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

Theatrum Poetarum that Marlowe “rose from an actor to be a maker of plays;” but the
authority of Phillips- who was very frequently inaccurate—carries little weight
Collier, who did so much to enlighten students, and so much to perplex them,
produced from his capacious portfolio a MS. ballad about Marlowe, entitled the
Aiheisfs Tragedie, from which it would appear that the poet had been an actor at the
Curtain and in the performance of his professional duties had had the misfortune to
break his leg:-
“A poet was he of repute,
And wrote full many a playe;
Now strutting in a silken sute,
Now begging by the way.
He had also a player been
Upon the Curtame-stage;
But brake his leg in one lewd scene
When in his early age.”
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This is doubtless very ingenious, but I have little hesitation in pronouncing the ballad
to be a forgery, though Dyce—who had been victimised on other occasions—and
later editors accept it as genuine. The words “When in his early age “can only mean
that the poet was a boy-actor at the Curtain; but we know that he could not possibly
have been connected with the stage before 1583. I have not seen the MS., and so am
unable to deliver any opinion as to the style of the hand-writing; but when we
remember how many documents, proved afterwards to be forgeries, Collier put
forward as genuine, we shall be quite justified in rejecting the Atheist's Tragtdie. It is
a work of no great difficulty to imitate with success a doggerel ballad.
Critics are agreed that the first, in order of time, of Marlowe's extant dramatic
productions is the tragedy of Tamburlaine the Great, in two parts. From internal
evidence there can be no doubt that Tamburlaine was written wholly by Marlowe; but
on the title-page of the early editions there is no author's name, and we have no
decisive piece of external evidence to fix the authorship on Marlowe. In Henslowe's
Diary there is an entry which, if it had been genuine, would have been conclusive :—
”Pd unto Thomas Dickers, the 20 of Desembr 1597, for adycyous to Fostus twentie
shellinges, and fyve shel-lenges for a prolog to Marloes Tamberlen, so in all I saye
payde twentye fyve shellinges.” (Henslowe's Diary, ed. J. P. Collier, p. 71.)
Unfortunately this entry, which was received without suspicion by Dyce and other
editors, is a forgery. Mr. G. F. Warner, who published in 1881 his careful and
Online Library of Liberty: The Works of Christopher Marlowe vol. 1
PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)
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http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/1687

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elaborate catalogue of the Manuscripts and Muniments of Dulwich College,
pronounces that “the whole entry is evidently a forgery, written in clumsy imitation of
Henslowe's hand. The forger, however, has shown some skill in his treatment of a
narrow blot or smudge which intersects the upper part of the U in the second
'shellinges;' for in order that the writing may appear to be under and not over the old
blot, he has at first carried up the ll (as if writing u) only as far as the lower edge of
the blot, and then started again from the upper edge to make the loops” (p. 159). The
only piece of external evidence which appears to connect Marlowe with Tamburlaine
is to be found in a sonnet
1
of Gabriel Harvey's, printed at the end of his New Letter of
Notable Contents, 1593. From a passage in the Black Book, 1604 (a tract attributed on
no sure ground to Thomas Mid-dleton the dramatist), Malone inferred that
Tamburlaine was written in whole or part by Nashe. The passage to which Malone
referred occurs in the account of an imaginary visit paid to Nashe in his squalid garret
“The testern, or the shadow over the bed,” we are informed, “was made of four ells of
cobwebs, and a number of small spinner's ropes hung down for curtains: the spindle-
shank spiders, which show like great letchers with little legs, went stalking over his
head as if they had been conning of I'amburlaine.” (Dyce's Middleton, v. 526.) It is
difficult to see how any conclusion about the authorship of Tamburlaine can be drawn
from this passage. The writer's meaning is that the spiders walked with the pompous
gait of an actor rehearsing the part of Tamburlaine. But, putting aside the evidence (in
itself conclusive) of style, there is an excellent reason for dismissing Nashe's claims.
To Robert Greene's Menaphon, of which the first extant edition is dated 1589 (though
some critics supposed that the book was originally published in 1587), Nashe
contributed an epistle “To the Gentlemen Students of Both Universities,” in which he
holds up to ridicule the “idiote art-masters that intrude themselves to our eares as the
alcumists of eloquence; who (mounted on the stage of arrogance) think to outbrave
better pens with the swelling bumbast of a bragging blank verse. Indeed it may be the
ingrafted overflow of some kilcow con-ceipt that overcloieth their imagination with a
more than drunken resolution, beeing not extemporall in the invention of anie other
meanes to vent their manhood, commits the digestion of their cholenck incumbrances
to the spacious volubilitie of a drumming decasillabon.” (Grosart's Nashe, i. xx.) This
passage vas surely intended as a counterblast to the Prologue of lamburlaine. The
allusion to “idiote art-masters” points distinctly to Marlowe, who took his Master's
degree in 1587; and it was Marlowe who had stamped “bragging blank verse “as his
own. Afterwards Nashe was on friendly terms with Marlowe; but in 1589 (or 1587?)
he was doing his best to aid Greene in discrediting the author of Tamburlaine. In an
address “To the Gentlemen Readers,” prefixed to his Perimedes the Black Smith,
1588, Greene denounces the introduction of blank verse, which he compares to the
“fa-burden of Bo-bell.” He speaks with scorn of those poets “who set the end of
scollarisme in an English blank verse;” and expressly mentions