The pact and the last act of Faustus
Mephistophilis appears at his command and says he is ready to give Faustus twenty-four years of pleasure and unlimited power, on condition that he sell his soul to Lucifer. Faustus accepts and signs the bond with blood drawn from his wounded arm. His first wish is for a bride, the fairest maiden in Germany, but Mephistophilis talks him out of marriage and offers a succession of other favorites instead. Faustus asks for Helen of Troy, and when she appears he is carried away: was this the face that launched a thousand ships and burned the topless towers of Ilium? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss; you are fairer than the evening air clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.
The last act is written with great power. There Faustus, in despair, begs God at least to end his eternal curse: let Faustus live in hell a thousand years, or a hundred thousand, but save him at last. At midnight, amid blinding clouds and thunder, he disappears. The chorus speaks his epitaph, and Marlowe's too: cut is the branch that might have grown full straight, and burned is Apollo's laurel bough.
The Jew of Malta and Edward II
Perhaps in these plays Marlowe meant to quench the fire of the mind's longing for knowledge, beauty and power. Aristotle held that the purging effect of tragedy helps its author more than its audience. In The Jew of Malta the lust for power turns into the greed for wealth, voiced in the prologue by the ghost of Machiavelli: those who hate me admire me most; they read my books to win St Peter's chair, and when they throw them away my flattering followers poison them; religion is a childish toy, and there is no sin but ignorance. The moneylender Barabas is a crude caricature of greed, hating everyone who stands in the way of his profit, and the play leans on prejudiced stereotypes of its day, which modern readers should keep in mind. Barabas says that in Florence, when they called him dog, he learned to kiss his hand, shrug and bow like a barefoot friar, hoping to see his tormentors on their deathbeds. He gloats over his jewels and the 'infinite riches in a little room', and when his daughter finds his lost bag of money he cries out, in words that recall Shylock, 'O my girl, my gold, my fortune, my felicity!' The play has a strength like fury, and a wit and force of language that bring Marlowe close to Shakespeare.
With Edward II Marlowe came closer still. The young king, newly crowned, sends for his favorite Gaveston, caresses him and showers him with offices and wealth; the nobles he has slighted rise in revolt and depose him. Edward turns to philosophy and says to his remaining friends: come, Spencer, come, Baldock, sit by me; now try the philosophy you learned from Plato and Aristotle in the famous nurseries of the arts. The drama is well built, the verse alive with feeling, imagination and power, the characters drawn clearly and without contradiction, and the king, so weak and so proud, must still be forgiven for his simplicity, youth and delicacy. It is much like Shakespeare's Richard II, written a year later.
What Marlowe lacked and what he gave
What might this dramatist of twenty-seven not have done had he matured? At that time Shakespeare was writing slight pieces such as Love's Labour's Lost, The Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Comedy of Errors. In The Jew of Malta Marlowe had learned to arrange every scene on a set plan; in Edward II he learned to make characters more than the embodiment of one quality. In a year or two he might have written without bombast and without forcing a thrilling, tidy ending on his plays, and he might have reached a loftier philosophy and a deeper interest in legend and in the moral weaknesses of mankind.
His chief fault was a lack of humor. There is no natural laughter in his work, and when something comic does turn up by chance it does not do the job it does in tragedy, which is to calm the reader's feelings before stirring him with a sad theme, as Shakespeare could do. Marlowe could grasp the physical beauty of women, but not their delicacy, anxiety and dignity; his plays have no memorable women, and this is true even of his unfinished Dido, Queen of Carthage.
As for his verse, at times the speaker becomes a poet and the orator delivers a 'thunderous and splendid speech'. In many scenes clear lines with fine figures and pleasing words run on so that one seems to be listening to Shakespeare's imaginative poetry. In Marlowe's hands blank verse proved best suited to English drama; though sometimes monotonous, its meter varied and it seemed to flow with natural continuity.
The death of Marlowe
His sad story ended suddenly. On 30 May 1593 three agents, Ingram Frizer, Nicholas Skeres and Robert Poley, joined the poet, who may still have been working as a spy, for dinner at a house or tavern in Deptford, a few miles from London. According to William Danby, the coroner, Frizer and Marlowe exchanged sharp words because they could not agree about the bill. Marlowe snatched Frizer's dagger and gave him some light wounds. Frizer seized his hand, turned the blade against him, and delivered a fatal wound; Marlowe died on the spot. Frizer, once arrested, claimed self-defense and was released after a month. (This official account has long been doubted by some, and the book does not discuss the doubts.) Marlowe was buried on 1 June in a grave whose place is unknown. He was twenty-nine.
Poems and legacy
Besides Dido, Marlowe left two fine works. One is Hero and Leander, a verse retelling of a story by Musaeus (fifth century) about the youth who swam the Hellespont to keep his tryst. The other is The Passionate Shepherd to His Love, one of the best lyrics of the Elizabethan age. Shakespeare honors Marlowe by putting phrases of that poem into the mouth of Sir Hugh Evans in The Merry Wives of Windsor, and in As You Like It (Act III, scene v) he alludes to him again with the line asking who ever loved that loved not at first sight, which is line seventy-six of Hero and Leander according to the book (the numbering is worth checking).
The work of Marlowe in so short a life is truly amazing. He made blank verse a flexible, powerful speech. He saved the Elizabethan stage from the attacks of Puritans and classicists, and he gave particular forms to the drama of ideas and to English history plays. His influence is visible in The Merchant of Venice, Richard II, Shakespeare's love poems and even his lofty rhetoric. Marlowe, Kyd, Lodge, Greene and Peele cleared the way, and the form, structure and style of Elizabethan drama were ready. Shakespeare's works, therefore, are not a miracle but the completion of the work of others.
Shakespeare: his name and his family
To keep this account sufficient, let us summarize what half the world knows. For three centuries scholars have investigated Shakespeare in good faith, and a great deal of notable information about him has come to light, enough that we may set aside the doubts commonly raised about his authorship and attribute nearly all the plays to him.
About his name, however, we cannot be sure. Elizabeth let people spell their names in different ways, though she did not let them choose different religions. So one document could contain several spellings of one name, and anyone was free to write his name as his taste or mood suggested. That is why Marlowe's name appears in five forms and Shakespeare's in six, according to the book. The spelling common today is absent from most of his signatures, and even within a single will his name appears in three forms.
His mother, Mary Arden, came from an old Warwickshire family. She married John Shakespeare, the son of her father's tenant, brought a sufficient dowry in land and money, and bore eight children, of whom William was the third. In Stratford John became a respected tradesman, bought two houses, and served as ale-taster, constable, town councilor and in other local offices, and helped the poor generously. After 1572 his fortune declined: he was sued for thirty pounds, failed to appear in court and had a warrant issued against him. In 1580, for reasons unknown, a court ordered him to give a bond to keep the peace. In 1592 his name appeared among those who, against the queen's orders, did not attend church every month, and from this some have concluded that he was a Catholic who would not obey the official English church. (The sentence is cut at this point by the chunk boundary; the next post completes it.)