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"Then, good my lord, if you forgiue them all,
Lift vp your hand in token you forgiue.

*

King John, farewell! in token of thy faith,
And signe thou diedst the seruant of the Lord,
Lift vp thy hand, that we may witnesse heere
Thou diedst the seruant of our Sauiour Christ.
Now ioy betide thy soule!"

"Lord Cardinal,

The Troublesome Raigne, Sig. M, ed. 1622.

If thou diest assured of heauenly blisse,

Hold vp thy hand, and make some signe to vs. [The Cardinal dies.

Oh, see, he dies, and makes no signe at all!

Oh, God, forgiue his soule !"

First Part of the Cont., Sig. F, ed. 1594.

"Let England liue but true within itselfe."

The Troublesome Raigne, Sig. M 2.

"Let England be true within itselfe."

The True Tragedie, Sig. D 4, ed. 1595.

But, on the other hand, there are many things throughout The Troublesome Raigne* so materially at variance with the style of Marlowe, that, while I admit the probability of his co-operation in the play, I cannot assent to the critical dictum + which would attribute the whole of it to him.

As to The Taming of a Shrew, which was both entered in the Stationers' Books and printed in 1594,—it abounds in passages that either strongly resemble or directly correspond with passages in the undoubted plays of Marlowe. These were first pointed out by an ingenious American critic, and, together with his arguments to prove that the comedy was written by Marlowe, may be seen in the second volume of Mr. Knight's Library edition of Shakespeare. I shall, as briefly as possible, declare my reasons for believing that Marlowe was not the author of The Taming of a Shrew. -Among the less striking parallelisms just mentioned is the following one;

"And hewd thee smaller then the Libian sandes."

The Taming of a Shrew, p. 42, ed. Shake. Soc.

"Or hew'd this flesh and bones as small as sand."

Faustus (from the quarto of 1616), p. 126, first col.

It has not been observed, that wbea Shakespeare opened the sec. scene of the first act of his Richard the Third with

"Set down, se down your honourable load,"

he remembered a line with which a scene in the Second Part of The Troublesome Raigne begins,"Set downe, set downe the loade not worth your paine."

Sig. K 4, ed. 1622.

+ Malone once supposed it to have been written by Peele or Greene; latterly (Shakespeare, by Boswell, ii. 313) he assigned it to Marlowe.

Now, if we were sure that the resemblance between these two lines was not accidental (and it seems highly probable that the former was suggested by the latter), we might at once conclude that the author of The Taming of a Shrew and Marlowe were distinct persons; for the line cited from Faustus belongs to a scene which is not found in the earliest quarto, and which is evidently the composition of a poet whose style was not a little dissimilar to that of Marlowe. But, leaving this particular out of the question, I find enough besides in The Taming of a Shrew to convince me that it was the work of some one who had closely studied Marlowe's writings, and who frequently could not resist the temptation to adopt the very words of his favourite dramatist. It is quite possible that he was not always conscious of his more trifling plagiarisms from Marlowe,-recollections of whose phraseology may have mingled imperceptibly with the current of his thoughts: but the case was certainly otherwise when he transferred to his own comedy whole passages of Tamburlaine or Faustus. In some instances the borrowed matter seems to be rather out of place in the speech which I subjoin it is very awkwardly introduced. When the bridegroom Ferando enters "baselie attired, and a red cap on his head," Polidor entreats him to change his apparel before going to church, and offers him the use of his own wardrobe: upon which, Ferando replies,

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Surely, we should have wondered at this violent and far-fetched comparison of Ferando's "sutes" to a particular massy robe, if we had not known that the writer was, as usual, levying a contribution on Marlowe ;—

"And I sat down, cloth'd with a massy robe
That late adorn'd the Afric potentate."

The Sec. Part of Tamburlaine, p. 56, first col.

Throughout the play there is little vigour of thought or expression; the style, when elevated, is laboriously ornate rather than poetical; the many high-flown descriptions of female beauty (which are admired by the American critic) have only an artificial glow; and the versification is monotonous in the extreme. Yet The Taming of a Shrew is by no means a contemptible drama, possessing, as it certainly does, some portion of genuine comic humour; a circumstance which alone would tend to prove that it was not the production of Marlowe, to whom, we have good reason to believe, nature had denied even a moderate talent for the humorous.-I may add, that, as The Taming of a Shrew is printed anonymously, its author probably had no intention

that his name should transpire, and therefore resorted to plagiarism with the greater boldness.

