398 Tucker Brooke, 



immediateh' the same distinguished actor, the same admirable plaj'-wright, 

 that Marlowe had been just before. Can Christopher Marlowe have been 

 a nom de guerre assumed for a time by Shakspeare? We know that actors 

 often make their debut under feigned names ; and, if Shakspeare quitted 

 home for any purpose of concealment, this policy was peculiarly natural . . . 

 This much is certain, that, during the five years of the nominal existence of 

 Marlowe, Shakspeare did not produce a single play . . . and that, from the 

 moment of Marlowe's nominal decease he produced at least two annually."^ 



Public interest in Marlowe's plays was much increased by 

 Edmund Kean's revival of the Jczv of Malta, April 24, 1818, and 

 by the controversy which this production led to. Apart from the 

 harlequin perversions of Doctor Faiistiis, by Mountford, Thur- 

 mond, and Rich, this seems to have been the first performance of 

 a play by Marlowe since the Faustns of 1663. The acting text, 

 prepared by Samson Penley, is of sufficient interest to merit 

 analysis. It is marked by large, but unacknowledged, plagiarisms 

 from Edivard 11}^^ 



Act I, scene i, 'A Landscape, near Malta,' opens with ]\Iathias, 

 'reading a letter' : 



"° In a review of Hazlitt's Lectures on the Age of Elizabeth in the same 

 periodical, September, 1820, the writer refers again to his theory : 



'We had occasion not long ago to throw out the suspicion that Christopher 

 Marlowe is but a borrowed designation of the great Shakspeare, who dis- 

 appears from all biographical research just at the moment when Marlowe 

 first comes on the stage; and who re-appears in his proper name in 1592, 

 when a strange story was put in circulation that Marlowe had been recently 

 assassinated with his own sword, which may be allegorically true.' Note a 

 curious revival of this suggestion, spontaneously and on different reasoning, 

 by T. C. Mendenhall: Did Martozve Write Shakespeare? Current Litera- 

 ture XXXII. 149-151, February, 1902. Very recently certain opponents of 

 the so-called Stratfordian understanding of Shakespeare have hit upon the 

 same idea. 



"^ 'Marlowe's Celebrated Tragedy of the Jew of Malta. In Five Acts. 

 With Considerable Alterations and Additions By S. Penley, Comedian. As 

 Performing with unanimous Approbation at the Theatre Royal, Drury-Lane 

 . . . 1818.' Genest (1832) who assumed the passages from Edzvard II to 

 be original with Penley, remarks (viii, p. 647) : 'as is usual in these cases, he 

 has inserted too much of his own, and omitted too much of the original ' 

 Genest's analyses of plots show that he had read Marlowe's plays, but reveal 

 no critical appreciation. In regard to Mountford's farce, he sa\'s (i, p. 

 452) : 'Marlowe has drawn the character of Faustus with the hand of a 

 master, and has written many passages very finely, but as he represents all 

 that happens to Faustus as matter of fact, his play is of course a strange 

 one — Mountfort has more judiciously ropresciitod the story as farcical' 



