360 Tucker Brooke, 



a Feaste of Fancie, or Poeticall Legendes, written by J. M. Gent. 

 i6oo.'^'^ Dekker, at the end of A Knight's Conjuring (1607) gives 

 a pleasant picture of lately deceased poets amusing themselves in 

 the Elysian Fields, where 'Marlow, Greene, and Peele had got 

 vnder the shades of a large vyne, laughing to see Nash (that was 

 but newly come to their Colledge,) still haunted with the sharpe 

 and Satyricall spirit that followed him here vpon eartJi.''^^ 



A digression on poets in Thomas Heywood's Hierarchie of the 

 Blessed Angels (1635, lib. iv., p. 206) remarks: 



Our moderne Poets to that passe are driuen, 

 Those names are curtal'd which they first had giuen ; 

 And, as we wisht to haue their memories drown'd, 

 We scarcely can afford them halfe their sound. 



Greene is instanced, and then 'Christ. Mario' : 



Mario, renown'd for his rare art and wit, 

 Could ne're attaine beyond the name of Kit ; 

 Although his Hero and Lcander did 

 Merit addition rather. 



Heywood then mentions Kyd, Watson, Nashe, Beaumont, Shake- 

 speare, Jonson, Fletcher and Webster, Dekker, May and Middle- 

 ton, and Ford, and concludes : 



Nor speake I this, that any here exprest, 

 Should thinke themselues lesse worthy than tlie rest, 

 Whose names haue their full syllable and sound; 

 Or that Franck, Kit, or lacke, are the least wound 

 Vnto their farne and merit. I for my part 

 (Thinke others what they please) accept that heart 

 Which courts my loue in most familiar phrase; 

 And that it takes not from my paines or praise. 

 If any one to me so bluntly com, 

 I hold he loues me best that calls me Tom. 



It was as the author of Hero and Leander and of the Passionate 

 ShepJierd that Marlowe enjoyed the highest personal reputation 

 in the period immediately following his death. Shakespeare's 

 allusion in As You Like It marks him distinctly as the author of 



"J. O. Halliwell, The Life of WiUiam Shakespeare, 1848, p. 191. The 

 poem has been conjecturally assigned to John Marston. 



"This pas.sage was evidently written just before publication, since it is 

 not found in Dekker's News from Hell (1606), of which A Knight's Con- 

 juring is a revision. 



