“Nature
Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.
Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend
The wondrous architecture of the world,
And measure every wandering planet’s course,
Still climbing after knowledge infinite,
And always moving as the restless spheres,
Will us to wear ourselves and never rest
Until we reach the ripest fruit of all.”
One of these verses reminds us of that exquisite one of Shakespeare
where he says that Love is
“Still climbing trees in the Hesperides.”
But Shakespeare puts a complexity of meaning into his chance sayings,
and lures the fancy to excursions of which Marlowe never dreamt.
But, alas, a voice will not illustrate like a stereopticon, and this
tearing away of fragments that seem to bleed with the avulsion is like
breaking off a finger from a statue as a specimen.
The impression he made upon the men of his time was uniform; it was
that of something new and strange; it was that of genius, in short.
Drayton says of him, kindling to an unwonted warmth, as if he loosened
himself for a moment from the choking coils of his Polyolbion for a
larger breath:--
“Next Marlowe bathèd in the Thespian springs
Had in him those brave translunary things
That the first poets had; his raptures were
All air and fire, which made his verses clear;
For that fine madness still he did retain
Which rightly should possess a poet’s brain.”
And Chapman, taking up and continuing Marlowe’s half-told story of Hero
and Leander, breaks forth suddenly into this enthusiasm of invocation:--
“Then, ho! most strangely intellectual fire
That, proper to my soul, hast power to inspire
Her burning faculties, and with the wings
Of thy unsphered flame visit’st the springs
Of spirits immortal, now (as swift as Time
Doth follow motion) find the eternal clime
Of his free soul whose living subject stood
Up to the chin in the Pierian flood.”
Surely Chapman would have sent his soul on no such errand had he
believed that the soul of Marlowe was in torment, as his accusers did
not scruple to say that it was, sent thither by the manifestly Divine
judgment of his violent death.
Yes, Drayton was right in classing him with “the first poets,” for
he was indeed such, and so continues,--that is, he was that most
indefinable thing, an original man, and therefore as fresh and
contemporaneous to-day as he was three hundred years ago. Most of us
are more or less hampered by our own individuality, nor can shake
ourselves free of that chrysalis of consciousness and give our “souls
a loose,” as Dryden calls it in his vigorous way. And yet it seems to
me that there is something even finer than that fine madness, and I
think I see it in the imperturbable sanity of Shakespeare, which made
him so much an artist that his new work still bettered his old. I think
I see it even in the almost irritating calm of Goethe, which, if it
did not quite make him an artist, enabled him to see what an artist
should be, and to come as near to being one as his nature allowed.
Marlowe was certainly not an artist in the larger sense, but he was
cunning in words and periods and the musical modulation of them. And
even this is a very rare gift. But his mind could never submit itself
to a controlling purpose, and renounce all other things for the sake
of that. His plays, with the single exception of “Edward II.,” have
no organic unity, and such unity as is here is more apparent than
real. Passages in them stir us deeply and thrill us to the marrow, but
each play as a whole is ineffectual. Even his “Edward II.” is regular
only to the eye by a more orderly arrangement of scenes and acts, and
Marlowe evidently felt the drag of this restraint, for we miss the
uncontrollable energy, the eruptive fire, and the feeling that he was
happy in his work. Yet Lamb was hardly extravagant in saying that “the
death scene of Marlowe’s king moves pity and terror beyond any scene,
ancient or modern, with which I am acquainted.” His tragedy of “Dido,
Queen of Carthage,” is also regularly plotted out, and is also somewhat
tedious. Yet there are many touches that betray his burning hand. There
is one passage illustrating that luxury of description into which
Marlowe is always glad to escape from the business in hand. Dido tells
Æneas:--
“Æneas, I’ll repair thy Trojan ships
Conditionally that thou wilt stay with me,
And let Achates sail to Italy;
I’ll give thee tackling made of rivelled gold,
Wound on the barks of odoriferous trees;
Oars of massy ivory, full of holes
Through which the water shall delight to play;
Thy anchors shall be hewed from crystal rocks
Which, if thou lose, shall shine above the waves;
The masts whereon thy swelling sails shall hang
Hollow pyramides of silver plate;
The sails of folded lawn, where shall be wrought
The wars of Troy, but not Troy’s overthrow;
For ballast, empty Dido’s treasury;
Take what ye will, but leave Æneas here.
Achates, thou shalt be so seemly clad
As sea-born nymphs shall swarm about thy ships
And wanton mermaids court thee with sweet songs,
Flinging in favors of more sovereign worth
Than Thetis hangs about Apollo’s neck,
So that Æneas may but stay with me.”
But far finer than this, in the same costly way, is the speech of
Barabas in “The Jew of Malta,” ending with a line that has incorporated
itself in the language with the familiarity of a proverb:--
“Give me the merchants of the Indian mines
That trade in metal of the purest mould;
The wealthy Moor that in the Eastern rocks
Without control can pick his riches up,
And in his house heap pearl like pebble-stones,
Receive them free, and sell them by the weight;
Bags of fiery opals, sapphires, amethysts,
Jacynths, hard topaz, grass-green emeralds,
Beauteous rubies, sparkling diamonds,
And seld-seen costly stones of so great price
As one of them, indifferently rated,
* * * * *
May serve in peril of calamity
To ransom great kings from captivity.
This is the ware wherein consists my wealth:
* * * * *
Infinite riches in a little room.”
This is the very poetry of avarice.
Let us now look a little more closely at Marlowe as a dramatist. Here
also he has an importance less for what he accomplished than for what
he suggested to others. Not only do I think that Shakespeare’s verse
caught some hints from his, but there are certain descriptive passages
and similes of the greater poet which, whenever I read them, instantly
bring Marlowe to my mind. This is an impression I might find it hard
to convey to another, or even to make definite to myself; but it is an
old one, and constantly repeats itself, so that I put some confidence
in it. Marlowe’s “Edward II.” certainly served Shakespeare as a model
for his earlier historical plays. Of course he surpassed his model, but
Marlowe might have said of him as Oderisi, with pathetic modesty, said
to Dante of his rival and surpasser, Franco of Bologna, “The praise is
now all his, yet mine in part.” But it is always thus. The path-finder
is forgotten when the track is once blazed out. It was in Shakespeare’s
“Richard II.” that Lamb detected the influence of Marlowe, saying that
“the reluctant pangs of abdicating royalty in Edward furnished hints
which Shakespeare has scarce improved upon in Richard.” In the parallel
scenes of both plays the sentiment is rather elegiac than dramatic,
but there is a deeper pathos, I think, in Richard, and his grief rises
at times to a passion which is wholly wanting in Edward. Let me read
Marlowe’s abdication scene. The irresolute nature of the king is finely
indicated. The Bishop of Winchester has come to demand the crown;
Edward takes it off, and says:--
“Here, take my crown; the life of Edward too:
Two kings of England cannot reign at once.
But stay awhile: let me be king till night,
That I may gaze upon this glittering crown;
So shall my eyes receive their last content,
My head the latest honor due to it,
And jointly both yield up their wishèd right.
Continue ever, thou celestial sun;
Let never silent night possess this clime;
Stand still, you watches of the element;
All times and seasons, rest you at a stay--
That Edward may be still fair England’s king!
But day’s bright beam doth vanish fast away,
And needs I must resign my wishèd crown.
Inhuman creatures, nursed with tiger’s milk,
Why gape you for your sovereign’s overthrow?--
My diadem, I mean, and guiltless life.
See, monsters, see, I’ll wear my crown again.
What, fear you not the fury of your king?
* * * * *
I’ll not resign, but, whilst I live, be king!”