Online Library of Liberty: The Works of Christopher Marlowe vol. 1 Portable Library of Liberty

laine, and the closing lines are suggestive of a passage of Edward II. The opening
lines are:—
“Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!
Comets, importing change of times and states,
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky,
And with them scourge the bad revolting stars
That have consented unto Henry's death!“
Compare II. Tamburlaine, v. 3:—
“Weep, heavens, and vanish into liquid tears!
Fall, stars that governs his nativity,
And summon all the shining lamps of heaven
To cast their bootless fires to the earth,
And shed their feeble influence in the air;
Muffle your beauties with eternal clouds!“
A closer parallel, whether as regards rhythm or expression, could hardly be found.
The two lines with which the First Part closes are:—
“Margaret shall now be queen and rule the king,
But I will rule both her, the king and realm.”
Very similar are Mortimer's words in Edward II., v. 4:—
“The queen and Mortimer
Shall rule the realm, the king; and none rules us.”
Online Library of Liberty: The Works of Christopher Marlowe vol. 1
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To Shakespeare we can assign with certainty only the scene in the Temple Garden and
Talbot's last battle, to which may be perhaps added Suffolk's courtship of Margaret. In
my judgment the rest of the play is chiefly Marlowe's. I would fain shift from
Marlowe's shoulders to Peek's the scene in which the memory of Joan of Arc is so
shamefully slandered; but I am convinced that the composition of that scene was
beyond Peele's powers.
It is well known that the Second and Third Parts of Henry VI. represent a revision of
two older Plays—The First Part of the Contention betwixt the two famous houses of
York and Lancaster (1594) and the True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York (1595); but
it is not, perhaps, so generally known that the revised editions preserve passages by
Marlowe which are not found in the earlier editions. The subject is one of the highest
possible interest, but for adequate discussion a lengthy essay would be needed. It is
important to note that the 1619 edition of the Whole Contention preserves in some
passages a text partially revised. The fact would seem to be that there existed several
copies of the plays in various stages of revision. There is no possibility of discovering
the early unrevised text in its integrity. The first editions (1594 and 1595) present a
text that had undergone a certain amount of revision. It is more than probable that in
many passages of the earliest editions we have a garbled text; for even Peele or
Greene might have reasonably considered themselves aggrieved at being held
responsible for such lines as these:—
“So lie thou there and breathe thy last.
What's here? the sign of the Castle?
Then the prophecy is come to pass,
For Somerset was forewarned of Castles,
The which he always did observe.
And now, behold, under a paltry ale-house sign,
The Castle in St. Albans,
Somerset hath made the wizard famous by his death.”
These jerky disjointed lines must have been hashed up from short-hand notes. I will
now state my own views very briefly. I hold that Shakespeare worked on a full and
accurate MS. copy of the early plays, and that these early plays were in large part by
Marlowe. Unless we suppose that Shakespeare had the full text of the early plays
before him, I do not know how we are to account for the introduction into the revised
plays of passages by Marlowe not found in the earlier copies. Critics have pointed out
that the opening lines of act iv. of 2 Henry VI. (” The gaudy, blabbing, and remorseful
day,” &c.) are unmistakably Marlowe's; and these lines are not found in the