Chapters in the History of English Literature from 1509 to the Close of the Elizabethan Period; From 1509 to the Close of the Elizabethan Period (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1884. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VIII. MARLOWE. Marlowe, b. 1563-64; educated at King's School, Canterbury, and at Corpus Christi (Bene't) College, Cambridge; d. 1593.--Tamburlaine the Great, before 1587; Tragical History of Dr. Faustus, 1588; Jew of Malta, 1588-90; Massacre of Paris, 1590 circ.; Edward II., 1590 circ.; Tragedy of Queen Dido, prob. left unfinished at Marlowe's death, and completed by Nash, prob. 1594. Marlowe is the greatest of Shakspere's predecessors; his work comes nearest, both in form and in idea, to that of the greatest of English dramatists. It may have been time alone that prevented him from making still narrower the gulf that separated him from his great contemporary; for Marlowe, born in 1564, died in 1593. After that university training common to all Elizabethan dramatists, --a training which gave enough knowledge of classics to allow of their use as literary appendages, as mines from which could be extracted illustrations, apt quotations, strings of well-sounding names, etc., --his life seems to have been one of the wildest Bohemianism, ending in inglorious death Of the genius, of the very great promise, of that "wit lent from Heaven," neither contemporaries nor posterity can have any doubt. It was never obscured in his works by " those vices sent from hell;" even Greene's solemn address to him in the Groatsworth of Wit--which begins by greeting him as an atheist: "Wonder not, thou famous gracer of tragedies, that Green, who has said with thee there is no God"--cannot convict him of wilful and utter abandonment to a life of thoughtless dissipation. Marlowe was not like the Vanbrughs, Farquhars, and in some trivial quarrel. Wycherleys of after-days, who felt at home and satisfied with wickedness, and to whom life was no problem. Marlowe lived the life fr...