354 Tucker Brooke, 



Marlowe's reputation suffered yet more when the sudden and 

 mysterious death of the 'atheistical' playwright made it convenient 

 for Puritan pamphleteers to use his character to point a moral. 

 The first of these was Richard Beard in chapter xxv of his Theatre 

 of Gods ludgcjnents (1597) : 



Not inferiour to any of the former in Atheisme & impiety, and equall to 

 all in maner of punishment was one of our own nation, of fresh and late 

 memory, called Mnrlin [marginal note : Marlow], by profession a scholler, 

 brought vp from his youth in the Vniuersitie of Cambridge, but by practise 

 a playmaker, and a Poet of scurrilitie, who by giuing too large a swinge to 

 his owne wit, and suffering his lust to haue the full raines, fell (not without 

 iust desert) to that outrage and extremitie, that hee denied God and his 

 Sonne Christ, and not only in word blasphemed the trinitie, but also (as it 

 is credibly reported) wrote bookes against it, affirming our Sauiour to be 

 but a deceiuer, and Moses to be but a coniurer and seducer of the people, 

 and the holy Bible to be but vaine and idle stories, and all religion but a 

 deuice of pollicie. But see what a hooke the Lord put in the nosthrils of 

 this barking dogge : It so fell out, that in London streets as he purposed to 

 stab one whome hee ought a grudge vnto with his dagger, the other party 

 perceiuing so auoided the stroke, that withall catching hold of his wrest, he 

 stabbed his owne dagger into his owne head, in such sort, that notwithstanding 

 all the meanes of surgerie that could be wrought, hee shortly after died 

 thereof. The manner of his death being so terrible (for hee euen cursed and 

 blasphemed to his last gaspe, and togither with his breath an oth flew out of 

 his mouth) that it was not only a manifest signe of Gods iudgement, but also 

 an horrible and fearefull terrour to all that beheld him. But herein did the 

 iustice of God most notably appeare, in that hee compelled his owne hand 

 which had written those blasphemies to be the instrument to punish him, and 

 that in his braine, which had deuised the same. I would to God (and I pray it 

 from my heart) that all Atheists in this realme, and in all the world beside, 

 would by the remembrance and consideration of this example, either forsake 

 their horrible impietie, or that they might in like manner come to destruction : 

 and so that abominable sinne which so flourisheth amongst men of greatest 

 name, might either be quite extinguished and rooted out, or at least 

 smothered and kept vnder, that it durst not shew it head any more in the 

 worlds eye.'^ 



sion of the poet's temerarious conduct would be enhanced by the circum- 

 stances of his death. 



° The Theatre of Gods ludiicmctits: Or, .•/ Collection of Histories out of 

 Sacred, Ecclesiastical!, and prophane Authoiirs, concerning the adntirable 

 ludgements of God vpon the transgressours of liis coniiiMndeinents. Trans- 

 lated out of French, and Augmented by more than three hundred Examples, 

 by Th. Beard. The obvious error, by which Marlowe's death is stated to 

 have occurred 'in London streets,' is omitted in the 1612 edition; but it 

 recurs in Edmund Rudierde's abridgment. The Thunderbolt of Gods IJ'rath 



