to the lower gallery. It was a small compartment at one end of, and
overlooking, the stage. The boy unlocked it [note 44]. Although the
round pit, into which one could look from this box, was open to the
clear sky, the floor of the upper gallery projected so far over this
box that the light was dim within it; and heavy curtains at its front,
although drawn apart, augmented its constant dimness. The boy started
to light a lamp in a wall bracket, but the man stopped him and directed
him as he left to lock the frail door. There was room for ten people in
the box, and as the boy turned the key upon his temporary prisoner, and
wormed his way through the packed gallery, he wondered how one could be
so selfish as to appropriate an entire box for one’s sole use.
Finding himself alone, the man threw off his hat and cloak; but
immediately the chill of the winter day penetrated his doublet and
he replaced the discarded garments. The interval in which his head,
countenance and shoulders were uncovered was scarcely a minute; but it
was quite long enough to reveal that his beard and hair were false,
and the doublet so arranged as to misrepresent the form beneath it.
Having seated himself so as to be out of the view of the audience, he
peered through the space between the wall and the edge of one of the
curtains. A pleased expression showed on his face as he noticed the
immensity of the audience.
There was no standing room in the pit, which was so clamorous for the
play to begin that the orchestra, in its box within the center wall
above the stage, could scarcely be heard above the tumult. The front
row of standing spectators was crowded so close to the stage that
their chins rested upon it; and the press was so great that several of
the more active groundlings had crawled up and lay upon the rushes at
the feet of the favored portion of the audience which occupied every
chair upon the ends of the stage. There were black hangings upon all
the posts and the lofty canopy above the boards was of like color,
indicating that the play to be presented was a tragedy. A sign bearing
the word “Denmark” hung close to the canopy, and was an announcement
of the place where the scenes of the drama were laid. Neither curtain
nor foot-lights graced the stage, but the rude painting of a castle
partially concealed the barn-like wall. A raised platform at the back
showed that there was to be a play within a play.
The music of the orchestra died away, and the groundlings and
scaffolders held breath. Francisco had taken his post, and Bernardo
entered. It seemed that the first question, “Who’s there?” was uttered
by the man in Box 4, for at that moment the door to the box was burst
open with a crash, and several persons pushed in. The gross-looking
man, whose broad shoulders had been used to force an entrance, was in
the lead. He whispered so that the quiet man against the railing heard
him, “Beg your pardon, but it was either this forcible intrusion, or
the sweat of the mob for us and these ladies, and no sight of the play.
You can’t blame us.”
The man to whom the words were addressed disdained to turn his head,
but sunk it lower within his ruff and kept his eyes on the stage, but
it is not likely that he saw it any more than he did the intruders.
He kept his peace, but his face was white from rage or fright. He had
recognized the speaker as Ben Jonson, and the voice of one of the other
two men with him had sounded so familiar that even before the ghost
stalked across the stage, he knew that one of his companions was Nash.
Feminine voices proclaimed that at least two of the fair sex were of
the party. Their whispers conveyed no further intelligence to him. He
again became absorbed in the play, while the intruders took possession
of the chairs behind him. They thought him a dull boor; he either
should have shown enough spirit to resent their rude entrance with
fierce words or a drawn sword; or, with resignation to the inevitable,
have murmured a welcome at least to the ladies. Thus ran their
thoughts; but he had forgotten the disturbance and his situation. Even
at the close of the act, the ecstasy of his mind continued as his eyes
swept over the audience, and from pleased countenances gleaned the
opinion of a favorable reception of the play. Why did this please him?
The conversation behind him caught his ears. It was between Jonson and
Nash and ran on uninterrupted for an interval. It held his attention.
“Who plays the ghost?”
“Shakespere” [note 45].
“’Tis said he wrote the play.”
“I question it.”
“Why so?”
“He knoweth little Latin.”
“We have heard no Latin.”
“True; but the speech of Horatio is descriptive of the events preceding
Cæsar’s death as set forth in Lucan’s Pharsalia” [note 46].
“Doth no translation of the Pharsalia exist?” [note 47]
“Yes, but only in manuscript.”
“Perchance he hath had access to the manuscript.”
“There is but one copy, and that is in my possession.”
“Translated by thyself?”
“No.”
“By whom?”
“Marlowe.”
“And the description of the tenantless graves, the sheeted dead
gibbering in the streets of Rome and the stars with trains of fire is
like Marlowe’s translation?”
