DOCSLIB.ORG

The Life and Complete Works in Prose and Verse of Robert Greene

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Life and Complete Works in Prose and Verse of Robert Greene THE HUTH LIBRARY. LIFE AND WORKS OF ROBERT GREENE, M.A. VOL. I. STOROJENKO'S LIFE OF ROBERT GREENE: ~ WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES. ; " "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players ; They have their exits and their entrances And one man in his time plays many parts. As You Like It, ii. 1^ X-^ "^"«^*»., ILH r ELIZABETH AN- JACOBEAN ^. irty (/-e/t.'i^- 'i^Uzytey Yerse and Prose LAR G E LY TroTV^ l7v6 Ziirary oi J .J BY TH E FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION ONLY C|)e ^utb iLi&rarp. THE Life and Complete Works IN PROSE AND VERSE OF ROBERT G_REENE. M.A. CAMBRIDGE AND OXFORD. IN FIFTEEN VOLUMES. FOR THE FIRST TIME COLLECTED AND EDITED, WITH NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS, ETC., BY THE REV. ALEXANDER B. GROSART, D.D., LL.D. (Edin.), F.S.A. (Scot.), .Sf. George's, Blackburn, Lancashire. VOL. I. STOROJENKO'S life of ROBERT GREENE, Translated by E. A. B. HOdgetts, Esq., London, WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES by the Editor. PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION ONLY. i88i-86. 50 coptes.\ Printed by Hazell, WaUon, &= Viney. Ld., London and Aylesbury. CONTENTS. PAGE Note vii Introduction ix '• Life . i Appendix A and B 257 Facsimile of Greene's Handwriting. Toface title-^age „a3ei aUa wfdjimac^ta Sick! 6rim ^octb^i^n gfcmcDte! 3(?( ttwUf, Mi^ ttmcfff teas aaga'a kap ((jji's fiua/m Swmte'." Goethe, — NOTE. I wish to record my right hearty thanks to E. A. B. Hodgetts, Esq., for his translation of Professor Storojenko's Life of Greene. It has been to him no perfunctory work, but a task of love and sympathy. I would emphasize my deep indebtedness to " mine ancient friend," Dr. Brinsley Nicholson, of Surrenden Lodge, for continuous and much prized help and suggestions. Anything more requiring to be said will be found in our Introduction and Notes throughout. It is no common satisfaction thus to have completed (.for the first time) the Works of Robert Greene along with those of his asscfciates, Thomas Nashe (6 vols.), and Dr. Gabriel Harvey (3 vols.). To students of Eliza- bethan-Jacobean literature it is believed the service thus rendered will be increasingly and wideningly appreciated. Whilst I write these words, an examination of Bp. Grindal's Register (fol. 213), which was Newcourt's authority, shows that Robertus Grene was admitted to ToUesbury on 19th June, 1584, on the death of ffrancis Searle ; and that fol. 225, in recording the succession of Moody, spells the name Greene, and adds—" per liberam et spontaneam resignationem Roberti Greene clerici ultimi "—the latter circumstance to be noted as inferentially telling us there had been no misconduct to lead to the resignation. The absence of the M.A. of Cambridge after the name introduces an element of doubt, but like absence in other entries pre- vents our rejecting this Robert Greene as the dramatist. R. W.'s ' red-nosed minister ' in Martin Mar-Sixtus, and the Pinner noting •minister,' seem to make it indubitable that whether he were vicar of ToUesbury or no, or whether he ever held a benefice or no, the dramatist was a cleric. Besides, let the dates and facts be kept in recollection as fitting in with the incumbency at ToUesbury: (i) In 1584 he published the ' Mirrour of Modestie,' also ' Arbasto '—the Vicar being appointed 19th June, 1584; (2) In 1585 he only published ' Planetomachia ' Vicar resigned 17th Feb. 1585, i.e. 1586; (3) In 1586 Greene published nothing, this being the year of his marriage. For the original of our fac-simile of Greene's handwriting (as it is believed), I am indebted to a private collector in London. A. B. G. ' This strange eventful history.'' As You Like It, ii. 7. INTRODUCTION TO PROFESSOR STOROJENKO'S LIFE OF GREENE. By the Editor. it is ; HILST a pleasant proof—among many—of the breadth of interest modernly taken in our great English Literature, that it has been deemed ex- pedient to furnish a new Life of Robert Greene mainly in a translation of that in Russian by Professor Storojenko of Moscow, and whilst I give ungrudging recognition to this Life (as well as to his " Predshestveniky Shakspeara "), three matters-of- fact nevertheless demand statement, toward modifying the apparent blame of our own countrymen for leaving it to a Stranger to fulfil this task