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But, above all, historical dramas were numerous. Nothing less surprising; the enthusiastic admiration for the country's past and present, which was one of the characteristics of the period, could not fail to influence the theatre as well as the other branches of literature. The same tragical or glorious events recorded in their poems by the authors of the "Mirror for Magistrates," or by lyrical poets like Daniel, Drayton or Spenser, were told again in dialogue and made the subject of plays: semi-fabulous histories of Locrine and Lear, reign of King John, histories of the Edwards and the Henries, triumphs of the Hundred Years' War, disasters of the War of the Roses, usurpation and crimes of Richard III., lives of outlaws like Robin Hood, of rebels like Jack Straw, or of latter-day great men who ended tragically, like More, Cromwell, or Wolsey. Badly composed of ill-assorted elements, a medley

See, eg. "The lamentable tragedie of Locrine, eldest son of King Brutus," 1595, acted ab. 1586 (Malone Soc. 1908), arbitrarily attributed Marlowe, Peele, Greene, and even Shakespeare.-"The True Chronicle History of King Leir," 1605, 4to, acted ab. 1588.-" The troublesome raigne of John King of England," 1591.-"The raigne of King Edward the Third,” 1596 (in which some have detected the hand of Shakespeare; the play is in any case the work of a true poet)." The famous victories of Henry the fifth containing the honourable battell of Agincourt," 1598, acted ab. 1580.-" The first part of the Contention betwixt the two famous houses of Yorke and Lancaster," 1594.-"The true Tragedie of Richard the third," 1594.-" A mery geste of Robyn Hood. wyth a newe playe for to be played in maye games" (sixteenth century; n.d.)." The Downfall of Robert earle of Huntington, afterwards called Robin Hood," and "The death of Robert," etc., 1601, two plays by Munday, acted 1598.-"The Life and Death of Jack Strawe, a notable rebell in England," pr. 1593, acted long before." Sir Thomas More," a remarkable play, left in MS. and printed by the Shakespeare Soc. 1844 (written before 1590?), see below, p. 269.The true Chronicle Historie of . . . Thomas lord Cromwell," registered 1602, acted 1592 ?—A “Wolsey" and many other lost historical plays figure in Henslowe's Diary. Most of the above-mentioned dramas have been reprinted by Hazlitt (" Shakespeare's Library "), by Dodsley ("Old Plays "), by the Shakespeare Society, by Brooke ("Shakespeare Apocrypha"). See the tables of F. E. Schelling ("The English Chronicle Play," New York, 1902, pp. 275 ff.), according to whose calculation about 150 historical dramas are known to have been represented between 1586 and 1606.

sometimes of puerile monstrosities, these dramas, in which truth was so clumsily told that they often seemed another sort of old wives' tales, enchanted the public by their subject. They deal with our ancestors and with us, thought the hearers; let us listen. When events belonged to a somewhat distant past, they were artificially brought as near as possible to modern times, the better to secure attention. The means resorted to were not very refined; we have seen before what they were: clowneries, allusions to men or deeds of the day, contemporary manners, feelings and costumes attributed to old-time personages; in other words ceaseless anachronisms. To take only one example, but a striking one, in Peele's "Edward I.," where the hero quotes Ariosto, a Queen Eleanor is shown, lewd, perfidious, and bloodthirsty, not at all like the Eleanor of history, not at all like the sweet-faced Queen who sleeps her last sleep at Westminster in her long tunic of gold; but as that princess was a Spaniard, and Spain was hated in Peele's days, the Queen of three hundred years before had to be blackened for the audience to be pleased.1

It was, however, one of the arguments of the apologists of playwrights that they taught English history: they have "instructed such as cannot reade in the discovery of all our English chronicles; and what man have you now of that weake capacity that cannot discourse of any notable thing recorded even from William the Conqueror, nay from the landing of Brute until this day?" 2 These tragedies, said Nash, give new life "to our forefathers' valiant actes, that have line long buried in rustie brass and worm-eaten bookes."3 If those teachings were not always

'The famous chronicle of King Edwarde the first . . . with his returne from the holy land. . . Lastly the sinking of Queene Elinor . . ." 1593; "Works," Bullen, i. 75.

2 Thomas Heywood, "Apology for Actors," 1612; Shakespeare Society, 1841, p. 53.

3" Pierce Penilesse," 1592; Shakespeare Society, p. 59.

strictly accurate, and morose minds did not refrain from pointing it out, at least they kept up the patriotic ardour and loyalism of the hearers.2 The worst of these plays succeeded scarcely less well than the best; the rough sketches of forerunners obtained often as much applause as Shakespeare's grandest dramas: patriotism, and not at all the opinion of the learned, decided the case.

IV.

One man, during this preparatory period, rose above the common level; his faults and his genius made of him a connecting link between the predecessors and Shakespeare. The faults are enormous, the genius shines only at times, but with splendid brilliancy. What Voltaire, in a fit of bad humour, said of Shakespeare, is true of Christopher Marlowe: he has "sparks of genius glowing in the midst of a horrible darkness." One of his dramas, besides, is quite apart, among the chaotic attempts of this preliminary epoch.

Born in February, 1564, Marlowe belonged to a humble family, of Canterbury; his father was a master shoemaker; his sister's husband plied the same trade.

