It is not alone the inflated ambition and miraculous success of the hero, that raise and swell the effect of this play to dimensions so astounding. His chief followers and his chief enemies express themselves with hardly inferior energy; and our minds are filled with amazement at the hundreds of thousands under various kings and emperors arrayed for and against the magnificent conqueror.1

"Tamburlaine" was Marlowe's first play, but the impetuous swell of his conceptions cannot be said to have been much moderated as he went on. His "raptures all air and fire" were not, I believe, the extravagance of youth; still. less could they have been, as Mr Collier seems to think, the result of inexperience in blank verse, and mistaken effort to make up by bombastic terms for the absence of rhyme; they were part of the constitution of this individual man. It is impossible to say what he might have done had his life been longer: he might have exhausted this high astounding vein, and proved himself capable of opening up another. But as long as he lived he found fuel for his lofty raptures. He could not repeat another conqueror of the world, but his heroes are all expanded to the utmost possible limit of their circumstances. The Jew of Malta is an incarnation of the devil himself: he is no less universal in his war against all mankind that are within reach of his power: he fights singlehanded with monstrous instruments of death against a whole city, and does not scruple to poison even his own daughter. Faustus is not a malevolent being, but his ambition is even greater than Tamburlaine's; he soars beyond the petty possibilities of humanity, leagues himself with superhuman powers, and rides through space in a fiery chariot exploring the secrets of the universe. Even in his historical play of

1 The resources of the scene-painter and the stage machinist were not then developed. A board with a name upon it indicated the place of the action; and supernatural personages descended and reascended only when the carpenter "could conveniently." But it seems probable that part of the success of Tamburlaine was due to its spectacular effect, introducing as it did potentates in the costumes of their several regions. Greene and Peele seem to have taken the hint. Belinus and Abdelmelec may have invoked the aid of the Turkish emperor to afford an opportunity of exhibiting the gorgeous costumes of himself and his retinue of kings.

Edward II., where he is bound by the shackles of recent history more or less known to his audience, the conflict of explosive passions is superhuman in its energies; the king's court is a hell of extravagant affection and fiendish spite, wanton tyranny and mutinous unapproachable fiercenessa den of wild beasts.1

It is sometimes said by way of superlative eulogy that the tragedy of Edward II. is worthy of Shakespeare. Such a notion could not be held for a moment by any one accustomed to draw distinctions among the objects of his admiration. The manner of Marlowe is as different as possible from the manner of Shakespeare. Not to enter into minute comparisons of expression, which, though somewhat tedious, is perhaps the most distinct way of conveying how radically they differ, it is sufficient to mention two great points of contrast, significant of the deepest differences of constitution. Marlowe has very little humour, and very little sense of varied aspects of character. Shakespeare is said to have borrowed the idea of Richard II. from Marlowe's Edward II., and his Hotspur from Marlowe's young Mortimer. Now compare the conceptions of the two dramatists. Edward and Richard agree only in being weak and wasteful kings, Mortimer and Hotspur in being irrepressible noblemen, with a natural delight in war. On the throne and in the dungeon Edward is more contemptible than Richard. Edward, indeed, is a spoiled child of Titanic breed: he has the infatuated loves and spites of a spoiled child; and the cruel indignities put upon him after his dethronement, seem aimed in contempt at his effeminacy. He clings to Gaveston as to a forbidden toy. When his nobles stalk defiantly from his presence and leave him to storm in monologue, he takes revenge by bullying his wife. In the true spirit of a wayward child, he loads Gaveston with honours to spite the fractious noblemen: he affirms that he cares for the throne only as a means of indulging his favourite. Shakespeare's Richard II. is a

1 This would almost seem to be the original of M. Taine's conception of sixteenth-century England.

very different being. He is said to be wasteful and given to favouritism but in all his appearances upon the stage, he comports himself with royal dignity. The faults that work his overthrow are impetuous indiscretion, and a greater love for Fine Art than the duties of government. His reverses turn upon a much finer pivot than Edward's gross abuse of power: he might have kept his throne had he not on a random impulse stopped the combat between Bolingbroke and Mowbray and sent them both into banishment :—

"O when the king did throw his warder down,
His own life hung upon the staff he threw.”