of love. (a) That Dyce, in his matterful and careful "Account of Robert Greene and his Writ- ings," prefixed to both his editions of his Dramatic Works and minor Poems, long since laid a " good foundation " for his suc- cessor, and on which that successor has necessarily built his own superstructure, with- " X EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION out such definite and detailed and generous acknowledgment of indebtedness as it had been a pleasure to English scholars to have found. {b) That besides his obligations throughout to Dyce, Professor Storojenko, in his most dis- tinctive conclusions and critical results, had been anticipated by a good year by Professor College, Christ- J. M. Brown, of Canterbury church, New Zealand; who in 1877 published his brilliant and penetrative literary Study entitled " An Early Rival of Shakespere in the New Zealand Magazine, a Quarterly Journal of Ge?ieral Literature, No. 6, April 1877 (pp. 97- 133)- {c) That it will be seen that, with all its pains- taking and insight, this Life has had to be read somewhat vigilantly, and to be frequently and fully annotated, with correc- tive and supplemental additions. O' times, because of this, one was tempted to give an original Life and utilise Professor Storojenko's criticisms and comments. But it was felt that the announcement of a translation of Storojenko's Life required redemption. With reference to Professor J. M. Brown's Paper, I mean in the outset, and as the first half of this Introduction, to reproduce it substantially, and thus reclaim for a " brither Scot " things that otherwise might seem to belong exclusively to the Foreigner. If Professor Storojenko worked out his problems independently (and certes he gives no faintest inti- mation of acquaintance, with the Essay in question, — — EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION. xi although it is well known in Germany), the twofold agreement on the main points will be mutually con- firmatory. And after every abatement, (meo judicid) this Russian Life of Robert Greene is noticeably well- informed, thoughtful, and fresh in substance ; sound and sober, not speculative ; practical and intelligible, not misty or super-ingenious ; in style, lucid, and luminous ; and as such deserving of translation. Compared with German investigators e.g., Bernhardi and Bodenstadt—it has exceptional merits. Turning now to the Paper of Professor J. M. Brown, it thus opens : " 'There is an upstart Crowe beautified with our feathers, that with his "Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide," supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you : and being an absolute Johannes fac- totum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrie.' Unconditional admiration has become so pre- vailingly the mood of nineteenth-century criticism of Shakespere, that to speak of the possibility of rivalry, or to question his supremacy, is to raise a contemptuous smile. To such a mood the sentence quoted seems little more than envious folly and untruth. But the circumstances in which it was written, if nothing else, demand for it serious consideration. The writer, Robert Greene, saw death close upon him when he wrote it ; he was driven before the wildest of his repentant moods ; and his repentances were ever whirlwinds of self-accusation, fiery, brief, and ruthlessly candid. Doubt has been thrown on the sincerity of his written repentances; and it must be granted that Greene was capable in his more Bohemian moods of the most hideous jests. But any one who studies the broken glimpses of his life, indistinct though it is as the very ' dream of a shadow,' sees its uncontrollable fits of dissipa- tion and its equally uncontrollable fits of remorse, and then reads the passionate fervour of his last appeal to his brother dramatists, in which this attack on Shakespere occurs, will — — xii EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION. not hesitate to accept it as a genuine utterance of Greene's last thoughts. Else it is the weakest jest ever was perpe- trated " (pp. 97-8). Only the ghoul-like heart of Dr. Gabriel Harvey could have doubted, much less made mock of the final " Repentance " of Robert Greene, and my friend pays too much heed to suspectors of this ignoble type by spending a line upon them. Sincerity and reality pulsate in every word of these ultimate utterances, and I for one do not envy the man who can read them with dry eyes even at this late day. He proceeds : " If the sentence be accepted .as genuine and serious, the charge must have had some foundation. The real question, therefore, is how far Greene was justified by his facts in the attack. Allowance must be made for the exaggeration of passion ; so also for the unwholesome state of the author's mind at the time. But when all allowance is made, a kernel of truth remains worthy investigation, corroborated, as it is, ' ' by the author of Greene's Funeralls (1594), who says ; "Nay more, the men that so eclipst his fame, " Purloynde his plumes ; can they deny the same ? The most noticeaMe point is that the line ' Tygers heart wrapt in a Player's hide ' parodies a line in Henry VI. (Pt. III., Act i., sc. 4), ' O tiger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide,' which also occurs in Tfie True Tragedie of Richard Duke of York.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Arden of Faversham, Shakespearean Authorship, and 'The Print of Many'
    Chapter 9 Arden of Faversham, Shakespearean Authorship, and 'The Print of Many' JACK ELLIOTT AND BRETT GREATLEY-HIRSCH he butchered body of Thomas Arden is found in the field behind the Abbey. After reporting Tthis discovery to Arden's wife, Franklin surveys the circumstantial evidence of footprints in the snow and blood at the scene: I fear me he was murdered in this house And carried to the fields, for from that place Backwards and forwards may you see The print of many feet within the snow. And look about this chamber where we are, And you shall find part of his guiltless blood; For in his slip-shoe did I find some rushes, Which argueth he was murdered in this room. (14.388-95) Although The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland by Raphael Holinshed and his editors records the identities and fates of Arden's murderers in meticulous detail (Holinshed 1587, 4M4r-4M6v; 1587, 5K1v-5K3v), those responsible for composing the dramatization of this tragic episode remain unknown. We know that the bookseller Edward White entered The Lamentable and True Tragedy ofArden ofFaversham in Kent into the Stationers' Register on 3 April 1592 (Arber 1875-94, 2: 607 ), and we believe, on the basis of typographical evidence, that Edward Allde printed the playbook later that year ( STC 733). We know that Abel Jeffes also printed an illicit edition of the playbook, as outlined in disciplinary proceedings brought against him and White in a Stationers' Court record dated 18 December 1592 (Greg and Boswell 1930, 44). No copies of this pirate edition survive, but it is assumed to have merely been a reprint of White's; Jeffes was imprisoned on 7 August 1592, so his edition must have appeared prior to this date.
    [Show full text]
  • Redating Pericles: a Re-Examination of Shakespeare’S
    REDATING PERICLES: A RE-EXAMINATION OF SHAKESPEARE’S PERICLES AS AN ELIZABETHAN PLAY A THESIS IN Theatre Presented to the Faculty of the University of Missouri-Kansas City in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree MASTER OF ARTS by Michelle Elaine Stelting University of Missouri Kansas City December 2015 © 2015 MICHELLE ELAINE STELTING ALL RIGHTS RESERVED REDATING PERICLES: A RE-EXAMINATION OF SHAKESPEARE’S PERICLES AS AN ELIZABETHAN PLAY Michelle Elaine Stelting, Candidate for the Master of Arts Degree University of Missouri-Kansas City, 2015 ABSTRACT Pericles's apparent inferiority to Shakespeare’s mature works raises many questions for scholars. Was Shakespeare collaborating with an inferior playwright or playwrights? Did he allow so many corrupt printed versions of his works after 1604 out of indifference? Re-dating Pericles from the Jacobean to the Elizabethan era answers these questions and reveals previously unexamined connections between topical references in Pericles and events and personalities in the court of Elizabeth I: John Dee, Philip Sidney, Edward de Vere, and many others. The tournament impresas, alchemical symbolism of the story, and its lunar and astronomical imagery suggest Pericles was written long before 1608. Finally, Shakespeare’s focus on father-daughter relationships, and the importance of Marina, the daughter, as the heroine of the story, point to Pericles as written for a young girl. This thesis uses topical references, Shakespeare’s anachronisms, Shakespeare’s sources, stylometry and textual analysis, as well as Henslowe’s diary, the Stationers' Register, and other contemporary documentary evidence to determine whether there may have been versions of Pericles circulating before the accepted date of 1608.
