39° Tucker Brooke, 



but carelessly printed and ill-edited volumes. This work nowhere 

 gives the editor's name, but it is stated on good authority to have 

 been George Robinson. Marlowe scholarship owes a considerable 

 debt to his pul)lishers, but practically nothing to him. 



Modern critical and bibliographical study of Marlowe, like 

 modern editions of his works, may be said to have begun about 

 the middle of the eighteenth century. The Latin account of Bishop 

 Tanner in 1748,^"- though of course faulty, manifests a spirit of 

 inquiry more advanced than that of Phillips, Wood, Langbaine. 

 Coxeter, and Oldys. Tanner, acknowledging his debt to Wood, 

 writes as follows : 



Marlovius (Christophorus) quondam in acadcmia Cantabrigicnsi musarum 

 alumnus : Postea actor scenicus : Deinde poeta dramaticus tragicus, paucis 

 inferior. Scripsit plurimas tragoedias, sc. — {Tamburlainc, two parts; The 

 Jew of Malta, Faustus, Lust's Dominion, and Edward II are listed ; then] 

 "Tragedy of Dido queen of Carthage" . . . Hanc perfecit et edidit Tho. 

 Nash, Lond. MDXCIV. 4*''. Hero et Lcander . . . Perfecit G. Chapman, 

 et edidit Lond. MDCVI. 8™. — Secundam hujus comoediae [sic] partem 

 scripsit carmine Anglico Henricus Petow .... Justo Dei judicio misere 

 vitam finiit, suo vuhieratus ense, ante A. D. 1593. Petowius in praefatione 

 ad secundam partem Herois et Leandri multa in Marlovii commendationem 

 adfert; hoc etiam facit Tho. Nash in Carmine elegiaco tragoediae Didonis 

 praefixo in obitum Christoph. Marlovii, ubi quatuor ejus tragoediarum 

 mentioncm facit, nee non et alterius De duce Guisio. Athen. Oxon. I. 338.'"^ 



It was in the latter half of the eighteenth century that actors 

 and scholars began the systematic quest of rare Marlowe quartos. 

 Dyce received from Mr. Bolton Corney the following vivid account 

 of such a search in 1764. The writer is identified by Dyce as Dr. 

 Ducarel (1713-1785), the noted antiriuarian and Keeper of the 

 Lambeth Library. 



One fine summer's day, in tlie year one thousand seven hundred and sixty- 

 four, going into an old book-shop kept by an old woman and her daughter, 

 on the north side of Middle-Row, Holbourn, to look for any ancient books; 

 not being" there long, looking round the shop, before Dodd the comedian 

 came in, to search, as he told me, for any of Kit Marlow's plays. I asked 



^^- Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica: sive, de Scriptoribus, qui in Anglia, 

 Scotia, et Ilibernia ad Saeculi XVII iniliuni flornentnt . . . .Utctore 

 Tlioina Tanncro . . . 1748, p. 512. 



"^ Nothing is known of the alleged elegy on Marlowe's death by Nasho, 

 which Tanner here first mentions and which Warton also asserted that he 

 had seen. It is not found in any extant copy of Dido. For a discussion of 

 the mystery see McKerrow's Nashc, ii. 335-337. 



