404 Tucker Brooke, 



the records of Bene't College (Corpus Christi), but found no entry 

 of Marlowe's name (the spelling Mc?'//» presumably blinded him). 

 A couple of articles which he contributed to the Gentleman's Maga- 

 zine in 1830, 'Of the Dramatic Writers who Preceded Shake- 

 speare, and especially of Christopher Marlowe,' gave the most 

 elaborate criticism of the poet yet attempted. Broughton's manu- 

 script annotations in a copy of the Robinson edition of 1826, now 

 in the British Museum, are still of considerable value. ^^" 



J. P. Collier's Poetical Decameron (1820), which attempted to 

 give popular interest to the minutiae of criticism, contains some 

 new points regarding Marlowe ; others were added in Collier's 

 notes on Edzvard II and The Jetv of Malta in the 1825 Dodsley. 

 Much more did Collier's History of English Dramatic Poetry to 

 tJie Time of Shakespeare (1832, 2d. ed. 1879) contribute to fix 

 Marlowe's place among his contemporaries and point out new 

 sources of information. Though Marlowe, only less than Shake- 

 speare, became the unfortunate subject of Collier's forgeries, the 

 fact remains that students of the former poet have gained far more 

 than they have suffered by his indefatigable activities. So much 

 can hardly be said of a later pioneer in dramatic research, F. G. 

 Fleay, whose many well-intentioned pages of Marlowe criticism 

 contain relatively little that is helpful. 



More modern in tone than those of Collier and more final than 

 Fleay 's are the judgments of Henry Hallam in the three pages 

 assigned to Marlowe in his Introduction to the Literature of 

 Europe in the ij, 16 and ij Centuries (1837—39). Hallam's 

 succinct appraisal has left little for more recent critics to unsay 

 or dispute. Of Tamhurlaine he remarks : 'This play has more 

 spirit and poetry than any which, upon clear grounds, can be shown 

 to have preceded it. We find also more action on the stage, a 

 shorter and more dramatic dialogue, a more figurative style, with 

 a far more varied and skilful versification.' 'The first two acts of 

 the Jew of Malta are more vigorously conceived, both as to 

 character and circumstance, than any other Elizabethan play, except 



""Other manuscript materials (likewise in the British Aluseum) which 

 bear ,on the history of Marlowe scholarship are the Collectanea Ecclesiastica 

 of Thomas Baker (1656-1740; Harleian 7042) and the Chorus Vaium of 

 Joseph Hunter (1783-1861 ; Additional AISS. 24, 488). Hunter frequently 

 copies from Baker. 



