[1276] “Our tragedies and comedies, not without cause, are cried out against, observing rules neither of honest civility nor skilful poetry;” and proceeds to ridicule their inconsistencies and disregard to time and place. Defence of Poesy.
Marlowe and his contemporaries. 28. A better æra commenced not long after, nearly coincident with the rapid development of genius in other departments of poetry. Several young men of talent appeared, Marlowe, Peele, Greene, Lily, Lodge, Kyd, Nash, the precursors of Shakspeare, and real founders, as they may in some respects be called, of the English drama. Sackville’s Gorboduc is in blank verse, though of bad and monotonous construction; but his followers wrote, as far as we know, either in rhyme or in prose.[1277] |Tamburlaine.| In the tragedy of Tamburlaine, referred by Mr. Collier to 1586, and the production wholly or principally, of Marlowe,[1278] a better kind of blank verse is first employed; the lines are interwoven, the occasional hemistich and redundant syllables break the monotony of the measure, and give more of a colloquial spirit to the dialogue. Tamburlaine was ridiculed on account of its inflated style. The bombast, however, which is not so excessive as has been alleged, was thought appropriate to such oriental tyrants. This play has more spirit and poetry than any which, upon clear grounds, can be shown to have preceded it. We find also more action on the stage, a shorter and more dramatic dialogue, a more figurative style, with a far more varied and skilful versification.[1279] |Blank verse of Marlowe.| If Marlowe did not re-establish blank verse, which is difficult to prove, he gave it at least a variety of cadence, and an easy adaptation of the rhythm to the sense, by which it instantly became in his hands the finest instrument that the tragic poet has ever employed for his purpose, less restricted than that of the Italians, and falling occasionally almost into numerous prose, lines of fourteen syllables being very common in all our old dramatists, but regular and harmonious at other times as the most accurate ear could require.
[1277] It may be a slight exception to this that some portions of the second part of Whetstone’s Promos and Cassandra are in blank verse. This play is said never to have been represented. Collier, iii. 64.
[1278] Nash has been thought the author of Tamburlaine by Malone, and his inflated style, in pieces known to be his, may give some countenance to this hypothesis. It is mentioned, however, as “Marlowe’s Tamburlaine” in the contemporary diary of Henslow, a manager or proprietor of a theatre, which is preserved at Dulwich College. Marlowe and Nash are allowed to have written “Dido Queen of Carthage” in conjunction. Mr. Collier has produced a body of evidence to show that Tamburlaine was written, at least principally, by the former, which leaves no room, as it seems, for further doubt, vol. iii. p. 113.
[1279] Shakspeare having turned into ridicule a passage or two in Tamburlaine, the critics have concluded it to be a model of bad tragedy. Mr. Collier, iii. 115-126, has elaborately vindicated its dramatic merits, though sufficiently aware of its faults.
Marlowe’s Jew of Malta, 29. The savage character of Tamburlaine, and the want of all interest as to every other, render this tragedy a failure in comparison with those which speedily followed from the pen of Christopher Marlowe. The first two acts of the Jew of Malta are more vigorously conceived, both as to character and circumstance, than any other Elizabethan play, except those of Shakspeare; and perhaps we may think that Barabas, though not the prototype of Shylock, a praise of which he is unworthy, may have suggested some few ideas to the inventor. But the latter acts, as is usual with our old dramatists, are a tissue of uninteresting crimes and slaughter.[1280] |and Faustus.| Faustus is better known; it contains nothing, perhaps, so dramatic as the first part of the Jew of Malta; yet the occasional glimpses of repentance and struggles of alarmed conscience in the chief character are finely brought in. It is full of poetical beauties; but an intermixture of buffoonery weakens the effect, and leaves it on the whole rather a sketch by a great genius than a finished performance. There is an awful melancholy about Marlowe’s Mephistopheles, perhaps more impressive than the malignant mirth of that fiend in the renowned work of Goethe. But the fair form of Margaret is wanting; and Marlowe has hardly earned the credit of having breathed a few casual inspirations into a greater mind than his own.[1281]
[1280] “Blood,” says a late witty writer, “is made as light of in some of these old dramas as money in a modern sentimental comedy; and as this is given away till it reminds us that it is nothing but counters, so that is spilt till it affects us no more than its representative, the paint of the property-man in the theatre.” Lamb’s specimens of Early Dramatic Poets, i. 19.
[1281] The German story of Faust is said to have been published for the first time in 1587. It was rapidly translated into most languages of Europe. We need hardly name the absurd supposition, that Faust, the great printer, was intended.
His Edward II. 30. Marlowe’s Life of Edward II. which was entered on the books of the Stationers’ Company in 1593, has been deemed by some the earliest specimen of the historical play founded upon English chronicles. Whether this be true or not, and probably it is not, it is certainly by far the best after those of Shakspeare.[1282] And it seems probable that the old plays of the Contention of Lancaster and York, and the True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York, which Shakspeare remodelled in the second and third parts of Henry VI., were in great part by Marlowe, though Greene seems to put in for some share in their composition.[1283] |Plays whence Henry Vl. was taken.| These plays claim certainly a very low rank among those of Shakspeare: his original portion is not inconsiderable; but it is fair to observe, that some of the passages most popular, such as the death of Cardinal Beaufort, and the last speech of the Duke of York, are not by his hand.
[1282] Collier observes that, “the character of Richard II. in Shakspeare seems modelled in no slight degree upon that of Edward II.” But I am reluctant to admit that Shakspeare modelled his characters by those of others; and it is natural to ask whether there were not an extraordinary likeness in the dispositions as well as fortunes of the two kings.