his beloved, the ‘divine Zenocratë’. His hubris in challenging the gods is not
punished; he merely dies. Like the protagonists of Marlowe’s Jew of Malta and Dr
Faustus, Tamburlaine is an arrogant upstart who scorns human limits. A Romantic
view of the Renaissance saw Dr Faustus as transcending worn-out teachings like
Galileo, or as an emblem of human aspiration like Goethe’s Faust. But Faustus does
not believe in hell, and sells his soul for twenty-four years of fun. The knowledge he
seeks is paltry, and he wastes his powers on schoolboy tricks. ‘Farce’ means stuffing,
and although the beginning and end ofFaustus are golden, its middle is stuffed with
the jests of the Vice of the old Moralities; a form which also provides a Good and an
Evil Angel, and devils who finally claim the unrepentant sinner.
Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,
And burnèd is Apollo’s laurel bough,
That sometime grew within this learned man.
Faustus is gone! Regard his hellish fall ...The orthodox moral of the Epilogue is transformed by a might and music of
language quite new to the English stage. Earlier Faustus has summoned up an image
of Helen of Troy:
‘Is this the face that launched a thousand ships
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss:
Her lips suck forth my soul, see where it flies.’Aspiration turns into delusion: the Doctor’s immortal soul falls mortal prey to a
demonic succuba he has himself conjured up. Marlowe specializes in the glamour of
desire:‘O thou art fairer than the evening air, / Clad in the beauty of a thousand
stars.’ He gives the same rhetorical projection to Christian lines: ‘See, see, where
Christ’s blood streams in the firmament!’ cries the despairing Faustus. Sin leads to
hell; which makes sensational theatre. Marlowe’s mighty line echoes; but the extinc-
tion of ambition seems sardonic rather than providential.
The protagonist ofThe Jew of Malta is called Barabas, like the murderer in the
Gospel whom the mob spared in preference to Jesus. A cunning trickster, he blows
up a convent of nuns (including his convert daughter) with devilish glee; but finally
falls into a cauldron of boiling oil he had prepared for his guests. Marlowe exploits
the revulsion of his audience, since the Catholic defenders and Turkish attackers of
Malta are as amoral as Barabas, and lack his cynical zest. The overreacher drops into
hell; yet this play is less tragic than blackly comic, an exposé of hypocrisy. The
Prologue, spoken by Machiavel, has the gleefully impious couplet: ‘I count religion
but a childish toy, / And hold there is no sin but ignorance’. The wicked Machiavel
also says: ‘Admired I am by those who hate me most’. Although ‘admired’ means
‘wondered at’, this suggests Marlowe’s fascination. The final screams of Barabas show
that the sin of ignorance is universal.
Screams also end Edward II, Marlowe’s most workmanlike play, a study in the
operation of power: the weak king loses his throne to rebel nobles who resent his
homosexual infatuation with the low Gaveston and conspire with his wife to depose
him.The murder of Edward suggested a pattern of pathos to Shakespeare for
Richard II. In comparison, Marlowe is disturbing, sensationalistic, lacking in tragic
complexity; but his sulphuric brilliance is not outshone. Shakespeare the poet-play-
wright learned from Marlowe’s dramatic use of language and verse. Shakespeare the
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 115