That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill, Enter CUSAY. See Cusay, see the flower of Israel, Brighter than inside bark of new-hewn cedar, On Zephyr's wings before the king of Heaven. David. Go now and bring her quickly to the King; Darid. Bright Bethsabe shall wash in David's bower In water mix'd with purest almond flower, Now comes my Lover tripping like the Roe, [Exit. [There is more of the same stuff, but I suppose the reader has a surfeit; especially as this Canticle of David has never been suspected to contain any pious sense couched underneath it, whatever his son's may. The Kingly bower "seated in hearing of a hundred streams," is the best of it.] LUST'S DOMINION; OR, THE LASCIVIOUS QUEEN, A TRAGEDY, BY CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE The Queen Mother of Spain loves an insolent Moor.* QUEEN. ELEAZAR, the Moor. Queen. Chime out your softest strains of harinony, And on delicious Music's silken wings Send ravishing delight to my love's ears; That he may be enamor'd of your tunes. Elear. A. ay, away. Queen. No, no, says aye; and twice away, says stay. Come, come, I'll have a kiss; but if you'll strive, For one denial you shall forfeit five. Elcaz. Be gone, be gone. Queen. What means my love? Burst all those wires; burn all those instruments; Eleaz. What, die for me? Away. you. Queen. Away, what way? I prithee, speak more kindly. Why dost thou frown at whom? Eleaz. At thee. Queen. At me? O why at me for each contracted frown, I prithee, speak to me, and chide me not, • Such another as Aaron in Titus Andronicus. Smile on me; and these two wanton boys, Bestow one smile, one little little smile, [Kit Marlowe, as old Izaak Walton assures us, made that smooth song which begins "Come live with me and be my love." The same romantic invitations "in folly ripe in reason rotten," are given by the queen in the play, and the lover in the ditty. He talks of "beds of roses, buckles of gold:" Thy silver dishes for thy meat, Prepared each day for thee and me. The lines in the extract have a luscious smoothness in them, and they were the most temperate which I could pick out of this Play. The rest is in King Cambyses' vein; rape, and murder, and superlatives; "huffing braggart puft" lines, such as the play writers anterior to Shakspeare are full of, and Pistol" but coldly imitates." Blood is made as light of in some of • Take a specimen from the speech of the Moor's: Now Tragedy, thou minion of the night, My bloody labors, tortures, stratagems, these old dramas as money in a modern sentimental comedy; and as this ia given away till it reminds us that it is nothing but counters, so that is spilt till it affects us no more than its representative, the paint of the propertyman in the theatre.] TAMBURLAINE THE GREAT; OR, THE SCYTHIAN SHEPHERD. IN TWO PARTS. BY CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE.-PART FIRST. Tamburlaine's person described. Or stature tall, and straightly fashioned; A heaven of heavenly bodies in their spheres: Pale of complexion, wrought in him with passion His custom in war. The first day when he pitcheth down his tents, White is their hue; and on his silver crest Then must his kindled wrath be quenched with blood, But if these threats move not submission, Black are his colors, black pavilion, His spear, his shield, his horse, his armor, plumes, He raseth all his foes with fire and sword. [I had the same difficulty (or rather much more) in culling a few sane lines from this as from the preceding Play. The lunes of Tamburlaine are perfect "midsummer madness." Nebuchadnazar's are mere modest pretensions compared with the thundering vaunts of this Scythian Shepherd. He comes in (in the Second Part) drawn by conquered kings, and reproaches these pampered jades of Asia that they can draw but twenty miles a day, Till I saw this passage with my own eyes, I never believed that it was any thing more than a pleasant burlesque of Mine Ancient's. But I assure my readers that it is soberly set down in a Play which their Ancestors took to be serious. I have subjoined the genuine speech for their amusement. Enter Tamburlaine, drawn in his chariot by Trebizon and Soria, with bits in their mouths, reins in his left hand, in his right hand a whip, with which he scourgeth them. Tamb. Holla, ye pamper'd jades of Asia: As you ye slaves in mighty Tamburlaine. The headstrong jades of Thrace Alcides tamed, And made so wanton that they knew their strengths, |