30 MAY 1885, Page 21

MR. MILLEN'S EDITION OF MARLOWE.*

THE enterprising publisher of these volumes has undertaken to

produce a collective edition of the dramatists who lived about the time of Shakespeare, and the cost and labour of a work so extensive will be appreciated by students acquainted with the prolific literature of the drama in that prolific age. That he should have chosen an editor so accomplished as Mr. A. H. Bullen speaks well for the success of the undertaking, and the type and form selected for the series ought to satisfy the most exacting lover of fine editions. We have no doubt whatever that Mr. Bullen has done wisely in rejecting the orthography of the old copies. Pedants and antiquarians may find some virtue in spelling which in by far the larger number of cases is due to the carelessness or indifference of the printer rather than to the choice of the writer; but it is not fitting that our great classics, when printed for general service, should be deformed by errors as uninstructive as they are offensive. The editor takes care to say that he has not modernised constructions characteristic of the period, such as the linking of a plural subject to a singular verb, which is common, we believe, to the Elizabethan poets, and is to be met with in one of Shakespeare's best known lyrics,—" Hark, hark ! the lark at heaven's gate sings."

That Marlowe should take precedence in Mr. Ballen's arduous undertaking is matter of course. He is the father of the English drama, and the first poet who showed the capabilities of the language when employed in blank verse. His line is not only mighty ; it is sometimes most musical, giving us a foretaste of what English verse was to become in the masterful hands of Shakespeare. The two poets, it will be remembered, were not separated in point of time; but Marlowe's genius blossomed earlier, and resembled one of those strange tropical growths

which surprise the traveller accustomed to the slow progress of vegetation in our northern climes. When Tamburlaine was

published, in 1590, Marlowe had but three years of his short life to live; and dying in 1593, at the age of thirty, he had won a lasting place among the poets of his country before the production by Shakespeare—if our chronology of the Shakespearian drama be accurate—of a single great play. What Marlowe might have achieved, had his unhappy life not

been cut short in a tavern brawl, it is, of course, impossible to conjecture; but the immense advance made on Tamburlaine by Dr. Faustus, in which, amidst much weakness, he first shows

his tremendous power in tragedy ; and the still further and

unquestionable progress made in the crowning effort of his genius, Edward II., might justify us in supposing that in art, if not in passionate fervour, he would have reached a still higher level. The conjecture seems reasonable; but, on the other hand, we are confronted by the fact that the Massacre of Paris, and Dido, Queen of Carthage, tragedies that add nothing to Marlowe's fame, were both written at a later date than Edward II. He is one of the most unequal of writers, rising to great heights, sinking to great depths ; sometimes reaching the highest heaven

of invention, sometimes falling into what has the appearance of burlesque. A striking illustration of this peculiarity is given

by Mr. Bullen in his Introduction. Writing of Tamburlaine, he observes that the poet did not pause to polish his lines, to

correct and curtail, but was borne swiftly onward by the wings of his imagination ; and on quoting the verses which we will also quote immediately, he adds :—" The ear exults in the sonorous march of the stately verse as each successive line paces more majestically than the preceding; but what cruel discom fiture awaits us at the end ! It seems ahngst inconceivable that the poet should have spoilt so magnificent a passage by the tame and impotent conclusion in the last line." Here is the passage to which the editor alludes :—

" Nature that framed us of four elements, Warring within our breasts for regiment, Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds; Oar 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, Wills us to wear ourselves, and never rest, Until we reach the ripest fruit of all, That perfect bliss and sole felicity, The sweet fruition of an earthly crown."

Dryden, who had the aspiring strength of Marlowe, and the same uncertain force of wing, so that he fell sometimes from noble heights to depths deeper than ever plummet sounded, never surely surpassed the bathos of the line with which this

fine passage terminates. Mr. Bullen observes that Marlowe seems to have blotted literally nothing in Tamburlaine; and he

adds, "that he was responsible for the vulgar touches of low comedy I am loth to allow." And a little further on we read : —" As far as possible it is well to avoid theorising ; but I must state my conviction that Marlowe never attempted to write a comic scene. The Muses had dowered him with many rare qualities—nobility, and tenderness, and pity—but the gift of humour, the most grateful of all gifts, was withheld."

The last remark is unquestionably true; but it does not follow that Marlowe was himself conscious of the de ficiency; the want of humour is, indeed, a defect of which an author rarely is conscious. One can scarcely doubt that Milton thought he made humorous strokes when he wrote his "Apology for Smectymunns," his Tetrachordon sonnet,

or the well-known line in Paradise Lost,—" No fear lest dinner cool." Dryden in all likelihood imagined there was humour in his wretched burlesque of the Tempest ; and who can doubt that even Wordsworth would have strongly disagreed with any criticism that denied to him the possession of this great faculty P

That the players did foist buffoonery into Marlowe's tragedies is in accordance with the known usage of the period; but it does not follow that Marlowe did not strive to win the ears of the gronndlings by similar efforts.

