Valdes. Faustus, these books, thy wit, and our experience Shall make all nations to canonize us.

As Indian Moors obey their Spanish lords,

So shall the spirits of every element

Be always serviceable to us three.

Like lions shall they guard us when we please;
Like Almain rutters with their horsemen's staves,
Or Lapland giants trotting by our sides :
Sometimes like women, or unwedded maids,
Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows
Than have the white breasts of the Queen of Love.
From Venice they shall drag huge argosies,
And from America the golden fleece,
That yearly stuffs old Philip's treasury ;*
If learned Faustus will be resolute.

Faustus. Valdes, as resolute am I in this

As thou to live; therefore object it not."†

In his colloquy with the fallen angel, he shows the fixedness of his determination :

"What, is great Mephistopheles so passionate

For being deprived of the joys of heaven?
Learn thou of Faustus manly fortitude,

And scorn those joys thou never shalt possess."‡

Yet we afterwards find him faltering in his resolutior,.

and struggling with the extremity of his fate:

"My heart's so hardened, I cannot repent:

Scarce can I name salvation, faith, or heaven:

But fearful echoes thunder in mine ears:

'Faustus, thou art damn'd!' these swords, and knives,
Poison, guns, halters, and envenom'd steel

Are laid before me to dispatch myself;

And long ere this I should have slain myself,
Had not sweet pleasure conquer'd 'deep despair.
Have I not made blind Homer sing to me
Of Alexander's love and Enon's death?
And hath not he that built the walls of Thebes
With ravishing sound of his melodious harp,
Made music with my Mephistopheles?

*An anachronism.

Works, ed. Dyce, ii. 12, 13.

+ Ibid. p. 21.

Why should I die, then, or basely despair?
I am resolv'd; Faustus shall ne'er repent.
Come, Mephistopheles, let us dispute again,
And argue of divine astrology."*

There is one passage more of this kind, which is so striking and beautiful, so like a rapturous and deeply passionate dream, that I cannot help quoting it here it is the address to the apparition of Helen :

Re-enter Helen.

Faustus. Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,

And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?

Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. [Kisses her.]
Her lips suck forth my soul! See, where it flies!

Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.

Here will I dwell, for Heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.

I will be Paris, and for love of thee,
Instead of Troy shall Wertenberg be sack'd;
And I will combat with weak Menelaus,
And wear thy colours on my plumed crest;
Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel,
And then return to Helen for a kiss.
Oh! thou art fairer than the evening air,
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars:
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter,
When he appear'd to hapless Semele;
More lovely than the monarch of the sky
In wanton Arethusa's azur'd arms;
And none but thou shalt be my paramour."

[Exeunt.†

The ending of the play is terrible, and his last exclamations betray an anguish of mind and vehemence of passion, not to be contemplated without shuddering:

Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,

And then thou must be damn'd perpetually.

Works, ed. Dyce, ii. 36–7.

† Ibid. p. 75.

Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,
That time may cease, and midnight never come.
Fair Nature's eye, rise, rise again, and make
Perpetual day; or let this hour be but
A year, a month, a week, a natural day,
That Faustus may repent, and save his soul

[The clock strikes twelve,
Oh, it strikes, it strikes! Now, body, turn to air,
Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell.

[Thunder and lightning.

Oh, soul! be chang'd into little water-drops,
And fall into the ocean; ne'er be found.
[Enter Devils.]

My God, my God, look not so fierce on me!
Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while!
Come not, Lucifer!

Ugly hell, gape not!

I'll burn my books! Oh! Mephistopheles."*

Perhaps the finest trait in the whole play, and that which softens and subdues the horror of it, is the interest taken by the two scholars in the fate of their master, and their unavailing attempts to dissuade him from his relentless career. The regard to learning is the ruling passion of this drama; and its indications are as mild and amiable in them as its ungoverned pursuit has been fatal to Faustus:

"Yet, for he was a scholar once admir'd

For wondrous knowledge in our German schools,
We'll give his mangled limbs due burial;

And all the students, cloth'd in mourning black,
Shall wait upon his heavy funeral."+

So the chorus:

"Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight, And burned is Apollo's laurel bough,

That sometime grew within this learned man.”‡

* Works, ed. Dyce, ii. 79–82.

+ Ibid. p. 156. It is to be remarked that the passage where these lines occur was first added in 1616, probably by another hand, -ED.

Ibid. pp. 83-84.

And still more affecting are his own conflicts of mind and agonising doubts on this subject just before, when he exclaims to his friends:

“Oh, gentlemen! Hear me with patience, and tremble not at my speeches. Though my heart pant and quiver to remember that I have been a student here these thirty years; oh! would I had never seen Wertenberg, never read book!"

A finer compliment was never paid, nor a finer lesson ever read to the pride of learning. The intermediate comic parts, in which Faustus is not directly concerned, are mean and grovelling to the last degree. One of the clowns says to another: "Snails! what hast got there? A book? Why thou canst not tell ne'er a word on't." Indeed, the ignorance and barbarism of the time, as here described, might almost justify Faustus' overstrained admiration of learning, and turn the heads of those who possessed it, from novelty and unaccustomed excitement, as the Indians are made drunk with wine! Goethe, the German poet, has written a drama on this tradition of his country, which is considered a masterpiece. I cannot find, in Marlowe's play, any proofs of the atheism or impiety attributed to him, unless the belief in witchcraft and the Devil can be regarded as such; and at the time he wrote, not to have believed in both, would have been construed into the rankest atheism and irreligion. There is a delight, as Mr. Lamb says, "in dallying with interdicted subjects;" but that does not, by any means, imply either a practical or speculative disbelief of them.

Lust's Dominion; or, The Lascivious Queen,* is referable to the same general style of writing; and is a striking picture, or rather caricature, of the unrestrained love of power, not as connected with learning, but with regal ambition and external sway. There is a good deal

* There is no authority for the ascription of this drama to the pen of Marlowe, although it is given to him in the edition of his Works, by Robinson, 1826, 3 vols. 8vo.-ED.

E

of the same intense passion, the same recklessness of purpose, the same smouldering fire within: but there is not any of the same relief to the mind in the lofty imaginative nature of the subject; and the continual repetition of plain practical villany and undigested horrors disgusts the sense and blunts the interest. The mind is hardened into obduracy, not melted into sympathy, by such barefaced and barbarous cruelty. Eleazar, the Moor, is such another character as Aaron in Titus Andronicus, and this play might be set down without injustice as "pue-fellow" to that. I should think Marlowe has a much fairer claim to be the author of Titus Andronicus than Shakspeare, at least from internal evidence; and the argument of Schlegel, that it must have been Shakspeare's, because there was no one else capable of producing either its faults or beauties, fails in each particular. The Queen is the same character in both these plays; and the business of the plot is carried on in much the same revolting manner, by making the nearest friends and relatives of the wretched victims the instruments of their sufferings and persecution by an arch-villain. To show, however, that the same strongbraced tone of passionate declamation is kept up, take the speech of Eleazar on refusing the proffered crown:

"What, do none rise?

No, no, for kings indeed are deities,

And who'd not (as the sun) in brightness shine?
To be the greatest is to be divine.

Who among millions would not be the mightiest ?
To sit in godlike state; to have all eyes
Dazzled with admiration, and all tongues
Shouting loud prayers; to rob every heart

* It is not altogether improbable that Marlowe had a share in the composition of this drama, licensed for the press in 1593, but known at present in no edition earlier than that of 1600.-ED.