“The one is drawn from the other; for in Marlowe’s translation ‘Sylla’s
ghost was seen to walk singing sad oracles:’ ‘Souls quiet and appeased
sighed from their graves;’ ‘and ghosts encountered men;’ and ‘sundry
fiery meteors blazed in Heaven.’”
“’Tis strange.”
“Most strange!”
“And how do you account for such a coincidence?”
“Wait; the play goes on.”
The second scene of Act I was in progress, and at its close Nash, who
appeared to be the better posted, said:
“Didst ever hear Marlowe’s play of Edward II?”
“Yes, years ago at this theater.”
“Dost thou remember the character of Spencer?”
“I do,” answered Jonson.
“Where he says:
‘’Tis not a black coat and a little band,
A velvet caped cloak faced before with serge?’”
“And what of that?” interrupted the other.
“What! why have you not just heard Hamlet say:
‘’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black’?”
“Examine at thy leisure the entire passages.”
“’Tis plagiarism!” ejaculated Jonson, ever ready to decry the works of
another.
“Or--” began Nash.
“Hamlet was written by Marlowe,” interrupted Jonson.
“True,” answered Nash, nodding his head excitedly, “And much additional
evidence exists confirmatory of your hastily given statement; but
this time is all too short to compare the precepts of Polonius with
Spencer’s ‘to stab when occasion serves,’ or with the meditations of
Barabbas; or to note how Marlowe’s metaphysical musings concerning
‘This frail and transitory flesh,’ ‘the aspiring mind,’ ‘the
incorporeal spirit,’ ‘the buzzing fear’ of what comes after death, have
been joined and compacted in this play of Hamlet. Note in your study
how smoothly the polished lines of Marlowe’s acknowledged works can
be run in between the lines of this play without the slightest jar or
impairment; note how many of the speeches wind up with the last two
lines rhyming; note the tendency in all toward bombast where excess of
passion is expressed.”
This conversation, while it pleased and amused the listener, awakened
in him a fear of no trifling character. He would have made his exit
from the box, but he dared not arise and pass before the eyes of those
behind him. They might recognize him, and such recognition was to
be avoided. Act III was in progress, and Burbage, as Hamlet, held
the audience spell-bound. Ophelia, played by the boy, Thomas Deak,
of the children of the Chapel, had awakened the sympathy of every
auditor; and in praise and honor of the creative genius of the drama an
inexhaustible cup was filling for the lips of all his lovers through
the coming centuries.
No sooner had the act closed than the conversation was resumed between
the two dramatists who had carried on the former discussion:
“‘The undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveler returns,’”
whispered Nash, “is much like the expression of Mortimer, who, upon
contemplation of death, says, in Edward II:
‘Weep not for Mortimer,
That scorns the world, and, as a traveler,
Goes to discover countries yet unknown.’”
“An apt parallelism,” remarked Jonson, and then slyly added, “But what
think you of the lines put in the mouths of the players?”
“In Scene II of Act II, of this Hamlet?” inquired Nash.
“Yes, Æneas’ tale to Dido.”
“I know not what to think of them.”
“Did not Marlowe begin the drama of Dido?”
“He did.”
“And you completed it, did you not?” questioned Jonson.
“I did,” answered Nash [note 37].
“Now, is not this speech of the players in ridicule of thy work?”
“Possibly,” answered Nash, somewhat nettled by the question. “I had no
love for the subject and pushed the work without inspiration; but no
one but Marlowe, methinks, would have taken offense at my weak closing
of his strong and poetic opening.”
“And the story of Troy was a fond one of his.”
“True, the famous Helen is the subject of conjuration in Faustus and is
spoken of in Tamburlaine.”
“And is not the same fondness displayed in Titus Andronicus, The
Merchant of Venice, King Henry IV, King Henry VI, Troilus and Cressida,
and the Tempest?”
“It is.”
“Well, then if thy supposition is correct that Marlowe instead of
Shakespere wrote this play of Hamlet, why is not my theory correct that
he is holding up thy extravagant lines in Dido to ridicule?” [note 48]
“But, how can that be possible?” retorted Nash, “while I may be
inclined to believe that Marlowe wrote this play, it could not have
been since I completed his unfinished drama of Dido; for did he not die
in 1593?”
“Is there not good reason to dispute that death?”
“By what?”
“The internal evidence of this play.”
“And by what else?”
“The contradictory reports of his death.”
“And to what conclusion does all this tend?”
“That Marlowe still lives, an outcast, a fugitive from justice.”
“But why an outcast; why a fugitive?”
“What else would cause him to keep concealed?”
