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THE POPULAR EDUCATOR. 



or any other external appliance ; and this, probably, in an ago 

 of such superabundant power, proved favourable to dramatic 

 genius. 



The greatness of the Elizabethan drama, as of other branches 

 of literature in the same era, belongs to the latter half of the 

 queen's reign, and still more strikingly to that of her successor. 



John Lilly, whose " Euphues " and the fashion of Euphuism 

 to which it gave a name we have already mentioned in a former 

 lesson, was also a dramatist of a considerable reputation. His 

 plays are founded upon mythological stories, one of the best 

 known being upon the story of " Endymion." These plays have 

 much of the character of the masque, of which we shall 

 have to speak hereafter ; and they seem to have been designed 

 in the first instance for representation at court rather than on 

 the public stage, though they afterwards made their way to the 

 regular theatre. 



Thomas Kyd, also one of the earlier of the Elizabethan drama- 

 tists, is known to fame chiefly as the author of two very remark- 

 able plays, "Jeronimo," and its continuation, "The Spanish 

 Tragedy." These plays are tragedies of the gloomiest cast, 

 tut they show very great dramatic power in dealing with a purely 

 tragic subject, and they attained a wonderful popularity. There 

 Is much doubt, however, whether the finest passages in the 

 latter play, those which Lamb describes as the very salt of the 

 play, are the work of Kyd, or of Ben Jonson, to whom they 

 have been commonly ascribed, or of some other dramatist. 



George Peele, to whom a very high place among the Eliza- 

 bethan dramatists has been assigned by some critics, is chiefly 

 distinguished by the ease and melody of his versification. This 

 is strongly shown in his most celebrated play, " David and 

 Bethsabe ;" but the power which this play shows is more 

 descriptive than dramatic. 



Robert Greene was a vigorous and prolific writer of pamphlets 

 and short miscellaneous prose pieces of various kinds. He was 

 also a popular dramatist, his plays being chiefly comic. 



Thomas Lodge was equally known as a physician and a 

 -dramatist. His best known play is " The "Wounds of Civil War, 

 lively set forth in the true tragedies of Marius and Sylla." 



But of the dramatists before Shakespeare, incomparably the 

 greatest was Marlowe. Christopher Marlowe was the son of a, 

 shoemaker at Canterbury, and was born in that town in 1563. 

 He received his early education at a free school in Canterbury, 

 and was afterwards, probably by the bounty of some relative or 

 other patron, sent to the University of Cambridge. He had 

 thus, like most if not all of the earlier Elizabethan dramatists, 

 the benefit of a liberal education. After taking his degree, he 

 followed the example of many young men of similar class and 

 education in that day, and became an actor. The remainder of 

 his short life was spent in the wildest debauchery; and he 

 died in 1593, at the age of thirty, it is said from a wound 

 received in a drunken tavern quarrel. In a life so short, and 

 spent as his was spent, Marlowe's works could scarcely have 

 been very numerous, and they are of very unequal merit. Some 

 of his plays, as that of "Tamburlaine," though never without 

 passages of great poetic beauty, are deformed by the grossest 

 extravagance of conception, expressed in the most inflated and 

 bombastic language. So much is this the case that some scenes 

 might well pass for burlesque, rather than serious dramatic 

 writing ; as, for instance, the famous scene in " Tamburlaine," 

 in which the Tartar chief appears in a chariot drawn by captive 

 Icings with bits in their mouths, reins in his left hand, and in 

 his right a whip, and thus addresses the kings : 



" Holla, ye pampered jades cf Asia ; 

 What ! can ye draw but twenty miles a day ?" 



"Whether these faults are to be attributed to the extravagance 

 of youth, or to a deliberate intention on the part of a man who 

 had his bread to make to write down to the level of his audience, 

 fl-sd gratify the lower tastes of the groundlings, it is at least 

 clear that the dramatic genius of Marlowe is not to be measured 

 by such plays as " Tamburlaine." 



