Let not my beauty's fire Nor pierce any bright eye That wandereth lightly. Bethsabe. Come, gentle zephyr, trick'd with those perfumes And stroke my bosom with the silken fan: To play the wantons with us through the leaves. David. What tunes, what words, what looks, what wonders pierce My soul, incensed with a sudden fire! What tree, what shade, what spring, what paradise, Enjoys the beauty of so fair a dame! Fair Eva, plac'd in perfect happiness, Lending her praise-notes to the liberal heavens, Wrought not more pleasure to her husband's thoughts May that sweet plain that bears her pleasant weight, That precious fount bear sand of purest gold; That pierce earth's bowels to maintain the source, Of moss that sleeps with sound the waters make That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill, Enter CUSAY See, Cusay, see the flower of Israel, The fairest daughter that obeys the king, In all the land the Lord subdued to me, Urias, now at Rabath siege with Joab? Tell her, her graces have found grace with him. David. Bright Bethsabe shall wash in David's bower Now comes my lover tripping like the roe, And with their murmur summon easeful sleep, Lamb condemns the work as a whole, but speaks with admiration of the line "Seated in hearing of a hundred streams,' which Chambers calls, "indeed a noble poetic image," which is almost precisely what Spedding says with regard to the same line in one of Bacon's hymns, while Hawkins, in his "Origin of the English Drama," gives it unstinted praise, quoting especially the lines At him the thunder shall discharge its bolt, And his fair spouse with bright and fiery wings, which he calls "a metaphor worthy of Eschylus." The opinion that these compositions are above Peele's mark is hardly questionable, but if ascribed to the author of the "Shakespeare" Works, they rank well with those of inferior merit, for it is beyond question that in these works there are wide disparities, of which "Andronicus" and "Hamlet' are good illustrations. Of "King Edward First," which is preserved in a mutilated form, and which has been thought by some to belong to the "Shakespeare" historical dramas, it is necessarily unsatisfactory on account of its imperfections. That works of the Elizabethan period have been erroneously accredited to authors cannot be doubted. Bullen says, for instance, of “Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes"; I strongly doubt whether it has been properly assigned to Peele, I suspect that it was written by some such person as Richard Edwards, when Peele was in his teens.1 Were it not for the strong individuality stamped in varying degrees upon all the "Shakespeare "dramas, which have found a place in the Canon, it is probable that several would have been discarded. We have given the reader, who, at the sacrifice of time and patience, has accompanied us thus far, as brief a view as possible of these misprized works of still questioned parentage, in order that he might get a fair understanding of their relationship to the greatest of literary problems. He will have seen by this time that the gist of our thesis is, that they, and the canonized works which we have discussed, are all the work, some of it immature, of one man, who "took all knowledge as his province," and devoted his best energies to an Advancement of Learning which was the crying need of his time. We realize that it devolves upon us to furnish the reader with convincing evidence of this, and we hope to do so should he continue to accord us his companionship. 1 The Works of George Peele. London, 1888. XIV MASKS ROBERT GREENE WAS a boon companion of Peele and a profligate of the vilest type, quite the equal of Peele in evil courses. The date of his birth is not known with certainty. He is said to have been born at Norwich; Dyce places the date at 1550, and Grosart, at 1560. We are told that he entered as a sizar at St. John's, Cambridge, in 1578, leaving, says Grosart, in 1585. He denominates him "a cleric," and "red nosed minister," asserting that he was Vicar of Lollesbury, Essex, in 1584.1 Foster ("Alumni Oxonienses") records him as being "incorporated at Oxford 1588." He left an autobiographical sketch printed in 1596. In it, after describing some of his villainies he naïvely says: Young yet in years, though old in wickedness, I began to resolve that there was nothing bad that was not profitable; whereupon I grew so rooted in all mischief, that I had as great a delight in wickedness as sundry have in godliness, and as much felicity I took in villany as others did in honesty. A recent biographer, following for the most part Greene's own account, says:— That Greene was married is certain, Dyce thinks in 1586, and it is as certain, that although on his own authority his wife was a most amiable and loving woman, he ere long forsook her to indulge without restraint his passion for debauchery and every species of self-indulgence. After leaving his wife, he lived with a woman, the sister of an infamous character, well known then under the name of "Cutting Ball," and by her he had a son who died in the year after his father. After leading one of the 1 A. B. Grosart, The Life and Complete Works of Robert Greene. London, 1887. maddest lives on record, he died a miserable death on the 3d of September, 1592, his last illness being caused by a debauch. On his deathbed he was deserted by all his former boon conpanions except his mistress, and was indebted to the wife of a poor shoemaker for the last bed on which he laid his miserable body — his dying injunction to his compassionate and admiring hostess being to crown his vain head after death with a garland of bays. This request, it seems, the poor woman attended to.1 Yet Grosart was influenced by a single passage in "Selimus" to accredit it to Greene. This is his remarkable confession: "One specific passage by itself would have determined me assigning 'Selimus' to Greene." He could have found scores to have warranted him equally in assigning it to Spenser. A number of works have been assigned him, the authorship of which even his biographers question. Professor Brown declares that "in style . . . Greene is father of Shakespeare"; that "James IV' is the first Elizabethan historical play outside Shakespeare, and is worthy to be placed on a level with Shakespeare's earlier style"; and he thinks "Shakespeare followed Greene's example in the 'Taming of the Shrew' and 'Midsummer Night's Dream""; Tieck, who translated the "Pinner of Wakefield" declares it to be "one of Shakespeare's juvenile productions.” CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE Was, if possible, a greater reprobate than his pot-companions, for to his evil accomplishments was added the temper of the bravo. Even less is known about him than of Peele or of Greene. He is said to have been the son of a shoemaker, John Marlowe, born at Canterbury, February, 1563-64, and granted the degree of B.A. in 1585, and M.A. in 1587, at Benet College, Cambridge; went to London shortly after he became an actor, but, it is said, had to resign, having broken his leg "in a lewd scene.” His career was brief, as he died June 1, 1593, a few The Works of the British Dramatists, p. 77. New York, n.d. |