“Thou hast not answered the question.”
“Did he not offend the church? Were not direct charges made against
him? Was not the Queen apprised? Was not this but three days before his
disappearance? You know the charge?”
“Aye, blasphemy.”
“And see what the play reveals, bitter remembrances, personal griefs
and doubts, misanthropy in strongest sort. ‘The suits of woe,’ the
‘weary, stale, flat and unprofitable uses of this world,’ ‘contagious
blastments,’ the losing of ‘all mirth,’ ‘we fools of nature,’ ‘the
sleep of death,’ ‘the blister on the forehead of the once innocent
love,’ These are but the outpourings of one sick of the vanities of
life, hopeless of fame, bereft of all joys, and unsolaced by religion.”
“Bah! one in love can write of murder and madness.”
“True, as it may fit the story that he writes; but this is a drama
in which the light and dark could well mingle to the interest of the
auditors; but no, ’tis heavy with the fruit of gloomy philosophical
meditations provoked in a sensitive mind from brooding over some crime
more dark than that of blasphemy.”
“So! and possibly what?” asked Nash.
“The slaying of a human being,” answered Jonson.
“Murder by Marlowe?” ejaculated Nash.
A feminine cry arose in the box. It was stifled instantly, but it
stopped the conversation. The man at the front of the box shuddered,
and covered his face with his hands. He had almost turned his head at
this outcry, but he restrained himself for the moment. This inclination
to turn had been induced solely by the effect upon his ears, but
following it came a force to turn him that was irresistible. The cry
had shaken a chord that had been vibrated before, it seemed by the same
voice in similar outcry. It did not immediately flash upon him where
or under what circumstances he had heard it. No words had risen from
the lips of this woman, as yet to him unseen, to give character to the
cry she had just uttered, or to explain its occasion. But the one chord
that it vibrated within him trembled until the surrounding network of
memory became animated, and the tavern duel scene at the point where
Anne had thrown herself at the feet of her combative husband arose in
the mind of the man at the box’s edge. The woman behind him was Anne!
His head turned involuntarily with the thought. He saw her; and she,
with gaze centered upon his face, recognized him as Marlowe despite
the change he had effected in his natural appearance. He also saw the
eyes of Nash and Jonson fastened upon him, and in self preservation he
resumed the position which he had been faithfully maintaining until
this late moment.
The outcry had been induced by two causes, one was the climax
reached in the conversation of the two men which had been running on
disjointedly during the progress of the play, and the other was the
wounding of Laertes by Hamlet in the duel scene. They had occurred
simultaneously. She had caught the name of Marlowe in the conversation
near her and knew that the talk was of him; the contest with foils
between the two actors on the stage had absorbed her so that again she
seemed the helpless spectator of a duel to death. It was the old scene
over again in all its vivid reality. Laertes, of kindlier aspect than
Burbage, as Hamlet, had awakened her sympathies, and she saw him as an
embodied Marlowe. Then came the struggle, the exchange of rapiers and
the thrust through the doublet of Laertes that staggered him. At the
same time she heard the final words of Nash, and the cry had passed her
lips.
It is a wonder that a second cry had not escaped her when, closely
following this exhibition, the man in front had fastened his eyes upon
her, and she recognized the person whom for five years she had sought,
until, with heart fairly eaten out with the changeless subject of her
thoughts and the dejection of an apparently fruitless quest, she had
numbered him among the voiceless unreturning. But the vision of his
face seemed but the natural concomitant of what had just transpired.
Why should the Fates drag any other visage within the field either of
reality or illusion? If God worketh for a purpose, what else could
all the events transpiring within the Curtain on that day lead up to,
except the meeting of the lovers?
Controlled by an irresistible impulse, Anne left her chair, and coming
forward to where Marlowe was seated, fell on her knees beside him. The
closing peal of ordnance had sounded, and amid the prolonged applause
of the great house, the play had ended. The enthusiasm continued,
despite the recognition of it by the leading actors, who bowed again
and again from the stage’s front. It was more than this acknowledgment
of its demonstrative praise that the audience wanted. Only a portion of
the applause was for the actors, the rest was for the genius who had
raised the tremendous tragedy.
“Where is the author?”
“Let him come forth!”
Such were the cries that arose. But no one answered the appeal. From
his place behind one wing of the stage, Shakespere looked out upon
the tumult, and then his eyes wandered to the box wherein sat the
unknown creator of the drama. Was the latter not impelled toward public
recognition of the multitude’s applause?