"But these that know the histories before they see them acted, are ever ashamed when they have heard what lyes the players insert amongst them."-Anonymous reply to Heywood, 1615; Hazlitt, "Shakespeare's Library," vol. v. p. 408.

2 It is not possible, however, to agree with Mr. Symonds, who thus begins his chapter on the old dramas of this sort: "The chronicle play is peculiar to English literature" ("Shakspere's Predecessors," 1900, p. 289). Without speaking of the "Mystère du Siège d'Orléans," written before 1450, to the glory of Joan of Arc, many examples of such plays can be pointed out in the French literature of the sixteenth century: plays on the wars of religion, Coligny, the Guises, Henri IV., and for the past, on Mérovće, Gaston of Foix, the battle of Bouvines, etc. (see many of them mentioned by Lanson, Revue d'Histoire Littéraire de la France, 1903, pp. 192, ff.) The truth is that, thanks to Marlowe and Shakespeare, England alone produced at that period works deserving a permanent rank in literature.

He was able, however, to receive a complete education. first in the local Grammar School, then at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; many poor children succeeded then, thanks to charitable foundations or to the help of a wealthy neighbour, in studying, attaining notoriety, frequenting the learned and the great, only sometimes to sink afterwards into the depths of low London life, and end miserably. Young Christopher was impetuous, immoderate, rash in words, in actions, in ideas, unable to restrain himself, as loose in his morals as in his beliefs. While yet a student, he translated Ovid's "Amores," far from repelled by the licentiousness of the Latin master 1; critics have derided his mistakes; the work is meritorious however for a college student. He returned more than once to the classics, and we know what rank he won for himself, among lyrical poets, with his " Hero and Leander,” adapted from the Greek.2 Master of Arts in 1587 at twenty-three, he settled apparently in London, and the meagre allusions to his life which have come down to us show him writing, year after year, mainly for the Lord Admiral's company, with Alleyn in the title-rôles, grandiloquent and tumultuous dramas which had a considerable success; appreciated for his vigorous mind by the best poets of his day, Drayton, Peele, Chapman, and Shakespeare3; frequenting

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Posthumous: " Epigrammes and Elegies," Middlebourgh, ab. 1597, the "Epigrammes" being the work of Sir J. Davies; the " Elegies ("Amores"), the work of Marlowe ; in rimed verse. "Works," ed. Cunningham, n.d., or ed. Bullen, 1885, 3 vols.; "Marlowes Werke," ed. Breymann and Wagner, Heilbronn, 1885 (each play issued separately).

2 In 1600 appeared: "Lucans first Book translated line for line, by Chr. Marlow," in blank verse. On "Hero and Leander," see above, vol. II. p. 413. On "Marlowe at Cambridge," see C. Moore Smith, Mod. Lang. Rev., iv. 167.

3 Who had a kindly souvenir for him, and quoted one of his lines in "As You Like It":

Dead shepherd, now I find thy saw of might:

Who ever lov'd, that lov'd not at first sight? (iii. 5).—

Raleigh, Thomas Walsingham, a relative of the Queen's Secretary, Harriott the algebrist, traveller, and astronomer, all of them noted for their boldness of thought. He thus came to pass for an atheist, and proceedings had been begun against him by a Government that burnt people for less radical differences with the established creed, when he died at twenty-nine, in 1593, killed in a quarrel at Deptford "by a baudy servingman, a rival of his in his lewd love." His career as a playwright had lasted six years.

2

His first play "Tamburlaine," a huge drama in two parts and ten acts, performed the year he left the University, by the Lord Admiral's players, 1587, rivalled

Peele spoke admiringly of him a few days after his death, in the Prologue of the Honour of the Garter," June, 1593:

unhappy in thine end,

Marley, the Muses darling for thy verse.

Drayton later, in his epistle to Reynolds, was no less warm in his praise of "Marlowe, bathed in the Thespian springs"; nor was Ben Jonson in his well-known allusion to "Marlowe's mighty line," 1623.

I

"Palladis Tamia," 1598, by Meres, who sees in Marlowe's "tragical death" a punishment for his "epicurism and atheism." His burial is recorded in the register of St. Nicholas' Church, Deptford, as having taken place on the 1st of June, 1593.

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2 "Tamburlaine the Great. Who, from a Scythian Shepheard . . . became a most puissant and mightye Monarque Devided into two Tragicall Discourses, as they were . . . shewed upon Stages. . . by the . . . Lord Admyrall, his servantes. -"The second part of the bloody conquests of mighty Tamburlaine, with his impassionate fury for the death of his Lady," etc., London, 1590; anonymous, but Marlowe's authorship seems certain On the sources of the play, see C. Herford, Academy, October 20, 1883, and Faligan, "De Marlovianis Fabulis," Paris, 1887, 8vo, French plays on Tamerlane, p. 111. Owing probably to the popularity won by Marlowe for his hero, such entries as the following appear in the Stationers' Registers : "The two commical discourses of Tomberlein the cithian shepparde" (a ballad), August 18, 1590; "A booke intituled Histoire du Grand Empereur Tamerlanes, rencontres, escarmouches. . . to be translated into English," July 2, 1597; Arber's Transcript, vol. ii. p. 558, vol. iii. p. 88.

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