courses will be now no less acceptable unto you to read after your serious affairs and studies than they have been lately for many of you to see when the same were shewed in London upon stages,' minus the frivolous fooling and often obscene jesting of professional mountebanks, could not but portray the poet's own feelings on the subject. After the success of his Tamburlaine it may be believed, and certainly hoped, that Marlowe visited his family and friends at Canterbury. Even if his parents found it difficult to forget their disappointed hopes with respect to his anticipated clerical career, they must have felt proud of his dramatic fame. Rumours of the popularity of his plays must have reached home, and the confirmation of any written statements he may have sent them must have been some compensation for their frustrated expectations. At this time the Marlowe family was leading the even tenor of citizen life: John Marlowe, the poet's father, had taken on various lads as apprentices to his business, and in 1583 had, as has been pointed out, married one of his daughters to a citizen of Canterbury. In 1587, Thomas Arthur, the brother of Catherine Marlowe, Kit's mother, is found settled with his wife, Ursula, and a numerous family in the parish of St. Dunstan, Canterbury, at the church of which parish his youngest son, Daniel, was christened on the 19th of March of that year. In 1588 the fear of a Spanish invasion was spreading all over the country and, especially in G the southern portion of the kingdom, causing great agitation amongst the inhabitants. Urgent appeals were made to the people to assist the state in preparing to resist the anticipated attack. The practice of archery continued to be maintained as a pastime, the introduction of firearms, heavy, cumbersome, and uncertain in aim as they were, not having yet superseded the favourite national pursuit. One means of national defence adopted to repel the expected invasion was the formation of troops of bowmen or archers. Citizens and countrymen alike volunteered for service in these troops, and amongst those who were enrolled, it is interesting to find, was John Marlowe, evidently the poet's father. In a manuscript muster-roll of the period the name of the patriotic freeman figures as that of a bowman. one of the burgher manuscript records of this same time evidence of his credit, if not of his position as a citizen, is furnished by an entry, immediately following one of the 7th April 1588, respecting a loan of five pounds being repaid by Henry Carre, 'out of Streeter's legacy, which Marley the shoemaker had and delivered in at Candlemas. No. xxx. R. Eliz.' In In those days, when no banking arrangements were in force, it was customary for sums of money to be placed in the hands of persons of good credit for safe custody until needed, and the above record testifies that John Marlowe was regarded as a man of integrity and substance. CHAPTER IV THE DRAMATIST THE next important item in Marlowe's literary life was the production of Doctor Faustus. This drama appears to have been originally put upon the stage by the Lord Admiral's men in 1588, although the earliest known reference to its public appearance is the 30th September 1594, in Henslowe's Diary, when a revival of it took place, with most gratifying results for the stage proprietor. Faustus not only sustained but enhanced the author's reputation. As with the other plays of Marlowe it is intended to depict one prominent trait of a character as in Tamburlaine the poet vehemently strove to express the insatiable longing of a warrior—a man apart from the common herdfor kingly power and despotic dominion over the physical bodies of weaker men, so in Faustus his intention is to portray the unquenchable thirst of a student to obtain sway over the minds of his fellowmen by mental or spiritual means. In Faustus there is no plot, scarcely a tale to tell, and even more than in Tamburlaine is the spectator dependent upon a series of scenes, which in this case show the gradual subjugation of a mighty mind by the power of evil 133 1 passions. From the very commencement of the tragedy, when the hero weighs and finds wanting to satisfy his inordinate desires all the advantages proffered by the leading professions until the terrific ending, the one leading object he has ever in view is the acquisition of 'mind-conquering learning.' The deity he worships, for its power to rule mankind, is 'scholarism'; the word Marlowe was sneered at by Greene for using to describe scholastic knowledge. To acquire full possession of 'Learning's golden gifts,' Faustus is prepared to risk everything, and thus falls an easy prey to the tempter. Had I as many souls as there be stars,' is his assertion, 'I'd give them all' to become potent in magical arts, for then I shall be a very demigod, and 'All things that move between the quiet poles But his dominion that exceeds in this Stretcheth as far as doth the mind of man.' What follows in the drama proves that the play of Faustus is, perhaps even without the author's direct intention or conception, no more nor less than an impersonation of CONSCIENCE. Even as good or evil, virtue or vice, was personified in the old mystery plays, so has Marlowe, with all his poetic power and genius, given but a spiritualised embodiment of a moral attribute. From time to time, during the progress of this tragedy, a 'Good Angel' and an 'Evil Angel' enter upon the scene and alternately sway the hero's mind by their counsels. In these suggestive promptings of Conscience, which they typify, the Good spirit always succumbs to the Evil, and has ultimately to leave Faustus to his fate. After their first appearance he soliloquises and ponders over the promise made by his malevolent inspirer to make him lord and commander of the terrestrial and celestial elements: 'How am I glutted with conceit of this! Perform what desperate enterprise I will? I'll have them read me strange Philosophy, Flushed with these fantastic aspirations, he seeks the assistance of two acquaintances who, as he knows, are already students of necromantic arts, and informs them how dissatisfied he is with all the science of the schools: 'Philosophy is odious and obscure, Both Law and Physic are for petty wits; Unpleasant, harsh, contemptible, and vile.' |
