[Enter Scholars.]

First Sch. Come, gentlemen, let us go visit Faustus,
For such a dreadful night was never seen

Since first the world's creation did begin;

Such fearful shrieks and cries were never heard.

Pray heaven the Doctor have escaped the danger.

Sec. Sch. O help us heavens! see, here are Faustus' limbs

All torn asunder by the hand of death.

Third Sch. The devil whom Faustus serv'd hath torn him thus:

For 'twixt the hours of twelve and one, methought

I heard him shriek and call aloud for help;

At which same time the house seem'd all on fire

With dreadful horror of these damned fiends.

Sec. Sch. Well, gentlemen, though Faustus' end be such

As every Christian heart laments to think on;

Yet, for he was a scholar once admired

For wondrous knowledge in our German schools,

We'll give his mangled limbs due burial:

And all the scholars, cloth'd in mourning black,

Shall wait upon his heavy funeral.

Chorus. Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,

And burned is Apollo's laurel bough

That sometime grew within this learned man:

Faustus is gone! Regard his hellish fall,
Whose fiendful fortune may exhort the wise

Only to wonder at unlawful things:

Whose deepness doth entice such forward wits

To practice more than heavenly power permits.

The classical taste of Marlow is shown in the fine apostrophe to Helen of Greece, whom the spirit of Mephostophilis conjures up 'between two Cupids' to gratify the sensual gaze of Faustus:

Was this the face that lanched a thousand ships,

And burn'd the topless towers of Ilium ?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss!
Her lips suck forth my soul-see where it flies.
Come, Helen, come give me my soul again;
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.

O thou art fairer than the evening air,
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars!
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter
When he appeared to hapless Semele;
More lovely than the monarch of the sky
In wanton Arethusa's azure arms;
And none but thou shall be my paramour.

Before 1593, Marlow produced three other dramas, the Jew of Malta, the Massacre of Paris, and a historical play, Edward the Second. The last of these is a noble drama, and contains a number of ably drawn characters and splendid scenes. We subjoin part of the death-scene at the close of the play—a scene which Charles Lamb says, 'moves pity and terror beyond any other scene, ancient or modern.' It may challenge comparison with Shakspeare's death of Richard the Second; but with all his power, Marlow could not interest us in his hero as the great dramatist does in the gentle Richard:

SCENE, BERKLEY CASTLE. THE KING IS LEFT ALONE WITH

LIGHTBORN, A MURDERER.

Edw. Who's there? what light is that? wherefore com'st thou ?
Light. To comfort you, and bring you joyful news.

Edw. Small comfort finds poor Edward in thy looks.

Villain, I know thou com'st to murder me.

Light. To murder you, my most gracious lord!

Far is it from my heart to do you harm.

The queen sent me to see how you were us'd,

For she relents at this your misery:

And what eyes can refrain from shedding tears,

To see a king in this most piteous state.

Edw. Weep'st thou already? list awhile to me,
And then thy heart, were it as Gurney's1 is

Edw. And there, in mire and puddle have I stood
This ten days' space; and lest that I should sleep,
One plays continually upon a drum.

They give me bread and water, being a king;
So that, for want of sleep and sustenance,
My mind's distemper'd, and my body's numb'd,
And whether I have limbs or no, I know not.
O would my blood drop out from every vein,
As doth this water from my tattered robes.
Tell Isabel the queen, I looked not thus,
When for her sake I run at tilt in France,

And there unhors'd the Duke of Cleremont.

Light. O speak no more, my lord! this breaks my heart.

Lie on this bed and rest yourself awhile.

Edw. These looks of thine can harbour nought but death:

I see my tragedy written in thy brows.

Yet stay awhile, forbear thy bloody hand,

And let me see the stroke before it comes,

That even then when I shall lose my life,

My mind may be more steadfast on my God.

Light. What means your highness to mistrust me thus?
Edw. What mean'st thou to dissemble with me thus?

1 His keepers.

Light. These hands were never stain'd with innocent blood,
Nor shall they now be tainted with a king's.

Edw. Forgive my thought, for having such a thought.

One jewel have I left, receive thou this.

Still fear I, and I know not what's the cause,

But every joint shakes as I give it thee.

Oh, if thou harbour'st murder in thy heart,

Let the gift change thy mind, and save thy soul.
Know that I am a king: Oh, at that name

I feel a hell of grief. Where is my crown?

Gone, gone; and do I still remain alive?

Light. You're overwatch'd, my lord; lie down and rest.
Edw. But that grief keeps me waking, I should sleep,
For not these ten days have these eyelids closed.

