Thus the various stories of Marlowe's death, as retailed by Thomas Beard (The Theatre of God's Judgments) in 1597, Francis Meres in his Palladis Tamia (1598), Anthony a Wood in his Athenae Oxonienses (1691) and repeated by later writers, may be dismissed as mere legend.
Marlowe was buried on June 1, 1593, at Deptford.
Marlowe's career as a dramatist lies between the years 1587 and 1593, and his four great plays are Tamburlaine the Great, an heroic epic in dramatic form divided into two parts of five acts each (c. 1587, printed in 159o) ; Dr. Faustus (1588, entered at Stationers' Hall 16or); The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew of Malta (dating perhaps from 1589, acted in 1592, printed in 1633) ; and Edward the Second (printed 1594). The very first words of Tamburlaine sound the trumpet note of attack in the older order of things dramatic:— From jigging veins of riming mother wits And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay We'll lead you to the stately tent of war, Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine Threatening the world with high astounding terms And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword.
It leapt with a bound to a place beside Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, and few plays have been more imitated by rivals (Greene's Alphonsus of Aragon, Peele's Battle of Alcazar, Selimus, Scander beg) or more keenly satirized by the jealousy and prejudice of out-distanced competitors. Other plays in which Marlowe is said to have had a share are The Massacre at Paris (1593), printed in his name; Dido, Queen of Carthage (1593), with Nashe; Lust's Dominion (c. i600), the original draft of which may have been by Marlowe; and the lost play, The Maiden's Holiday, in the list of plays burnt by Warburton's cook. Some critics have traced his hand in other plays, among these being the Shakespearian Titus Andronicus, Henry VI., and Richard III. The following notes on the plays and on the poems are taken from the article written by Swinburne for the gth ed. of the Encyclopedia Britan nica. (T. S.; X.) Estimate on the Plays.—With many and heavy faults, there is something of genuine greatness in Tamburlaine the Great; and for two grave reasons it must always be remembered with dis tinction and mentioned with honour. It is the first poem ever written in English blank verse, as distinguished from mere rhymeless decasyllabics; and it contains one of the noblest pas sages, perhaps indeed the noblest, in the literature of the world, ever written by one of the greatest masters of poetry in loving praise of the glorious delights and sublime submission to the everlasting limits of his art.
The just and generous judgment passed by Goethe on the Faustus of his English predecessor in tragic treatment of the same subject is somewhat more than sufficient to counterbalance the slighting or the sneering references to that magnificent poem which might have been expected from the ignorance of Byron or the incompetence of Hallam. What most impressed the author of Faust in the work of Marlowe was a quality the want of which in the author of Manfred is proof enough to consign his best work to the second or third class at most. "How greatly it is all planned!" the first requisite of all great work, and one of which the highest genius possible to a greatly gifted barbarian could by no possibility understand the nature or conceive the existence.
Tamburlaine is monotonous in the general roll and flow of its stately and sonorous verse through a noisy wilderness of per petual bluster and slaughter ; but the unity of tone and purpose in Doctor Faustus is not unrelieved by change of manner and variety of incident. In the vision of Helen, for example, the in tense perception of loveliness gives actual sublimity to the sweet ness and radiance of mere beauty in the passionate and spontane ous selection of words the most choice and perfect; and in like manner the sublimity of simplicity in Marlowe's conception and expression of the agonies endured by Faustus under the imme diate imminence of his doom gives the highest note of beauty, the quality of absolute fitness and propriety, to the sheer straightfor wardness of speech in which his agonizing horror finds vent.
It is now a commonplace of criticism to observe and regret the decline of power and interest after the opening acts of The Jew of Malta. This decline is undeniable, though even the latter part of the play (the text of which is very corrupt) is not wanting in rough energy; but the first two acts would be sufficient foundation for the durable fame of a dramatic poet. In the blank verse of Milton alone—who perhaps was hardly less indebted than Shakespeare was before him to Marlowe as the first English master of word-music in its grander forms—has the glory or the melody of passages in the opening soliloquy of Barabbas been possibly surpassed.