388 Tucker Brooke, 



Anthony Wood, treats Marlowe incidentally in the course of his 

 article on Thomas Newton, the reputed author of Tamhurlaine. 

 Wood takes over most of what Phillips says, with characteristic 

 adaptation, Init he makes an advance hy denying Phillips' ascription 

 of Tauihurlainc to Newton, and then proceeds, in a passage which 

 has been quoted earlier, to rewrite the story of Marlowe's life by 

 the light of Beard, Meres, and his own imagination.*^' 



Gerard Langbaine's Nciv Catalogue of English Plays (1688) and 

 his Account of the English Draniatick Poets (1691) illustrate the 

 scanty and often fallacious ideas of Marlowe that survived. In 

 the Account, which appeared in the same year as Wood's Athcnae, 

 Langbaine likewise rebukes Phillips for his error about Tamhur- 

 laine: 'I know not how Mr. Philips came to ascribe Tamhurlaine 

 the Great to this Author ; for tho' Marloe's Name be not printed 

 in the Title-page, yet both in Mr. Kirkman's and my former Cata- 

 logue printed 1680, his Name is prefix'd.'^® Charles Gildon's ampli- 

 fication of Langbaine did nothing for Marlowe and little for any 

 other author. Its title is the best thing about this book : 'The 

 Lives and Characters of the English Dramatick Poets. Also an 

 Exact Account of all the Plays that were ever yet Printed in the 

 English Tongue . . . with Remarks and Observations on most 

 of the said Plays. First begun by Mr. Langbain, improv'd and 

 continued down to this Time, by a Careful Hand' (1699). The 

 manuscript notes of the anticjuaries, Thomas Coxeter (1689-1747) 

 and William Oldys (1696-1761), show no advance in knowledge 

 or sympathy. Oldys, writing in a copy of Langbaine (ed. 1691), 

 thus purlilindly sums up Marlowe : 'Christopher Marloe was born 

 about the former part of Edwd. VI. Educated at Cambridge, 

 afterwards an Actor and then a writer of plays.' 



"' See above, p. 355, n. 6. 



"* Kirkman's second catalogue (1671) first marked the author of Tamhur- 

 laine as Marlowe. Langbaine's disgust at PhilHps' obtuseness is a little 

 naive, however, for neither he nor Kirkman stands high as an authority on 

 Elizabethan authorship. It should be said in fairness, however, that Lang- 

 baine pointed out a number of the most interesting allusions to Marlowe. 



