But Dora lived unmarried till her death.
(Tennyson, Dora)
In Faustus Marlowe went farther: he broke up the line, to a gain in intensity, in the last soliloquy; and he developed a new and important conversational tone in the dialogues of Faustus with the devil. Edward II. has never lacked consideration: it is more desirable, in brief space, to remark upon two plays, one of which has been misunderstood and the other underrated. These are the Jew of Malta and Dido Queen of Carthage. Of the first of these, it has always been said that the end, even the last two acts, are unworthy of the first three. If one takes the Jew of Malta not as a tragedy, or as a “tragedy of blood,” but as a farce, the concluding act becomes intelligible; and if we attend with a careful ear to the versification, we find that Marlowe develops a tone to suit this farce, and even perhaps that this tone is his most powerful and mature tone. I say farce, but with the enfeebled humour of our times the word is a misnomer; it is the farce of the old English humour, the terribly serious, even savage comic humour, the humour which spent its last breath on the decadent genius of Dickens. It has nothing in common with J. M. Barrie, Captain Bairnsfather, or Punch. It is the humour of that very serious (but very different) play, Volpone.
First, be thou void of these affections,
Compassion, love, vain hope, and heartless fear;
Be moved at nothing, see thou pity none ...
As for myself, I walk abroad o’ nights,
And kill sick people groaning under walls:
Sometimes I go about and poison wells ...
and the last words of Barabas complete this prodigious caricature: