patience."-" But what could a husband do," said Parlamente, « save what has been recounted in this story? » "What could he do?" said Ennarsuite: "he could beat his wife."

"I think," said Parlamente, "that a good woman would not be so grieved in being beaten out of anger, as in being contemptuously treated by a man who does not care for her, and after having endured the suffering of the loss of his friendship, nothing the husband might do would cause her much concern. And besides, the story says that the trouble she took to draw him back to her was because of her love for her children, and I believe it "—"And do you think it was so very patient of her,” said Nomerfide, "to set fire to the bed in which her husband was sleeping?" "Yes," said Longarine, "for when she saw the smoke she awoke him; and that was just the thing where she was most in fault, for of such husbands as those the ashes are good to make lye for the washtub."-"You are cruel, Longarine," said Oisille, "and you did not live in such fashion with your husband."- No," said Longarine, "for, God be thanked, he never gave me such occasion, but reason to regret him all my life, instead of to complain of him."-"And if he had treated you in this way," said Nomerfide, "what would you have done?" — "I loved him so much," said Longarine, "that I think I should have killed him and then killed myself; for to die after such vengeance would be pleasanter to me than to live faithfully. with a faithless husband."

"As far as I see," said Hircan, "you love your husbands only for yourselves. If they are good.after your own heart, you love them well; if they commit towards you the least fault in the world, they have lost their week's work by a Saturday. The long and the short is that you want to be mistresses; for my part I am of your mind, provided all the husbands also agree to it." "It is reasonable," said Parlamente, "that the man rule us as our head, but not that he desert us or ill-treat us.' "God," said Oisille, "has set in such due order the man and the woman that if the marriage estate is not abused, I hold it to be one of the most beautiful and stable conditions in the world; and I am sure that all those here present, whatever air they assume, think no less highly of it. And forasmuch as men say they are wiser than women, they should be more sharply punished when the fault is on their side. But we have talked enough on this subject."

IV

"IT SEEMS to me, since the passage from one life to another is inevitable, that the shortest death is the best. I consider fortunate those who do not dwell in the suburbs of death, and who from that felicity which alone in this world can be called felicity pass suddenly to that which is eternal."-"What do you call the suburbs of death?" said Simortault." I mean that those who have many tribulations, and those also who have long been sick, those who by extremity of bodily or mental pain, have come to hold death in contempt and to find its hour too tardy,- all these have wandered in the suburbs of death, and will tell you the hostelries where they have more wept than slept."

V

"Do you count as nothing the shame she underwent, and her imprisonment?"

"I think that one who loves perfectly, with a love in harmony with the commands of God, knows neither shame nor dishonor save when the perfection of her love fails or is diminished; for the glory of true loves knows not shame: and as to the imprisonment of her body, I believe that through the freedom of her heart which was united with God and with her husband, she did not feel it, but considered its solitude very great liberty; for to one who cannot see the beloved, there is no greater good than to think incessantly of him, and the prison is never narrow where the thought can range at will."

VI

"IN GOOD faith I am astonished at the diversity in the nature of women's love: and I see clearly that those who have most love have most virtue; but those who have less love, dissimulate, wishing to feign virtue."

"It is true," said Parlamente, "that a heart pure towards God and man, loves more strongly than one that is vicious, and it fears not to have its very thoughts known.”

XVII-608

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

(1564-1593)

wo months before the birth of William Shakespeare, on February 26th, 1564, John Marlowe, shoemaker in the ancient town of Canterbury, carried a baby boy, his first son, to be baptized in the Church of St. George the Martyr. John Marlowe was a "clarke of Saint Marie's church," and member of the Shoemakers' and Tanners' Guild. He may have been a man of sufficient means to give his son a liberal education; or some rich gentleman, Sir John Manwood perhaps, may have interested himself in the gifted lad. At any rate Christopher went to the King's School, Canterbury, where fifty pupils were taught gratuitously and allowed £4 a year each; and there he was a diligent scholar, for it is recorded that in 1579 he received an allowance of £1 for each of the first three terms. From school he was sent to Benet-now Corpus Christi - College, Cambridge; where he obtained the degree of B. A. in 1583, and that of M. A. in 1587. His translations of Ovid's elegies were probably begun, if not completed, during his years at the university. There are slight indications in his poems that he may have been a soldier for a time, and served during the Netherlands campaign. Probably, however, he went at once to London from Cambridge,—“a boy in years, a man in genius, a god in ambition," as Swinburne says,- and began his struggle for fame and fortune. Like many another young poet, he may have gone on the stage; but it is said that he was soon after incapacitated for acting, by an accident which lamed him. He attached himself as playwright to a prominent dramatic company,— that of the Earl of Nottingham, the Lord Admiral.

