II. FROM THE CLOSING OF THE THEATRES TO THE 



APPEARANCE OF DODSLEY'S SELECT 



COLLECTION OF OLD PLAYS 



(1642- I 744) 



Marlowe was not one of the Elizabethans whose popularity 

 survived the Elizaljethan era. His 'translunary' genius was equally 

 alien to Puritan and to Restoration taste. The allusions already 

 cited show, indeed, that, as a dramatist at least, his reputation 

 had shrunk to very small proportions before the death of James I. 

 On the outbreak of the civil wars it fell into almost total eclipse. 

 There was no edition of any of his works between 1642 and the 

 appearance of the first Dodsley in 1744, except the spurious Lust's 

 Dominion and the shabby 1663 perversion of Doctor Faustus.^- 

 The encyclopedic poem 'On the Time-Poets,'®" published in 1656, 

 speaks of Jonson, Fletcher, Beaumont, Shakespeare, Massinger, 

 Chapman, Daborne, Sylvester, Quarles, May, Sandys, Digges, 

 Daniel, Drayton, Wither, Browne, Shirley, Ford, Middleton, Hey- 

 wood, Churchyard, Dekker, Basse, Brome, Chaucer, and Spenser ; 

 but has not a word to say of Marlowe. Fuller's Worthies of 

 England (1662) is equally silent. Dryden never mentions him; 

 nor does Downes, whose Roscius Anglicanus (1708) records the 

 dramatic performances tliat took place between 1641 and 1660. 

 The only evidence that Marlowe's influence was still alive in the 

 Restoration age may be found in the apparent reminiscences of 

 Mephistophilis in Milton's Satan ; ])ut even Milton does not any- 

 where refer specifically to Marlowe. 



A very few casual allusions there are to the past popularity of 

 the Marlowe plays. Those of Gayton and Cowley, belonging 

 really to the period before the suppression of theatres, though 

 repeated later, have been already quoted. Davenant says in his 

 PlayJioiisc to be Let (ca. 1663) : 



There's an old tradition. 

 That in the times of mighty "Tamburlaine," 



^ Moseley's entry of 'a comedie called The Maidens Holiday by Christo- 

 pher Marlow and John Day,' April 8, 1654, would indicate perhaps that 

 Marlowe's name still carried some weight ; as would the statement, 'Written 

 by Christofer Marloe, Gent.' on Kirkman's two title-pages of Lust's 

 Doninioii (1657, 1661). 



** In Clioyce Drollery, Son:::s. and Sonnets. Reprinted by Halliwell in 

 The Shakespeare Society's Papers iii. 172-174, 1847. 



