Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 36.djvu/192

 1876, by Miss Jane Lee;, Study of Shakespeare, pp. 51 sq.) Evidence of style also gives Marlowe some pretension to a share in 'Edward III,' 1596, 4to, a play of very unequal merit, but including at least one scene which has been doubtfully assigned to Shakespeare.

Harvey in his 'Newe Latter' of 1593 expresses surprise that Marlowe's 'Gargantua mind' was conquered and had 'left no Scanderbeg behind.' Mr. Fleay infers that Marlowe had written, but had failed to publish, a play concerning Scanderbeg; but this is not the most obvious meaning of a perplexing passage. 'The True History of George Scanderbage, played by the Earl of Oxford's servants' (i.e. not later than 1588), and entered on the Stationers' Registers 3 July 1601, is not extant. 'Lust's Dominion, or the Lascivious Qneen. A Tragedie written by Christofer Marloe, Gent.' published by Kirkman in 1657 (another edit. 1661), is unjustifiably ascribed to Marlowe. It is possibly identical, as Collier suggested, with the 'Spanish Moor's Tragedy,' written for Henslowe early in 1600 by Dekker, Haughton, and Day. Among the plays destroyed by Warburton's cook was 'The Maiden's Holiday,' a comedy assigned to Day and Marlowe. Day belonged to a slightly later generation, and there is no evidence of Marlowe's association with a comedy.

Three verse renderings from the classics also came from Marlowe's pen. His translation of Ovid's 'Amores' was thrice printed in 12mo, without date, at 'Middleborough,' with the epigrams of Sir John Davies [q. v.] Whether 'Middleborough' is to be taken literally is questionable. The earliest edition, 'Epigrammes and Elegies,' appeared about 1597, and is now very rare. A copy at Lamport Hall, Northamptonshire, the property of Sir Charles Edmonds, has been reproduced in facsimile by Mr. Charles Edmonds, who assigns it to the London press of W. Jaggard, the printer of the 'Passionate Pilgrim.' The work was condemned to the flames by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London in June 1599, on the ground of its licentiousness (Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. xii. 436).

Marlowe's chief effort in narrative verse was his unfinished paraphrase of Musæus's 'Hero and Leander.' He completed two 'sestiads,' which were entered by John Wolf as 'an amorous poem' on the Stationers' Registers on 28 Sept. 1593, and were published in 1598 by Edward Blount [q. v.] at the press of Adam Islip. This was dedicated by Blount to Sir Thomas Walsingham. A copy is in Mr. Christie-Millet's library at Britwell. George Chapman finished the poem, and in the same year two further editions of the work appeared from the press of Felix Kingston with the four sestiads added Chapman. Copies of both these later editions are at Lamport. Other editions of the complete poem were issued in 1606 (Brit. Mus.) 1643, 1617 (Huth Library), 1629, and 1637. A copy of the 1629 edition, formerly in Heber's library, contains in seventeenth-century handwriting Marlowe's 'Elegy on Manwood' and some authentic notes respecting his life (see Cat. 1834, iv. No. 1415). It now belongs to Colonel Prideaux of Calcutta (cf. Notes and Queries, 6th ser. xi. 305, 353, xii. 16;, iii. App.ii.) The poem is throughout in rhymed heroics, and Marlowe's language is is peculiarly 'clear, rich, and fervent.' Its popularity was as great as any of Marlowe's plays. According to Nashe he was here inspired by 'a diviner muse' than Musæus ('Lenten Stuffe,' in, Works. Francis Meres, in his 'Palladia Tamia' (1598), declared that 'Musæus, who wrote the loves of Hero and Leander . . . hath in England two excellent poets, imitators in the same argument and subject, Christopher Marlow and George Chapman.' Ben Jonson quotes from it in 'Every Man in his Humour,' and is reported by a humble imitator of Marlowe, William Bosworth, author of 'Chast and Lost Lovers' (1651), to have been 'often heard to say' that its 'mighty lines . . . were fitter for admiration than for parallel.' Henry Petowe published in 1598 'The Second Part of Hero and Leander.' John Taylor the Water-poet claims to have sung verses from it while sculling on the Thames. Middleton in 'A Mad World, my Masters,' described it and 'Venus and Adonis' as 'two luscious marrow-bone pies for a young married wife.' An edition by S. W. Singer appeared in 1821, and it was reprinted in Brydges's 'Restituta' (1814).

'The First Book of Lucan's Pharsalia,' entered by John Wolf on the Stationers' Registers on 28 Sept. 1593, was issued in 1600, 4to. It is in epic blank verse, and although the lines lack the variety of pause which was achieved by Marlowe's greatest successors, the author displays sufficient mastery of the metre to warrant its attribution to his later years. The volume has a dedication signed by 'Thom. Thorpe,' the publisher of Shakespeare's 'Sonnets,' and addressed to Blount. It was reprinted by Percy in his specimens of blank verse before Milton.

Marlowe's well-known song, 'Come live with me and be my love,' was first printed, without the fourth or sixth stanzas and with the first stanza only of the 'Answer,' in the