About her naked neck his bare arms threw,
And laid his childish head upon her breast
And, with still panting rock’t, there took his rest.”
I think all will agree that this is very delicately done.
A Tavern Coterie.
But let us not forget where we are, and where we are finding such men and such poems: we are in London and are close upon the end of the sixteenth century; there are no morning newspapers; these came long afterward; but the story of such a death as that of Marlowe, stabbed in the eye—maybe by his own dagger—would spread from tongue to tongue; (possibly one of his horrific dramas had been played that very day): certainly the knowledge of it would come quick to all his boon friends—actors, writers, wits—who were used to meet, maybe at the Falcon on Bankside, or possibly at the Mermaid Tavern.
This Mermaid Tavern was a famous place in those and in succeeding days. It stood on Cheapside (between Friday and Bread Streets) gorgeous with three ranges of Elizabethan windows, that gave look-out upon an array of goldsmiths’ shops which shone across the way. It was almost in the shadow of the Church of St. Mary le Bow, burned in the great fire, but having its representative tower and spire—a good work of Christopher Wren—standing thereabout in our time, and still holding out its clock over the sidewalk.
And the literary friends who would have gathered in such a place to talk over the sad happening to Kit Marlowe are those whom it behoves us to know, at least by name. There, surely would be Thomas Lodge,[104] who was concerned in the writing of plays; wrote, too, much to his honor, a certain novel (if we may call it so) entitled Rosalynde, from which Shakespeare took the hint and much of the pleasant machinery for his delightful drama of “As You Like It.” This Lodge was in his youth hail fellow with actors who gathered at taverns; and—if not actor himself—was certainly a lover of their wild ways and their feastings. He admired Euphues overmuch, was disposed to literary affectations and alliteration—writing, amongst other things, A Nettle for Nice Noses. He was, too, a man of the world and wide traveller; voyaged with Cavendish, and was said to be engaged in a British raid upon the Canaries. In later years he became a physician of soberly habits and much credit, dying of the plague in 1625.