He unrolled the manuscript of Titus Andronicus at the fifth act, and read:
“Oft have I digged up dead men from their graves
And set them upright at their dear friends’ doors,
Even when their sorrows almost were forgot;
And on their skins as on the bark of trees,
Have with my knife carved in Roman letters,
‘Let not your sorrow die though I am dead.’
Tut! I have done a thousand dreadful things,
As willingly as one would kill a fly.”
“Now in this same play, thou hast given us the very echo of Tamburlaine and his queen Zenocrate. The scene where Tamora first appears to the emperor is couched in identical language with the one where Zenocrate is given the crown by the king; and again in the first act of the first part of Henry VI you treat the death of Joan in the same manner as you do the death of Zenocrate. No servile imitator could have more carefully copied his master.”
“His very trick of hand,” drawled Shakespere.
Marlowe did not reply, but continued a rapt listener while his friend went on with increasing ardor:
“In act II of Titus Andronicus you write of the golden sun galloping ‘the zodiac in his glistening coach,’ as though in your ears still rattled ‘ugly darkness with her rusty coach,’ as you have described the night in act V of the first part of Tamburlaine and again in Edward II. If thou must take the most striking passages of thy Tamburlaine, and cut from them scraps and pieces upon which to pad out these later dramas, thou should be more circumspect in their use. If thou art not, one of two things will surely follow, thy friend here, who stands as thy mask, will be dubbed a plagiarist of vilest sort, or all these plays will be proclaimed thine.”
“Save me from such a calumny,” exclaimed Shakespere, “and Peele speaks truth, for a tempest has already begun to brew. But that is my story, and I must not break the thread of Peele’s argument.”
“Well! And what if the plays are proclaimed mine as you mention?” asked Marlowe.
“Why, thy existence will be discovered, for both Chapman and Nash know the full list of your works. Perhaps more know it. The report of thy death is loose and has not been widely circulated. Harvey attributed it to the plague.”
“Yes,” said Shakespere, “he wrote that ‘gogle-eyed sonnet’ about you in September, 1593, containing the line, ‘He and the plague contended for the game,’ and how the ‘graund disease’ smiled at your ‘Tamburlaine contempt,’ and ‘sternly struck home.’”