Chapter X: Preface: And Critical List of Authors From Select British Poets 365 (10)

Lastly, to conclude this account; what gave a unity and common direction to all these causes, was the natural genius of the country, which was strong in these writers in proportion to their strength. We are a nation of islanders, and we cannot help it; nor mend ourselves if we would. We are something in ourselves, nothing when we try to ape others. Music and painting are not our _forte_: for what we have done in that way has been little, and that borrowed from others with great difficulty. But we may boast of our poets and philosophers. That’s something. We have had strong heads and sound hearts among us. Thrown on one side of the world, and left to bustle for ourselves, we have fought out many a battle for truth and freedom. That is our natural style; and it were to be wished we had in no instance departed from it. Our situation has given us a certain cast of thought and character; and our liberty has enabled us to make the most of it. We are of a stiff clay, not moulded into every fashion, with stubborn joints not easily bent. We are slow to think, and therefore impressions do not work upon us till they act in masses. We are not forward to express our feelings, and therefore they do not come from us till they force their way in the most impetuous eloquence. Our language is, as it were, to begin anew, and we make use of the most singular and boldest combinations to explain ourselves. Our wit comes from us, ‘like birdlime, brains and all.’ We pay too little attention to form and method, leave our works in an unfinished state, but still the materials we work in are solid and of nature’s mint; we do not deal in counterfeits. We both under and over-do, but we keep an eye to the prominent features, the main chance. We are more for weight than show; care only about what interests ourselves, instead of trying to impose upon others by plausible appearances, and are obstinate and intractable in not conforming to common rules, by which many arrive at their ends with half the real waste of thought and trouble. We neglect all but the principal object, gather our force to make a great blow, bring it down, and relapse into sluggishness and indifference again. _Materiam superabat opus_, cannot be said of us. We may be accused of grossness, but not of flimsiness; of extravagance, but not of affectation; of want of art and refinement, but not of a want of truth and nature. Our literature, in a word, is Gothic and grotesque; unequal and irregular; not cast in a previous mould, nor of one uniform texture, but of great weight in the whole, and of incomparable value in the best parts. It aims at an excess of beauty or power, hits or misses, and is either very good indeed, or absolutely good for nothing. This character applies in particular to our literature in the age of Elizabeth, which is its best period, before the introduction of a rage for French rules and French models; for whatever may be the value of our own original style of composition, there can be neither offence nor presumption in saying, that it is at least better than our second-hand imitations of others. Our understanding (such as it is, and must remain to be good for any thing) is not a thoroughfare for common places, smooth as the palm of one’s hand, but full of knotty points and jutting excrescences, rough, uneven, overgrown with brambles; and I like this aspect of the mind (as some one said of the country), where nature keeps a good deal of the soil in her own hands. Perhaps the genius of our poetry has more of Pan than of Apollo; ‘but Pan is a God, Apollo is no more!’

LECTURE II
ON THE DRAMATIC WRITERS CONTEMPORARY WITH SHAKESPEAR, LYLY, MARLOW,
HEYWOOD, MIDDLETON, AND ROWLEY

The period of which I shall have to treat (from the Reformation to the middle of Charles I.) was prolific in dramatic excellence, even more than in any other. In approaching it, we seem to be approaching the RICH STROND described in Spenser, where treasures of all kinds lay scattered, or rather crowded together on the shore in inexhaustible but unregarded profusion, ‘rich as the oozy bottom of the deep in sunken wrack and sumless treasuries.’ We are confounded with the variety, and dazzled with the dusky splendour of names sacred in their obscurity, and works gorgeous in their decay, ‘majestic, though in ruin,’ like Guyon when he entered the Cave of Mammon, and was shewn the massy pillars and huge unwieldy fragments of gold, covered with dust and cobwebs, and ‘shedding a faint shadow of uncertain light,

‘Such as a lamp whose light doth fade away,
Or as the moon clothed with cloudy night
Doth shew to him that walks in fear and sad affright.’

The dramatic literature of this period only wants exploring, to fill the enquiring mind with wonder and delight, and to convince us that we have been wrong in lavishing all our praise on ‘new-born gauds, though they are made and moulded of things past;’ and in ‘giving to dust, that is a little gilded, more laud than gilt o’er-dusted.’ In short, the discovery of such an unsuspected and forgotten mine of wealth will be found amply to repay the labour of the search, and it will be hard, if in most cases curiosity does not end in admiration, and modesty teach us wisdom. A few of the most singular productions of these times remain unclaimed; of others the authors are uncertain; many of them are joint productions of different pens; but of the best the writers’ names are in general known, and obviously stamped on the productions themselves. The names of Ben Jonson, for instance, Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher, are almost, though not quite, as familiar to us, as that of Shakespear; and their works still keep regular possession of the stage. Another set of writers included in the same general period (the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century), who are next, or equal, or sometimes superior to these in power, but whose names are now little known, and their writings nearly obsolete, are Lyly, Marlow, Marston, Chapman, Middleton, and Rowley, Heywood, Webster, Deckar, and Ford. I shall devote the present and two following Lectures to the best account I can give of these, and shall begin with some of the least known.