    [Show full text]
  • The Plays & Poems of Robert Greene;
    ROBERT -GREENE ITY LOS ANGELES * -»* THE PLAYS & POEMS OF ROBERT GREENE EDITED WITH INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES By J. CHURTON COLLINS, Litt.D. (PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM) \ VOL. II FRIER BACON AND FRIER BONGAY. JAMES THE FOURTH THE PINNER OF WAKEFIELD. A MAIDENS DREAME POEMS FROM THE NOVELS. NOTES TO PLAYS AND POEMS APPENDIX : ENGLAND'S PARNASSUS. GLOSSARI AL INDEX GENERAL INDEX OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS MDCCCCV 28609 HENRY FROWDE, M.A. PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD LONDON, EDINBURGH NEW YORK AND TORONTO * ' CONTENTS VOLUME I PAGE Facsimile of a portion of the Alleyn MS. of Orlando Furioso Frontispiece PREFACE vii GENERAL INTRODUCTION I INTRODUCTION TO ALPHONSVS 70 ALPHONSVS KING OF ARRAGON 77 INTRODUCTION TO LOOKING GLASSE . .137 A LOOKING GLASSE 143 INTRODUCTION TO ORLANDO FVRIOSO . .215 ORLANDO FVRIOSO 221 THE ALLEYN MS 266 NOTES :— ALPHONSVS 279 LOOKING GLASSE 290 ORLANDO FVRIOSO 304 VOLUME II INTRODUCTION TO FRIER BACON 1 FRIER BACON AND FRIER BONGAY .... 15 INTRODUCTION TO IAMES IV 79 IAMES THE FOVRTH 87 INTRODUCTION TO THE PINNER 159 THE PINNER OF WAKEFIELD 181 INTRODUCTION TO A MAIDENS DREAME . .219 A MAIDENS DREAME 221 POEMS FROM THE NOVELS 235 NOTES :— FRIER BACON 325 IAMES THE FOVRTH 349 THE PINNER OF WAKEFIELD 367 A MAIDENS DREAME 378 POEMS FROM THE NOVELS 381 APPENDIX : ENGLAND'S PARNASSUS . .398 GLOSSARIAL INDEX 407 INDEX 411 INTRODUCTION TO FRIER BACON AND FRIER BONGAY This play was first published in quarto by Edward White in 1594, and in the May of that year it was entered on the Stationers' Registers, thus :— xiiii t0 die Maij ' ADAM ISLIP Entred for his Copie under th(e h)andes of bothe the EDWARD WHITE wardens a booke entituled the Historye of ffryer BACON andffryer BOUNGA YE .
    [Show full text]
  • The Works of Christopher Marlowe Vol. 1 [1590]
    The Online Library of Liberty A Project Of Liberty Fund, Inc. Christopher Marlowe, The Works of Christopher Marlowe vol. 1 [1590] The Online Library Of Liberty This E-Book (PDF format) is published by Liberty Fund, Inc., a private, non-profit, educational foundation established in 1960 to encourage study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals. 2010 was the 50th anniversary year of the founding of Liberty Fund. It is part of the Online Library of Liberty web site http://oll.libertyfund.org, which was established in 2004 in order to further the educational goals of Liberty Fund, Inc. To find out more about the author or title, to use the site's powerful search engine, to see other titles in other formats (HTML, facsimile PDF), or to make use of the hundreds of essays, educational aids, and study guides, please visit the OLL web site. This title is also part of the Portable Library of Liberty DVD which contains over 1,000 books and quotes about liberty and power, and is available free of charge upon request. The cuneiform inscription that appears in the logo and serves as a design element in all Liberty Fund books and web sites is the earliest-known written appearance of the word “freedom” (amagi), or “liberty.” It is taken from a clay document written about 2300 B.C. in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash, in present day Iraq. To find out more about Liberty Fund, Inc., or the Online Library of Liberty Project, please contact the Director at [email protected].
