Marlowe

“ Marlowe had turned and half drawn his rapier, while his cloak, hurriedly unclasped at his throat, had fallen to the floor. It was the Count who first broke the oppressive silence.
“My suspicions were right,” he said, looking at the woman. “And thou,” he hissed, glaring at the man, “draw thy sword. I could kill thee like a rat, but the boldness of thy entry here entitles thee to more consideration. Thou art not a coward in every sense of the word.” ”

“ Low voices reached their ears, and the noise created by the stumbling movements of many persons in the darkness came with shocking distinctness. Bame stood nearest the folding doors of the chantry.
“Close them,” whispered Marlowe, pointing.
Bame turned in instant response, and pushed to the narrow doors, bolting them. But circular openings were in their fronts, and seeing this, Marlowe hastily extinguished the burning candles. The voices came nearer, and the footsteps now sounded in the aisles.
“It cannot be the watchmen, for they are many.” ”

“ In Miss Marlowe there is something young, warm, and engaging, a way of giving herself wholly to the pleasure of pleasing, to which the footlights are scarcely a barrier. As if unconsciously, she [199] fills and gladdens you with a sense of the single human being whom she is representing. And there is her strange beauty, in which the mind and the senses have an equal part, and which is full of savour and grace, alive to the finger-tips. ”

“ Then the fire of the period of ambition filled him, and he saw his home, the deserted bench at which he once labored, the patient face of his wife and then the figure of Marlowe as he appeared to him under the blazing lights of the chantry. Ah! was it he? Yes. “And are not the charges false?” rises the question from a thousand voices.
He recognizes them all, and he attempts to say, “Yes, and let it be so recorded!” but he finds himself without voice. There is a darkness that is never to be lifted about him. He has a faint comprehension of the reason, but it grows into no verity. ”

“ Half of the horribleness of the object was thus hidden, and viewing the profile she was again struck with its likeness to Marlowe’s.
“Look,” she said to her companion, who stood near her, “how like he is to thee.”
“So?” he asked, quickly.
“Yes, do you not see? Is there not a striking similarity in form? Is not the nose the same as thine? The face clean shaven; the hair of like color?” ”

“ Then the witness went further. He had not been an intimate acquaintance of Marlowe, but he had long known him by repute as a prince of good-fellows. With such feeling had he mentioned this characteristic of the man, and discoursed on his genius as an actor, and writer, that the unlettered crowd, whose model for a hero conformed to these proportions, was ready to weep at the further mention of his name, or give its united efforts to the apprehension of the murderer. Already the vow was on all lips to join in the hue and cry until the pursued was run to earth. ”

“ The fog might rise disclosing a sky conducive of joyous spirits, or it might gather so dense that naught but the austere form of Melancholy, with her trailing robes of black, could walk 29 with firm and unfaltering strides within it. It was the latter condition that was to follow. At that moment, in the mind of Marlowe, the rosiest dreams of life pursued one another as though conceived by an Ovid, and impelled by the spirit of a Homer ”

“ And he, the magic creator of forms more palpable and enduring than those of clay, groping in the darkness which might never be lifted, was thus beginning the conjuration of the everlasting.
“Marlowe,” exclaimed Tamworth, noticing the lack of pressure on his arm, and his friend’s faltering footsteps. “You drag your feet as though in sleep. See, the clouds are breaking and the gray of the dawn is about us.” ”

“ But the powerful influence exerted by Marlowe on Shakespeare's literary work is more interesting than their private relations with each other. All the blank verse in Shakespeare's early plays bears the stamp of Marlowe's inspiration. In 'Richard II' and the 'Merchant of Venice ' Shakespeare chose subjects of which Marlowe had already treated in 'Edward II' and the 'Jew of Malta,' and although the younger dramatist was more efficient in the handling of his plots than the elder, Shakespeare's direct indebtedness to Marlowe in either piece is unmistakable. ”

“ The gulf between the work of the two men is still very great. In Marlowe there is none of that benign humanity that clings to even [109] the grimmest of Shakespeare’s tragedies. Marlowe’s characters are bleak in nature and massive in outline; enormous and majestical, but forbidding and almost inhuman. His style has the same qualities: glowing with a volcanic energy, capable of a mighty soaring line and phrase (“Marlowe’s mighty line,” as Ben Jonson called it) , but diffuse, truculent, exaggerated, and bombastic. ”

“ Shakespeare did not excel Marlowe in Marlowe’s own excellences, though he humanized Marlowe’s Jew, launched his own blank verse on the tide of Marlowe’s oratory, and modulated, in Richard II., his master’s type of chronicle tragedy.
As the middle ages receded, the known life of man upon this earth became of sovereign interest, and of this interest the drama is the freest artistic expression. If Marlowe is the voice of the impulse to explore, the plays of Shakespeare are the amplest freight brought home Shake-speare. ”

“ If Marlowe's life was unworthy, the fault must be laid rather at the door of circumstances than of his own genuine nature. His plays show him to have been an ardent idealist and a representative of many of the qualities that made the greatness of the Renaissance. The Renaissance learning, the apparently boundless vistas which it had opened to the human spirit, and the consciousness of his own power, evidently intoxicated Marlowe with a vast ambition to achieve results which in his youthful inexperience he could scarcely even picture to himself. ”

