6. Quoted by Thomas Warton, History of English Poetry (1774–81), ed. W. C. Hazlitt (1871), IV, 217. The original is now lost, and it is possible that this is a forgery, but the sentiment was commonplace.
7. Christopher Marlowe, The Complete Poems and Translations, ed. Stephen Orgel (Harmondsworth, 1971), p. 211.
8. Louis Le Roy, Of the Interchangeable Course, or Variety of Things, tr. Robert Apsley (1594), sig. A4r. Tamburlaine is in effect the hero of Le Roy’s book: see fols. 107v – 109v and 119v –120r.
9. ‘To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr William Shakespeare: And What He Hath Left Us’ (30), The Complete Poems, ed. George Parfitt (Harmondsworth, 1975), p. 263.
10. Discoveries 963–4, in Complete Poems, ed. Parfitt, p. 398.
11. Emrys Jones, ‘Into the Open’, Essays in Criticism 33 (1983), p. 344.
12. Ethel Seaton, ‘Marlowe’s Map’, Essays and Studies 10 (1924), pp. 13–35.
13. Jack Rummel, Robert Oppenheimer, Dark Prince (Oxford, 1992), p. 11. Oppenheimer was recalling the words of Siva to Arjuna, Baghavad-Gita 10.
14. Philip Henderson, ‘Marlowe as a Messenger’, Times Literary Supplement, 12 June 1953, p. 381.
15. Julia Briggs, ‘Marlowe’s Massacre at Paris: A Reconsideration’, Review of English Studies n.s. 34 (1983), p. 259.
16. Felix E. Schelling, English Drama (London, 1914), p. 68.
17. Harry Levin, Christopher Marlowe: The Overreacher (London, 1954), p.131.
18. Reported by Roma Gill, ‘“Such Conceits as Clownage Keeps in Pay”: Comedy in Dr Faustus’, in The Fool and the Trickster: Studies in Honour of Enid Welsford, ed. Paul V. A. Williams (Cambridge, 1979), p.56.
19. Lectures on the Age of Elizabeth (1820), repr. in Marlowe, ‘Dr Faustus’: A Casebook, ed. John Jump (London, 1969), p. 27.
20. W. W. Greg, ‘The Damnation of Faustus’, Modern Language Review 61 (1946), repr. in Jump, Casebook, pp. 71–88.
21. T. S. Eliot, Selected Essays (London, 1951), p. 105.
22. Cf. Wilbur Sanders, The Dramatist and the Received Idea: Studies in the Plays of Marlowe and Shakespeare (Cambridge, 1968), p. 42.
23. See Charles NichoU, The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe (London, 1992).
‘The Baines Note’ (text in British Library MS Harley 6848, ff. 185–6)
A note containing the opinion of one Christopher Marly concerning his damnable judgement of religion, and scorn of God’s word.
That the Indians and many authors of antiquity have assuredly written of above sixteen thousand years agone, whereas Adam is proved to have lived within six thousand years.
He affirmeth that Moses was but a juggler and that one Hariot, being Sir W[alter] Ralegh’s man, can do more than he.
That Moses made the Jews to travel forty years in the wilderness, (which journey might have been done in less than one year) ere they came to the promised land to th’intent that those who were privy to most of his subtleties might perish and so an everlasting superstition remain in the hearts of the people.
That the first beginning of religion was only to keep men in awe.
That it was an easy matter for Moses being brought up in all the arts of the Egyptians to abuse the Jews being a rude and gross people.
That Christ was a bastard and his mother dishonest.
That he was the son of a carpenter, and that if the Jews among whom he was born did crucify him they best knew him and whence he came.
That Christ deserved better to die than Barabbas and that the Jews made a good choice, though Barabbas were both a thief and a murderer.
That if there be any God or any good religion, then it is in the Papists because the service of God is performed with more ceremonies, as elevation of the mass, organs, singing men, shaven crowns & etc. That all Protestants are hypocritical asses.
That if he were put to write a new religion, he would undertake both a more excellent and admirable method, and that all the New Testament is filthily written.
That the woman of Samaria and her sister were whores and that Christ knew them dishonestly.
That St John the Evangelist was bedfellow to Christ and leaned always in his bosom, that he used him as the sinners of Sodoma.
That all they that love not tobacco and boys were fools.
That all the apostles were fishermen and base fellows neither of wit nor worth, that Paul only had wit but he was a timorous fellow in bidding men to be subject to magistrates against his conscience.
That he had as good right to coin as the Queen of England, and that he was acquainted with one Poley, a prisoner in Newgate, who hath great skill in mixture of metals, and having learned some things of him he meant through help of a cunning stamp-maker to coin French crowns, pistolets and English shillings.
