Middlesex Session Roll, XXXI Elizabeth, October, 1588, that two men went bond for his appearance in court (charges not stated). 2. A warrant issued by the Privy Council for his arrest, May 18, 1593. 3. The note in the records of the Privy Council that Marlowe had appeared May 20th and had been commanded to attend their Lordships until licensed to the contrary.22 4. Thomas Kyd's letter .to Sir John Puckering which accuses Marlowe of atheism.23 5. The documents bearing on the circumstances of his death recently published by Dr. Hotson.24 Certainly there is little enough to build on here, and when it is added that there is not one direct reference to Harvey in Marlowe's works, the difficulties of our attempt can be clearly seen. Yet we are entirely safe in believing that Marlowe spent the greatest part of the six years 1587-93 in and about London. Indeed the amount of the dramatic work which he accomplished, his friendships with Chapman, Kyd, Shakespeare, Nashe, and Greene, the brief legal documentation, and finally his connection with the Walsingham family, all confirm that supposition. Since we know too that he fell into some disfavor with the Cambridge authorities about the time of his departure,25 it is unlikely that he should have revisited the University and run upon Harvey at any time before 1591-2, when the latter's fellowship at Trinity expired. We have left the time from August 1592, when Harvey came up to London, until May 30, 1593, the date of Marlowe's death, in which to look for some quarrel or other explanation to serve as our background in interpreting the Gorgon poems. Harvey's purpose in coming to London was to attend to legal affairs in connection with the estate of his brother John, who had died in July. He was detained in the city until about July 20th of the following year, living all this time, according to Nashe, at the house of his printer, Wolfe, in St. Paul's Churchyard. The months were not spent in idleness. On the 12th of October he 22 All reprinted by J. H. Ingram, Christopher Marlowe and his Associates, pp. 198-9. 23 Works of Thomas Kyd, ed. F. S. Boas, Oxford 1901, pp. cviii-cx. 24 J. L. Hotson, The Death of Christopher Marlowe, 1925. And cf. passim for data on note 22. 25 Privy Council Registers, Elizabeth, vi, 381 b. Public Rec. Off. 28 Cf. Marg., pp. 60-5. secured by chancery order the administration of his brother's goods during the minority of the daughters. Between September and December he composed and published Four Letters, a reply to Greene's Quip for an Upstart Courtier. With Nashe's rejoinder, Strange Newes of the Intercepting of Certaine Letters, January, 1592-3, he set about the composition of Pierces Supererogationa welter of words and opinions in which he strangely inserted his reply to Lyly's Paphatchet, written four years earlier.27 The body of the work bears the date "27. of Aprill: 1593"; a preliminary letter to his friends, " at London this 16 of July "; and a note at the end from John Thorius is subscribed, "Oxford, the 3 of August, 1593." Dr. McKerrow has shown clearly that the volume did not come from the press until about the middle of October.28 Despite these facts, there is no reason to think that Harvey altered the text after April 27th to insert the remarks on Marlowe as Ingram would imply.29 Accepting the following, then, as true reflections of Harvey's opinion of Marlowe while still alive, we may look more particularly for the basis of his dislike. “His [Nashe's] gayest floorishes, are but Gascoignes weedes, or Tarletons trickes, or Greenes crankes, or Marlowes brauadós: his iestes, but the dregges of comon scurrilitie, the shreds of the theater, or the of-scouring of new Pamflets.” 30 (Nashe) "that shamefully, and odiously misuseth euery friend, or acquaintance, as he hath serued some of his fauorablest Patrons (whom for certain respectes I am not to name), M. Apis Lapis, Greene, Marlow, Chettle, and whom not?" 31 no Religion, but precise Marlowisme." 32 Little is to be gathered from the first quotation beyond a vague deprecation of Marlowe's writing for its conceited boldness. In the second we have some evidence that Harvey thought of Marlowe as one of his enemy's friends, but apparently not such a one as might be leagued with Nashe against himself in a way which would justify Bullen's epitome of the Gorgon sonnet: "Marlowe is dead; it remains to muzzle Nashe.'" 33 The third quotation, as I believe, 27 This occupies pp. 124-221 in G. H., II. It is dated November 5, 1589. 28 T. N., V, 95-103. 29 Op. cit., p. 252. 31 Ibid., p. 322. 83 Ibid., p. 234. 30 G. H., II, 115. 33 Bullen's Marlowe, 1, lxvii. exhibits the real nature of Harvey's attitude, one familiar enough to Marlowe students-abhorrence of the atheist. Let us see how the references in Harvey's next book bear this out. A New Letter of Notable Contents, cast in the form of a long letter to his printer, Wolfe, was written from Saffron Walden and dated September 18, 1593. First the prose passages: "Though Greene were a Iulian, and Marlow a Lucian: yet I would be loth, He [Nashe] should be an Aretin." 