4 SEPTEMBER 1964, Page 25

BOOKS

Brutalities of Power

By C B. COX

IN the past Marlowe has often been depicted as the exuberant Elizabethan humanist, 'still climbing after knowledge infinite'; in recent studies more emphasis has been given to the evi- dence of sadism in his work. Certainly Marlowe could associate himself with the joy of wielding power over other human beings, savouring their torments with sensual relish. He was keenly sen- sitive to the way in which a man's best creative energies can become involved with the physical pleasure of humiliating his opponents. His insight into sadism is shown when Tamburlaine delights in the sufferings of Bajazeth in his cage, or when Edward II is forcibly washed and shaved in puddle water, and then obscenely tortured to death by Lightborn.

Yet Marlowe's love of cruelty should not be over-emphasised, for his attitude towards power, even as early as when he wrote Tarnburlaine, is always ambivalent. He delights in energy, but at the same time criticises its misuse. His attitude towards power is surprisingly modern. After in- dulging himself in the Fascist lusts of Tambur- laine, he becomes increasingly distrustful of the human will, very conscious of how the desire for power can end in sensual brutality. Marlowe's fundamental problem was strikingly presented in the film of Lawrence of Arabia, when Lawrence registered with shock that he enjoyed executing one of his followers. There are -signs in Edward II that this fear of the will was leading to a disgust for life itself, a feeling that all human action is debased. This conflict in Mar- lowe between soaring aspiration and a sense of guilt found superb dramatic expression in his best-known play, Dr. Faustus.

This `see-saw' attitude towards power is brought out very perceptively in Mr. J. B. Steane's ex- cellent study of Marlowe.* Mr. Steane's opening chapter provides a brief, sensible account of the documentary evidence on which our knowledge of Marlowe's life is based; but his main purpose is to write 'criticism that has the poetry as its centre of• interest, looking inwards to the art as something to be appreciated with enjoyment and Judgment, rather than outwards to the life, times, background and abstracted thought.' The major Part of bis book is devoted to detailed discus- Sion of all the plays, translations and poems, and to close analysis of Marlowe's language. Mr. Steane is a critic of fine perceptions and much common sense; his book should remain for some time the best guide to the world of Marlowe's imagination.

Mr. Steane's sensitivity to Marlowe's poetry IS particularly seen in his sympathetic study of The Tragedie of Dido, and in his analyses of Tamburlaine and Dr. Faustus. Some critics have adopted extreme views' towards these plays, try- ing to claim Marlowe either for God or the Devil. Mr. Stdane rejects the theory, usually associated * MARLOWE: A CRITICAL STUDY. By J. B. Stcane. (C.U.P., 35s.) t CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE: A BIOGRAPHY. By A. L. Rowse. (Macmillan, 35s.) with the name of R. W. Battenhouse, that Tamburlaine expresses a Christian belief in the punishment of sin; in fact, the audience is in- vited by the rhetoric to associate themselves with Tamburlaine's blood lust, and though there is some implied criticism of Tamburlaine, at the end our sympathies are still largely with him. Other writers, remembering that Marlowe was accused of atheism, have gone to the other ex- treme. Erich Heller has argued that all the vitality of Faustus goes into the poetry of aspiration, and that Marlowe's sensibility is clearly not in sympathy with the Christian fable. Mr. Steane points convincingly to the many impressive lines of religious feeling in the play : See see where Christs blood streames in the firmament.

One drop would saue my soule, halfe a drop, ah my Christ.

• Ah rend not my heart for naming of my Christ.

Marlowe could involve himself imaginatively both with Faustus's longings for divinity and with his fear of damnation. In all his plays he gives evidence of a divided mind.