The earliest tragedy of which I shall take notice (I believe the earliest that we have) is that of Ferrex and Porrex, or Gorboduc (as it has been generally called), the production of Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, afterwards created Earl of Dorset, assisted by one Thomas Norton. This was first acted with applause before the Queen in 1561, the noble author being then quite a young man. This tragedy being considered as the first in our language, is certainly a curiosity, and in other respects it is also remarkable; though, perhaps, enough has been said about it. As a work of genius, it may be set down as nothing, for it contains hardly a memorable line or passage; as a work of art, and the first of its kind attempted in the language, it may be considered as a monument of the taste and skill of the authors. Its merit is confined to the regularity of the plot and metre, to its general good sense, and strict attention to common decorum. If the poet has not stamped the peculiar genius of his age upon this first attempt, it is no inconsiderable proof of strength of mind and conception sustained by its own sense of propriety alone, to have so far anticipated the taste of succeeding times, as to have avoided any glaring offence against rules and models, which had no existence in his day. Or perhaps a truer solution might be, that there were as yet no examples of a more ambiguous and irregular kind to tempt him to err, and as he had not the impulse or resources within himself to strike out a new path, he merely adhered with modesty and caution to the classical models with which, as a scholar, he was well acquainted. The language of the dialogue is clear, unaffected, and intelligible without the smallest difficulty, even to this day; it has ‘no figures nor no fantasies,’ to which the most fastidious critic can object, but the dramatic power is nearly none at all. It is written expressly to set forth the dangers and mischiefs that arise from the division of sovereign power; and the several speakers dilate upon the different views of the subject in turn, like clever schoolboys set to compose a thesis, or declaim upon the fatal consequences of ambition, and the uncertainty of human affairs. The author, in the end, declares for the doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance; a doctrine which indeed was seldom questioned at that time of day. Eubulus, one of the old king’s counsellors, thus gives his opinion—

‘Eke fully with the duke my mind agrees,
That no cause serves, whereby the subject may
Call to account the doings of his prince;
Much less in blood by sword to work revenge:
No more than may the hand cut off the head.
In act nor speech, no nor in secret thought,
The subject may rebel against his lord,
Or judge of him that sits in Cæsar’s seat,
With grudging mind to damn those he mislikes.
Though kings forget to govern as they ought,
Yet subjects must obey as they are bound.’

Yet how little he was borne out in this inference by the unbiassed dictates of his own mind, may appear from the freedom and unguarded boldness of such lines as the following, addressed by a favourite to a prince, as courtly advice.

‘Know ye that lust of kingdoms hath no law:
The Gods do bear and well allow in kings
The things that they abhor in rascal routs.
When kings on slender quarrels run to wars,
And then in cruel and unkindly wise
Command thefts, rapes, murder of innocents,
The spoil of towns, ruins of mighty realms;
Think you such princes do suppose themselves
Subject to laws of kind and fear of Gods?
Murders and violent thefts in private men
Are heinous crimes, and full of foul reproach;
Yet none offence, but deck’d with noble name
Of glorious conquests in the hands of kings.’

The principal characters make as many invocations to the names of their children, their country, and their friends, as Cicero in his Orations, and all the topics insisted upon are open, direct, urged in the face of day, with no more attention to time or place, to an enemy who overhears, or an accomplice to whom they are addressed; in a word, with no more dramatic insinuation or byeplay than the pleadings in a court of law. Almost the only passage that I can instance, as rising above this didactic tone of mediocrity into the pathos of poetry, is one where Marcella laments the untimely death of her lover, Ferrex.

‘Ah! noble prince, how oft have I beheld
Thee mounted on thy fierce and trampling steed,
Shining in armour bright before the tilt;
And with thy mistress’ sleeve tied on thy helm,
And charge thy staff to please thy lady’s eye,
That bowed the head-piece of thy friendly foe!
How oft in arms on horse to bend the mace,
How oft in arms on foot to break the sword,
Which never now these eyes may see again!’

There seems a reference to Chaucer in the wording of the following lines—

‘Then saw I how he smiled with slaying knife
Wrapp’d under cloke, then saw I deep deceit
Lurk in his face, and death prepared for me.’[14]

Sir Philip Sidney says of this tragedy: ‘Gorboduc is full of stately speeches, and well sounding phrases, climbing to the height of Seneca his style, and as full of notable morality; which it doth most delightfully teach, and thereby obtain the very end of poetry.’ And Mr. Pope, whose taste in such matters was very different from Sir Philip Sidney’s, says in still stronger terms: ‘That the writers of the succeeding age might have improved as much in other respects, by copying from him a propriety in the sentiments, an unaffected perspicuity of style, and an easy flow in the numbers. In a word, that chastity, correctness, and gravity of style, which are so essential to tragedy, and which all the tragic poets who followed, not excepting Shakespear himself, either little understood, or perpetually neglected.’ It was well for us and them that they did so!

The Induction to the Mirrour for Magistrates does his Muse more credit. It sometimes reminds one of Chaucer, and at others seems like an anticipation, in some degree, both of the measure and manner of Spenser. The following stanzas may give the reader an idea of the merit of this old poem, which was published in 1563.

‘By him lay heauie Sleepe cosin of Death
Flat on the ground, and still as any stone,
A very corps, saue yeelding forth a breath.
Small keepe tooke he whom Fortune frowned on,
Or whom she lifted vp into the throne
Of high renowne, but as a liuing death,
So dead aliue, of life he drew the breath.

The bodies rest, the quiet of the hart,
The trauailes ease, the still nights feere was he.
And of our life in earth the better part,
Reuer of sight, and yet in whom we see
Things oft that tide, and oft that neuer bee.
Without respect esteeming equally
King _Crœsus_ pompe, and _Irus_ pouertie.

And next in order sad Old Age we found,
His beard all hoare, his eyes hollow and blind,
With drouping cheere still poring on the ground,
As on the place where nature him assign’d
To rest, when that the sisters had vntwin’d
His vitall thred, and ended with their knife
The fleeting course of fast declining life.

