Christopher Marlowe

“ And crave the help of shepherds that were nigh.
Herewith he stay'd his fury; and began
To give her leave to rise; away she ran:
After went Mercury, who us'd such cunning,
As she, to hear his tale, left off her running;
(Maids are not won by brutish force and might,
But speeches full of pleasure and delight;)
And knowing Hermes courted her, was glad,
That she such loveliness and beauty had,
As could provoke his liking; yet was mute;
And neither would deny, nor grant his suit.
Still vow'd he love ”

“ The witness had arisen from her chair and turned her head. She saw the figure on the bed, and started, for at the first glimpse she thought the coroner’s words were true. She recognized the scarlet doublet, vest of the same color, and the rest of the attire as that in which Marlowe had appeared. The face—yes, that was also his, but—no, it was not. She sank back in her chair, and, in full flood, light burst upon her. Marlowe had concealed the crime.
“I know the dead man,” she said firmly, “It is Christopher Marlowe.” ”

“ Promptly at eight o'clock William and myself passed the stony portals of the Boar's Head, and were ushered into the back ground floor dining room where we met our friend Field and a playwright named Christopher Marlowe, standing before a great open chimney, with a blazing fire and a splendid supper.
Field seemed to take great pride in making us [47] acquainted with Marlowe, the greatest actor and dramatist of his day, whose plays were even then the talk and delight of London. ”

“ Perhaps thy sacred priesthood makes thee loath.
Tell me, to whom mad’st thou that heedless oath?”
“To Venus,” answered she and, as she spake,
Forth from those two tralucent cisterns brake
A stream of liquid pearl, which down her face
Made milk-white paths, whereon the gods might trace
To Jove’s high court. He thus replied: “The rites
In which love’s beauteous empress most delights
Are banquets, Doric music, midnight revel,
Plays, masks, and all that stern age counteth evil. ”

“ Mr. Ingram, following Dyce, says (Christopher Marlowe and his Associates, 1904, p. 184) : "The earliest references to the poet not only allude to his friendship with Raleigh but even assert that he read a paper on the Trinity before Sir Walter Raleigh and his brother Carew and others at the Knight's house." [35] The alleged [Pg 50] friendship is in all probability a myth, though Ralegh must have been fascinated by the creator of Tamburlaine and Faust, two portraits in which that bold and aspiring spirit may very well have seen himself. ”

“ Ah, she doth more worth than her vices prove!
Spare me, oh, by our fellow bed, by all
The gods, who by thee, to be perjured fall. [422]
And by thy face to me a power divine,
And by thine eyes, whose radiance burns out mine!
Whate'er thou art, mine art thou: choose this course,
Wilt have me willing, or to love by force.50
Rather I'll hoist up sail, and use the wind,
That I may love yet, though against my mind. [Pg 204]
FOOTNOTES:
[419] Not in Isham copy or ed. A.
[420] The original has "Venerunt capiti cornua sera meo."
[421] "Et que taceo."
[422] "Qui dant fallendos se tibi saepe, deos." ”

“ I cannot buss [4] thy fill, play with thy hair,
Swearing by Jove, "thou art most debonair!"
Not I, by cock! [5] but [I] shall tell thee roundly,—
Hark in thine ear,—zounds, I can (⁠) thee soundly.
Sweet wench, I love thee: yet I will not sue,
Or shew my love as musky courtiers do;
I'll not carouse a health to honour thee,
In this same bezzling [6] drunken courtesy,
And, when all's quaffd, eat up my bousing-glass, [7]
In glory that I am thy servile ass ”

“ Ne'er felt before—am I transported thus?
My fingers paddle, too, in blood—is't mine? Jacconot.
O, content you, Master Marplot—it's you that's down, drunk or sober; and that's your own blood on your fingers, running from a three-inch groove in your ribs for the devil's imps to slide into you. Ugh! cry gramercy! for it's all over with your rhyming!
Heywood.
O, heartless mischief! Middleton.
Hence, thou rabid cur! Marlowe.
What demon in the air with unseen arm
Hath turn'd my unchain'd fury against myself? ”

“ If she discards thee, what use serv'st thou for?
Good form there is, years apt to play together:
Unmeet is beauty without use to wither.
She may deceive thee, though thou her protect;
What two determine never wants effect.
Our prayers move thee to assist our drift,
While thou hast time yet to bestow that gift.
FOOTNOTES:
[248] Not in Isham copy or ed. A.
Elegia IV. Quod amet mulieres, cujuscunque formæ sint.
I mean not to defend the scapes [249] of any,
Or justify my vices being many ”