Another word on the subject of plays attributed to Marlowe. It has been conjectured that both Locrine and Titus Adronicus are by him: but, if every old tragedy of more than usual merit, whose author is either doubtful or unknown, must be fathered 'upon Marlowe, the catalogue of his dramas will presently be swollen to a size not easily reconcilable with the shortness of his life.

I have now brought to a close this very imperfect essay concerning one whom Drayton has characterised in the following fervid lines;

"Neat [Next] Marlow, bathed in the Thespian springs,

Had in him those braue translunary things

That the first poets had; his raptures were

All ayre and fire, which made his verses cleere ;

For that fine madnes still he did retaine,

Which rightly should possesse a poet's braine."*

Though immeasurably superior to the other dramatists of his time, he is, like them, a very unequal writer; it is in detached passages and single scenes, rather than in any of his pieces taken as a whole, that he displays the vast richness and vigour of his genius. But we can hardly doubt that if death had not so suddenly arrested his career, he would have produced tragedies of more uniform excellence; nor is it too much to suppose that he would also have given still grander manifestations of dramatic power;—indeed, 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 in tragedy to Shakespeare than has yet been made by any of his countrymen.

• To Henry Reynolds, of Poets and Poesie,- The Battaile of Agincourt, &c. 1627, ed fol.-Besides the notices of Marlowe which have been already cited from Meres's Palladis Tamia, &c, 1598 (see pp. xxxi, xlii), the following passages occur in that work. "As the Greeke tongue is made famous and eloquent by Homer, Hesiod, Euripides, &c. and the Latine tongue by Virgill, Ouid, Horace, &c. SO the English tongue is mightily enriched, and gorgeouslie inuested in rare ornaments and resplendent abiliments by Sir Philip Sidney, Spencer, Daniel, Drayton, Warner, Shakespeare, Marlow, and Chapman." fol. 280. "As these tragicke poets flourished in Greece, Eschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, &c.; and these among the Latines, Accius, M. Attilius, Pomponius Secundus, and Seneca; so these are our best for tragedie, the Lorde Buckhurst, Doctor Leg of Cambridge, Doctor Edes of Oxforde, Maister Edward Ferris, the authour of the Mirrour for Magistrates, Marlow, Peele, Watson, Kid, Shakespeare, Drayton, Chapman, Decker, and Beniamin Johnson." fol. 283.-The passage in Jonson's verses To the memory of Shakespeare, which has been before alluded to (see note†, p. xli), may not improperly be quoted here;

"For, if I thought my judgment were of years,

I should commit thee surely with thy peers,
And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine,
Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line.”

P. xxiv.

ADDENDA.

Account of Marlowe and his writings.

"Edward the Second ...... first printed in 1598."

Not long ago I purchased a quarto of this play, which has the title-page and the first leaf of the text supplied in very old handwriting,—the title-page being worded as follows: The troublesome Raigne and lamentable death of Edward the second King of England; with the tragicall fall of proude Mortimer. As it was sondry times publiquely acted in the honorable Cittie of London, By the right honorable the Earle of Pembroke his Seruant Written by Chri: Mar: Gent. Imprinted at London for William Jones dwelling neere Holborne Conduit at the Signe of the Gunne. 1593. Since the quarto just described is an imperfect copy of what is now known as the quarto of 1598, we may perhaps conclude, that the quarto of 1598 was merely a re-issue, with a new title-page, of an impression originally published in 1593. There may have been, however, a distinct edition of the play in 1593, of which no copies have come down to us.

P. 73, first col.

The Second Part of Tamburlaine the Great.

"Your soul gives essence to our wretched subjects," &c.

In a note on this line I have shown, by two other passages of the play, the rashness of Mr. Collier's assertion that "subjects" is a printer's blunder for "substance": and I might also have cited the following passage from Chapman's continuation of our author's Hero and Leander;

"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," &c.
p. 291, sec. col.

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