That if Christ would have instituted the sacrament with more ceremonial reverence it would have been had in more admiration, that it would have been much better being administered in a tobacco pipe.
That the angel Gabriel was bawd to the Holy Ghost, because he brought the salutation to Mary.
That one Ric[hard] Cholmley hath confessed that he was persuaded by Marlowe’s reasons to become an atheist.
These things, with many other, shall by good and honest witness be approved to be his opinions and common speeches, and that this Marlowe doth not only hold them himself, but almost into every company he cometh he persuades men to atheism willing them not to be afeard of bugbears and hobgoblins, and utterly scorning both God and his ministers as I, Richard Baines, will justify and approve both by mine oath and the testimony of many honest men, and almost all men with whom he hath conversed any time will testify the same, and as I think all men in Christianity ought to endeavour that the mouth of so dangerous a member may be stopped; he saith likewise that he hath quoted a number of contrarieties out of the Scripture which he hath given to some great men who in convenient time shall be named. When these things shall be called in question the witness shall be produced.
Richard Baines
Further Reading
C. L. Barber, Creating Elizabethan Tragedy: The Theater of Marlowe and Kyd, ed. Richard P. Wheeler (Chicago, 1988).
Emily C. Bartels, Spectacles of Strangeness: Imperialism, Alienation and Marlowe (Philadelphia, 1993).
Lawrence Danson, ‘Christopher Marlowe: The Questioner’, English Literary Renaissance 12 (1982), pp. 3–29.
Kenneth Friedenreich, Roma Gill and Constance B. Kuriyama (eds.), ‘A Poet and a Filthy Play-Maker’: New Essays on Christopher Marlowe (New York, 1988).
Darryll Grantley and Peter Roberts (eds.), Christopher Marlowe and English Renaissance Culture (Aldershot, 1996).
Stephen J. Greenblatt, ‘Marlowe and the Will to Absolute Play’, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago and London, 1980), pp. 193–221.
Michael Hattaway, Elizabethan Popular Theatre: Plays in Performance (London, 1982).
Alvin Kernan (ed.), Two Renaissance Mythmakers: Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson, Selected Papers from the English Institute, 1975–6, new series no. 1 (Baltimore, 1977).
Constance Brown Kuriyama, Hammer or Anvil: Psychological Patterns in Christopher Marlowe’s Plays (New Brunswick, 1980).
___, Christopher Marlowe: A Renaissance Life (Ithaca, NY, and London, 2002).
Harry Levin, Christopher Marlowe: The Overreacher (London, 1954).
Arthur Lindley, ‘The Unbeing of the Overreacher: Proteanism and the Marlovian Hero’, Modern Language Review 84 (1989), pp. 1–17.
Wilbur Sanders, The Dramatist and the Received Idea: Studies in the Plays of Marlowe and Shakespeare (Cambridge, 1968).
Ethel Seaton, ‘Fresh Sources for Marlowe’, Review of English Studies 5 (1929), pp. 385–401.
Vivien Thomas and William Tydeman (eds.), Christopher Marlowe: The Plays and their Sources (London, 1994).
Judith Weil, Christopher Marlowe: Merlin’s Prophet (Cambridge, 1977).
DIDO, QUEEN OF CARTHAGE
Standard Modern E
dition
H. J. Oliver (ed.), Dido Queen of Carthage and The Massacre at Paris, Revels Plays (Manchester, 1968).
Criticism
Jackson I. Cope, ‘Marlowe’s Dido and the Titillating Children’, English Literary Renaissance 4 (1974), pp. 315–25.
Brian Gibbons, ‘“Unstable Proteus”: The Tragedy of Dido Queen of Carthage’, in Christopher Marlowe, ed. Brian Morris (London, 1968).
Roma Gill, ‘Marlowe’s Virgil: Dido Queene of Carthage’, Review of English Studies n.s. 28 (1977), pp. 141–55.
Margo Hendricks, ‘Managing the Barbarian: The Tragedy of Dido Queen of Carthage’, Renaissance Drama 23 (1992), pp. 165–88.
Malcolm Kelsall, Christopher Marlowe (Leiden, 1981), ch. 3.
Mary E. Smith, ‘Staging Marlowe’s Dido Queene of Carthage’, Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 17 (1977), pp. 177–90.
TAMBURLAINE
Standard Modern Editions
J. S. Cunningham (ed.), Tamburlaine the Great, Revels Plays (Manchester, 1981).
David Fuller (ed.), Tamburlaine Parts 1 and 2, Complete Works, vol. 5 (Oxford, 1998).
John Jump (ed.), Tamburlaine the Great (London, 1967).
Criticism
C. L. Barber, Creating Elizabethan Tragedy: The Theater of Marlowe and Kyd, ed. Richard P. Wheeler (Chicago, 1988), 45–86.