“ OVIDII NASONIS AMORUM. LIBER PRIMUS. Elegia I. Quemadmodum a Cupidine, pro bellis amoris scribere coactus sit.
We which were Ovid's five books, now are three,
For these before the rest preferreth he:
If reading five thou plain'st of tediousness,
Two ta'en away, thy [128] labour will be less;
With Muse prepared, [129] I meant to sing of arms,
Choosing a subject fit for fierce alarms:
Both verses were alike till Love (men say)
Began to smile and took one foot away.
Rash boy, who gave thee power to change a line?
We are the Muses' prophets, none of thine. [Pg 106]
What, if thy mother take Diana's ”

“ But still drooped down, regarding not her hand,
"Why mock'st thou me," she cried, "or being ill,
Who bade thee lie down here against thy will?
Either thou art witched with blood of frogs [399] new dead,
Or jaded cam'st thou from some other's bed."80
With that, her loose gown on, from me she cast her;
In skipping out her naked feet much graced her.
And lest her maid should know of this disgrace,
To cover it, spilt water in the place.
FOOTNOTES:
[381] So eds. B, C.—Isham copy and ed. A:—
"That were as white as is the Scithian snow." ”

“ MARLOWE, CHRISTOPHER (1564–1593) , English dramatist, the father of English tragedy, and instaurator of dramatic blank verse, the eldest son of a shoemaker at Canterbury, was born in that city on the 6th of February 1564. He was christened at St George’s Church, Canterbury, on the 26th of February, 1563/4, some two months before Shakespeare’s baptism at Stratford-on-Avon. His father, John Marlowe, is said to have been the grandson of John Morley or Marlowe, a substantial tanner of Canterbury. ”

“ Even then a sword was being sheathed by one of them, and Gyves had heard the late outcry 151 which of itself was sufficient to have justified him in taking them into custody to await further investigation. One of the men was Christopher Marlowe.
To us, with our limited vision, what a comedy is life. Over what scenes of merriment could we not amuse ourselves were we robbed of hearts and consciences and there were added to our remaining faculties the power of unlimited sight alone ”

“ My Father is deceast, come Gavestone,
And share the Kingdome with thy deerest friend.
Ah words that make me surfet with delight,
What greater blisse can hap to Gaveston,
Then live and be the Favorite of a King?
Sweete Prince I come: These these, thy amorous lines
Might have enforst me to have swum from France,
And like Leander gaspt upon the sand,
So thou wouldst smile and take me in thine armes.
The sight of London to my exil'd eyes,
Is as Elizium to a new come soule,
Not that I love the City or the men,
But that it harbors him I hold so deere,
The King, upon whose bosome let me dye, ”

“ Why was their authorship concealed?
As to the first inquiry, my belief that Christopher Marlowe could have written the plays, had vii his life been sufficiently prolonged, was supported by the opinions of Phillips, Collier, Dowden, Malone, Swinburne and Dyce [notes 1-6.]
This belief was founded upon the striking similarity of the strongest portions of his acknowledged works to passages of the Shakespere plays; the tendency of each to degenerate into pomposity and bombast in passages of tragic pathos [note 7] ; the similar treatment of characters, and the like spirit that pervades them. ”

“ The moon sleeps with Endymion every day;
Thou art as fair as she, then kiss and play.
Jove, that thou should'st not haste but wait his leisure,
Made two nights one to finish up his pleasure.
I chid [209] no more; she blushed, and therefore heard me,
Yet lingered not the day, but morning scared me.
FOOTNOTES:
[204] So Dyce for "from" of the old eds.
[205] This line is omitted in ed. A.
[206] Isham copy and ed. A "This."
[207] Isham copy and ed. A "had'st."
[208] Isham copy and ed. A "Punish ye me."
[209] So the Isham copy. The other old eds. "chide." ”

“ Middleton.
Cease your death-rattle, night-hawk!
Marlowe.
That's well said.
Jacconot.
Is it? So 'tis my gallants—a night-bird like yourselves, am I.
Marlowe.
Beast!—we know you.
Jacconot.
Your merry health, Master Kit Marlowe! I'll bring a loud pair of palms to cheer your soul the next time you strut in red paint with a wooden weapon at your thigh. [Pg 344]
Marlowe.
Who sent for you, dorr-hawk?—go!
Jacconot.
Go! Aha!—I remember the word—same tone, same gesture—or as like as the two profiles of a monkey, or as two squeaks for one pinch. Go!—not I—here's to all your healths! One pull more! ”

