“And what said Chapman,” interrupted Marlowe.
“He said, ‘Most damnably like Marlowe’s, but certain it is that it was not among his posthumous effects, and it was never presented under his name, nor before his death.’”
“And what said Harvey?”
“He said truly that if thou didst not write it, then this fellow Shakespere had caught thy very trick of hand.”
At this remark, Shakespere laughed so heartily that even the others had to join with him.
“Apt critics, these,” said Marlowe, “’tis strange that they should see resemblances between that play and any of my acknowledged works.”
“Bah,” returned Peele, “no one so blind as a mother to the faults of her child. Strange? Why that play is full of thine old spirit. Here, give me thy copy of it, and of thy Jew of Malta.”
Marlowe turned to a chest beside his table and drew forth two rolls of manuscript. He handed them to Peele, who opened the Jew of Malta at the second act, and read:
“As for myself I walk abroad o’ nights
And kill sick people groaning under walls:
Sometimes I go about and poison wells:
* * * * *
And always kept the sexton’s arms in ure
With digging graves and ringing dead men’s knells:
* * * * *
And every moon made some or other mad,
And now and then one hang himself for grief.
Pinning upon his breast a long great scroll
How I with interest tormented him.”
“And now,” he continued, “see how thou hast imitated thy early and immature work almost to an echo.”