" Perhaps the play gives
the hint of what Marlowe might have become had not the dagger of a groom
in a tavern cut short at thirty his burning career.
Even in that time of romance and daring speculation he went further than
his fellows. He was said to have been tainted with atheism, to have
denied God and the Trinity; had he lived he might have had trouble with
the Star Chamber. The free-voyaging intellect of the age found this one
way of outlet, but if literary evidences are to be trusted sixteenth and
seventeenth century atheism was a very crude business. The _Atheist's
Tragedy_ of Tourneur (a dramatist who need not otherwise detain us)
gives some measure of its intelligence and depth. Says the villain to
the heroine,
"No? Then invoke
Your great supposed Protector. I will do't."
to which she:
"Supposed Protector! Are you an atheist, then
I know my fears and prayers are spent in vain."
Marlowe's very faults and extravagances, and they are many, are only the
obverse of his greatness. Magnitude and splendour of language when the
thought is too shrunken to fill it out, becomes mere inflation. He was a
butt of the parodists of the day. And Shakespeare, though he honoured
him "on this side idolatry," did his share of ridicule.
Pages:
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82