Come, come, I'll have a kiss; but if you'll strive,
For one denial you shall forfeit five.
Queen. What means my Love?
Burst all those wires; burn all those instruments;
For they displease my Moor. Art thou now pleas'd?
Or wert thou now disturb'd? I'll wage all Spain
To one sweet kiss, this is some new device
To make me fond and long. Oh, you men
Have tricks to make poor women die for you.
Eleaz. What, die for me?
Queen. Away, what way? I prithee, speak more kindly. Why dost thou frown?
Eleaz. At thee.
Queen. At me?
O why at me ? for each contracted frown,
A crooked wrinkle interlines my brow:
Spend but one hour in frowns, and I shall look
Like to a Beldam of one hundred years.
I prithee, speak to me, and chide me not.
I prithee, chide, if I have done amiss;
But let my punishment be this, and this.
I prithee, smile on me, if but a while;
Then frown on me, I'll die : I prithee, smile.
Smile on me; and these two wanton boys,
These pretty lads that do attend on me,
Shall call thee Jove, shall wait upon thy cup
And fill thee nectar: their enticing eyes
Shall serve as chrystal, wherein thou may'st see
To dress thyself; if thou wilt smile on me.
Smile on me; and with coronets of pearl
And bells of gold, circling their pretty arms,
In a round ivory fount these two shall swim,
And dive to make thee sport:
Bestow one smile, one little little smile,
And in a net of twisted silk and gold
In my all-naked arms thyself shalt lie.9
9 Kit Marlowe, as old Isaac Walton assures us, made that smooth song which begins "Come live with me and be my love." The same romantic invitations "in folly ripe in reason rotten" are given
by the queen in the play, and the lover in the ḍitty. He talks of "beds of roses, buckles of gold:”
Thy silver dishes for thy meat,
As precious as the Gods do eat,
Shall on an ivory table be
Prepar'd each day for thee and me.
The lines in the Extract have a luscious smoothness in them, and they were the most temperate which I could pick out of this Play. The rest is in king Cambyses' vein; rape, and murder, and superlatives; "huffing braggart puft" lines such as the play-writers anterior to Shakspeare are full of, and Pistol " but coldly imitates." -Blood is made as light of in some of these old Dramas as Money in a modern Sentimental Comedy; and as this is given away till it reminds us that it is nothing but counters, so that is spilt till it affects us no more than its representative the paint of the property-man in the theatre.
* Take a specimen from a speech of the Moor's.
Now Tragedy, thou minion of the night,
Rhamnusia's pue-fellow, to thee I'll sing
Upon an harp made of dead Spanish bones,
The proudest instrument the world affords;
When thou in crimson jollity shall bathe
Thy limbs, as black as mine, in springs of blood
Still gushing from the conduit head of Spain.
To thee that never blushest, though thy cheeks
Are full of blood, O Saint Revenge, to thee
I consecrate my murders, all my stabs,
My bloody labours, tortures, stratagems,
The volume of all wounds that wound from me į
Mine is the Stage, thine is the Tragedy.
TAMBURLAINE THE GREAT; OR THE SCYTHIAN SHEPHERD. IN TWO PARTS. BY CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE.-PART THE FIRST.
Tamburlaine's Person described.
Of stature tall, and straitly fashioned;
Like his desire, lift10 upwards, and divine.
So large of limbs, his joints so strongly knit,
Such breadth of shoulders, as might mainly bear
Old Atlas' burthen. Twixt his manly pitch
A pearl more worth than all the world is placed :
Wherein by curious soverainty of art
Are fix'd his piercing instruments of sight;
Whose fiery circles bear encompassed
A heaven of heavenly bodies in their spheres:
That guides his steps and actions to the throne
Where Honour sits invested royally.
Pale of complexion, wrought in him with passion
Thirsting with soverainty and love of arms.
His lofty brows in folds do figure death;
And in their smoothness amity and life.
About them hangs a knot of amber hair,
Wrapped in curls, as fierce Achilles' was;
On which the breath of heaven delights to play,
Making it dance with wanton majesty.
His armes long, his fingers snowy-white,
Betokening valour and excess of strength;
In every part proportion'd like the man
Should make the world subdue to Tamburlaine.
The first day when he pitcheth down his tents,
White is their hue; and on his silver crest
A snowy feather spangled white he bears;
To signify the mildness of his mind,
That, satiate with spoil, refuseth blood:
But when Aurora mounts the second time,
As red as scarlet is his furniture;
Then must his kindled wrath be quench'd with blood,
Not sparing any that can manage arms:
But if these threats move not submission,
Black are his colours, black pavilion,
His spear, his shield, his horse, his armour, plumes,
And jetty feathers, menace death and hell;
Without respect of sex, degree or age,
He raseth all his foes with fire and sword."
"I had the same difficulty (or rather much more) in culling a few sane lines from this as from the preceding Play. The lunes of Tamburlaine are perfect "midsummer madness." Nebuchadnazar's are mere modest pretensions compared with the thundering vaunts of this Scythian Shepherd. He comes in (in the Second Part) drawn by conquered kings, and reproaches these pampered jades of Ásia that they can draw but twenty miles a day. Till I saw this passage with my own eyes, I never believed that it was any thing more than a pleasant burlesque of Mine Ancient's. But I assure my readers that it is soberly set down in a Play which their Ancestors took to be serious. I have subjoined the genuine speech for their amusement. Enter Tamburlaine, drawn in his chariot by Trebizon and Soria, with bits in their mouths, reins in his left hand, in his right hand a whip, with which he scourgeth them.
Tamb. Holla ye pamper'd jades of Asia:
What can ye draw but twenty miles a day,
And have so proud a chariot at your heels,
And such a coachman as great Tamburlaine?
But from Asphaltis, where I conquered you,
To Byron here, where thus I honour you?
The horse that guide the golden eye of heaven,
And blow the morning from their nostrils,
Making their fiery gate above the clouds,
Are not so honour'd in their governor
As you ye slaves in mighty Tamburlaine.
The headstrong jades of Thrace Alcides tamed,
That King Egeus fed with human flesh,
And made so wanton that they knew their strengths,
Were not subdued with valour more divine,
Than you by this unconquer'd arm of mine.
To make you fierce and fit my appetite,
You shall be fed with flesh as raw as blood,
And drink in pails the strongest muscadel :
If you can live with it, then live and draw
My chariot swifter than the racking clouds:
If not, then die like beasts, and fit for nought
But perches for the black and fatal ravens.
Thus am I right the scourge of highest Jove, &c.
EDWARD THE SECOND: A TRAGEDY, BY CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE.
Gaveston shews what pleasures those are which the King chiefly delights in.
Gav. I must have wanton poets, pleasant wits,
Musicians, that with touching of a string
May draw the pliant King which way I please.
Music and poetry are his delight;
Therefore I'll have Italian masks by night,
Sweet speeches, comedies, and pleasing shows;
And in the day, when he shall walk abroad,
Like Sylvan nymphs my pages shall be clad;
My men, like satyrs grazing on the lawns,
Shall with their goat-feet dance the antick hay.
Sometimes a lovely boy in Dian's shape,
With hair that gilds the water as it glidés,
Crownets of pearl about his naked arms,
And in his sportful hands an olive tree
To hide those parts which men delight to see,
Shall bathe him in a spring, and there hard by,
One like Acteon, peeping thro' the grove,
Shall by the angry goddess be transform'd,
And running in the likeness of an hart,
By yelping hounds pull'd down, shall seem to die;
Such things as these best please his majesty.
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