Page:Cousins's Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature.djvu/271

 Dictionary of English Literature 259

In his next play, The Jew of Malta, M. continues to show an advance in technical skill, but the work is unequal, and the Jew Barabas is to Shyiock as a monster to a man. In Edward II., M. rises to his lighest display of power. The rhodomontade of Tamburlaine and and in the whole workmanship he approaches more nearly to Shake speare than any one else has ever done. Speaking of it Lamb says, ' The death scene of Marlowe's King moves pity and terror beyond any scene, ancient or modern, with which I am acquainted." M. is now almost certainly believed to have had a large share in the three >arts of Henry VI., and perhaps also he may have collaborated in Titus Andronicus. His next plays, The Massacre of Paris and The Tragedy of Dido (written with Nash, q.v.}, both show a marked fall ing off; and it seems likely that in his last years, perhaps, breaking down under the effects of a wild life, he became careless of fame as of ail else. Greene, in his Groat's Worth of Wit, written on his death- >ed, reproaches him with his evil life and atheistic opinions, and a ew days before his hapless death an information was laid against lim for blasphemy. The informer was next year hanged for an outrageous offence, and his witness alone might not be conclusive, jut M.'s life and opinions, which he made no secret of, were notorious. On the other hand, his friends, Shakespeare, Nash, Drayton, and Chapman, all make kindly reference to him. To escape the plague rfrich was raging in London in 1593, he was living at Deptforcl, then a country village, and there in a tavern brawl he received a wound in the head, his own knife being turned against him by a serving man, upon whom he had drawn it. The quarrel was about a girl of the town. The parish record bears the entry. ' Christopher Marlowe, slain by ffrancis Archer, the i of June
 * he piled-up horror of The Jew are replaced by a mature self-restraint,
 * 593." M. is the father of the modern English drama, and the in

troducer of the modern form of blank verse. In imagination, rich ness of expression, originality, and general poetic and dramatic Dower he is inferior to Shakespeare alone among the Elizabethans. !n addition to his plays he wrote some short poems (of which the best known is Come live with me and be my love], translations from Dvid's Amores and Lucan's Pharsalia, and a glowing paraphrase of VEusaeus' Hero and Leander, a poem completed by Chapman.

Ed. of Works by Dyce, Cunningham, and Bullen; Ingram's C. Mar lowe and his Associates, etc.

MARMION, SHACKERLEY (1603-1639). Dramatist, s. of

a country gentleman of Northamptonshire, was ed. at Oxford. After a youth of extravagance, he fought in the Low Countries. His writings consist of an epic, Cupid and Psyche, and three comedies, Holland's Leaguer, A Fair Companion, and The. Antiquary. His plays show some power of satire, and were popular, but he had little of the dramatist.

MARRY AT, FREDERICK (1792-1848). Novelist, s. of a

West India merchant, was b. in London. In 1806 he entered the mavy as a midshipman under Lord Cochrane (afterwards Earl of iDundonald), and saw much service in the Mediterranean, at Wal- cheren, and in the Burmese War of 1824. He returned in 1830 as a