There heard we him with broke and hollow plaint
Rew with himselfe his end approaching fast,
And all for naught his wretched mind torment,
With sweete remembrance of his pleasures past,
And fresh delites of lustic youth forewast.
Recounting which, how would he sob and shreek?
And to be yong again of _Ioue_ beseeke.

But and the cruell fates so fixed be,
That time forepast cannot returne againe,
This one request of Ioue yet prayed he:
That in such withred plight, and wretched paine,
As _eld_ (accompanied with lothsome traine)
Had brought on him, all were it woe and griefe,
He might a while yet linger forth his life,

And not so soone descend into the pit:
Where Death, when he the mortall corps hath slaine,
With wretchlesse hand in graue doth couer it,
Thereafter neuer to enioy againe
The gladsome light, but in the ground ylaine,
In depth of darknesse waste and weare to nought,
As he had nere into the world been brought.

But who had seene him, sobbing how he stood
Vnto himselfe, and how he would bemone
His youth forepast, as though it wrought him good
To talke of youth, all were his youth foregone,
He would haue musde and maruail’d much whereon
This wretched Age should life desire so faine,
And knowes ful wel life doth but length his paine.

Crookebackt he was, toothshaken, and blere eyde,
Went on three feete, and sometime crept on foure,
With old lame bones, that ratled by his side,
His scalpe all pil’d, and he with eld forelore:
His withred fist still knocking at Deaths dore,
Fumbling and driueling as he drawes his breath,
For briefe, the shape and messenger of Death.’

John Lyly (born in the Weold of Kent about the year 1553), was the author of Midas and Endymion, of Alexander and Campaspe, and of the comedy of Mother Bombie. Of the last it may be said, that it is very much what its name would import, old, quaint, and vulgar.—I may here observe, once for all, that I would not be understood to say, that the age of Elizabeth was all of gold without any alloy. There was both gold and lead in it, and often in one and the same writer. In our impatience to form an opinion, we conclude, when we first meet with a good thing, that it is owing to the age; or, if we meet with a bad one, it is characteristic of the age, when, in fact, it is neither; for there are good and bad in almost all ages, and one age excels in one thing, another in another:—only one age may excel more and in higher things than another, but none can excel equally and completely in all. The writers of Elizabeth, as poets, soared to the height they did, by indulging their own unrestrained enthusiasm: as comic writers, they chiefly copied the manners of the age, which did not give them the same advantage over their successors. Lyly’s comedy, for instance, is ‘poor, unfledged, has never winged from view o’ th’ nest,’ and tries in vain to rise above the ground with crude conceits and clumsy levity. Lydia, the heroine of the piece, is silly enough, if the rest were but as witty. But the author has shewn no partiality in the distribution of his gifts. To say truth, it was a very common fault of the old comedy, that its humours were too low, and the weaknesses exposed too great to be credible, or an object of ridicule, even if they were. The affectation of their courtiers is passable, and diverting as a contrast to present manners; but the eccentricities of their clowns are ‘very tolerable, and not to be endured.’ Any kind of activity of mind might seem to the writers better than none: any nonsense served to amuse their hearers; any cant phrase, any coarse allusion, any pompous absurdity, was taken for wit and drollery. Nothing could be too mean, too foolish, too improbable, or too offensive, to be a proper subject for laughter. Any one (looking hastily at this side of the question only) might be tempted to suppose the youngest children of Thespis a very callow brood, chirping their slender notes, or silly swains ‘grating their lean and flashy jests on scrannel pipes of wretched straw.’ The genius of comedy looked too often like a lean and hectic pantaloon; love was a slip-shod shepherdess; wit a parti-coloured fool like Harlequin, and the plot came hobbling, like a clown, after all. A string of impertinent and farcical jests (or rather blunders), was with great formality ushered into the world as ‘a right pleasant and conceited comedy.’ Comedy could not descend lower than it sometimes did, without glancing at physical imperfections and deformity. The two young persons in the play before us, on whom the event of the plot chiefly hinges, do in fact turn out to be no better than changelings and natural idiots. This is carrying innocence and simplicity too far. So again, the character of Sir Tophas in Endymion, an affected, blustering, talkative, cowardly pretender, treads too near upon blank stupidity and downright want of common sense, to be admissible as a butt for satire. Shakespear has contrived to clothe the lamentable nakedness of the same sort of character with a motley garb from the wardrobe of his imagination, and has redeemed it from insipidity by a certain plausibility of speech, and playful extravagance of humour. But the undertaking was nearly desperate. Ben Jonson tried to overcome the difficulty by the force of learning and study: and thought to gain his end by persisting in error; but he only made matters worse; for his clowns and coxcombs (if we except Bobadil), are the most incorrigible and insufferable of all others.—The story of Mother Bombie is little else than a tissue of absurd mistakes, arising from the confusion of the different characters one with another, like another Comedy of Errors, and ends in their being (most of them), married in a game at cross-purposes to the persons they particularly dislike.