    [Show full text]
  • In This Chapter We Are Going to Discuss Kyd's the Spanish Tragedy, Or
    In this chapter we are going to discuss Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronimo is Mad Again, an Elizabethan tragedy written by Thomas Kyd between 1582 and 1592. Highly accepted and prominent in its time, The Spanish Tragedy established a new genre in English drama, the revenge play or revenge tragedy. Its plot contains numerous violent murders and comprises as one of its characters a personification of Revenge. The Spanish Tragedy was often referred to (or parodied) in works written by other Elizabethan playwrights, including William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Christopher Marlowe. Many elements of The Spanish Tragedy, such as the play-within-a-play used to entrap a murderer and a ghost intent on vengeance, emerge in Shakespeare's Hamlet. (Thomas Kyd is frequently proposed as the author of the hypothetical Ur-Hamlet that may have been one of Shakespeare's primary sources for Hamlet.) Date In the "Induction" to his play Bartholomew Fair (1614), Ben Jonson alludes to The Spanish Tragedy as being "five and twenty or thirty years" old. If taken literally, this would yield a date range of 1584–89 – a range that has the same opinion with what also is known about the play. However, the precise date of composition is unknown, though it is conjectured that it was composed somewhere between 1583 and 1591. Most evidence indicate to a completion date before 1588, mentioning that the play makes no reference to the Spanish Armada, and because of possible allusions to the play in Nashe's Preface to Greene's Menaphon from 1589 and The Anatomie of Absurdity from 1588–89.
    [Show full text]
  • Titus out of Joint: Reading the Fragmented Titus Andronicus
    Titus out of Joint Titus out of Joint: Reading the Fragmented Titus Andronicus Edited by Liberty Stanavage and Paxton Hehmeyer Titus out of Joint: Reading the Fragmented Titus Andronicus, Edited by Liberty Stanavage and Paxton Hehmeyer This book first published 2012 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2012 by Liberty Stanavage and Paxton Hehmeyer and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-3762-8, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-3762-0 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Titus out of Joint Chapter One................................................................................................. 7 ‘At the Signe of the Gunne’: Titus Andronicus, the London Book Trade, and the Literature of Crime, 1590-1615 Nadia Bishai Chapter Two.............................................................................................. 49 “Chief architect and plotter of these woes”: Body, Text and Architecture in Titus Andronicus Muriel Cunin Chapter Three...........................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Dr Peter Sillitoe, Shalt Collection
    1 Dr Peter Sillitoe, ShaLT Collection Enhancement Report No. 6 for the V&A, Theatre and Performance Department (March 2012) Christopher Marlowe NB: All photographs featured in this report are from the National Art Library at the V&A Museum and are not for reproduction (photography by Dr Maurice Hindle, ShaLT’s Project Manager). This report focuses upon one of the leading playwrights of the early modern or ‘Shakespearean’ period: the life and career of Christopher Marlowe, possibly most famous in the wider community for his Dr Faustus play from the late 1580s. Marlowe is particularly interesting for a variety of reasons. Born in the same year as William Shakespeare, Marlowe has a good claim to be the first well-known dramatist in contemporary London. Particularly famous for his dark tragedies (often referred to by critics as ‘Marlovian tragedy’), Marlowe was one of the very first dramatists to use blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) on stage, something that others, including notably Shakespeare, would go on to copy. In the period, the use of bombastic rhetoric along with the blank verse allowed the playwright to gain a reputation for his so-called ‘mighty line’. Furthermore, Marlowe has often dominated criticism of the pre-Shakespearean stage. His plays were performed several years before the arrival in London of Shakespeare, though it is clear that there was a brief period in the early 1590s when the two would have effectively been competitors. Unlike Shakespeare, Marlowe was one of the ‘university wits’, a group of dramatists who had studied at Oxford or, in Marlowe’s case, at Cambridge.