Mr. Steane believes that there is a falling-away in Marlowe's achievement from Tamburlaine and Fahstus to The Jew of Malta, Edward 11 and The Massacre at Paris. At the beginning of his play, Faustus is proud, lusty and energetic; at the end, he cowers and hides, wishing his man- hood to be shrunk to the stature of a brutish beast. This movement of shrinkage, according to Mr. Steane, is typical of Marlowe himself as a writer. Just as the glories of Tamburlaine are transformed into the petty world of Edward 11, so Marlowe's imagination loses its creative energy, and becomes mean and uninspired. This theory persuades Mr. Steane, on critical grounds and following the argument of P. H. Kocher, that Faustus was written in 1588 or 1589 immediately after Tamburlaine, and before 'the bitter deflating mood of The Jew, Edward II and (in its different way) Hero and Leander.' As a critic, Mr. Steane prefers the shorter 1604 A text of Faustus to the 1616 B text, and objects strongly to the knock- about farce and cheap spectacle of the middle section, much of which he holds to be non- Marlovian. Mr. Steane argues persuasively for these views, but there are good grounds for feeling that the dating of Faustus and the reliability of the cen- tral episodes are still very open questions. Mr. Steane accepts rather simply that a writer's de- velopment is likely to be consistent, and that a man of Marlowe's ability would not stoop to writing cheap farce, neither of which contentions is necessarily true. More important, Mr. Steane's theory of shrinkage leads him to undervalue Edward 11.

According to Mr. Steane, Edward II is 'narrowly personal : the people are all small, and beyond them is nothing greater.' There is no 'moral history,' no sense, as in Shakespeare, of the effect of personal will on the great concerns of England and the realm. Steane looks in vain for positive values, 'some feeling for the values of stability and restraint.' Instead of the im- mensity of creation, glorified in the imagery of Tamburlaine, we have life constricted to the prison where Edward sits in darkness, up to his knees in water, waiting for his murderers.

These opinions do not do justice to Marlowe's insight in Edward II into the ambiguities of power. His concern is to dramatise Edward's humanity, the anguish of his suffering, and not to draw moral lessons. It is implied in the play that there is no divine pattern in human affairs; violence appears meaningless, and is not a sym- bol, as in Macbeth, of chaos in the universe. In all his plays Marlowe draws his audience into an ambiguous relationship with his heroes, part affection, part repulsion. Tamburlaine, Faustus, the Jew, Edward, all demonstrate in an extreme form what for Marlowe is the nature of ordinary human action. To act is to become involved with suffering and evil. Edward II may lack the poetic achievement of Tamburlaine and Faustus, but it displays a new subtlety in its treatment of such issues. Marlowe is more detached from his characters, not so involved in the sadism of Lightborn. In Marlowe's brief career he begins with a delight in the RenaissanCe hero, and ends with a deflation of heroic dreams which points forward to the satires of Pope. Mr. Steane him- self offers a valuable analysis of Hero and Leander, in which he demonstrates how the tone shifts from romantic and heroic to burlesque and mock heroic, from warmth and sympathy to savage irony.

In his new study of Marlowe,t Dr. Rowse suggests that Marlowe showed all the signs of being a schizophrenic type, and there is cer- tainly much evidence for this in the split in his work between tenderness and brutality, de- tached irony and savage farce. Dr. Rowse's aim is almost the exact opposite of that of Mr. Steane. His purpose is not mere 'criticism,' but the reality of biography, to follow Marlowe's tracks in his work. He begins with a description of ye olde Elizabethan England in Canterbury

(`The noise and hubbub of it all!'), and then pro- vides a reasonably lucid account of the likely occupations and studies of a Cambridge under- graduate of Marlowe's time; but the main part of the book is a study of the poems and plays, from which Dr. Rowse discovers the reality of biography. The Marlowe he portrays is a poete maudit, like Rimbaud in his `spiritual desolation and intellectual ecstasies.'

Dr. Rowse writes with enthusiasm; his material is largely second-hand, but his book might have served as the kind of general introduction useful in schools. Unfortunately, he writes in an irritat- ing, self-congratulatory style, and his book is full of over-confident pronouncements (We have no reason to doubt now that Dr. Faustus is the best of Marlowe's plays and that it belongs to the last year of his life'). The chapter on the Rival Poets repeats the silliest of his comments on Shakespeare's sonnets. He tells us that the sonnets are addressed to Southampton without bothering to mention that anyone had thought otherwise or that the issue might be in doubt. The most startling discoveries of Dr. Rowse are that Sonnet 86 is in the past tense and so must refer to the death of Marlowe (in fact, it ends in the present) and that Shakespeare might have died in the years 1592 and 1593 (several of his generation did!).

Dr. Rowse's tone is often woefully inadequate. After Bajazeth's wife brains herself against her cage, he write: 'It is all very horrid, and, it must be supposed, effective.' It is more appro- priate to end with some admirable words of Professor Clifford Leech: Marlowe 'was a man who speculated on, and brought alive to his mind, the furthest reaches of human power and of human suffering and humiliation.'