Now as I speak they fall, and yet with fear

Open again. O wherefore sitt'st thou here?

Light. If you mistrust me, I'll be gone, my lord,
Edw. No, no; for if thou mean'st to murder me,
Thou wilt return again; and therefore stay.

Light. He sleeps.

Edw. O let me not die; yet stay, O stay awhile.
Light. How now, my lord?

Edw. Something still buzzeth in mine ears,
And tells me if I sleep I never wake;

This fear is that which makes me tremble thus.
And therefore tell me, wherefore art thou come?

Light. To rid thee of thy life; Matrevis, come.
Edw. I am too weak and feeble to resist:

Assist me, sweet God, and receive my soul.

In addition to the dramatic productions already mentioned, Marlow assisted Nash in the tragedy of Dido, Queen of Carthage, and translated part of Hero and Leander, and the Elegies of Ovid.

Marlow's life was as wild and irregular as his writings. He was even accused of atheistical opinions; but there is no trace of this in his plays. He came to an early and singularly unhappy end. He was attached to a lady, who favored another lover; and having found them in company together, in a frenzy of rage he attempted to stab the man with his dagger. His antagonist seized him by the wrist, and turned the dagger so that it entered Marlow's own head in such a manner, that, notwithstanding all the means of surgery that could be resorted to, he shortly after died of his wounds. The last words of Greene's address to him, a year or two before, are somewhat ominous :-Refuse not, with me, till this last point of extremity; for little knowest thou how in the end thou shalt be visited.' Marlow's fatal conflict is supposed to have taken place at Deptford, as he was buried there on the first of June, 1593.

Of the various compliments paid to the genius of this unfortunate poet, the following, by his celebrated contemporary, Michael Drayton, is the finest :

Next Marlow, bathed in the Thesperian springs,

Had in him those brave translunary things

That the first poets had: his raptures were
All air and fire, which made his verses clear;
For that fine madness still he did retain,

Which rightly should possess a poet's brain.

Besides the dramatists thus far noticed, as the precursors of Shakspeare, we might mention Haughton, Brewer, Porter, Smith, Hathaway, Wilson, and a host of others; for from the diary of Henslowe it appears that, during the seven years following 1591, more than a hundred different plays were performed by four only, out of the ten theatrical companies then existing in London. Several good dramas also of this golden age have descended to us, the authors of which are unknown. A few of these possess merit of a very high order; such as the London Prodigal, the Yorkshire Tragedy, the Misfortunes of Arthur, Lord Cromwell, Edward the Third, and Arden of Feversham, the last of which is a domestic tragedy, founded on a murder which took place in 1551. On these, however, our limits will not permit us to dwell: we shall, therefore, at once pass to Shakspeare himself.

Lecture the Chirteenth.

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

THE THE genius of Greene, of Peele, and of Marlow, had essentially contributed to prepare the way for Shakspeare. These writers had given a more settled and scholastic form to the drama than it had previously possessed, and assigned to it a permanent place in English literature. They adorned the stage also with a greater variety of character and action, with deep passion, and with true poetry; and familiarized the public ear with the sound of blank verse. When Shakspeare, therefore, appeared conspicuously on the dramatic horizon, the scene may be said to have been prepared for his reception. The Genius of the drama had accumulated materials for the use of the great poet, who was destined to extend her empire over limits hitherto unrecognized, and invest it with a degree of splendor surpassing any thing that the world had yet witnessed.

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE was of a respectable family, and was born at Stratford-upon-Avon, in Warwickshire, on St. George's day, April the twentythird, 1564. His father, John Shakspeare, was a wool-comber, and by an early marriage with a rustic heiress, Mary Arden, he not only elevated his social position, but obtained an estate worth nearly seventy pounds a year. The poet's father's fortunes for some years so rapidly advanced that he rose, eventually, to be high bailiff and chief alderman of Stratford; but reverse of fortune compelled him, in 1578, to mortgage his wife's inheritance, and, from the public records of the town, it appears that he had fallen into comparative poverty. William was his eldest son, and was, at this time, at the grammar-school; but the change in his father's circumstances compelled him to return home to assist at his father's business. There is, from this period, a blank of some years in his history; but doubtless he was engaged, whatever might have been his condition or employment, in treasuring up those poetic materials which he afterward expanded with so much splendor. The study of man and of nature, facts in natural history, the country, the fields and the woods, would be gleaned by familiar intercourse and observations among his fellow-townsmen, and in rambling over the beautiful valley of the Avon.

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