Dyce, 1831, vol. i. p. iv. v.) The materials of the fable are furnished by two popular legends, which are here again connected with each other, and also with certain events of the reign of the good King Edward, (in all probability the highly popular Edward III.), without regard to chronology or historical truth.

"George-a-Green," and "Robin Hood," are not, even in the present day, entirely banished from the memory of Englishunen; and at the period when Greene wrote, they were the favourite heroes of the populace. The characters, which are well conceived and skilfully worked out by the poct, are in the very spirit of the old legends, romances, and ballads, which were still current among the people. Extraordinary personal strength, and an equal degree of courage and honour- a lively light-hearted gaiety, loyalty to their sovereign, attachment to their own class and mode of life –form the principal traits of their characters. Accordingly, they are sketched in a perfectly epic style, and merely from that aspect of their existence which connects them with the outer world -with external relations, circumstances, and events; while the inward life of mind and soul is rarely, if ever, brought before us. In like manner the action is spun out from external causes; and by the accidental concurrence of circumstances and events. With the defeat of the rebellious Earl of Kendall, by the Pinner, and of the Scottish King, by the old Musgrove, and their delivery as prisoners to the King, the thread of the story first laid down is at an end. But at this juncture Robin Hood comes forward, and the action assumes an entirely new turn, in which the shoemakers of the merry city of Bradford play an important part. In short, an essentially new piece opens, in which, however, the story of the Pinner's love for the fair Bettris is incidentally brought to a close. It is manifest that the several movements of the action are not otherwise connected with each other than as the exploits of Diomed depend on the anger of the godlike Achilles, or the adventurous travels of Ulysses are connected with the manner in which he revenges himself on the insolent suitors. If, however, we allow this epical method to pass, and overlook the frequent offences against the laws of dramatic composition, the whole will appear so highly amusing, the characters drawn so unpretendingly, and with so few, yet delicate and expressive touches; the

language so unforced, natural, and appropriate; the wit so sprightly and so naïve, and all pervaded with such a tone of hilarity and goodnature, that I am disposed to rank it higher than the Friar Bacon.

Collier, and with him Tieck, places the first appearance of Friar Bacon in the year 1588; from Henslow's Diary it appears to have been acted in London in 1591. Somewhere about this time, probably in 1589, the "Pinner of Wakefield" may have been composed; in 1593 it was still acted. However, it may, without hesitation, be assumed, that Robert Greene had written for the stage many years before this—at all events as early as 1587. (Collier, iii. 150.)

Christopher Marlowe's oldest piece, "Tamburlane the Great," is placed by Collier, (iii. 108) on very plausible, not to say certain grounds, in the year 1586. The very choice of such a subject for his first appearance as a dramatic poet, throws some light on his character. The date and place of Marlowe's birth are alike involved in uncertainty in all probability he was younger, by some years, than his friend Greene. He, too, had enjoyed a good education, and studied at Cambridge, 1583. However, his wild and irregular courses seem, at a very early period, to have driven him to abandon his destined career. Soon after quitting the University he became a player, and was well received, but appears, after a short time, to have quitted the stage, perhaps as imposing too much restraint on his pleasures, or perhaps that he might be able to devote all his powers and talents to writing. At least we do not meet with his name in any of the contemporaneous lists of players. On the other hand, his great tragedies appeared in quick succession, the "Massacre at Paris," and the "Life and Death of Dr. Faustus," being written (according to Collier) in 1588; his "Jew of Malta," in 1589; and his "Dido," in which he had the assistance of Nash, in 1590; and in the next year, his best work, "Edward II."* These six dramas, besides others, which, perhaps, belong to him, he composed within the short space of six or seven years of a riotous and dissipated career, and distracted by warm feelings and headstrong passions. In this respect he rivalled his companion

* Lust's Dominion, which, in modern times, has been generally ascribed to him, is not his work, but was a later production from the pens of Dicker, Haughton, and Day, as is plain from Dodsley's Old Plays, II. 311, Ed. 1825. (Collier, iii. 96.)

Greene, with this difference, however, that while the latter's failings resulted from weakness of character and frivolity, with Marlowe on the contrary, who possessed an excess rather than want of strength of mind and will, it was the immoderation of his feelings and desires, the passionate susceptibility, and the strange fantastic cast of his whole character, that were the source of his ruinous irregularities and immorality. Like his life and character, his very death was violent. It is now ascertained that Marlowe died in the prime of life in the following manner:—having attacked, in a fit of jealousy, one Francis Archer, his rival in love, with his dagger, his antagonist, being the stronger man, wrested his own weapon from him, and drove it into his head; from this wound he died on the 1st of June, 1593.