To leave this, and proceed to something pleasanter, Midas and Endymion, which are worthy of their names and of the subject. The story in both is classical, and the execution is for the most part elegant and simple. There is often something that reminds one of the graceful communicativeness of Lucian or of Apuleius, from whom one of the stories is borrowed. Lyly made a more attractive picture of Grecian manners at second-hand, than of English characters from his own observation. The poet (which is the great merit of a poet in such a subject) has transported himself to the scene of action, to ancient Greece or Asia Minor; the manners, the images, the traditions are preserved with truth and delicacy, and the dialogue (to my fancy) glides and sparkles like a clear stream from the Muses’ spring. I know few things more perfect in characteristic painting, than the exclamation of the Phrygian shepherds, who, afraid of betraying the secret of Midas’s ears, fancy that ‘the very reeds bow down, as though they listened to their talk’; nor more affecting in sentiment, than the apostrophe addressed by his friend Eumenides to Endymion, on waking from his long sleep, ‘Behold the twig to which thou laidest down thy head, is now become a tree.’ The narrative is sometimes a little wandering and desultory; but if it had been ten times as tedious, this thought would have redeemed it; for I cannot conceive of any thing more beautiful, more simple or touching, than this exquisitely chosen image and dumb proof of the manner in which he had passed his life, from youth to old age, in a dream, a dream of love. Happy Endymion! Faithful Eumenides! Divine Cynthia! Who would not wish to pass his life in such a sleep, a long, long sleep, dreaming of some fair heavenly Goddess, with the moon shining upon his face, and the trees growing silently over his head!—There is something in this story which has taken a strange hold of my fancy, perhaps ‘out of my weakness and my melancholy’; but for the satisfaction of the reader, I will quote the whole passage: ‘it is silly sooth, and dallies with the innocence of love, like the old age.’

‘_Cynthia._ Well, let us to Endymion. I will not be so stately (good
Endymion) not to stoop to do thee good; and if thy liberty consist in
a kiss from me, thou shalt have it. And although my mouth hath been
heretofore as untouched as my thoughts, yet now to recover thy life
(though to restore thy youth it be impossible) I will do that to
Endymion, which yet never mortal man could boast of heretofore, nor
shall ever hope for hereafter. (_She kisses him_).

_Eumenides._ Madam, he beginneth to stir.

_Cynthia._ Soft, Eumenides, stand still.

_Eumenides._ Ah! I see his eyes almost open.

_Cynthia._ I command thee once again, stir not: I will stand behind
him.

_Panelion._ What do I see? Endymion almost awake?

_Eumenides._ Endymion, Endymion, art thou deaf or dumb? Or hath this
long sleep taken away thy memory? Ah! my sweet Endymion, seest thou
not Eumenides, thy faithful friend, thy faithful Eumenides, who for
thy sake hath been careless of his own content? Speak, Endymion!
Endymion! Endymion!

_Endymion._ Endymion! I call to mind such a name.

_Eumenides._ Hast thou forgotten thyself, Endymion? Then do I not
marvel thou rememberest not thy friend. I tell thee thou art Endymion,
and I Eumenides. Behold also Cynthia, by whose favour thou art awaked,
and by whose virtue thou shalt continue thy natural course.

_Cynthia._ Endymion! Speak, sweet Endymion! Knowest thou not Cynthia?

_Endymion._ Oh, heavens! whom do I behold? Fair Cynthia, divine
Cynthia?

_Cynthia._ I am Cynthia, and thou Endymion.

_Endymion._ Endymion! What do I hear? What! a grey beard, hollow eyes,
withered body, and decayed limbs, and all in one night?

_Eumenides._ One night! Thou hast slept here forty years, by what
enchantress, as yet it is not known: and behold the twig to which thou
laidest thy head, is now become a tree. Callest thou not Eumenides to
remembrance?

_Endymion._ Thy name I do remember by the sound, but thy favour I do
not yet call to mind: only divine Cynthia, to whom time, fortune,
death, and destiny are subject, I see and remember; and in all
humility, I regard and reverence.

_Cynthia._ You shall have good cause to remember Eumenides, who hath
for thy safety forsaken his own solace.

_Endymion._ Am I that Endymion, who was wont in court to lead my life,
and in justs, tourneys, and arms, to exercise my youth? Am I that
Endymion?

_Eumenides._ Thou art that Endymion, and I Eumenides: wilt thou not
yet call me to remembrance?

_Endymion._ Ah! sweet Eumenides, I now perceive thou art he, and that
myself have the name of Endymion; but that this should be my body, I
doubt: for how could my curled locks be turned to gray hair, and my
strong body to a dying weakness, having waxed old, and not knowing it?

_Cynthia._ Well, Endymion, arise: awhile sit down, for that thy limbs
are stiff and not able to stay thee, and tell what thou hast seen in
thy sleep all this while. What dreams, visions, thoughts, and
fortunes: for it is impossible but in so long time, thou shouldst see
strange things.’

_Act V. Scene 1._

It does not take away from the pathos of this poetical allegory on the chances of love and the progress of human life, that it may be supposed to glance indirectly at the conduct of Queen Elizabeth to our author, who, after fourteen years’ expectation of the place of Master of the Revels, was at last disappointed. This princess took no small delight in keeping her poets in a sort of Fool’s Paradise. The wit of Lyly, in parts of this romantic drama, seems to have grown spirited and classical with his subject. He puts this fine hyperbolical irony in praise of Dipsas, (a most unamiable personage, as it will appear), into the mouth of Sir Tophas:

‘Oh what fine thin hair hath Dipsas! What a pretty low forehead! What
a tall and stately nose! What little hollow eyes! What great and
goodly lips! How harmless she is, being toothless! Her fingers fat and
short, adorned with long nails like a bittern! What a low stature she
is, and yet what a great foot she carrieth! How thrifty must she be,
in whom there is no waist; how virtuous she is like to be, over whom
no man can be jealous!’

_Act III. Scene 3._

It is singular that the style of this author, which is extremely sweet and flowing, should have been the butt of ridicule to his contemporaries, particularly Drayton, who compliments Sidney as the author that

‘Did first reduce
Our tongue from Lyly’s writing, then in use;
Talking of stones, stars, plants, of fishes, flies,
Playing with words and idle similes,
As the English apes and very zanies be
Of every thing that they do hear and see.’

