Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/332

 324

NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. vn. APRIL 27, 1901.

And all that can advance.

I should like to see our fool dance. Ah ! but I can sing. Come, all you lads, that 's a mind for listin',

Come with me and be not afraid : You shall have all kinds of liquor,

Likewise dance with a pretty maid.

The Fool

is supposed to kill one of the men, and then the shout, " Dead ! and where 's the doctor?"

The. Doctor.

Here I am, the doctor ;

I can cure the itch, the stitch,

The blind, the lame,

And raise the dead to life again.

I once cured a man that had been in his grave nin<

years.

Take hold of my bottle till I feel his pulse And every time he stirr'd his bagpipes played Cheer up, Sam, and let 's have a dance.

The Indian King.

[He appears as a black man with white dress.] Where out ! my lads, let me come in, I'm the chap they call " the Indian King."

[He dances, &c The Lady.

I 'm a lady bright and gay, The truth to you I '11 tell.

What did the Fool say?

MABEL PEACOCK. Kirton-in-Lindsey.

(To be continued.)

EDMUND SPENSER, ' LOCRINE,' AND

'SELIMUS.' (Continued from p. 263.)

As in his other work, so in 'Selimus Marlowe has subordinated everything in his play to the development of a single idea, which he has embodied in the character whose^name is given to the play. It is the same idea as is personated in Tamburlaine and in the Duke of Guise the lust of power or hunger for an earthly crown. Similarly, too, he makes Guise, Tamburlaine, and Seli- raus pronounced atheists, men who scorn religion, and only use it as a cloak to cover their designs. Add also that the three characters are ardent disciples of the teach- ings of Machiavelli.

The confession of faith made by Selimus in his great speech, 11. 235-385, is neither more nor less than an exposition by the author of his own beliefs and opinions ; and the substance of this speech is condensed by Machiavel in the prologue to 'The Jew of Malta.' It also finds a parallel in the long speech by Guise in * The Massacre at Paris/ Dyce, pp. 228, 229, and its sentiments and phrasing are echoed in many passages of

Marlowe's acknowledged work. Moreov it is on record in an official document that Marlowe was in the habit of expressing his opinions in the very words that he has put into the mouth of Selimus.

Greene might have written, and very pos- sibly did write, * Locrine,' and a strong case could be made out for him as its author ; but he is impossible as the author of ' Selimus.' Compared with his work generally, but espe- cially with his plays, the style of l Selimus ' is severe simplicity itself ; and its sustained power and vigorous phrasing are things which Greene in his wildest dreams could never hope to aspire to or even imitate. Besides, Greene was not a proselytizing atheist who vented his opinions in all com- panies, nor was he a follower of Machiavelli. Indeed, he had such an aversion to Marlowe's opinions that he went out of his way to make the fact publicly known. In 'The Groats- worth of Wit' Greene admonishes Marlowe to abandon atheism and to guide his life and his thoughts by other and better precepts than those of " pestilent Machivilian policie." It is quite clear from his writings that Greene was not an atheist of the aggressive type that Marlowe was, and that his argu- mentative powers were not equal to the composition of the singularly powerful plea against religion made by Selimus. Marlowe's irreligious views were notorious his contemporaries, and we find one of his enemies, a Richard Bame or Banes, laying an information against him on that score, one of the counts in the indictment being that le (Marlowe) was constantly saying " that Dyce, p. 389, Appendix II.). Bame or Banes asserts that this was one of Marlowe's ' common speeches," as " shall by good and lonest men be proved " ; that he preached atheism in all companies, and scorned both God and man, "willinge them not to be ifrayed of bugbeares and hobgoblins." Now, .hose very words are used by Selimus in the peech already referred to, where he says hat the names of gods, religion, heaven, and lell were first devised to make men live " in [uiet awe" and that religious observations are
 * he first beginnynge of Religion was only
 * o keep men in awe " (Marlowe's ' Works,'

)nly bug-bears to keep the world in fear, ind make men quietly a yoke to bear.

LI. 340-1.

'he case for Marlowe as against Greene does ot need further argument. Marlowe affected a supreme contempt for eligion, and he ransacked a copious voca- ulary to give that contempt expression. In is acknowledged work he refers to it as a