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


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Uprear'd a wonderment of Eiyhty Eight;
The Earth, addreading to be overhurld,
What now auailes, quoth She, my ballance weight:
The Circle smyl'd to see the Center feare:
The wonder was no wonder fell that yeare.
Wonders enhaunse their powre in numbers odd:
The fatal! yeare ofyeares is Ninety Three:
Parma hatk kist, Demaine entreats the rodd;
Warre wondrcth Peace and Spaine in Fraunce to see,
Brave Eckenberg the dowty Bassa shames,
The Christian Neptune Turkish Vulcane tames.
Navarre wooes Roome, Charlmaine glues Guise the Phy:
Weepe Powles, thy Tambcrlaine voutsafes to dye.
L'ENUOY.
The hugest miracle remains behinde,
The second Shakerley Rash-Swash to binde.
The Writers Postcript, or a friendly Caueat to the second Shakerley of Powles.
SONET.
Sltimbring I lay in melancholy bed
Before the dawning of the sanguin light;
When Eccho shrill or some Familiar Spright
Busted an Epitaph into my hed.
Magnifique Mindes bred of Gargantnas race
In grisly weedes His Obsequies waiment [sic]
Whose Corps on Powles, whose mind triuph'd on Kent,
Online Library of Liberty: The Works of Christopher Marlowe vol. 1
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http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/1687


Scorning to bate Sir Rodomont an ace.
I mus'd awhilt, and, having mus'd a while,
Jesu (quoth I) is that Gargantua minde
Conquered and left no Scanderbeg behinde?
Vowed hi not to Powles a Second bile?
What bile or kibe? (quoth that same early spright)
Have you forgot the Scanderbegging wight.
GLOSSE.
Is it a Dreamsor is the Highest minde
That ever haunted Powles or hunted winde
Bereaft of that same sky-surmounting breath,
That breath that taught the Tempany to swell!
He and the Plague contended for the game:
The hawty man txtolles his hideous thoughtes,
And g!oriously insultes upon poore soulcs
That plague themselves: for faint harts plague themselves.
The tyrant Sickness of base minded slaites
Oh how it domino's in Coward Lane!
So Surquidy rang out his larum knell
When he had girn'd at many a dolefull bell.
The ground Disease disdain'd his Toade Conceit
And smiling at his Tantberlainc contempt
Sternly struck home the peremptory stroke,
He that nor feared God nor dreaded Diu'll,
Nor ought admired but his wondrous self:
Likejunos gawdy Bird that proudly stares
On glittringfan of his triumphant taile,
Or like the ugly Bugg that scorrid to dy,
And mmtntes of Glery rear'd in towering witt—
Alas I but Babell Pride must kiss the put.
L'ENUOY.
Powles steeple, and a hugyer thing if dmane; Bcware
the next Bull-beggar of the owne.
Fata immature vagantur.”
Harvey's Newe Letter is dated September 1593, and Marlowe died in the June
preceding. The drift of the “goggle-eyed sonet of Gorgon “(as Nashe terms it) and
“L'enuoy “plainly is,—” Marlowe is dead; it remains to muzzle Nashe.” The epitaph
in the “Postcript” certainly refers to Marlowe, and the meaning of the extraordinary
lines “I mus'd awhile,” &c., is the same as in the previous sonnet But what are we to
make of the Glosse? The only sense to be got out of the lines is that Marlowe had
fallen a victim to the plague. We know that the plague was raging at that time in the
metropolis. Probably Gabriel Harvey was staying in the country, to be out of the reach
of infection,
1
when he wrote his Newe Letter. Hearing the report of Marlowe's death
he had taken it for granted, when he raised his whoop of exultation, that the poet had
died of the plague. We may be sure that, if he had been acquainted at the time with the
true account of Marlowe's tragic end, he would have gloated over every detail with
ghoul-like ferocity. Though Marlowe took no active part, so far as we know, in
Online Library of Liberty: The Works of Christopher Marlowe vol. 1
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http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/1687


supporting Nashe, he seems not to have attempted to conceal his contempt for the
Harveys. In Have with you to Saffron Walden, Nashe reports a saying of Marlowe's
about Gabriel's younger brother, the Rev. Richard Harvey:—” Kit Marloe was wont
to say that he was an asse, good for nothing but to preach of the Iron Age.” If
Marlowe was accustomed to deliver his opinion about the Harveys after that fashion,
the doctor's animosity is explicable. In Pierces Supererogation (p. 62) the vindictive
writer exclaims:—” His [i.e. Nashe's] gayest flourishes are but Gascoigne's weedes or
Tarleton's trickes, or Greene's crankes or Marlowe's bravadoes.” In the same tract he
uses the term “Marloweism “in the sense of “irreverence.”
It must be frankly conceded that Marlowe not only abandoned Christianity, but had
the reputation of leading a vicious life. In the Returne from Pernassus, an anonymous
academical play, printed in 1606, but acted before the death of Queen Elizabeth, while
high praise is paid to his genius, regret is expressed for the disorderli-ness of his
life:—
“Marlowe was happy in his baskin['d] Muse,—
Alas, unhappy in his life and end!
Pitty it is that wit so ill should dwell,
Wit lent from heaven, but vices sent from hell.
Our theater hath lost, Pluto hath got
A tragick penman for a driery plot.”
Among the Harleian MSS. (6853, foL 520) is a Note
1
”contayninge the opinion of
one Christofer Marlye, concernynge his damnable opinions and judgment of Relygion
and scorne of Gods worde.” It is a comfort to know that the ruffian who drew up the
charges, a certain “Rychard Bame,” was hanged
1
Tyburn on 6th December 1594.
Doubtless Bame was backed by some person or persons of power and position. It was
a deliberate attempt on the part of some fanatics to induce the public authorities to
institute a prosecution for blasphemy against the poet. How the charges would have
been met it is not easy to say; probably his friends—particularly his patron Sir
Thomas Wal-singham—would have been powerful enough to avert any serious
danger. To a modern reader many of the charges put forward by Bame seem too silly
to deserve any serious attention. If Marlowe had been a man of such abandoned
principles as his enemies represented, I strongly doubt whether Chapman, who was
distinguished for strictness of life, would have cherished his memory with such
affection and respect. To my mind the apostrophe to Marlowe in the Third Sestiad of

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