CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE. 1563-4-1593 Of the life of Christopher Marlowe-the most distinguished of the dramatists who immediately preceded Shakspearenothing is known except its beginning and its end. After we have traced him from school to college, and from thence to London, he disappears in the crowds of the metropolis, where he seems to have spent his few remaining years in the service of the stage. Christopher, or, as he is familiarly called by his contemporaries, Kit Marlowe, was the son of John Marlowe, a shoemaker, and was born at Canterbury in February, 1563-4. He received the elements of his education at the King's School in that city, and was afterwards placed at Benet (Corpus Christi) College, Cambridge, where he matriculated as a pensioner on the 17th March, 1580-1. There were scholarships in the gift of the King's School, but it does not appear that Marlowe obtained admission to the University as a scholar; and as it is unlikely that his father's circumstances were sufficiently prosperous to bear the expenses of his collegiate course, we must infer that the cost was defrayed by the assistance of some rich friend or patron of the family. This conjecture is strengthened by Marlowe's Latin verses to the memory of Sir Roger Manwood,* who resided in the neighbourhood of Canterbury, and was munificent in the dispensation of his bounties. To that gentleman Marlowe was, probably, indebted for the completion of his education. He passed through the University with credit, taking his degree of A.B. in 1583, and that of A.M. in 1587. Whatever might have been the views of his friends with respect to *See post, p. 236. his settlement in life, Marlowe early relinquished all intention of entering any of the professions which usually close the vista of a collegiate course. Before he had acquired his last University honour, he had already closely connected himself with the theatres. His first play, Tamburlaine the Great,* was brought out previously to 1587, and, if the following statement may be relied upon, his appearance as a dramatist was only the sequel to former relations with the stage as an actor. 'Christopher Marlowe,' says Philips, a kind of second Shakspeare (whose contemporary he was), not only because, like him, he rose from an actor to be a maker of plays, though inferior both in fame and merit; but also because in his begun poem of Hero and Leander, he seems to have a resemblance of that clear and unsophisticated wit which is natural to that incomparable poet.'t There is an error of some magnitude in this passage. Marlowe was not the contemporary, but the predecessor of Shakspeare; and it is a still wider departure from truth to describe him as a second Shakspeare, meaning thereby a follower who nearly equalled his master. The strict observance of chronology, as far as it can be fixed, is indispensable to the history of what is loosely called the Elizabethan drama. The whole period it occupied was about half a century; and, considering how much was accomplished within that time, every step of the progress, and each individual's share in it, becomes of importance. Yet there is hardly any portion of our literary annals in which greater confusion prevails; and Peele and Massinger, Kyd and Webster, Greene and Ben Jonson, who were really distant from each other, are commonly mixed up together, as if, instead of forming an interlinked series, they were all writing simultaneously. It might be a question of minor biographical interest, whether Marlowe was a little before Shakspeare, or Shakspeare a little before First printed in 1590. + Theatrum Poetarum, Marlowe; but it is a question of a very different order of interest, whether the weighty versification of Tamburlaine preceded or followed the delicate melody of the Midsummer Night's Dream. Dates are here essential to enable us to trace the course of our dramatic poetry from its source to that point where the stream is at its full. Marlowe is close to the spring; to him is ascribed, on apparently valid grounds, the first use of blank verse in dramatic composition; and we must, therefore, treat him as a poet who struck out a path for himself, and not as a follower of Shakspeare. Indeed, it may be said that Marlowe had closed his account not only with the stage, but with all human affairs, before Shakspeare was known as an original dramatist. At all events, it is certain that the first notice we have of Shakspeare was published only a few months before the death of Marlowe, and that it does not recognise him even as a maker of plays of his own, but as an adapter of the plays of others, including some of Marlowe's amongst them.* Philips is so careless in his statements that he sometimes vitiates a fact by his mere manner of presenting it; as, for instance, when he says that Marlowe ‘rose from an actor to be a maker of plays.' There was a tradition in his time, which is still preserved in an old ballad, that Marlowe had been upon the stage; it was known also that Shakspeare was a member of the Lord Chamberlain's company; but there is no authority whatever for the assertion that they had been actors before they became dramatists. The reverse is much more likely to be true of Marlowe. The ballad which refers to his stage career is not, perhaps, a very safe authority in itself, having been written soon after his death, for the express purpose of exposing the irregularities and errors of his life and opinions; but upon this single point, supported by Philips, it may be credited. The doggrel is precise in its allegations, See ante, p. 27. |