Which must apply to the prose style of his work, called ‘_Euphues and his England_,’ and is much more like Sir Philip Sidney’s own manner, than the dramatic style of our poet. Besides the passages above quoted, I might refer to the opening speeches of Midas, and again to the admirable contention between Pan and Apollo for the palm of music.—His Alexander and Campaspe is another sufficient answer to the charge. This play is a very pleasing transcript of old manners and sentiment. It is full of sweetness and point, of Attic salt and the honey of Hymettus. The following song given to Apelles, would not disgrace the mouth of the prince of painters:

‘Cupid and my Campaspe play’d
At cards for kisses, Cupid paid;
He stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows;
His mother’s doves, and team of sparrows;
Loses them too, then down he throws
The coral of his lip, the rose
Growing on’s cheek (but none knows how)
With these the chrystal of his brow,
And then the dimple of his chin;
All these did my Campaspe win.
At last he set her both his eyes,
She won, and Cupid blind did rise,
O, Love! has she done this to thee?
What shall, alas! become of me?’

The conclusion of this drama is as follows. Alexander addressing himself to Apelles, says,

‘Well, enjoy one another: I give her thee frankly, Apelles. Thou shalt
see that Alexander maketh but a toy of love, and leadeth affection in
fetters: using fancy as a fool to make him sport, or a minstrel to
make him merry. It is not the amorous glance of an eye can settle an
idle thought in the heart: no, no, it is children’s game, a life for
sempsters and scholars; the one, pricking in clouts, have nothing else
to think on; the other, picking fancies out of books, have little else
to marvel at. Go, Apelles, take with you your Campaspe; Alexander is
cloyed with looking on that, which thou wonderest at.

_Apelles._ Thanks to your Majesty on bended knee; you have honoured
Apelles.

_Campaspe._ Thanks with bowed heart; you have blest Campaspe.
[_Exeunt._

_Alexander._ Page, go warn Clytus and Parmenio, and the other lords,
to be in readiness; let the trumpet sound, strike up the drum, and I
will presently into Persia. How now, Hephestion, is Alexander able to
resist love as he list?

_Hephestion._ The conquering of Thebes was not so honourable as the
subduing of these thoughts.

_Alexander._ It were a shame Alexander should desire to command the
world, if he could not command himself. But come, let us go. And, good
Hephestion, when all the world is won, and every country is thine and
mine, either find me out another to subdue, or on my word, I will fall
in love.’

Marlowe is a name that stands high, and almost first in this list of dramatic worthies. He was a little before Shakespear’s time,[15] and has a marked character both from him and the rest. There is a lust of power in his writings, a hunger and thirst after unrighteousness, a glow of the imagination, unhallowed by any thing but its own energies. His thoughts burn within him like a furnace with bickering flames; or throwing out black smoke and mists, that hide the dawn of genius, or like a poisonous mineral, corrode the heart. His Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, though an imperfect and unequal performance, is his greatest work. Faustus himself is a rude sketch, but it is a gigantic one. This character may be considered as a personification of the pride of will and eagerness of curiosity, sublimed beyond the reach of fear and remorse. He is hurried away, and, as it were, devoured by a tormenting desire to enlarge his knowledge to the utmost bounds of nature and art, and to extend his power with his knowledge. He would realise all the fictions of a lawless imagination, would solve the most subtle speculations of abstract reason; and for this purpose, sets at defiance all mortal consequences, and leagues himself with demoniacal power, with ‘fate and metaphysical aid.’ The idea of witchcraft and necromancy, once the dread of the vulgar and the darling of the visionary recluse, seems to have had its origin in the restless tendency of the human mind, to conceive of and aspire to more than it can atchieve by natural means, and in the obscure apprehension that the gratification of this extravagant and unauthorised desire, can only be attained by the sacrifice of all our ordinary hopes, and better prospects to the infernal agents that lend themselves to its accomplishment. Such is the foundation of the present story. Faustus, in his impatience to fulfil at once and for a moment, for a few short years, all the desires and conceptions of his soul, is willing to give in exchange his soul and body to the great enemy of mankind. Whatever he fancies, becomes by this means present to his sense: whatever he commands, is done. He calls back time past, and anticipates the future: the visions of antiquity pass before him, Babylon in all its glory, Paris and Œnone: all the projects of philosophers, or creations of the poet pay tribute at his feet: all the delights of fortune, of ambition, of pleasure, and of learning are centered in his person; and from a short-lived dream of supreme felicity and drunken power, he sinks into an abyss of darkness and perdition. This is the alternative to which he submits; the bond which he signs with his blood! As the outline of the character is grand and daring, the execution is abrupt and fearful. The thoughts are vast and irregular; and the style halts and staggers under them, ‘with uneasy steps’;—‘such footing found the sole of unblest feet.’ There is a little fustian and incongruity of metaphor now and then, which is not very injurious to the subject. It is time to give a few passages in illustration of this account. He thus opens his mind at the beginning:

‘How am I glutted with conceit of this?
Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please?
Resolve me of all ambiguities?
Perform what desperate enterprise I will?
I’ll have them fly to India for gold,
Ransack the ocean for orient pearl,
And search all corners of the new-found world,
For pleasant fruits and princely delicates.
I’ll have them read me strange philosophy,
And tell the secrets of all foreign kings:
I’ll have them wall all Germany with brass,
And make swift Rhine circle fair Wittenberg;
I’ll have them fill the public schools with skill,
Wherewith the students shall be bravely clad;
I’ll levy soldiers with the coin they bring,
And chase the Prince of Parma from our land,
And reign sole king of all the provinces:
Yea, stranger engines for the brunt of war
Than was the fiery keel at Antwerp bridge,
I’ll make my servile spirits to invent.