He was a dashing fellow, witty and daring, "the darling of the town," and with a gift for making friends. He was a protégé of Thomas Walsingham, and gallant Sir Walter Raleigh found him a congenial spirit. He knew Kyd, Nash, Greene, Chapman, and very likely Shakespeare too. Of all the brilliant group that glorify Elizabethan literature, there is no more striking or typical figure than Marlowe's own. He was the very embodiment of the Renascence spirit, with energies all vitalized and athirst for both spiritual and sensual satisfactions. His gay-hearted, passionate, undisciplined nature was too exorbitant in demand to find content. To his pagan soul beauty and pleasure were ultimate aims, orthodox faith and observances impossible. So for a few mad years he dreamed and wrote,

loved and feasted, starved sometimes, perhaps; and then at twentynine, when he had tried all possible experiences, his wild, brilliant young life suddenly ended. His irreligious scoffing, doubtless exaggerated from mouth to mouth, led finally to a warrant for his arrest. Evading this, he had gone to the small town of Deptford, and there, June 1593, while at the tavern, he became engaged in a drunken scuffle in which he was fatally stabbed.

Marlowe's first play, Tamburlaine,' must have been written before he was twenty-four. Like many of his contemporaries, he always borrowed his plots; and this one he took from 'Foreste,' a translation from the Spanish made by Thomas Fortescue. His treatment of it was a conscious effort to revolutionize dramatic poetry; for "jiggling veins of rhyming mother wits" to substitute "high astounding terms"; and it is his great distinction that with Tamburlaine' he established blank verse in the English drama. From the appearance of Gorboduc' in 1562 there had been blank or rimeless verse; but the customary form of dramatic expression was in tediously monotonous heroic couplets, whether they suited the subject or not. Marlowe was the first of the English dramatists to understand that thought and expression should be in harmony. His original spirit refused dictation; and he developed a rich sonorous line, the beauty of which was recognized at once. His musical ear and poetic instinct guided him to hitherto forbidden licenses,-variety in the management of the cæsura, feminine rhymes, run-on lines, the introduction of other than iambic measures; and thus he secured an elasticity of metre which permanently enriched English poetry. His creative daring stifled a cold and formal classicism, inaugurated our romantic drama, and served as guiding indication to Shakespeare himself. But although certain verses of Tamburlaine' cling to the reader's memory as perfect in poetic feeling and harmony, the greater part of it is mere "bombast » to modern taste. Even in Marlowe's day his exaggerations excited ridicule, and quotations from his dramas became town catchwords. But the spontaneous passion of his impossible conceptions gave them a force which impressed the public. Tamburlaine' was immensely popular, and the sequel or Part Second was enthusiastically received. Many critics since Ben Jonson have discussed "Marlowe's mighty line" and honored its influence; and his fellow writers were quick to follow his example.

The Faust legend, traceable back to the sixth century, finally drifted over to England, where in ballad form, founded upon the 'Volksbuch' by Spiess, it appeared in 1587, and probably soon caught Marlowe's attention. His play of Dr. Faustus' was given in 1588, and was very highly praised. It is said that Goethe, who thought of translating it, exclaimed admiringly, "How greatly it is all planned!”

Compared with the harmonic unity of form and matter in Goethe's 'Faust,' Marlowe's work seems childish in construction, uneven and faulty in expression. But there are certain passages-for example, the thrilling passion of the invocation to Helen, and the final despair of Faustus-of positive poetic splendor.

In the Jew of Malta' there are fine passages which show Marlowe's increasing mastery of his line. But in spite of its descriptive color and force, and keen touches of characterization, it was less successful than Tamburlaine,' and is perhaps most noteworthy now for the obvious parallelism of certain scenes with those of the later 'Merchant of Venice.'

'Edward II.,' founded upon Robert Fabyan's 'Chronicle' or 'Concordance of Histories,' is structurally the best of Marlowe's plays, and contains finely pathetic verse which bears comparison with that of Shakespeare's historical dramas. The poet as he grows older seems to take a broader, more sympathetic view of life; and therefore he begins to understand feelings more normal than the infinite ambitions of Faustus and Tamburlaine, and becomes more skillful in the portrayal of character. There is little of his earlier exaggeration. The two shorter dramas - 'The Massacre of Paris,' and 'Dido, Queen of Carthage › were written in collaboration with other playwrights.

No one can read Marlowe carefully without feeling that the social influences of his time made him a dramatist, and that he was by nature a lyric poet. He was intensely subjective, and incapable of taking an impersonal and comprehensive point of view. He always expresses his own aspiration for fame, or joy, or satisfaction, transcending anything earth can offer. "That like I best that flies beyond my reach." This preoccupation with imaginative ideals made it impossible for him to understand every-day human nature. Hence no touch of humor vitalizes his work; and hence his efforts to depict women are always vague and unsatisfactory. He is at his best when expressing his own passions,—his adoration of light and color, of gold and sparkling gems, of milk-white beauties with rippling brilliant hair. Like the other men of his time, he loved nature: delighted in tinkling waters, wide skies, gay velvety blossoms. He is a thorough sensualist; frankly, ardently so in 'Hero and Leander,’that beautiful love poem, a paraphrase of Musach's poem, of which he wrote the first two sestiads, and which after his death was finished by Chapman. Every one knows the lines, written in much the same spirit, of The Passionate Shepherd to his Love'; "that smooth song which was made by Kit Marlowe," as Izaak Walton says. It had many imitations, and a charming response from the pen of Sir Walter Raleigh.