Marlowe. I shan’t boast I told you. O Mary, when I first came to you, it was he sent me. He came like a child and asked me to see you, to say what good of him I could,
Because I was his friend. And now, see, see, How I have friended him!
Mary. I love you for it. He shall not know. Why talk of him? Forget him!
Marlowe. Can you?
Mary. Why, that I cannot makes me mad—
Marlowe. Forget him? As soon forget myself! I am his courage, His worldly wisdom—Mary, I think I am The youth he lost in Stratford. Yet we’re one age, And now we write one play. If I died of a sudden, It seems he’d breathe me as I left my body, And I should live in him as sunshine lies Forgotten in a forest, and be found In slants and pools and patterns, golden still In all he writes.
Mary. O dull Kit! have I adventured here to hear you talk of dying?
Marlowe. You borrowed Archer’s name.
Mary. I wanted one that would startle you out to me, and you told me the tale of him once, how young he died.
Marlowe. And how unwilling! You’ve set him running in my head like a spider in a skull,