    [Show full text]
  • The Spanish Tragedy: Thomas Kyd Free
    FREE THE SPANISH TRAGEDY: THOMAS KYD PDF Thomas Kyd,David Bevington | 160 pages | 02 Mar 2010 | MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS | 9780719043444 | English | Manchester, United Kingdom Spanish Tragedy: Study Guide | SparkNotes Highly popular and influential in its time, The Spanish Tragedy established a new genre in English theatre, the revenge play or revenge tragedy. The play contains several violent murders and includes as one of its characters a personification of Revenge. The Spanish Tragedy is often considered to be the first mature Elizabethan drama, a claim disputed with Christopher Marlowe 's Tamburlaine[2] and The Spanish Tragedy: Thomas Kyd been parodied by many Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights, including Marlowe, William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. Many elements of The Spanish Tragedy, such as the play-within-a-play used to trap a murderer and a ghost intent on vengeance, appear in Shakespeare's Hamlet. Thomas Kyd is frequently proposed as the author of the The Spanish Tragedy: Thomas Kyd Ur-Hamlet that may have been one of Shakespeare's primary sources for Hamlet. Lord Strange's Men staged a play that the records call Jeronimo on 23 February at The Rose for Philip Henslowe[3] and repeated it sixteen times to 22 January It is unlikely, however, that the performance in February was the play's first performance, as Henslowe did not mark it as 'ne' new. The Admiral's Men revived Kyd's original on 7 Januaryand performed it twelve times to 19 July; they staged another performance conjointly with Pembroke's Men on 11 October the same year. The records of Philip Henslowe suggest that the play was on stage again in and English actors performed the play on tour in Germanyand both German and Dutch adaptations were made.
    [Show full text]
  • Shakespeare in Arden of Faversham and the Additions to the Spanish Tragedy: Versification Analysis
    Journal of Early Modern Studies, n. 5 (2016), pp. 175-200 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.13128/JEMS-2279-7149-18088 Shakespeare in Arden of Faversham and the Additions to The Spanish Tragedy: Versification Analysis Marina Tarlinskaja University of Washington (<[email protected]>) Abstract The essay describes versification particulars of Arden of Faversham. The findings suggest that the central part, scenes 4-8, was composed by Shakespeare while the remainder of the play was created by an older playwright, possibly Thomas Kyd. It shares features with Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy. The essay confirms the hypothesis that the Additions to Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy had been composed by Shakespeare in the early seventeenth century. Thus Shakespeare had collaborated with Kyd twice: as a younger poet and a later refurbisher. Keywords: Collaboration, Kyd, Shakespeare, Spelling, Stressing, Syntactic Breaks 1. Arden of Faversham: Authorship Arden of Faversham is an Elizabethan play of contested authorship (its original spelling was Arden of Feversham). It was entered into the Stationers’ Register on 3 April 1592 and printed anonymously in quarto (Q1) later that same year, then again in 1599 (Q2) and 1633 (Q3). The authorship problem of Arden of Faversham is particularly tantalizing because it is such a great play, composed by someone who knew how to write for the stage. Arden of Faversham is a so-called domestic tragedy, ‘a bold experiment in portraying the passions of ordinary Englishmen in the setting of contemporary society and in a language appropriate to the characters and theme’ (Wine 1973, lxxiii). Its plot is based on real and relatively recent history: the 1551 murder of Thomas Arden, a successful middle-aged businessman in Tudor England, by his young well- born wife Alice and her low-born lover Mosby (the class distinctions between the high-born and low-born are emphasized many times in the play).