_Enter_ Valdes _and_ Cornelius.

Come, German Valdes, and Cornelius,
And make me blest with your sage conference.
Valdes, sweet Valdes, and Cornelius,
Know that your words have won me at the last,
To practice magic and concealed arts.
Philosophy is odious and obscure;
Both Law and Physic are for petty wits;
’Tis magic, magic, that hath ravish’d me.
Then, gentle friends, aid me in this attempt;
And I, that have with subtile syllogisms
Gravell’d the pastors of the German church,
And made the flow’ring pride of Wittenberg
Swarm to my problems, as th’ infernal spirits
On sweet Musæus when he came to hell;
Will be as cunning as Agrippa was,
Whose shadow made all Europe honour him.
_Valdes._ These books, thy wit, and our experience
Shall make all nations to canonize us.
As Indian Moors obey their Spanish lords,
So shall the Spirits of every element
Be always serviceable to us three.
Like lions shall they guard us when we please;
Like Almain Rutters with their horsemen’s staves,
Or Lapland giants trotting by our sides:
Sometimes like women, or unwedded maids,
Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows
Than have the white breasts of the Queen of Love.
From Venice they shall drag whole argosies,
And from America the golden fleece,
That yearly stuffs old Philip’s treasury;[16]
If learned Faustus will be resolute.
_Faustus._ As resolute am I in this
As thou to live, therefore object it not.’

In his colloquy with the fallen angel, he shews the fixedness of his determination:—

‘What is great Mephostophilis so passionate
For being deprived of the joys of heaven?
Learn thou of Faustus manly fortitude,
And scorn those joys thou never shalt possess.’

Yet we afterwards find him faltering in his resolution, and struggling with the extremity of his fate.

‘My heart is harden’d, I cannot repent:
Scarce can I name salvation, faith, or heaven:
Swords, poisons, halters, and envenom’d steel
Are laid before me to dispatch myself;
And long ere this I should have done the deed,
Had not sweet pleasure conquer’d deep despair.
Have I not made blind Homer sing to me
Of Alexander’s love and Œnon’s death?
And hath not he that built the walls of Thebes
With ravishing sounds of his melodious harp,
Made music with my Mephostophilis?
Why should I die then or basely despair?
I am resolv’d, Faustus shall not repent.
Come, Mephostophilis, let us dispute again,
And reason of divine astrology.’

There is one passage more of this kind, which is so striking and beautiful, so like a rapturous and deeply passionate dream, that I cannot help quoting it here: it is the Address to the Apparition of Helen.

‘_Enter_ Helen _again, passing over between two Cupids_.

_Faustus._ Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships,
And burned the topless tow’rs of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
Her lips suck forth my soul! See where it flies.
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for Heav’n is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.
I will be Paris, and for love of thee,
Instead of Troy shall Wittenberg be sack’d;
And I will combat with weak Menelaus,
And wear thy colours on my plumed crest;
Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel,
And then return to Helen for a kiss.
—Oh! thou art fairer than the evening air,
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars:
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter,
When he appear’d to hapless Semele;
More lovely than the monarch of the sky
In wanton Arethusa’s azure arms;
And none but thou shalt be my paramour.’

The ending of the play is terrible, and his last exclamations betray an anguish of mind and vehemence of passion, not to be contemplated without shuddering.

—‘Oh, Faustus!
Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,
And then thou must be damn’d perpetually.
Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heav’n,
That time may cease, and midnight never come.
Fair nature’s eye, rise, rise again, and make
Perpetual day; or let this hour be but a year,
A month, a week, a natural day,
That Faustus may repent, and save his soul.

(_The Clock strikes Twelve._)

It strikes, it strikes! Now, body, turn to air,
Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell.
Oh soul! be chang’d into small water-drops,
And fall into the ocean; ne’er be found.

(_Thunder. Enter the_ Devils.)

Oh! mercy, Heav’n! Look not so fierce on me!
Adders and serpents, let me breathe awhile!—
Ugly hell, gape not! Come not, Lucifer!
I’ll burn my books! Oh! Mephostophilis.’

Perhaps the finest _trait_ in the whole play, and that which softens and subdues the horror of it, is the interest taken by the two scholars in the fate of their master, and their unavailing attempts to dissuade him from his relentless career. The regard to learning is the ruling passion of this drama; and its indications are as mild and amiable in them as its ungoverned pursuit has been fatal to Faustus.

‘Yet, for he was a scholar once admir’d
For wondrous knowledge in our German schools,
We’ll give his mangled limbs due burial;
And all the students, clothed in mourning black,
Shall wait upon his heavy funeral.’

So the Chorus:

‘Cut is the branch that might have grown full strait,
And burned is Apollo’s laurel bough,
That sometime grew within this learned man.’

And still more affecting are his own conflicts of mind and agonising doubts on this subject just before, when he exclaims to his friends; ‘Oh, gentlemen! Hear me with patience, and tremble not at my speeches. Though my heart pant and quiver to remember that I have been a student here these thirty years; oh! would I had never seen Wittenberg, never read book!’ A finer compliment was never paid, nor a finer lesson ever read to the pride of learning.—The intermediate comic parts, in which Faustus is not directly concerned, are mean and grovelling to the last degree. One of the Clowns says to another: ‘Snails! what hast got there? A book? Why thou can’st not tell ne’er a word on’t.’ Indeed, the ignorance and barbarism of the time, as here described, might almost justify Faustus’s overstrained admiration of learning, and turn the heads of those who possessed it, from novelty and unaccustomed excitement, as the Indians are made drunk with wine! Goethe, the German poet, has written a drama on this tradition of his country, which is considered a master-piece. I cannot find, in Marlowe’s play, any proofs of the atheism or impiety attributed to him, unless the belief in witchcraft and the Devil can be regarded as such; and at the time he wrote, not to have believed in both, would have been construed into the rankest atheism and irreligion. There is a delight, as Mr. Lamb says, ‘in dallying with interdicted subjects’; but that does not, by any means, imply either a practical or speculative disbelief of them.