“ And, as I think, all men in Christianty ought to endeavour that the mouth of so dangerous a member may be stopped." Probably Marlow was aware of the character of those whom he thus irritated by his unlicensed speech, and did it out of bravado and wantonness, or to excite admiration of his spirit and courage in worrying a puritanical informer to desperation. ”

“ That Marlowe's situation was desperate is certain. The only ones who could have saved him—by the use of their political influence—were the men who were most in danger from him. From Kyd's reticence—a politic reticence, no doubt—the "men of quallitie" knew that they were safe if he was. Marlowe was the only one they had cause to fear. Marlowe, therefore, had to be silenced. [34] Ingram Frizer, a [Pg 48] servant of Mr. Thomas Walsingham, and therefore an associate of Marlowe (and not likely to be distrusted) , was assigned the task of stopping the poet-spy's career. ”

“ APPENDIX. 1 “A second Shakespere, not only because he rose like him from an actor to be a maker of plays, * * * but also because * * * he seems to have a resemblance to that clear unsophisticated wit that is natural to that incomparable poet.”
—Phillips in Theatrum Poetarum, p. 24, Ed. 1680.
2 “Collier considers that Marlowe would in this case (i. e. had he lived) have become a formidable rival to Shakespere.”
—Gervinus’ Shakespere Commentaries, p. 78.
3 “But the department of tragedy was dominated by a writer of superb genius, Christopher Marlowe. ”

“ I meane the Peeres, whom thou shouldst dearely love:
Libels are cast against thee in the streete,
Ballads and rimes made of thy overthrow.
Lan.
The Northren borderers seeing their houses burnt
Their wives and Children slaine, runne up and downe
Cursing the name of thee and Gaveston.
Mor.
When wert thou in the field with banners spread?
But once, and then thy Souldiers marcht like Players,
With garish robes, not armour; and thy selfe
Bedaub'd with Gold, rode laughing at the rest,
Nodding and shaking of thy spangled crest,
Where womens favours hung like labels downe. ”

“ Kyd was by no means the only one to accuse Marlowe. On Whitsun Eve, May 29, 1593, the Privy Council received a "Note" [27] from one Richard Baines [27] (not "Bames") , charging Marlowe, the associate of cutpurses and masterless men, with the foulest blasphemies. In this document, in the informer's own hand, Baines [Pg 35] accuses Marlowe of maintaining that Harriott, the brilliant scientist and inventor, whom the fool multitude regarded as a magician, and whom he describes as "Sir W. Raleighs man," could "do more" than Moses who "was but a Jugler." ”

“ Farther on he laughs at the 'prophetical spirits' of those 'who set the end of scholarism in an English blank-verse.'
"Marlowe took his degree of Master of Arts in the very year when Nash was unable to do so, &c.
"I thus arrive at the conclusion, that Christopher Marlowe was our first poet who used blank-verse in dramatic compositions performed in public theatres."—Hist. of Dramatic Poetry, vol. iii. pp. 110, 111, 112.
This is literally all; and, I ask, can any "conclusion" be much more inconclusive? Yet Mr. ”

“ Nature doth strive with Fortune and his stars
To make him famous.
—I Tamburlaine, ii, 1.
Nature and Fortune joined to make him great.
—King John, iii, 1.
A number of years ago I read the plays of Christopher Marlowe; and as evidence of the impression they made upon me, there is still among my recent notes gathered for this romance, the extracts I then wrote down from his Tamburlaine and Faustus. There was something in them to excite more than the passing interest of a boy ”

“ Quod primo amore correptus, in triumphum duci se a Cupidine patiatur.
What makes my bed seem hard seeing it is soft?
Or why slips down the coverlet so oft?
Although the nights be long I sleep not tho [134]
My sides are sore with tumbling to and fro.
Were love the cause it's like I should descry him,
Or lies he close and shoots where none can spy him?
'Twas so; he strook me with a slender dart;
'Tis cruel Love turmoils my captive heart.
Yielding or striving [135] do we give him might,
Let's yield, a burden easily borne is light.10
I saw a brandished fire increase in strength,
Which being not shak'd, I saw it die at length. ”