356 Tucker Brooke, 



William Vaughan's Golden Grove (1600) shows, apparently, 

 more actual knowledge of Marlowe's fate, but betrays a Puritanical 

 bias no less strong than that of Beard : 



Not inferiour to these was one Christopher Marlow by profession a play- 

 maker, who, as it is reported, about 7. yeeres a-goe^ wrote a booke against 

 the Trinitie : but see the effects of Gods iustice ; it so hapned, that at Det- 

 ford, a little village about three miles distant from London, as he meant 

 to stab with his ponyard one named Ingram, that had inuited him thither 

 to a feast, and was then playing at tables, he quickly perceyuing it, so 

 auoyded the thrust, that withall drawing out his dagger for his defence, hee 

 stabd this Marlow into tlie eye, in such sort, tliat his braines comming out 

 at the daggers point, hee shortlie after dyed. Thus did God, the true 

 executioner of diuine iustice, worke the ende of impious Atheists. 



Finally, in the second part of The Return from Parnassus 

 (1601?) we find an echo of the Puritan note, derived probably 

 from Beard, Meres, or Vaughan, in the trite coupling of artistic 

 genius and hellish immorality : — 



Marlozve was happy in his buskind muse, 



Alas vnhappy in his life and end. 



Pitty it is that wit so ill should dwell. 



Wit lent from heauen, but vices sent from hell. 



Ing. Our Theatre hath lost, Pluto hath got, 



A Tragick penman for a driery plot.^ 



In a degree unusual even among university graduates Marlowe 

 seems to have had a reputation for learning, and for a certain 

 aloofness which might be ascribed, as one desired, to dignity or 

 to pride. 'Great folly were it in me,' says the printer of Tauibur- 

 laine (1590), 'to commend vnto your wisedomes, either the elo- 

 quence of the Author that writ them, or the worthiness of the matter 



upon, to stab, him, with his dagger ; But the serving-man being very quick, 

 so avoided the stroke, that withal catching hold of Mario's wrist, he stab'd 

 his own dagger into his own head, in such sort, that notwithstanding all the 

 means of surgery that could be wrought, he shortly after died of his wound, 

 before the year 1593.' 



'The second edition, dated 1608, says '14. yeres a-goe'. The passage 

 quoted occurs in botli editions on signatures C 4 verso and C 5. 



* Dyce thinks the lines of this writer, 'whom no one will suspect of 

 fanaticism,' a serious arraignment of the poet's character. There seems, 

 however, no reason to suspect this Cambridge undergraduate of any inde- 

 pendent knowledge of Marlowe's life in London. The wording of this 

 allusion to Marlowe's end seems borrowed from Pecle's in The Honour of 

 the Garter (1593)- Cf. below, p. 358. 