Richard's death is heroic; and his reflections in the dungeon may be contrasted with Gaveston's schemes for the amusement of Edward, as showing the higher reach of his philosophic and artistic culture. A close comparison of Mortimer and Hotspur reveals still more striking dissimilarities. Mortimer is outspoken and delights in war like Hotspur, but he shows no trace of the amiable qualities of Harry Percy. He is actuated by a coarse ambition to marry the queen and seize the throne, and is the author of the gross cruelty wreaked upon the helpless king. Harry Percy is presented in more varied as well as more amiable lights. He chafes and "chaffs" Glendower with impudence privileged by its happy audacity. He is wrapt up in warlike schemes: he gives playful evasive answers to his wife's questions; sometimes he is so preoccupied that he does not answer till an hour afterwards. He is fondly beloved by his Kate while he is alive, he is her "mad ape," her "paraquito," a dear provoking fellow; and when he dies, her noble eulogy of his chivalrous nature shows how deep was his hold of her affections. To his rival Hal, his overpowering devotion to war sometimes appears a little comical; but his courage and prowess receive all deference and honour. Of all those traits that give Harry Percy individual life, there is not the faintest prefiguration in Marlowe's young Mortimer. Character-painting, indeed, was not in Marlowe's way his personages do not show many-sided character in

their different relations. All his creations relax under the charms of love, and express themselves with glowing affection; but they all relax and warm into raptures very much after the same fashion. There is no such discrimination in Marlowe as the distinction between the wooing of Troilus and the wooing of Diomede, not to speak of finer distinctions. Even Edward's love for Gaveston and the Jew's love for his daughter flow into the same current of language as Tamburlaine's love for Zenocrate, and Faustus's admiration of Helen.

The fragment of "Hero and Leander" is incomparably the finest product of Marlowe's genius : it is one of the chief treasures of the language. The poet is fairly intoxicated with the beauty of his subject: he has thought about the two lovers, and dreamed about them, and filled his imagination with their charms; he writes with ecstasy as if obeying an impulse that he can resist no longer, and in every other line expressions escape him that have all the warmth of involuntary bursts of admiration. He dashes into the subject with passionate eagerness, outlining the situation with a few impatient strokes, and at once proceeding to descant on the beauty of Hero :

:

"On Hellespont, guilty of true lovers' blood,
In view and opposite two cities stood,
Sea-borderers, disjoined by Neptune's might;
The one Abydos, the other Sestos hight.
At Sestos Hero dwelt; Hero the fair,
Whom young Apollo courted for her hair,
And offered as a dower his burning throne
Where she should sit for men to gaze upon.

Some say for her the fairest Cupid pined,
And looking in her face was strooken blind.
But this is true; so like was one the other,
As he imagined Hero was his mother;
And oftentimes into her bosom flew,
About her naked neck his bare arms threw,
And laid his childish head upon her breast,
And with still panting rock, there took his rest.

So lovely fair was Hero, Venus' nun,
As Nature wept thinking she was undone,
Because she took more from her than she left,
And of such wondrous beauty her bereft :
Therefore in sign her treasure suffered wrack,
Since Hero's time hath half the world been black."

From Hero he passes to Leander—

"Amorous Leander, beautiful and young,
Whose tragedy divine Musæus sung,

Dwelt at Abydos; since him dwelt there none
For whom succeeding times make greater moan."

Leander's beauty is painted in even more glowing colours than Hero's. In his picture of the infatuated doating of Edward II. on Piers Gaveston, Marlowe had already shown that he understood the passion that may be felt for the beauty of young men, and here we have a stronger evidence. He describes Leander with something like a Greek feeling for his beauties, his arms, his smooth breast, his white shoulder, his orient cheeks and lips: some of the particulars would seem to have been adopted by Shakespeare and applied to the praise of his beautiful friend. The poem as a whole is more voluptuous and earnestly impassioned in sentiment than Shakespeare's corresponding poem of "Venus and Adonis :" the poet did not live to carry the tale into its tragic stage.

III. ROBERT GREENE (1560-1592).

To class Greene among the dramatists is rather a harsh measure for his reputation, although the arrangement is justified by his relations with the stage. When Shakespeare began to write, Marlowe and Greene were the most firmly established playwrights, and both himself and his friends testify to the eagerness of rival managers to obtain the hastiest of Greene's performances. Yet Greene's plays are by no means the best fruits of his pen. He began his literary career as an author of love-tales or novels in prose