INTRODUCTION Faustus Friar The facie between THE internal connexion between the two plays reprinted Doctor in this volume is indisputable. There is, as will be seen, no and Friar evidence amounting to absolute proof as to the priority of Bacon and either of them to the other in date of composition; and it Bungay. is highly probable that both were written and performed for connexion the first time without more than a brief interval between between the plays, them. Thus as Marlowe was born in 1564 (N. S.), and and the Greene probably not long before 1560 (for he is known to prima have taken his Bachelor of Arts' degree in 1578), the two difference plays belong to not very different stages in the lives of them. their respective authors, and offer fair materials for a comparison between their gifts and powers as dramatic poets. While, however, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay has doubtless come down to us very much as it was written by Greene, and has indeed been described by a comparatively early tradition as one of the two plays of which he was sole Lauthor, the earliest copy we possess of Doctor Faustus contains additions, and possibly further alterations, by other hands than Marlowe's. None of his plays, except Edward II (for Dido Queen of Carthage was written conjointly with Nash), is to be regarded as the unadulterated expression of his own art2; and least of all the tragedy before us. Yet on no other are the marks of his mighty genius more visibly impressed; although it is impossible, Edward Phillips, in the Theatrum Poetarum, 1675. See R. Simpson, The School of Shakspere, ii. 339. The other play, Faire Em, is almost certainly not by Greene. * See W. Wagner, Emendationen und Bemerkungen zu Marlowe, in Jahrbuch der deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, xi. (1876) 73-5. Relations between Greene's Marlowe. were it only for the reason given, to term Doctor Faustus, That jealousy of rivals which is the bane of all but the Greene and highest kinds of artist-life has never raged with greater fury Marlowe. than in Robert Greene. His relations with Christopher jealousy of Marlowe, who was, like him, University (Cambridge) bred, seem to have varied at different periods in his career. Their plays were mostly, though not invariably, written for different companies. Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great and Greene's Comical History of Alphonsus King of Arragon were in all probability both produced in 1587 by the Lord Admiral's (the Earl of Nottingham's) servants, acting at the Curtain in Shoreditch, but in which order of succession is unknown1. It therefore remains a conjecture only that the success of Marlowe's first tragedy suggested the composition of Greene's Alphonsus, and that the latter play was designed to challenge a comparison with the former. On the other hand, Friar Bacon (though in 1592 we find it in the possession of Lord Strange's company, which in 1594 was absorbed into the Lord Chamberlain's, and was finally called the King's) is held to have been first performed by the Queen's company, acting at the Theater,' likewise in Shoreditch; while Faustus was probably from the first performed, like most of Marlowe's plays, by the Lord Admiral's (the Earl of Nottingham's) servants". It seems a highly probable conclusion that Greene had in the course of the year transferred himself to the Queen's company, while Marlowe remained with the Admiral's men, performing at the Curtain near by. Not long afterwards, in his prose-tract Perimedes the Blacksmith (entered on the Stationers' Registers March 29, 1588), Greene, referring to some remarks about a change made by him in the motto which, after the fashion of the time, he was accustomed to append to his publications, wrote as follows: 1 See Fleay's Life of Shakespeare, pp. 96, 97. See Henslowe's Diary; and compare Fleay, Shakespeare Manual, p. 88, and Life of Shakespeare, pp. 9, 97. 1 'I keepe my old course, to palter vp something in prose, vsing mine old poesie still, Omne tulit punctum; although latelye two gentlemen poets made two mad men of Rome beate it out of their paper bucklers, and had it in derision, for that I could not make my verses iet vpon the stage in tragicall buskins, euerie worde filling the mouth like the faburden of Bo-bell, daring God out of heauen with that atheist Tamburlan, or blaspheming with the mad priest of the sonne: but let me rather openly pocket vp the asse at Diogenes hand than wantonlye set out such impious instances of intollerable poetrie, such mad and scoffing poets that haue propheticall spirits as bred of Merlins race. If there be anye in England that set the end of scollarisme in an English blanck-verse, I thinke either it is the humor of a nouice that tickles them with selfe-loue, or too much frequenting the hot-house (to use the Germaine prouerbe) hath swet out all the greatest part of their wits, which wasts gradatim, as the Italians say poco à poco. If I speake darkely, gentlemen, I craue pardon, in that I but answere in print what they haue offered on the stage'.' The references to Marlowe in this passage