LUST’S DOMINION; _or_, THE LASCIVIOUS QUEEN, is referable to the same general style of writing; and is a striking picture, or rather caricature, of the unrestrained love of power, not as connected with learning, but with regal ambition and external sway. There is a good deal of the same intense passion, the same recklessness of purpose, the same smouldering fire within: but there is not any of the same relief to the mind in the lofty imaginative nature of the subject; and the continual repetition of plain practical villainy and undigested horrors disgusts the sense, and blunts the interest. The mind is hardened into obduracy, not melted into sympathy, by such bare-faced and barbarous cruelty. Eleazar, the Moor, is such another character as Aaron in Titus Andronicus, and this play might be set down without injustice as ‘pue-fellow’ to that. I should think Marlowe has a much fairer claim to be the author of Titus Andronicus than Shakespear, at least from internal evidence; and the argument of Schlegel, that it must have been Shakespear’s, because there was no one else capable of producing either its faults or beauties, fails in each particular. The Queen is the same character in both these plays; and the business of the plot is carried on in much the same revolting manner, by making the nearest friends and relatives of the wretched victims the instruments of their sufferings and persecution by an arch-villain. To shew however, that the same strong-braced tone of passionate declamation is kept up, take the speech of Eleazar on refusing the proffered crown:

‘What do none rise?
No, no, for kings indeed are Deities.
And who’d not (as the sun) in brightness shine?
To be the greatest is to be divine.
Who among millions would not be the mightiest?
To sit in godlike state; to have all eyes
Dazzled with admiration, and all tongues
Shouting loud prayers; to rob every heart
Of love; to have the strength of every arm;
A sovereign’s name, why ’tis a sovereign charm.
This glory round about me hath thrown beams:
I have stood upon the top of Fortune’s wheel,
And backward turn’d the iron screw of fate.
The destinies have spun a silken thread
About my life; yet thus I cast aside
The shape of majesty, and on my knee
To this Imperial state lowly resign
This usurpation; wiping off your fears
Which stuck so hard upon me.’

This is enough to shew the unabated vigour of the author’s style. This strain is certainly doing justice to the pride of ambition, and the imputed majesty of kings.

We have heard much of ‘Marlowe’s mighty line,’ and this play furnishes frequent instances of it. There are a number of single lines that seem struck out in the heat of a glowing fancy, and leave a track of golden fire behind them. The following are a few that might be given.

‘I know he is not dead; I know proud death
Durst not behold such sacred majesty.’

· · · · ·

‘Hang both your greedy ears upon my lips,
Let them devour my speech, suck in my breath.’

· · · · ·

——‘From discontent grows treason,
And on the stalk of treason, death.’

· · · · ·

‘Tyrants swim safest in a crimson flood.’

· · · · ·

The two following lines—

‘Oh! I grow dull, and the cold hand of sleep
Hath thrust his icy fingers in my breast’—

are the same as those in King John—

‘And none of you will bid the winter come
To thrust his icy fingers in my maw.’

and again the Moor’s exclamation,

‘Now by the proud complexion of my cheeks,
Ta’en from the kisses of the amorous sun’—

is the same as Cleopatra’s—

‘But I that am with Phœbus’ amorous pinches black’—&c.

Eleazar’s sarcasm,

——‘These dignities,
Like poison, make men swell; this rat’s-bane honour,
Oh, ’tis so sweet! they’ll lick it till they burst’—

shews the utmost virulence of smothered spleen; and his concluding strain of malignant exultation has been but tamely imitated by Young’s Zanga.

‘Now tragedy, thou minion of the night,
Rhamnusia’s pewfellow,[17] to thee I’ll sing,
Upon a harp made of dead Spanish bones,
The proudest instrument the world affords:
To thee that never blushest, though thy cheeks
Are full of blood, O Saint Revenge, to thee
I consecrate my murders, all my stabs,’ &c.

It may be worth while to observe, for the sake of the curious, that many of Marlowe’s most sounding lines consist of monosyllables, or nearly so. The repetition of Eleazar’s taunt to the Cardinal, retorting his own words upon him, ‘Spaniard or Moor, the saucy slave shall die’—may perhaps have suggested Falconbridge’s spirited reiteration of the phrase—‘And hang a calve’s skin on his recreant limbs.’

I do not think THE RICH JEW OF MALTA so characteristic a specimen of this writer’s powers. It has not the same fierce glow of passion or expression. It is extreme in act, and outrageous in plot and catastrophe; but it has not the same vigorous filling up. The author seems to have relied on the horror inspired by the subject, and the national disgust excited against the principal character, to rouse the feelings of the audience: for the rest, it is a tissue of gratuitous, unprovoked, and incredible atrocities, which are committed, one upon the back of the other, by the parties concerned, without motive, passion, or object. There are, notwithstanding, some striking passages in it, as Barabbas’s description of the bravo, Philia Borzo[18]; the relation of his own unaccountable villainies to Ithamore; his rejoicing over his recovered jewels ‘as the morning lark sings over her young;’ and the backwardness he declares in himself to forgive the Christian injuries that are offered him,[19] which may have given the idea of one of Shylock’s speeches, where he ironically disclaims any enmity to the merchants on the same account. It is perhaps hardly fair to compare the Jew of Malta with the Merchant of Venice; for it is evident, that Shakespear’s genius shews to as much advantage in knowledge of character, in variety and stage-effect, as it does in point of general humanity.

