Kyd died, oppressed by poverty, about the year 1595.
17. Marlowe, Christopher, as an author, an object of great admiration and encomium in his own times, and, of all the dramatic poets who preceded Shakspeare, certainly the one who possessed the most genius. He was egregiously misled, however, by bad models, and his want of taste has condemned him, as a writer for the stage, to an obscurity from which he is not likely to emerge.
This "famous gracer of tragedians," as he is termed by Greene, in his Groatsworth of Wit, produced eight plays:—
1. Tamburlaine the Great, or the Scythian Shepherd. Part the First. 4to.
2. Tamburlaine the Great. Part the Second. 4to.
Of this tragedy, in two parts, which was brought on the stage about the year 1588, though not printed until 1590, it is impossible to speak without a mixture of wonder and contempt; for, whilst a few passages indicate talents of no common order, the residue is a tissue of unmingled rant, absurdity, and fustian: yet strange as it may appear, the most extravagant flights of this eccentric composition were the most popular, and numerous allusions to its moon-struck reveries, are to be found in the productions of its times. That it should be an object of ridicule to Shakspeare, and of quotation to Pistol, are alike in character.[245:B]
3. Lust's Dominion, or the Lascivious Queen a Tragedy. 12mo.
This, like the two former plays, is tragedy run mad, and its spirit may be justly described in the words of one of its characters; Eleazor the Moor, who exclaims,—
"—— Tragedy, thou minion of the night,
——————— to thee I'll sing