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CHAPTER III

LONDON: MANHOOD

No promise or hope of preferment would have been needed to draw Marlowe to London, the centre of literary activity as well as of political affairs. That he intended to rely upon his literary abilities for fame and fortune is self-evident. He was not the sort of man likely to look for the help of others to make a career for him, although most of his school and college associates had already migrated to the metropolis, and could prove serviceable in time of need, should such ever arise. Amongst old Cambridge companions there was Richard Boyle, who had been destined for the Bar, but who, finding he was unable to support himself at that, had forsaken Jurisprudence, and had, as he records in his Remembrances, 'put myself into the service of Sir Roger Manwood, Lord Chief Baron ... where I served as one of his clerks.' 78

It was probably through the Boyles, or some of his Canterbury friends, that Marlowe made the acquaintance of Roger Manwood. Like so many

of Marlowe's associates, Manwood was of Kentish extraction, having been born at Sandwich, where

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his father was in business as a draper, and of which place his grandfather had been twice mayor, and, in 1523, its parliamentary representative. Soon after he had been called to the Bar, Roger Manwood was appointed Recorder of Sandwich and then elected to represent that ancient Cinque Port in Parliament. In 1578 he had been made Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, was knighted, and was in great favour at Court. Evidently he was a very desirable acquaintance for a young man having to make his position in the world, and there is every reason to believe that he was on friendly terms with the poet. It is worth notice that in early life the future judge had displayed his dramatic proclivities by appearing in the character of the 'Lord Chief Baron,' in the masque of Palaphilos, at the Inner Temple revels of 1561.

When the Lord Chief Baron Manwood died in December 1592, Marlowe composed the following epitaph on him:

'In obitum honoratissimi Viri, Rogeri Manwood, Militis,
Quæstorii Reginalis Capitalis Baronis.

Noctivagi terror, ganeonis triste flagellum,
Et Jovis Alcides, rigido vulturque latroni,
Urna subtegitur. Scelerum, gaudete, nepotis !
Insons, luctifica sparsis cervice capillis,
Plange! fori lumen, veneranda gloria legis,
Occidit: heu, secum effœtas Acherontis ad oras
Multa abiit virtus. Pro tot virtutibus uni,
Livor, parce viro; non audacissimus esto
Illius in cineres, cujus tot millia vultus
Mortalium attonuit: sic cum te nuntia Ditis

Vulneret exsanguis, feliciter ossa quiescant,

Famaque marmorei superet monumenta sepulchri !' 79

The Manwoods were connected by marriage with the Sidneys, one of whom was at King's School at the same time as Marlowe, and with the Walsinghams, another Kentish family, with whom Kit was, or subsequently became, very intimately acquainted. The poet's associations with other persons of note, or influence, or genius, resident in the metropolis, will be referred to later on.

When he came to London Marlowe doubtless brought some of his manuscripts with him. A favourite work amongst English classical students at that time was the Helena Raptus of Coluthus. Several Latin editions of it had recently appeared, and, so say the Coxeter MSS., Marlowe translated it into English in 1587. His version is authoritatively stated to have appeared in 1595, but no copy of the work is known to exist. Before he left Cambridge he must have been engaged upon dramatic writing, and when he arrived at the metropolis he doubtless had with him the original draft of Tamburlaine. The drama had been completed by 1587, as it was produced upon the stage in that year.

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Whatever Marlowe's position or means may hitherto have been, the great success which this drama immediately attained made his fame if not his fortune, and procured him the friendship of several persons of rank and reputation. With the leading literati of the period he naturally became acquainted. George Chapman, the translator of

Homer, became his trusty friend, and to be a friend of Chapman was a good reputation in itself, for he bore an unblemished character amongst his contemporaries. He was described by Wood as of 'reverend aspect and graceful manners, religious and temperate.' Chapman was also on intimate terms with Spenser, Shakespeare, Matthew Roydon, and all the most famed poets of the time; and with the Walsinghams, to whom several of his books were dedicated.81

The work that made Marlowe famous, famous 'not for an age but for all time,' was Tamburlaine. Although it was produced by 1587, the first known edition of it did not appear in print until 1590. By the latter date, the author of the play was noted and well known to all, but, for a reason doubtless deemed best by the publisher, no author's name was given on the title-page. Richard Jones, who published Tamburlaine and many of the earliest known works of various writers of repute, is described by Thomas Lodge as 'a needie pirate'; whilst Nicholas Breton declared he was 'an unfair dealer'; so that Marlowe is scarcely likely to have reaped much benefit from the man's enterprise. The title-page of the first known edition of the work reads as follows:

Tamburlaine the Great, who, from a Scythian Shephearde by his rare and woonderfull Conquests, became a most puissant and mightye Monarque. And (for his tyranny and terrour in Warre) was tearmed The Scourge of God. Devided into two Tragicall

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