Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/110

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NOTES. AND QUERIES. [9* s. VIL FEB. 9, 1901,

Tamb. Thou [Jove] hast procur'd a greate

enemy Than he that darted mountains at thy head.

'2 Tamburlaine,' IV. i. 132-33.

Here let me say that there are severa other passages in Marlowe that could be citec to show that he was an admirer of * Th Raines of Rome ' ; and in one case he seems to make an indirect allusion to Spensei himself :

As that brave sonne of Aeson, which by charmes Atchiev'd the golden fleece in Colchid land, Out of the earth engendred men of armes Of dragons teeth, sowne in the sacred sand, So this brave towne that in youthlie daies An hydra was of warriours glorious, &c.

' The Ruines of Rome,' stanza x.

When Marlowe alludes to the fable he does so in the precise phraseology of ' The Ruines of Rome,' and he makes Meander attribute it to " the poets." Surely he was thinking particularly of Spenser. But ] will quote :

Mean. Like to the cruel brothers of the earth, Sprung of the teeth of dragons venernous, Their careless swords shall lance their fellows

throats,

And make us triumph in their overthrow. Mycetes. Was there such brethren, sweet Meander

say,

That sprung of teeth of dragons venemous? Mean. So poets say, my lord. Myc. And t is a pretty toy to be a poet. Well, well, Meander, thou art deeply read, And having thee, 1 have a jewel sure.

' 1 Tamburlaine,' II. ii. 47-56.

Of course, I claim that the coincidence of ' Selimus ' and ' Tamburlaine ' borrowing identical material from the same poem of Spenser is an argument in favour of the Marlowe authorship of both plays. But I deny that the same argument can hold good in respect to 'Locrine,' which copies 'Seli- mus ' almost as outrageously as it does Spenser. The author of 'Locrine' merely happened to discover that 'Selimus' had obtained a small portion of its material from ' The Ruines of Rome,' and he followed suit, but with less discretion and infinitely less ability.

The following are a few of the many identities that can be brought together from 'Selimus' and 'Locrine.' I could fill pages with such parallels :

Acomat. Fortune doth favour every bold assay, And 't were a trick of an unsettled wit Because the bees have stings with them alway, To fear our mouths in honey to embay.

' Selimus,' 826-29.

Hub. He is not worthy of the honeycomb That shuns the hives because the bees have stings.

' Locrine,' III. ii.

Baj. Now Bajazet will ban another while, And utter curses to the concave sky Which may infect the airy regions.

Send out thy furies from thy fiery hall ; The pitiless Erynnis arm'd with whips And all the damned monsters of black hell.

More bloody than the Anthropophagi, That fill their hungry stomachs with men's flesh. ' Selimus,' 11. 1800-1802 ; 1320-22 ; and 1421-22.

Thus copied in a speech of ' Locrine ' :

Hum. Where may I damn, condemn, and ban my fill

And utter curses to the concave sky Which may infect the airy regions.

Come, fierce Erynnis, horrible with snakes ; Come, ugly furies, armed with your whips ;

Or where the bloody Anthropophagi With greedy jaws devour the wandering wights.

III. vi.

No author repeats himself in this slavish manner, nor would he imitate a whole scene of one of his own plays as ' Locrine,' IV. ii., imitates 11. 1874 to 1990 of 'Selimus.' The action, the order of the speeches, the incident itself, and the conceits and sayings by which it is helped out are all remembered.

Now we come to ' The Faerie Queene,' and to the evidence which not only demolishes the theory of a common authorship for ' Locrine ' and ' Selimus,' but proves that Marlowe must have written the latter play.

' Selimus ' is full of ' The Faerie Queene ' ; but ' Locrine,' so far as I have been able to discover, never once borrows from Spenser's poem. That is very strange, for Spenser bells the story of Locrine at some length in book ii. canto x. Beyond that coincidence I have not been able to find anything in the shape of verbal or other parallel, except in a few cases where 'Locrine' borrows from Selimus.' The age of miracles is ceased. If the author of ' Selimus ' were also the author of 'Locrine,' why does he habitually avoid borrowing from Spenser's great poem ? The answer is plain : he is a different man from the author of 'Selimus' a man who had never read ' The Faerie Queene.'

The first three books of 'The Faerie Queene' were published in 1590, the same ear which saw the publication of 'Tam- burlaine.' But a portion of the poem was in irculation as early as 1588, some lines of )ook 11. being accurately cited by Abraham orike. (See Dyce's note, p. 66, col. 2, Mar-
 * raunce, that year, in his 'Arcadian Rhe-

J? S <T W. rks ; : ! Selimu s' was printed in 594, Locrine ' in the following year. There