    [Show full text]
  • Tamburlaine the Great
    Tamburlaine the Great In this chapter we shall discuss Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great ,the earliest of Marlowe’s plays, the two-part Tamburlaine the Great (c. 1587; published 1590), where we find Marlowe’s characteristic “mighty line” (as Ben Jonson called it). Marlowe breathed fresh blood into the otherwise dry blank verse and established the same as the staple medium for later Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatic writing. It appears that originally Marlowe intended to write only the first part, concluding with Tamburlaine’s marriage to Zenocrate and his making “truce with all the world.” But the popularity of the first part encouraged Marlowe to continue the story to Tamburlaine’s death. This gave him some difficulty, as he had almost exhausted his historical sources in part I; consequently the sequel has, at first glance, an appearance of padding. Yet the effort demanded in writing the continuation made the young playwright look more coldly and searchingly at the hero he had chosen, and thus part II makes explicit certain notions that were below the surface and insufficiently recognized by the dramatist in part I. The play is based on the life and achievements of Timur (Timurlenk), the bloody 14th-century conqueror of Central Asia and India. Tamburlaine is a man avid for power and luxury and the possession of beauty. When for a moment he has no immediate opponent on earth, he dreams of leading his army against the powers of heaven, though at other times he glories in seeing himself as “the scourge of God”; he burns the Qurʾān, for he will have no intermediary between God and himself, and there is a hint of doubt whether even God is to be granted recognition.
    [Show full text]
  • Marlowe Effect’
    CHAPTER 1 Marlowe’s Early Books: 1 Contention and a ‘Marlowe Effect’ PETER KIRWAN1 The First Part of the Contention – by which I mean the play published in quarto in 1594, 1600 and 1619, as distinguished from the play 2 Henry VI first published in the Shakespeare Folio of 1623 – may seem an unusual focus in a collection concerned with Marlowe. However, this play has longstanding claims to be Marlovian.2 By the early twentieth century, most critics concurred that both this play and The True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York were (collaboratively or solely) by Marlowe. R. Grant White argued they were written by ‘Marlowe, Greene and Shakspere (and perhaps Peele) together, not improbably as co-laborers’, and that Shakespeare redrafted them as 2 and 3 Henry VI (Furnivall, iii-iv). F.J. Furnivall agreed that the first common passage between 1 Contention and 2 Henry VI is ‘plainly Marlowe. The exaggeration and the strain are far more like him than Shakspere’ (vi). Jane Lee believed the Contention plays were by Marlowe and Greene, and perhaps also Peele. She argued that ‘to Shakspere, working together with Marlowe, was due the revision of the old plays and their transformation into Henry VI., Parts 2 and 3’ (Tyler, iii-iv). Thomas Tyler announced confidently: We now need have no difficulty in admitting that Marlowe assisted Shakspere further in the development of the Second and Third Parts of Henry VI. out of the Contention and the True Tragedy […] But it may be said that the traces of Marlowe’s hand are, at any rate, less conspicuous in the Third Part of Henry VI.
    [Show full text]
  • Vol. VII, No. 2 (1946, April)
    '(...., -. AUG 14 1946 SE~lTLE. W~SMING TQt The Shakespeare Fellowship 11,1as founded in Landon in 1922 under the pre..ruiency of Sir George Greenwood. VOL. vn APRIL, 1946 NO. 2 Another Stratf ordian Aids the Oxford Cause B'Y Louis P. Bi:NEZET~ M.A., Pd.D. ''WE ARE NOT QUITE certain of the identity of the story of Shakspere•s attendance at the Strat­ espeare's father; we are by no means certain ford Grammar School, and pointing out that Au­ !he identity of his wife •. we do not know when brey's story of his having been a country school­ began his dramatic car~r; we know the actual master "is entirely unsupported," gives a table of of the first production of very few of his the authenticated facts of William's life which oc­ , let alone that of their composition. Almost cupies ju.et two-thirds of .a printed page. Accept­ e commonly received stuJf of his Hf e story ing the Stratford man's career as an actor, on the s and patches of traJition if not positive basis of tbe Countess· oi ~outhampton's question­ work. We do not know whether he ever went able post-dated entry 1 in the muddled accounts of school. The early journey to London is first her late husband, he says that the rest of Shak­ of a hundred years after date. The deer steal• spere's life in London has to be plentifully inter• reason for it is probably twenty years later. spersed with "doubtleM" or "probably" or "may crystallization of the!le and other traditions in have" to pass muster..
    [Show full text]