David Daiches, ‘Language and Action in Marlowe’s Tamburlaine’, More Literary Essays (Edinburgh, 1968), pp. 42–69.
Helen Gardner, ‘The Second Part of Tamburlaine the Great’, Modern Language Review 37 (1942), pp. 18–24.
John Gillies, ‘Marlowe, the Timur myth, and the Motives of Geography’, in Playing the Globe: Genre and Geography in English Renaissance Drama, ed. John Gillies and Virginia Mason Vaughan (Madison, Wis., and London, 1998), pp. 203–29.
Ethel Seaton, ‘Marlowe’s Map’, Essays and Studies 10 (1924), pp. 13–35.
Eugene M. Waith, The Herculean Hero in Marlowe, Chapman, Shakespeare and Dryden (New York and London, 1962).
___, ‘Marlowe and the Jades of Asia’, Studies in English Literature 5 (1965), pp. 229–45.
Richard Wilson, ‘Visible Bullets: Tamburlaine the Great and Ivan the Terrible’, English Literary History 62 (1995), pp. 47–68.
THE JEW OF MALTA
Standard Modern Edition
N. W. Bawcutt (ed.), The Jew of Malta, Revels Plays (Manchester, 1978).
Criticism
Howard S. Babb, ‘“Policy” in Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta’, English Literary History 24 (1957), pp. 85–94.
Thomas Cartelli, ‘Shakespeare’s Merchant, Marlowe’s Jew: The Problem of Cultural Difference’, Shakespeare Studies 20 (1987), pp.255–68.
Coburn Freer, ‘Lies and Lying in The Jew of Malta’, in Kenneth Friedenreich et al. (eds.), ‘A Poet and a Filthy Play-Maker’: New Essays on Christopher Marlowe (New York, 1988), pp. 143–65.
Stephen J. Greenblatt, ‘Marlowe, Marx, and Anti-Semitism’, in his Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture (Chicago and London, 1990), pp. 40–58.
G. K. Hunter, ‘The Theology of The Jew of Malta’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 27 (1964), pp. 211–40.
Ian McAdam, ‘Carnal Identity in The Jew of Malta’, English Literary Renaissance 26 (1996), pp. 46–74.
Catherine Minshull, ‘Marlowe’s “Sound Machevill”’, Renaissance Drama n.s. 13 (1982).
Wilbur Sanders, The Dramatist and the Received Idea: Studies in the Plays of Marlowe and Shakespeare (Cambridge, 1968), ch. 3
DOCTOR FAUSTUS
Standard Modern Editions
David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen (eds.), Doctor Faustus. A-and B-Texts (1604, 1616), Revels Plays (Manchester, 1993).
___(eds.), Dr Faustus and Other Plays (Oxford, 1995).
Criticism
C. L. Barber, ‘The Form of Faustus’ Fortunes Good or Bad’, Tulane Drama Review 8 (1964), pp. 92–119; repr. in his Creating Elizabethan Tragedy: The Theater of Marlowe and Kyd, ed. Richard P. Wheeler (Chicago, 1988), pp. 87–130.
Max Bluestone, ‘Libido Speculandi: Doctrine and Dramaturgy in Contemporary Interpretations of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus’, in Reinterpretations of Elizabethan Drama. Selected Papers from the English Institute, ed. Norman Rabkin (New York, 1969), pp. 33–88.
Roma Gill, ‘“Such Conceits as Clownage Keeps in Pay”: Comedy in Doctor Faustus’, in The Fool and the Trickster: Studies in Honour of Enid Welsford, ed. Paul V. A. Williams (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 55–63.
Michael Hattaway, ‘The Theology of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus’, Renaissance Drama n.s. 3 (1970), pp. 51–78.
J. H. Jones (ed.), The English Faust Book (Cambridge, 1994).
John Jump (ed.), Marlowe, ‘Doctor Faustus’: A Casebook (London, 1969).
Harry Levin, Christopher Marlowe: The Overreacher, ch. 5.
Gareth Roberts, ‘Necromantic Books: Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus and Agrippa of Nettesheim’, in Christopher Marlowe and English Renaissance Culture, ed. Darryll Grantley and Peter Roberts (Aldershot, 1996), pp. 148–71.
Wilbur Sanders, The Dramatist and the Received Idea: Studies in the Plays of Marlowe and Shakespeare (Cambridge, 1968), chs. 10–12.
Edward A. Snow, ‘Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and the Ends of Desire’, in Two Renaissance Mythmakers: Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson, Selected Papers of the English Institute, ed. Alvin Kernan (Baltimore, 1977), pp. 70–110.
EDWARD THE SECOND
Standard Modern Editions
Charles R. Forker (ed.), Edward the Second, Revels Plays (Manchester, 1994).