Ths three plays by which Marlowe is to be judged, not only as 

 to what his powers were, but what they might have been had he 

 lived to the full maturity of his genius, are " The Jew of Malta," 

 "Doctor Faustus," and "Edward II." Barabbas, the Jew, in 

 the first of these plays, is a monster of avarice and cruelty, 

 painted with great power ; but in obedience, no doubt, to the 

 popular notion of Jews in his day, Marlowa has painted a 

 monster after all, rather than a man. It has often been sug- 



gested that Shakespeare's Shy lock was in some degree taken 

 from Marlowe's Barabbas ; but, though the idea of introducing 

 such a character may well have been borrowed by Shakespeare 

 from his predecessor, the characters themselves have little in 

 common, and are radically unlike. " Edward II." is a play of 

 far higher merit. It contains passages showing a power cf 

 pathos rarely equalled. But the greatest of Marlowe's plays is 

 " Faustus." It is founded upon the same story as the " Faust" 

 of Goethe ; but the treatment of the story by the two poets is as 

 different as might have been expected in the case of the actor of 

 the sixteenth century and the philosopher of the close of the 

 eighteenth. 



In Marlowe's hands, the story is simply that of a greai 

 scholar and man of science who, devoting himself to the for- 

 bidden arts of magic, sells his soul to the devil, in return for 

 four-and-twenty years of enjoyment of all earthly and sensual 

 pleasures ; and the interest of his play arises out of the tragic 

 scenes for which the story gives occasion. The closing scene of 

 Faustus' life well illustrates Marlowe's powers. 



The end of the twenty-four years is very near, and Faustus is 

 left alone by his scholars to meet his fate : 



[The clod; strikes eleven.] 

 Faustus." Ah, Faustua, 

 Now hast them but one bare hour to live, 

 And then thou must be damned perpetually ! 

 Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven, 

 That time may cease, and midnight never come ! 

 Fair Nature's eye, rise, rise again, and make 

 Perpetual day ; or let this hour be but 

 A j'ear, a month, a week, a natural day, 

 That Faustus may repent and save hia soul ! 

 O lente, lente currite, noctis equi ! 

 The stars move still, time rues, the clock will strike, 

 The devil will come, and Faustus must be damued. 

 Oh, I'll leap up to my God ! Who pulls me down ? 

 See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament f 

 One drop would save my soul ; half a drop. Ah, my Christ I 

 Ah ! rend not my heart for naming of my Christ ! 

 Yet will I call on him. Oh, spare me, Lucifer ! 

 Where is it now ? 'Tis gone ; and see where God 

 Stretcheth out his arm, and bends his awful brows ! 

 Mountains and hills come, coine and fall oa me, 

 And hide me from the heavy wrath of God ! 

 No, no ! 



Ihen will I headlong run into the earth : 

 Earth gape ! Oh, no, it will net harbour me ! 

 You stars that roigned at my nativity, 

 Whose influence hath allotted death and hell, 

 Now draw up Faustus, like a foggy mist, 

 Into the entrails of yon labouring cloud ; 

 That when you vomit forth into the air, 

 My limbs may issue from ycur smoky mouth, 

 So that my soul may but ascend to heaven ! 



[The clock strikes the half -hour. 



Ah, half the hour is past ! 'Twill all be past anon. 

 O God, if thou wilt not have mercy on my soul 

 Yet for Christ's sake, whose blood has ransomed me, 

 Impose some end to my incessant pain ; 

 Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years, 

 A hundred thousand, and at last be saved ! 

 Oh, no end is limited to damned souls ! 

 Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul ? 

 Or why is this immortal that thou hast ? 

 Ah, Pythagoras' metempsychosis ! were that true, 

 This soul should fly from me, and I be changed 

 Into some brutish beast ! All beasts are happy, 

 For, when they die, 



Their souls are soon dissolved in elements ; 

 But mine must live still, to be plagued in hel!. 

 Curs'd be the parents that engendered thee ! 

 No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer, 

 That hath deprived thee of the joys of heaven. 



[The clock strikes twelve.] 



Oh, it strikes, it strikes ! Now, body, turn to air, 

 Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell ! 



[Thunder and lightning.'] 

 Oh, soul, be changed into little water-drops, 

 And fall into the ocean ; ne'er be found. 



[.Enter devils.] 



My Gcd, my God, look not so fierce on me ! 

 Adders and serpents, let me breathe awhile ! 

 Ugly hell, gape not ! come not, Lucifer ! 

 I'll turn my books : ah ! Mephistophelis !" 



[Exeunt devils viith FatwftwJ 