He, Marlowe, was possessed with temporary elation over the enthusiasm
of the audience, and with the further knowledge that the one whom he
loved was now beside him. In his ecstasy, it seemed that he mingled
with the gods. The darkness in which he dwelt, and the mighty world,
voiceless as to himself and his merit, were as naught. The same spirit
that had filled and fired him in the production of the eternal drama,
again possessed him, and for once, but not again, he felt the crown of
laurel about his brows.
APPENDIX.
1 “A second Shakespere, not only because he rose like him from an actor
to be a maker of plays, * * * but also because * * * he seems to have a
resemblance to that clear unsophisticated wit that is natural to that
incomparable poet.”
--Phillips in Theatrum Poetarum, p. 24, Ed. 1680.
2 “Collier considers that Marlowe would in this case (i. e. had he
lived) have become a formidable rival to Shakespere.”
--Gervinus’ Shakespere Commentaries, p. 78.
3 “But the department of tragedy was dominated by a writer of superb
genius, Christopher Marlowe. Shakespere, whose powers ripened slowly,
may at the time when he wrote the ‘Comedy of Errors’ and ‘Love’s
Labor Lost,’ have well hesitated to dispute with Marlowe his special
province. Imitators and disciples had crowded around the master.”
--Edward Dowden.
4 “If Marlowe had lived to finish his ‘Hero and Leander’ he might
perhaps have contested the palm with Shakespere in his ‘Venus and
Adonis’ and ‘Rape of Lucrece.’”
--Malone.
5 “In his first stage Shakespere had dropped his plummet no deeper into
the sea of the spirit of man than Marlowe had sounded before him, and
in the channel of simple emotion no poet could cast surer line with
steadier hand than he.”
--Swinburne’s “A Study of Shakespere,” p. 77.
“It [Richard III] is doubtless a better piece of work than Marlowe ever
did; I dare not say than Marlowe ever could have done. It is not for
any man to measure * * * what it is that Christopher Marlowe could not
have done; but dying as he did and when he did, etc.”
--“A Study of Shakespere,” Swinburne 43.
6 “For my own part, I feel a strong persuasion, that with added years
and well directed efforts, he would have made a much nearer approach to
Shakespere than has yet been made by any of his countrymen.”
--Dyce’s Marlowe, p. 55.
7 Raise cavalieros higher than the clouds,
And with the cannon break the frame of heaven;
Batter the shining palace of the sun,
And shiver all the starry firmament.
--Second Part Tamburlaine II, 4.
“Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead,
Till of this flat a mountain you have made,
To o’ertop old Pelion, or the skyish head
Of blue Olympus.”
--Hamlet III, 3.
“Streams of blood
As vast and deep as Euphrates or Nile.”
--Tamburlaine V, 2.
“Not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain.”
--Hamlet IV, 4.
8 “Weep Powles, thy Tamburlaine voutsafes to dye.
* * * * * * * * *
He and the plague contended for the game.
* * * * * * * * *
The graund disease disdained his Toade Conceit
And smiling at his Tamburlaine contempt
Sternly struck home the peremptory stroke.”
--Harvey’s New Letter, September, 1593.
9 “It so fell out that in London streets, as he (Marlowe) proposed to
stab one, whom he owed a grudge unto, with his dagger, * * * he stabbed
his owne dagger into his owne head, etc.”
--Thomas Beard’s “Theater of God’s Judgments,”
Edition First, 1597.
10 “As the poet Lycophron was shot to death by a certain rivall of his,
so Christopher Marlow was stabbed to death by a bawdy servingman, a
rivall of his in his lewde love.”
--Meres “Palladis Tamia,” etc., 1598.
11 “Not inferior to these was one Christopher Marlow, by profession
a playmaker, who, as it is reported, about 14 years ago wrote a book
against the Trinitie. It so happened that at Deptford, a little village
about 3 miles from London, as he meant to stab with his ponyard one
named Ingram, etc.”
--Vaughan’s Golden Grove, etc., 1600.
12 “As for the Worthies on his hoste’s wall,
He knows three worthy drunkards pass them all;
The first of them in many a tavern tried,
At last subdued by Aquavitæ died.”
--Sam’l Rowland (published 1600).
13 “He (Ben Jonson) killed Mr. Marlow, ye poet, on Bunhill, coming from
the Green Curtain play house.”
--Aubrey’s “Lives of Eminent Men,” citing Sr. Ed. Sherburne, p. 415.
