“Enough of that!” exclaimed Marlowe, impatiently, “I shall yet get even with that villainous sonneteer.”
“But to return to that description of night in act V of the first part of Tamburlaine,” said Peele, “there, the horses that drag the night, ‘from their nostrils breathe rebellious winds and dreadful thunder claps;’ while in the second part of Henry VI, the same old horses ‘from their misty jaws breathe foul contagious darkness in the air.’ The method of description and the figures of speech are the same, and you personify the same objects.”
“Well, it is a favorite description of mine for night, and as my attention is called to it, I now remember that in my Hero and Leander, ‘the night * * * heaved up her head and breathed darkness forth.’[28] This is the last time that I shall use the figure.”
“Well, that passage from Henry VI,” resumed Peele, “that I have just alluded to is also like another in Tamburlaine, beginning: ‘Black is the beauty of the brightest day’” [[note 42]].
“Possibly they are open to criticism. I shall revise, and in future labor toward perfection in word condensation,” said Marlowe, “but I cannot destroy all the well turned lines. For instance, there is the same spirit breathing through the verses for the friar Laurence, beginning ‘The grey-eyed morn smiles on the frowning light;’ but how can I curtail, how remodel with hope of preserving their beauty? You may assert that such lines echo with the music of Hero and Leander, and with them draw a close parallel to the passage in the latter, where Apollo’s golden harp aroused Hesperus, but I shall not change them. The critics may have food for thought and they may grow strong enough upon it to be formidable, but so long as I write of love, the lines must be cast in the purest mould that I am capable of using.”
“Then destroy thy Ovid and Homer, and go back to Seneca; read Plutarch and Holinshed. Thou hast written love tragedies and historical plays; take thy Faustus for the model of a drama of stern and darkened life.”
“Shall it be tragedy?”
“Yes, the darkest picture of thy mind.”
“My own bitter experiences.”
“Have it so if thou wilt,” returned Peele, “it is only he who has drained the cup of deepest sorrow and felt the tooth of adversity, that can draw such a picture.”