34 "Plinyes, and Lucians religion may ruffle, and scoffe awhile: but extreme Vanitie is the best beginning of that brauery, and extreme Miserie the best end of that felicity. Greene, and Marlow might admonish other to aduise themselues: "35 66 To give the full context in each case would require several pages; it may be sufficient to summarize the argument preceding the first quotation as a homiletic plea for Nashe to forsake the ways of desperate blasphemies" and repent at the feet of Christ. Although he has just spoken in praise of the heathen philosophers, Harvey uses the names Julian and Lucian here as synonyms for pagan and scoffer. The second passage is preceded by a long harangue on the blasphemy of Nashe and other "surmounting spirites" who are finally named as Marlowe and Greene. Thus we have three instances in which Marlowe is used to point a moral on behalf of religion. At this juncture one should take care not to be misled by talk of Harvey's supposed puritanism; Professor Tolman has very effectively disposed of the myth,36 and furthermore no controversial intention is to be found in the present context. It is rather as an earnest pleader for good morals and dignified letters that Harvey reproaches Nashe by citing the examples of such (to him) unquestionably irreligious "rakehells" as Greene and Marlowe. Doubtless he was unaware of the slight irony in coupling Marlowe with the man who had alluded to him in the well known tag as "daring God out of Heaven with that Aetheist Tamburlan." Of course, Harvey is voicing what was believed in all quarters and repeated with holy joy by such persons as Beard, Meres, 34 G. H., I, 289. 35 Ibid., 1, 292. 36"The Relation of Spenser and Harvey to Puritanism," Modern Philology, xv, 549-64, January, 1918. Vaughan, and Rudierde." Yet I think there is to be found in his case a particular reason for crediting Marlowe with atheism when we remember that the rector of Scadbury, where the Walsingham family, Marlowe's patrons, lived, had since 1587 been none other than Gabriel's brother Richard. This worthy must certainly have known Marlowe, and, whatever the facts, probably thought him an enemy of religion and a blasphemer. In all probability the dislike was mutual, for on the authority of Nashe 38 Marlowe spoke of Dick Harvey as "an asse, good for nothing but to preach of the Iron Age." Whether that saying be apocryphal or not, is it too much to suppose that the brothers came to share a common opinion of Christopher Marlowe's spiritual health? In the light of careful analyses by McKerrow and Moore Smith the old picture of an implacable ghoulish Harvey, slanderer of the living, vile calumniator of the dead, has become ridiculous. Grosart, Ingram, and too many others by losing their tempers in round execration of this "pedant" (a tiresome epithet which it seems no one has failed to apply) to whom the glory of genius and the finest dramatic art mean nothing, have quite lost their grasp of the essential problem. We are not concerned at this point with the aesthetic limitations of our man but with the dominant idea back of all his references to Marlowe. We have constructed what appears to be a reasonable hypothesis as to the nature of that idea; it remains to test it by a detailed analysis of the difficult verses mentioned at the beginning of our undertaking. I SONET. Gorgon, or the Wonderfull yeare. St. Fame dispos'd to cunnycatch the world, Vprear'd a wonderment of Eighty Eight: The Earth, addreading to be ouerwhurld, What now auailes, quoth She, my ballance weight? The wonder was, no wonder fell that yeare. Wonders enhaunse their powre in numbers odd: The fatall yeare of yeares is Ninety Three: Parma hath kist; De-maine entreates the rodd: 37 The charges made by these men are quoted and discussed by Tucker Brooke in the Transactions of the Conn. Acad. as cited above; and cf. Dr. Hotson's book passim. 38 T. N., III, 85. Warre wondreth, Peace and Spaine in Fraunce to see. Braue Eckenberg, the dowty Bassa shames: The Christian Neptune Turkish Vulcane tames. Nauarre wooes Roome: Charlmaine giues Guise the Phy: L'enuoy. The hugest miracle remaines behinde, The second Shakerley Rash-swash to binde. II A / Stanza declaratiue: to the Louers of Admirable Workes. Pleased it hath a Gentlewoman rare, With Phenix quill in diamont hand of Art, To muzzle the redoubtable Bull-bare, Vis consilii expers, mole ruit sua. III The Writer's Postscript: or a frendly Caueat to the Second Shakerley of Powles. Slumbring I lay in melancholy bed, Before the dawning of the sanguin light: When Eccho shrill, or some Familiar Spright, Buzzed an Epitaph into my hed. Magnifique Mindes, bred of Gargantuas race, In grisly weedes His Obsequies waiment, Whose Corps on Powles, whose mind triumph'd on Kent I mus'd awhile: and hauing mus'd awhile, What bile or kibe? (quoth that same early Spright) 39 Is it a Dreame? or is the Highest minde 3o That breath, that taught the Tempany to swell? "Reading of the original. Grosart in his reprint, following Collier, inserts an it in the second half of the line: Is it a Dreame? or is it the Highest minde which of course makes nonsense. |