The Rev. Mr. Dyce omits the play of _Lust's Dominion, or the Lascivious
Queen_, from the excellent, and (in all other respects) complete edition of
Marlowe's _Works_ which he has lately published, considering it to have
been "distinctly shown by Mr. Collier" that it could not have been the work
of that poet. I must say, however, that the argument for its rejection does
not appear to me by any means conclusive. It runs thus: in the first act is
presented the death of a certain King Philip of Spain; and this King Philip
must be Philip II., because in a tract printed in the _Somers' Collection_,
giving an account of the "last words" of that monarch, are found passages
which are plainly copied in the play. Now, Philip II. did not die till
1598, and the tract was not published till 1599, whereas Marlowe's death
took place in 1593. _Ergo_, Marlowe could not have written _Lust's
Dominion_. But we know that it was the constant custom of managers to cause
acting plays to be altered and added to from time to time: the curious
_Diary of Manager Henslowe_ is full of entries of the payment of sums of
twenty shillings or so, to the authors whom he kept, for "adycyons" to the
works of others. And surely it is no forced hypothesis to suppose that some
literary cobbler employed to touch up Marlowe's work, finding a King Philip
in it, should have thought to improve and give it an air of historic truth,
by introducing the circumstances furnished by the pamphlet into the
death-scene. Apart from these particulars, the king is neither Philip I.
nor Philip II., but a mere King Philip of Spain in general, quite superior
to historical considerations. The positive evidence in support of Marlowe's
authorship is tolerably strong, though not absolutely conclusive. The
earliest extant edition of the play bears his name at full length on the
title-page. It is true that the date of that edition is 1650, sixty-six
years after his death: still the publisher must have had _some_ reasonable
ground for attributing the work to him; and in all cases comparatively
little value ought to be attached to negative, when opposed by positive
evidence. We {254} need look no farther than this very edition of Marlowe
for an illustration of the possibility such a combination of circumstances
as I have supposed. In the earliest known edition of the play of _Dr.
Faustus_ is found an allusion to a certain Dr. Lopez, who did not attain
notoriety (by being hanged) till after Marlowe's death; but Mr. Dyce very
justly only infers from this that the particular passage is an
interpolation. According to the reasoning applied to _Lust's Dominion_,
Faustus also should have been expelled summarily, upon this objection: and
yet, in the case of that play, we know that such a conclusion from such
premises would have been erroneous. I am unwilling to lay much stress on
the internal evidence to be drawn from the language and conduct of the play
itself, because I am aware how little reliance can be placed on reasoning
drawn from such observations; but no one, I think, will deny that there are
many passages which at least _might_ have been written by Marlowe: and, on
the whole, I submit that it would have been more satisfactory if Mr. Dyce
had included it in this edition.
He has changed his practice since he printed among Middleton's works (and
rightly) the play of the _Honest Whore_, a play generally--I believe,
universally--attributed to Dekker alone, on the authority of one single
entry in Henslowe's _Diary_, where the names of the two poets are
incidentally coupled together as joint authors of the piece!
I should mention, that I take the dates and book-lore from Mr. Dyce
himself.