explain themselves; though it must be regarded as a mere coincidence only that the expression 'scollarisme' occurs in the Opening Chorus of Doctor Faustus (16). Whether or not in consequence of this attack, Marlowe very probably soon after its publication followed Greene to the Queen's company; but by the autumn of 1589 they were again at issue, Marlowe having, if we may accept Mr. Fleay's most apt conjecture, deserted the Queen's company for another (Pembroke's). In his Menaphon, Camilla's alarum to slumbering Euphues (entered on the Stationers' Registers August 23, 1589), of 1 Quoted by Dyce, in the Account of R. Greene and his Writings, in the Works of R. Greene and G. Peele, 35. Compare Simpson, u. s., ii. 351. In Beard's Theatre of God's Judgments, 1597 (cited by Dyce, in the Account of Marlowe, in the Works of Marlowe, xxxi), and presumably elsewhere, Marlowe is called 'Marlin.' "Life of Shakespeare, p. 99. b which, as Mr. Fleay points out, the very title 'Menaphon' is taken from Marlowe's Tamburlaine1, the same scholar has pointed out a manifest allusion to Marlowe in the following passage 2: 'Whosoeuer... descanted of that loue, tolde you a Canterbury tale; some propheticall full mouth that as he were a coblers eldest sonne, would by the laste tell where anothers shooe wrings, but his sowterly aime was iust leuell, in thinking euerie looke was loue, or euerrie faire worde a pawne of loyaltie.' Marlowe was the son of a shoemaker, and born at Canterbury, where his monument was erected in our own days. And, in the Epistle to the Gentlemen Students of both Universities' prefixed by Thomas Nash to Greene's tract, there can be little doubt that, while the former insinuates a compliment to his friend and collaborateur by inveighing 3 against the 3 'idiote art-masters, that intrude themselues to our eares as the alcu mists of eloquence; who (mounted on the stage of arrogance) think to outbraue better pens with the swelling bumbast of a bragging blanke verse,— Marlowe is included in the sneer, who had taken his degree of M.A. at Cambridge in the very year when Nash had been obliged to quit the University in disgrace". Here, it is quite possible that Nash may have intentionally chosen the expression 'alcumists,' and the phrase describing these alchemists as 'mounted' on a stage of arrogance, in remembrance of the alchemist Doctor Faustus in Marlowe's play, who for no mountebank purpose, ‘mounts him up to scale Olympus' top.' (Chorus before sc. vii, 1. 3.) Greene returned to the 1 He appears there as one of the 'Persian Captains.' 2 P. 54 in Professor Arber's edition in The English Scholar's Library, No. 12. Arber, u. s., pp. 5, 6. See W. Bernhardi, Robert Greene's Leben und Schriften (1874), 48, 49; and compare Collier, History of English Dramatic Poetry, iii. pp. 110-2. I see no need for stumbling at the expression 'idiote art-master,' which surely need not be taken to signify, as Mr. Fleay thinks it does, one not M.A.' attack in the Epistle prefixed to his Farewell to Folly (not known to have been published before 1591, though possibly written earlier1). Here, his assertion that the whole impression of a previous tract by him, England's Mourning Garment, had been sold, is accompanied by a sneer to the effect that the pedlar, finding it too dear, had been forced to buy 'the life of Tomlivolin, to wrap up his sweet powders in those unsavoury papers.' In this passage 'Tomlivolin' has been with obvious probability interpreted as a misprint for 'Tamburlan,' which had been first printed in 1590. warning to The bitterness of Greene against Marlowe came to an end His post-driven out, may be, by that greater bitterness of which humous the expressions have contributed more to provoke the ill- him, will of posterity against Greene's name than all the errors for which he so loudly did penance. In his tract, A Groatsworth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance, published in 1592 by Henry Chettle soon after its author's miserable death, Greene addresses 'those gentlemen his quondam acquaintance, that spend their wits in making playes,' wishing them 'a better exercise, and wisedome to preuent his extremities.' And the first of those whom, in a passage often quoted, he entreats 'to take heed,' is beyond all doubt Marlowe. 'Wonder not (for with thee will I first beginne), thou famous gracer of tragedians, that Green, who hath said with thee, like the foole in his heart, "There is no God," should now giue glorie vnto his greatnesse; for penetrating in his power, his hand lyes heauy vpon me, he hath spoken vnto me with a voyce of thunder, and I haue felt he is a God that can punish enemies. Why should thy excellent wit, his gift, be so blinded that thou shouldest giue no glory to the giuer? Is it pestilent Machiuilian policie that thou hast studied? O peevish follie! what are his rules but meere confused mockeries, able to extirpate in small time the generation of mankinde? for if sic volo, sic iubeo, holde in those that are able to commaund, and if it be lawfull fas et nefas, to doo any thing that is beneficiall, onely tyrants should 1 See below, p. cxix. |