184 C. F. Tucker Brooke, 



" fellows," Hemings and Condell gained for his works the same 

 textual purity which Ben Jonson obtained by the unusual expedient 

 of personal revision and publication. 



With the dramas of Marlowe, Kyd, Greene, and other popular 

 writers not connected with particular companies, the case is Yexy 

 different. For these poets the power of ensuring the form of their 

 productions ceased when the plays were once sold to an acting 

 company. Yet a popular play was likely to need frequent reno- 

 vation in the eyes of the company's manager, and the latter would 

 be likely to turn the manuscript over for revision to some hack in 

 his employ — often, doubtless, to one incapable of appreciating the 

 purposes of the original poet. Moreover, there was small chance 

 that a valuable stage play would reach the press even in the modi- 

 fied form in which the actors presented it; for the companies cer- 

 tainly frowned on publication. Therefore, a very large number of 

 the dramas of Marlowe and his contemporaries were printed sur- 

 reptitiously from damaged, imperfect, or superseded drafts less 

 authoritative even than the playhouse copies. 



In the case of no play of Marlowe, not even in the case oi Edward II, 

 which is least corrupt, can we feel assurance that there has survived 

 a text based upon the author's original manuscript and comparable 

 in authority with the texts of the Shakespeare and Jonson Folios. 

 The Contention and True Tragedy are particularly imperfect. The 

 dubious authenticity of the printed text should, therefore, be kept 

 in mind lest the occasional degeneration of the poetry into rank 

 doggerel or the sudden weakening of the dialogue be given undue 

 ^weight in judging the plays. It is largely on the basis of this textual 

 impurity that the theory of double or triple authorship of our plays 

 has arisen, the tendency being to ascribe to one poet what has sur- 

 vived more or less in its original state, while assigning to another 

 whatever the theatrical manipulator and the printer's devil have 

 united in deforming. 



Several parallels to passages in Marlowe's accepted dramas occur 

 in lines of 2 and J Henry VI not found in the Contention and True 

 Tragedy versions : 



2 Henry VI, 1, ii, 15 f. : 



" And never more abase our sight so low 



As to vouchsafe one glance unto the ground." 



Edward II, 1. 879 f. : 



" Whose mounting thoughts did never creepe so low, 

 As to bestow a looke on such as you." 