14 “Christopher Marlow, slaine by Francis Frazer; sep. 1 of June,
1593.” This entry from the burial register of the church of St.
Nicholas, Deptford, was kindly furnished me by the present pastor, Rev.
William Chandler. The surname “Frazer” had been given to the world
by Dyce and others as “Archer” and is so printed in the Encyclopedia
Britannica, but such is a misreading.
--The Author.
15 “Idiote art masters that intrude themselves to our ears as the
alcumists of eloquence; who (mounted on the stage of arrogance) think
to outbrave better pens with the swelling bumbast of a bragging blank
verse.”
--Nash’s Introduction to Greene’s Menaphon, 1587 (Grosart’s
Nashe I, XX).
“And he that cannot write true English without the help of clerks of
parish churches, will needs make himself the father of interludes. O,
’tis a jolly matter when a man hath a familiar style, and can endite a
whole year, and not be beholden to art.”
--Greene’s Farewell to Folly (1587).
“It’s a common practice now-a-days, amongst a sort of shifting
companions, that run through every art and thrive at none, to leave the
trade of noverint whereto they were born and busy themselves with the
endeavors of art, that could scarcely Latinize their neck-verse, if
they should have need. Yet English Seneca, read by candle light, yields
many good sentences, etc.”
--Nash (1587).
16 “From jigging veins of rhyming mother wits,
And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay,
We’ll lead you to the stately tent of war.”
--Prologue to Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, Part First.
17 “Before him there was neither genuine blank verse nor a genuine
tragedy in our language.”
--Article on Marlowe, Ency. Britannica, vol. XV, p. 556.
“That fiery reformer who wrought on the old English stage no less a
miracle than Hernani on the French stage in the days of our fathers.”
--Swinburne’s “Study of Shakespere,” p. 31.
18 “Quicke-sighted spirits,--this supposed Appolo,--
Conceit no other, but the admired Marlo;
Marlo admired, whose honney-flowing vein
No English writer can as yet attaine.”
--Henry Petowe, Second Part, “Hero and Leander,” 1598.
19 “Now (as swift as Time
Doth follow Motion) find th’ eternal clime
Of his free soul, whose living subject stood
Up to the chin in the Pierian flood,
And drunk to me half this Musean story
Inscribing it to deathless memory.”
--Chapman’s Third Sestiad to Marlowe’s Hero and Leander.
20 “Unhappy in thine end,
Marley, the Muses’ darling for thy verse,
Fit to write passions for the souls below,
If any wretched souls in passion speak.”
--George Peele “Prologue to the Honour of the Garter.”
21 “The impression of the man that hath been dear unto us, living an
after life in our memory, etc.”
--Blunt’s Dedication of Hero and Leander, 1598.
22 “Is it a dream? or is the Highest minde
That ever haunted Pauls, or haunted winde
Bereft of that same sky-surmounting breath,
That breath that taught the Timpany to swell?”
--“Sonet Gorgon,” Gabriel Harvey, 1593.
23 “Dead Musæus’ gracious song.”
--Henry Chettle.
24 “Next Marlow, bathed 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.”
--Michael Drayton’s Epistle, etc.
25 Ben Jonson’s commendatory verses prefixed to the Folio Edition of
1623, cannot be included among the contemporary notices. They were
not written until seven years after Shakespere’s death. Ben Jonson
failed to write aught about Shakespere while the latter lived. His
sneers at the early “Shakespere plays,” as shown in the Prologue
to “Every Man In His Humor” and his sonnet “On Poet-Ape,” are too
well known to need quotation; and, being a “contemner and scorner of
others,” one must look to self interest as being the motive for the
production of those commendatory lines to his “beloved, the author,
Master William Shakespere.” Was not this self interest a financial
one in the Shakespere plays? Shakespere died in 1616. The first folio
edition appeared in 1623. The address, therein, attributed by Malone
and many other commentators, to Jonson, recited that the plays are now
offered to “view cured and perfect of their limbs,” and “we have scarce
received from him a blot in his papers.” If these statements were true
of manuscripts, unmentioned in the will of Shakespere, and “collected”
by Heminge and Condell from the playhouses, it must be that some master
mind arranged, revised and recopied them during the seven years between
Shakespere’s death and this publication. From the date of the death
of Shakespere (1616) to 1625, “Jonson did not write one line for the
stage!” It was this revision that kept him silent, and as editor of the
folio edition he sought for reimbursement for his labors in its sale.
“But whatever you do, buy,” reads the address in that edition; and the
commendatory verses are praise enough to excite purchases.