Edward II. is, according to the modern standard of composition, Marlowe’s best play. It is written with few offences against the common rules, and in a succession of smooth and flowing lines. The poet however succeeds less in the voluptuous and effeminate descriptions which he here attempts, than in the more dreadful and violent bursts of passion. Edward II. is drawn with historic truth, but without much dramatic effect. The management of the plot is feeble and desultory; little interest is excited in the various turns of fate; the characters are too worthless, have too little energy, and their punishment is, in general, too well deserved, to excite our commiseration; so that this play will bear, on the whole, but a distant comparison with Shakespear’s Richard II. in conduct, power, or effect. But the death of Edward II. in Marlow’s tragedy, is certainly superior to that of Shakespear’s King; and in heart-breaking distress, and the sense of human weakness, claiming pity from utter helplessness and conscious misery, is not surpassed by any writer whatever.

‘_Edward._ Weep’st thou already? List awhile to me,
And then thy heart, were it as Gurney’s is,
Or as Matrevis, hewn from the Caucasus,
Yet will it melt ere I have done my tale.
This dungeon, where they keep me, is the sink
Wherein the filth of all the castle falls.
_Lightborn._ Oh villains.
_Edward._ And here in mire and puddle have I stood
This ten days’ space; and lest that I should sleep,
One plays continually upon a drum.
They give me bread and water, being a king;
So that, for want of sleep and sustenance,
My mind’s distempered, and my body’s numbed:
And whether I have limbs or no, I know not.
Oh! would my blood drop out from every vein,
As doth this water from my tatter’d robes!
Tell Isabel, the Queen, I look’d not thus,
When for her sake I ran at tilt in France,
And there unhors’d the Duke of Cleremont.’

There are some excellent passages scattered up and down. The description of the King and Gaveston looking out of the palace window, and laughing at the courtiers as they pass, and that of the different spirit shewn by the lion and the forest deer, when wounded, are among the best. The Song ‘Come, live with me and be my love,’ to which Sir Walter Raleigh wrote an answer, is Marlowe’s.

Heywood I shall mention next, as a direct contrast to Marlowe in everything but the smoothness of his verse. As Marlowe’s imagination glows like a furnace, Heywood’s is a gentle, lambent flame that purifies without consuming. His manner is simplicity itself. There is nothing supernatural, nothing startling, or terrific. He makes use of the commonest circumstances of every-day life, and of the easiest tempers, to shew the workings, or rather the inefficacy of the passions, the _vis inertiæ_ of tragedy. His incidents strike from their very familiarity, and the distresses he paints invite our sympathy, from the calmness and resignation with which they are borne. The pathos might be deemed purer from its having no mixture of turbulence or vindictiveness in it; and in proportion as the sufferers are made to deserve a better fate. In the midst of the most untoward reverses and cutting injuries, good-nature and good sense keep their accustomed sway. He describes men’s errors with tenderness, and their duties only with zeal, and the heightenings of a poetic fancy. His style is equally natural, simple, and unconstrained. The dialogue (bating the verse), is such as might be uttered in ordinary conversation. It is beautiful prose put into heroic measure. It is not so much that he uses the common English idiom for everything (for that I think the most poetical and impassioned of our elder dramatists do equally), but the simplicity of the characters, and the equable flow of the sentiments do not require or suffer it to be warped from the tone of level speaking, by figurative expressions, or hyperbolical allusions. A few scattered exceptions occur now and then, where the hectic flush of passion forces them from the lips, and they are not the worse for being rare. Thus, in the play called A WOMAN KILLED WITH KINDNESS, Wendoll, when reproached by Mrs. Frankford with his obligations to her husband, interrupts her hastily, by saying

——‘Oh speak no more!
For more than this I know, and have recorded
Within the _red-leaved table_ of my heart.’

And further on, Frankford, when doubting his wife’s fidelity, says, with less feeling indeed, but with much elegance of fancy,

‘Cold drops of sweat sit dangling on my hairs,
Like morning dew upon the golden flow’rs.’

So also, when returning to his house at midnight to make the fatal discovery, he exclaims,

——‘Astonishment,
Fear, and amazement beat upon my heart,
Even as a madman beats upon a drum.’

It is the reality of things present to their imaginations, that makes these writers so fine, so bold, and yet so true in what they describe. Nature lies open to them like a book, and was not to them ‘invisible, or dimly seen’ through a veil of words and filmy abstractions. Such poetical ornaments are however to be met with at considerable intervals in this play, and do not disturb the calm serenity and domestic simplicity of the author’s style. The conclusion of Wendoll’s declaration of love to Mrs. Frankford may serve as an illustration of its general merits, both as to thought and diction.

‘Fair, and of all beloved, I was not fearful
Bluntly to give my life into your hand,
And at one hazard, all my earthly means.
Go, tell your husband: he will turn me off,
And I am then undone. I care not, I;
’Twas for your sake. Perchance in rage he’ll kill me;
I care not; ’twas for you. Say I incur
The general name of villain thro’ the world,
Of traitor to my friend: I care not, I;
Poverty, shame, death, scandal, and reproach,
For you I’ll hazard all: why what care I?
For you I love, and for your love I’ll die.’