“ Marlowe, a star too sovereign, too superb,
⁠To fade when heaven took fire from Shakespeare's light,
A soul that knew but song's triumphal curb
⁠And love's triumphant bondage, holds of right
His pride of place, who first in place and time
Made England's voice as England's heart sublime.
III.
Marlowe bade England live in living song:
⁠The light he lifted up lit Shakespeare's way:
He spake, and life sprang forth in music, strong
⁠As fire or lightning, sweet as dawn of day.
Song was a dream where day took night to wife:
'Let there be life,' he said: and there was life. ”

“ Clash, clash, clash, rang the blades, and the stamp of feet upon the checkered carpet grew quicker and heavier. Still the actor retreated in curves around the room, and still the Count pressed him.
Suddenly the unforeseen happened. The Count found his foot entangled in the folds of the cloak which Marlowe had let fall upon the floor. He endeavored to kick it aside but lost his equilibrium. The other became the aggressor, and with a desperate lunge, as the Count stumbled, he thrust his rapier blade deep into the eye and brain of the latter. ”

“ From his place behind one wing of the stage, Shakespere looked out upon the tumult, and then his eyes wandered to the box wherein sat the unknown creator of the drama. Was the latter not impelled toward public recognition of the multitude’s applause?
He, Marlowe, was possessed with temporary 295 elation over the enthusiasm of the audience, and with the further knowledge that the one whom he loved was now beside him. In his ecstasy, it seemed that he mingled with the gods. The darkness in which he dwelt, and the mighty world, voiceless as to himself and his merit, were as naught. ”

“ 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! ”

“ He lunged forward, but Marlowe had thrown himself on guard, and the thrust was skillfully parried. The blades rang sharply, and it seemed that the candles blazed upward with a fiercer light. The Count assumed the aggressive from the first; but if his demeanor indicated his real feelings, it was that of an executioner rather than an avenger. He was cool and deliberate, showing neither passion nor fury. As contrasted with this, his opponent fought with the strength of despair. ”

“ Marlowe was absent on my entering the family, nor durst I ask when he was expected. My health and spirits gradually declined from my close confinement. When allowed, as I have before said, of a chance time to go out, instead of enjoying the fresh air, I have sat down to weep over scenes of former happiness. I dined constantly with the old housekeeper. She informed me, one day, that Mr. Marlowe, her master’s young heir, who had been absent some time on a visit, was expected home on the ensuing day. Fortunately, the good dame was too busily employed to notice my agitation. ”

“ Marlowe stands with his back to the window, one foot on a chair, shouting out a song as the curtain rises.
Marlowe [singing] . If Luck and I should meet I’ll catch her to me crying, ‘To trip with you were sweet, Have done with your denying!’ Hey, lass! Ho, lass! Heel and toe, lass! Who’ll have a dance with me? All Together. Hey, Luck! Ho, Luck! Ne’er say no, Luck! I’ll have a dance with thee!
A Man [hammering the table] . Again! Again!
Landlord [at the door] . Sir, sir, there’s without a young gentleman hot with riding—
Marlowe. Does the hot young gentleman give no name? ”

“ She had caught the name of Marlowe in the conversation near her and knew that the talk was of him; the contest with foils between the two actors on the stage had absorbed her so that again she seemed the helpless spectator of a duel to death. It was the old scene over again in all its vivid reality. Laertes, of kindlier aspect than Burbage, as Hamlet, had awakened her sympathies, and she saw him as an embodied Marlowe. Then came the struggle, the exchange of rapiers and the thrust through the doublet of Laertes that staggered him. ”

“ And who, may I ask, are you, that show so deep an interest?”
“Not one to be feared,” returned Marlowe, smiling; “an idle poet who has sung of braver men than his eyes have yet beheld, and would see a man still braver than the song—Kyt Marlowe, at your service, good my Rouse,” and so saying, the poet, with a hand through the big soldier’s arm, led the way from the shop out to the High Street of Southwark. “Had you not another comrade in the wars, a vagabond of most preposterous paunch and waddling legs? ”

“ 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 242 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. ”

“ It was that of Peele, the dramatist, and with a hearty salutation he entered, closely followed by Shakespere.
“Thou art doubly welcome,” said Marlowe, rising and grasping the outstretched hands of his unexpected visitors. ”

“ One line Marlowe remodels with triumphant success:
And set black streamers in the firmament
(Tamburlaine) becomes
See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament!
(Doctor Faustus) The verse accomplishments of Tamburlaine are notably two: Marlowe gets into blank verse the melody of Spenser, and he gets a new driving power by reinforcing the sentence period against the line period. The rapid long sentence, running line into line, as in the famous soliloquies "Nature compounded of four elements" and "What is beauty, saith my sufferings, then?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ Marlowe's well-known song, 'Come live with me and be my love,' was first printed, without the fourth or sixth stanzas and with the first stanza only of the 'Answer,' in the 'Passionate Pilgrim,' 1699, a collection of verse by various hands, although the title-page bore the sole name of Shakespeare. In 'England's Helicon' the lyric appeared in its complete form, with the signature 'C. Marlowe' beneath it; the well-known answer in six stanzas which follows immediately is signed 'Ignoto' and is ascribed to Sir Walter Raleigh. Marlowe's lyric caught the popular ear immediately. ”

“ 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. ”