of a protagonist who is sometimes contemptible and must sometimes be heroic and pitiful. Marlowe's conception of a tragic hero, however, transcended any outlines furnished by his sources or any stage types such as villain and tyrant. He conceived his heroes first of all as men capable of great passions, consumed by their desires, abandoned to the pursuit of their lusts, whether they led to glory, butchery, loss of kingdom, or eternal damnation. This intensity of emotion gives them an elevation and a heroic interest that outlasts contemptibility or pathos. Nor are they without representational value. They linger in the mind as men, absurd, exaggerated, monstrous at times, but appealingly human in moments when their passion rings true, and impressively typical of the eternal struggle of passion and desire against the fixed limits of human attainment. It is in the realization of their emotions that the plays secure their great impressiveness. Tragedy has become not the presentation of history, myth, or events of any sort, but the presentation of the passionate struggle and pitiful defeat of an extraordinary human being.
Genuine human passion and a vital conception of life's tragedy found expression in verse, sometimes inspired, sometimes absurd, but always spontaneous and unfaltering. Blank verse, borrowed from Italy and adopted in English Senecan plays, now became a new instrument, and its preëminent adaptability for tragic poetry henceforth long remained unquestioned. If it has had many greater masters since, it had none comparable before, and, in spite of stiffness, monotony, and great unevenness, it rises now and again to remarkable technical excellence. It is sui generis, without known models, though it gathers to itself many of the prevailing characteristics of Renaissance poetry. It has plenty of Senecan hyperbole, but curiously little of Senecan antithesis or aphorism; it abounds in rant and bombast; it is over-adorned with classical allusion; it delights in ornament and sonority; and in the main it is declamatory and lyrical rather than dramatically suited to character and situation. Again, it is mannered and often monotonous, especially in "Tamburlaine," where the repetition of names and the recurrence of polysyllabic words at the ends of lines give the familiar swing:—
"To ride in triumph through Persepolis"....
"Soft ye, my lords, and sweet Zenocrate"....
"Then shall my native city, Samarcanda."
Yet the lover of romantic poetry will find delight in the very impetuosity of the rant, the thunder of the declamation, the roll of the proper names, the color and pageantry of the descriptions, the occasional loveliness of the luxurious classicism, and yet more in the splendid surges of the verse to reveal the turmoil and anguish of passionate death. From the first moment Marlowe was an undoubted poet; and to his tremendous facility of words and rhythm he was adding, as "Edward II" reveals, a moderation of ornament, an evenness of power, and a dramatic consistency, while still retaining the potentiality of dazzling dramatic flash. He brought not only blank verse but poetry to the English drama, and the greatness of its style dates from his achievement.