The incompleteness of his work is obvious. He did nothing

perfectly, but he did much splendidly. His Dr. Faustus is singularly weak in parts; but when it attains the climax, there

are few scenes in English tragedy, out of Shakespeare, that impress the mind so strongly. A similar remark applies to

Edward II. As a work of art, it is more complete than any other of Marlowe's dramas ; but we cannot agree with Mr. Swinburne that there is more discrimination of character in the play than in Shakespeare's Richard II. Neither need we accept the contrary assertion of Hazlitt, that the characters are too worthless and have too little energy to excite our commiseration.

He is right, however, in saying—and in this he agrees with a still greater critic, Charles Lamb—that the death-scene of the king, " in heart-breaking distress, and the sense of human weakness, claiming pity from utter helplessness and conscious misery, is not surpassed by any writer whatever." Marlowe's dramatic deficiencies are forgotten in his transcendent merits.

The greatness of his conceptions, the richness and harmony of his versification, and the genius which enabled him to create

our drama and to give a permanent shape to that which was

previously without form and void, form a title to fame which may almost justify the enthusiastic oulogium of Mr. Swin burns :

"' If all the pens that ever poets held

Had fed the feeling of their masters' thoughts,' And as with rush of hurtling chariots

The flight of all their spirits were impelled Toward one great end, thy glory—nay, not then, Not yet might'st thou be praised enough of men."

But Marlowe has claims on our admiration in addition to his craft as a dramatist. Everybody knows the " choicely good" song, for it has grown hackneyed in three centuries,—"Come live

with me and be my love ; " and his fragment of Hero and Leander, which palpitates with life in every line, displays a

richness of versification well.nigh unequalled even in that wealthy age of poetry. Passionate and voluptuous it is, and, from a moral standing-point, Hallam's severe opinion of it is perhaps justified ; but this at least may be said, that the unabashed nakedness of Marlowe is more tolerable and less hurtful than the half-veiled licentiousness in which some novelists of our day rejoice. There is less excuse, or perhaps

none at all, to be made for his translation of Ovid's Amores ; and the publication of that translation in this fine edition of Marlowe's works suggests the question, how far it is necessary

to print every line or poem that a poet writes. Scott declared he would not mutilate Dryden ; and assuredly any attempt to purify his comedies would be a hopeless task. The vice in them is ingrained. The reader mast take them as they are or leave them alone ; and, with a few significant excep tions, the loss incurred by adopting the latter course would be far from serious. The same remark holds good with reference to dramatists like Wycherley or Congreve. They must be printed with all:the grossness that clings to them, or pass oat of existence altogether. In the publication of short poems an editor is forced sometimes, out of mercy to his readers, to exercise his discretion. Messrs. Elwin and Courthope's edition of Pope does not contain all the pieces which a former editor ventured

to publish; the reproduction, in a recent library edition of Keats, of some verses morally objectionable and poetically worthless, was generally felt to be injudicious; and Mr. Gosse, in his complete edition of Gray, one of the most refined of poets, follows the example of Mitford in rejecting a gross couplet.

There is no hard-and-fast line to be followed with regard to this matter. It seems but reasonable and fair to a poet's memory to omit whatever he himself declined to print or wished to withdraw from publication. To this extent an editor can

act, and beyond it he is helpless. He is not like a bon vivant, who can enjoy certain dishes and avoid others ; he cannot insert what he likes and reject what he dislikes ; and although the Amores do credit neither to Marlowe's taste nor scholarship,

and the version is at once worthless and detestable, Mr. Bullen, to his regret, no doubt, has been forced to reprint it. The translation was condemned by Archbishop Whitgift to be burnt

in 1599; it is a pity that Marlowe had not the grace so to treat it when in manuscript.

"The sweetest names," said Lamb, "and which carry a perfume in the mention, are Kit Marlowe, Drayton, Drummond of Hawthornden, and Cowley." Was it because he died young that the gentlest of men and the subtlest of dramatic critics had this affection for the name of Marlowe. We know little about him likely to win affection; the sense of power rather

than of sweetness is associated with his memory. Yet there are indications that this man, whose life seems to have been throughout one of unruly passion and license, had the power, so common to impulsive, fiery natures, of attracting admiration or affection. Chettle indeed, himself a humble playwright, stated plainly enough that he had no wish to be acquainted with Marlowe, and Greene's dying testimony against him is too well known to be quoted ; but the " liberal affection " of Sir Thomas Walsingham, and the tender epithets bestowed on " the Muses' darling" after his untimely end, show that the impression left upon his contemporaries by this "dead shepherd" was not wholly unfavourable. And we who look back on his stained life, if we are inclined to moralise on Marlowe's unhappy course, should remember how young he was when he died, and that his short years, full of folly though they may have been, were not without noble aspirations and achievements. To the last he seems to have been "climbing after knowledge infinite," and the wellknown lines of Drayton form a just tribute to his memory :—

" 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."

We cannot part with Mr. Bullen without congratulating him on his success. The Introduction, which consists of eighty-four pages, contains within that brief space no slight amount of criticism and learning. With much help from Mr. Dyce, his able predecessor in the same field—help which he never fails to acknowledge—Mr. Sullen takes his own course, and has thought out for himself every difficult question. In his judgments he is eminently suggestive and sane, and he avoids the exaggeration so commonly displayed by critics whose views of literature are narrowed to an age.