Marlowe was in all essential points the direct opposite of Greene; while the latter delighted in a cheerful grace, and agreeableness of style, Marlowe aimed solely and exclusively at the forcible, extraordinary, and sublime. He possessed, in fact, a vigorous, and -not to lay too much stress upon the term-a great mind; but his heart was waste and rude, and it is from the heart that every truly great thought proceeds. Accordingly, under his hand, the forcible becomes the forced, the uncommon the unnatural, while the great and sublime sinks into the grotesque and monstrous. As, within his own breast, inordinate passions and emotions stormed and raged, so, in the world, he discerned a titan-like conflict and struggle between mighty forces, which must ultimately destroy and annihilate each other; so that moral necessity can only appear amid ruin and desolation. Accordingly, in Marlowe's pieces, the tragical almost always degenerates into the horrible. With him the essence of tragedy consists not in the fall of the truly noble, great, and lovely, brought on by its own intellectual weakness, but rather in the internecine struggle of the primary elements of human nature, the destructive conflict of its mightiest faculties and impulses, forcibly drawn out of their proper career, and of the most vehement affections and passions. To such a height does he frequently accumulate terrific and monstrous events, deeds of violence, enormities and crimes, that no corresponding catastrophe, nor adequate punishment, can be devised for them; and the close of the piece consequently appears as a low and narrow outlet through which the mass of the action seeks in vain to force its

way. Accordingly, the last moments of his heroes, however they may distress and agitate, never exalt or elevate the feelings. His notion of tragedy comprehends in it nothing of solace and atonement. Nevertheless, his mental vigour alone has enabled him to do that which was wholly beyond the power of Greene; his poetical matter is well connected and condensed; his dramas have for their basis a vital concrete idea, a fully defined view of life and the world, out of which the whole composition appears to have grown naturally, and organically to have perfected itself. So far his composition possesses solidity and perfectness, and Skottowe is plainly wrong when he refuses to allow him any merit in this respect. But, on the other hand, some of his details are disproportionately dwelt upon; his scenes do not run into each other simply and naturally, but are tacked together without harmony, and so far, no doubt, betoken a want of true artistic judgment. The action not unfrequently stands perfectly still, while certain incoherent excrescences attach themselves to it; in short, the intrinsic unity of idea is not combined with extrinsic grace and perfection; the outward form is angular, clumsy, and stiff. In like manner, his characters are painted with a few broad touches, and in strong light and shade; they are seldom truly grand, but, for the most part, extravagant and monstrous; bold and vigorous, indeed, so far as they are drawn, always imperfect and incomplete. In these points, again, where Greene is weakest, Marlowe is strongest; he possesses, in an eminent degree, the power of pourtraying, with the greatest vigour and expression, the inmost states, passions, and emotions of the soul; his characters, in short, are, generally speaking, nothing but affection-all passion and sensibility; viewed on this side, they appear over-full; while, on the other hand, they are deficient in the finer touches, and nicer alternations of light and shade, between self-command and passionate ebullition, and the several grades of evolution and progress.

All his passions and affections, and with them the incidents of the action, spring forth at once fixed and mature; they are there, but why or wherefore we know not-all reflection is excluded; his personages seem, we might almost say, to be entirely without thought or reflection; and, accordingly, it is rarely we meet with a general sentiment in a drama of Marlowe's; this domain of

mind he has left altogether uncultivated.

But what we most

especially miss in the works of this author is, a living relation and interaction between the outer and the inner world of his dramatic personages. While with Greene the acts and events of the piece appear for the most part to derive their motives from without, with Marlowe they seem entirely to proceed from within; his characters act in the way they do, from no apparent motive or antecedent cause so disposing them, but because such is their humour at the moment when they are called upon to will and to act. Marlowe's diction is generally copious and nervous, pregnant and impressive-his delineations of passion and affection most commonly happy; it is, however, wanting in grace and tenderness; and in the same way that in the structure of his fable and in his characters he delights in the extraordinary, the massive, and the prodigious, so in his language he is ever aiming at unusual and striking figures, and consequently too often sinks into inflation and bombast. To Marlowe, however, belongs the merit of effecting a great improvement in dramatic diction; the weight of his example having led to the invariable adoption of blank verse even in the more popular pieces of the public theatres. Marlowe was the first to employ it on a public stage, and carried it to a degree of perfection which comes very near to that of Shakspeare. (Collier, iii. 115, &c., 128, &c., goes at length into this subject). Moreover, Marlowe possesses a distinct and stronglymarked character of style. To describe briefly its chief peculiarities, we may observe in the first place, that its chief defect is the undue predominance which the lyrical element maintains in all his pieces-the decidedly lyrical manner in which he handles dramatic poetry. He entirely overlooks the outward world, and never duly considers the objectivity of mind and life wherein necessity reigns with iron hand, lopping off all immoderation and excess, while the subjective, and therewith the capricious also, which rejects both measure and restraint, are with him everywhere paramount. Hence the monstrous and the unnatural in his characters and plots, where all is passion and emotion; hence, too, the want of circumspection-the precipitancy, and the inadequacy of the motives-the want of a gradual march of the plot, and of a graceful and harmonious movement in the language and action.