A reason why critical opinions coincide so closely with regard to the merits of Tamburlaine, as they do also with regard to those of Edward the SecondMarlowe's last work-is certainly due to the fact that the text of both dramas is the least corrupt of his plays; both have been preserved nearly in the condition in which they left their maker's hand, untinkered and unadded-to by the pens of meaner

men.

Of course contemporary stage-managers could not afford to ignore 'such conceits as clownage keeps in pay,' and the usual buffooneries of the period had to be foisted in between the acts, either by the players, or by the management. Joseph Hall (Bishop of Exeter) in his satire, Virgidemiarum, referring to the absurdity and vulgarity of these distracting interludes, draws particular attention to them in connection with Tamburlaine. The author of this drama was, he points out:

'One higher pitch'd doth set his soaring thought
On crowned kings that Fortune hath low brought :
On some uprearèd, high-aspiring swaine

As it might be the Turkish Tamburlaine.

Then weeneth he this base drink-drownèd spright
Rapt to the three-fold loft of heaven hight,
When he conceives upon his faignèd stage
The stalking steps of his great personage,

Graced with huf-cap termes and thund'ring threats
That his poor hearer's hayre quite upright sets';

So, to counteract the terror likely to thrill the audience, and as considerate as Bottom, in the

Midsummer Night's Dream, to propitiate their overstrung feelings :

'Now least such frightful showes of Fortune's fall
And bloudy tyrants' rage should chance apall
The dead-stroke audience, midst the silent rout
Comes trampling in a selfe-misformed lout,
And laughs and grins, and frames his mimick face,
And justles straight into the prince's place:
Then dothe the theatre eccho all aloud

With gladsome noyse of that applauding crowd:
A goodly hoch-poch when vile russettings

Are matched with monarchs and with mightie kings.'

These lines were written whilst Tamburlaine still held possession of the stage, although its author had already passed away.

That Marlowe had any hand in the rubbish these clowns ranted for the benefit of the groundlings is unconceivable, but that he was compelled to submit to the intervention of their fooling is as equally certain. With reference to such 'gag,' in the 1592 edition of Tamburlaine the printer, Richard Jones, prefixed an address 'To the Gentlemen-Readers and Others that take pleasure in Reading Histories,' in which he, or some one over his signature, says, 'I have purposely omitted and left out some fond and frivolous gestures, digressing and, in my poor opinion, far unmeet for the matter, which I thought might seem more tedious unto the wise than any way else to be regarded, though haply they have been of some vain-conceited fondlings greatly gaped at what time they were shewed upon the stage in their graced deformities: nevertheless now to be

mixtured in print with such matter of worth, it would prove a great disgrace to so honourable and stately a history. Great folly were it in me to commend unto your wisdoms either the eloquence of the author that writ them, or the worthiness of the matter itself.'

Ben Jonson, who must have smarted as sorely as any of his of his contemporaries under such inflictions, thus characterises the audiences of the age: the audiences to which the masterpieces of the time had to be submitted:

'The wise and many-headed bench that sits
Upon the life and death of plays and wits,

(Composed of gamester, captain, knight, knight's man,
Lady or pucelle, that wears mask or fan,

Velvet or taffata cap, ranked in the dark,

With the shop's foreman, or some such brave spark
That may judge for his sixpence) had, before
They saw it half, damned thy whole play, and more;
Their motives were, since it had not to do

With vices, which they looked for, and came to.'83

The sensation which the production of Tamburlaine made was till then unparalleled. It was a new excitement, arousing admiration from some, but from others nothing save envy, hatred, and malice. The contemporary play-writer, Robert Greene, who belonged to one of the wildest sets of the metropolis, and who, although M.A. of Cambridge and an author of works which might have brought him in sufficient wherewith to live had he been commonly prudent, was at this time a social outcast, and the veriest

booksellers' hack. This man, apparently out of mere envy of the young dramatist's success, whilst his own. plays were being damned, conceived an unquenchable hatred of Marlowe. There is no evidence

whatever that Marlowe had any personal knowledge of Greene, beyond the fact of the latter having, in a most libellous manner, in a posthumous tract styled him a 'quondam acquaintance.'

Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, 'that crazy death-bed wail of a weak and malignant spirit,' that pamphlet, letter, libel, or whatever it may be styled, is generally quoted and referred to as if it might be accepted as positive proof against any one, 'without,' as Richard Simpson says, 'making allowance for the ingrained falsehood of the man. Greene gives us to understand that he and Marlowe were great friends; yet in addressing Marlowe he makes against him the vilest insinuations, and those which we can now read are little in comparison with those which the manuscript probably contained.' 84 Chettle, who edited the copy for the printer, subsequently stated that he had no personal knowledge of Marlowe, 'whose learning,' he added, 'I reverence,' and had therefore only obtained his character by hearsay. He declared that when he copied out Greene's manuscript, he 'stroke out what there in conscience I thought he in some displeasure writ; or had it been true, yet to publish it was intollerable.' 85

Robert Greene, whose character was of the very shadiest hue, out of spite through envy, or from some

real or imaginary grievance, could not refrain from flinging mud at Marlowe, and, later on, at Shakespeare. Apparently because the productions of the younger man's genius had displaced Greene's plays in popular favour, he pursued Marlowe with innuendo and slander, year by year, until he himself was carried off by debauchery and disease. In an epistle prefixed to his Perimedes, published in 1588, Greene would not forbear from recounting how a play of his had been scorned because, unlike certain 'gentlemen poets,' 'I could not make my verses jet upon the stage in tragical buskins, every word filling the mouth like a fa-burden of Bow-bells, daring God out of heaven with that atheist, Tamburlaine . . . such mad and scoffing poets that have poetical spirits, as bred of Merlin's race, if there be any in England, that set the end of scholarism in an English blank verse,' and so on. Merlin is of course a hit at Marlin, as the poet's name was frequently written, and as Marlowe was known among his associates by the nickname of 'Tamburlaine,' as Shakespeare was subsequently by that of 'Falstaff,' the mischief to be made by this spiteful reference can be appreciated.

Greene had another fling at his hated and too successful contemporary in Menaphon, registered in 1589. After a reference to Tamburlaine, to intensify his sneers he goes out of his way to style the story of a certain love-passage 'a Canterbury tale,' adding that it had been told by some 'propheticall full mouth that as he were a Cobbler's eldest sonne, would by