Roma Gill (ed.), Edward II (Oxford, 1967).
Richard Rowland (ed.), Edward II, Complete Works, vol. 3 (Oxford, 1994).
Martin Wiggins and Robert Lindsey (eds.), Edward the Second (London, 1997).
Suggested Further Reading
Debra Belt, ‘Anti-theatricalism and Rhetoric in Marlowe’s Edward II’, English Literary History 21 (1991), pp. 134–60.
Gregory W. Bredbeck, Sodomy and Interpretation: Marlowe to Milton (Ithaca, NY, 1991).
Thomas F. Cartelli, Marlowe, Shakespeare, and the Economy of Theatrical Experience (Philadelphia, 1991).
Robert Fricker, ‘The Dramatic Structure of Edward II’, English Studies 34 (1953), pp. 128–44.
Michael Hattaway, Elizabethan Popular Theatre: Plays in Performance (London, 1982), pp. 141–59.
Clifford Leech, ‘Marlowe’s Edward II: Power and Suffering’, Critical Quarterly 1 (1959), pp. 181–96.
J. F. McElroy, ‘Repetition, Contrariety and Individualization in Edward II’, Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 24 (1984), pp. 205–24.
THE MASSACRE AT PARIS
Standard Modern Editions
H. J. Oliver (ed.), Dido Queen of Carthage and The Massacre at Paris, Revels Plays (Manchester, 1968).
Edward J. Esche (ed.), The Massacre at Paris, Complete Works, vol. 5 (Oxford, 1998).
Suggested Further Reading
Julia Briggs, ‘Marlowe’s Massacre at Paris: A Reconsideration’, Review of English Studies n.s. 34 (1983), pp. 257–78.
Richard Hillman, Shakespeare, Marlowe and the Politics of France (Basingstoke, 2002,), pp. 72–112.
Andrew M. Kirk, ‘Marlowe and the Disordered Face of French History’, Studies in English Literature 35 (1995), pp. 193–213.
Paul H. Kocher, ‘François Hotman and Marlowe’s The Massacre at Paris’, PMLA 56 (1941), pp. 349–68.
___, ‘Contemporary Pamphlet Backgrounds for Marlowe’s The Massacre at Paris’, Modern Language Quarterly 8 (1947), pp. 157–73, 309–18.
David Potter, ‘Marlowe’s Massacre at Paris and the Reputation of Henri III of France’, in Christopher Marlowe and English Renaissance Culture, ed. Darryll Grantley and Peter Roberts (Aldershot, 1996), pp. 148–71.
Judith Weil, Christopher Marlowe: Merlin’s Prophet (Cambridge, 1977).
A Note on the Texts
The texts in this volume have been freshly edited from the earliest printed editions of Marlo
we’s plays. The spellings, punctuation, speech-prefixes, stage directions and lineation preserved in the original editions have been silently modernized in accordance with the particular needs of each text, given that Marlowe’s plays were subject to the diverse conventions of printers. We have undertaken these modernizations conservatively, and have not sought to impose an arbitrary consistency across the volume: the grand rhetorical speeches of Tamburlaine, for example, require a different presentation from that demanded by the rapid conversational exchanges of The Jew of Malta. Elizabethan compositors’ punctuation does not necessarily respect the sense-units of the original. Richard Jones’s printing of Tamburlaine the Great, for example, contains many verse lines ending with full stops which affect the intelligibility of the text. We have freely repunctuated with the aim of making the syntactic structure as clear as possible for the modern reader.
Elizabethan spellings have been modernized, so ‘mushrump’, ‘centronel’ and ‘vild’ become ‘mushroom’, ‘sentinel’ and ‘vile’. All ‘-ed’ endings have been standardized, so ‘serv’d’ becomes ‘served’ and ‘returnd’ becomes ‘returned’. Syllabic ‘-ed’ endings have been marked ‘-èd’. Contractions in the original have been retained but in their modern form, so ‘swolne’ and ‘tane’ become ‘swoll’n’ and ‘ta’en’. We have followed the original lineation of the copy-texts, except when it is evident that verse has been mistakenly printed as prose and vice versa. These alterations have not been noted. Substantive changes to the wording of the original texts, on the other hand, have been recorded with some discussion in the Notes.
Printing-house errors such as turned letters, misplaced and transposed type and obvious cases of missing type have been silently corrected. Where ‘and’ is used, meaning ‘if’, we have silently adopted the modern form, ‘an’. The abbreviations ‘Mr’ and ‘S.’ have been expanded to ‘Master’ and ‘Saint’, respectively. All numbers in the copy-texts have also been expanded, so ‘24’ becomes ‘four and twenty’.
The Complete Plays Page 4