Tudor Lives: Success & Failure of an Age (36 page)

The god of war resigns his room to me,

Meaning to make me general of the world;

Jove viewing me in arms looks pale and wan,

Fearing my power should pull him from his throne.

This is the man who annihilates armies, massacres virgins and keeps the Turkish sultan in a cage, who harnesses captured kings to his chariot, and hangs the Governor of Babylon from the walls for his soldiers to shoot at.
⁴
Marlowe was infatuated by the almost superhuman destiny of his hero, and the play irresistibly piled
triumph on triumph. No such portrait of Renaissance ‘virtù’, of the power-in-action which the Elizabethan world so greatly admired, had ever been seen before. Nor was that all. The grandeur of the vision was matched by the grandeur of the poetry. Kyd had used blank verse for the effective tragedy of his revenge play, but Marlowe went far beyond this rugged verse. His line, which was able to convey the overwhelming drive of ambition:

Nature that framed us of four elements,

Warring within our breasts for regiment,

Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds:

Our souls    .    .    .    .    .

Will us to wear ourselves and never rest,

Until we reach the ripest fruit of all,

That perfect bliss and sole felicity,

The sweet fruition of an earthly crown—

was also capable of the beautiful lament for Queen Zenocrate:

Now walk the angels on the walls of heaven,

As sentinels to warn th’ immortal souls

To entertain divine Zenocrate.

In the plays that followed, the fascination of power still held. Marlowe’s mind dwelt on Barabas, the Jew of Malta, amassing huge wealth, devising faithless stratagems, his every breath an act of treachery; on Warwick and Mortimer plotting against and bringing down Edward II; on the monstrous Duke of Guise, causing the massacre at Paris to secure the Catholic power; and on Faustus bartering his soul to the devil in return for all knowledge. As in
Tamburlaine,
the later plays had the same wide-ranging curiosity, the spectacular and horrific elements, that so delighted the public. The professional actors vied for his dramas. Performances of
The Jew of Malta, The Massacre at Paris
and
Doctor Faustus
helped to ensure the success of the
Rose,
Henslowe’s new theatre on Bankside, and gave the great actor Edward Alleyn outstanding parts. And as Marlowe’s stage skill increased, so the verse became more varied, more subtle. Glittering images suggested the wealth of the Jew; exact observation and swifter verse gave the characters of
Edward II
a new depth; and at last Faustus, deceived by the devil and awaiting death, called out with the startled vision and broken lines of true tragic poetry:

The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,

The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned.

O I’ll leap up to my God: who pulls me down?

See see where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament.

One drop would save my soul, half a drop, ah my Christ.

When the precocious Marlowe died at the age of twenty-nine, William Shakespeare, younger by a few weeks, was still learning the craft of the dramatist. He had already several plays behind him—
Love’s Labour’s Lost
and the
Comedy of Errors
, the three parts of the history play
Henry VI
, and perhaps one or two others—but his development was slow and steady, and his best work was to be done in the next century. As he wrote, however, nearly all he touched—comedy, romance, pastoral, tragedy, history, biography—had been tried already, and in many cases given some degree of polish. The experiments had been done, the forms were established, the actors were gathered, and the stages were being built. The genius of Marlowe had put the stamp of maturity on the English theatre, and his triumphs found an enthusiastic, paying audience. The way was open for Shakespeare and his notable fellow dramatists, at the turn of the century and in the next reign, to make English verse drama the astonishing thing it became.

1
   There is some doubt about the authorship of this piece. It is possible that only the conclusion is by Rastell.

2
   Blackfriars, though within the city walls, claimed to be outside city jurisdiction. The theatre thus avoided the ban of the Common Council. Though the
Blackfriars
was known as a ‘private’ theatre, the performances were public in the sense that the aristocratic audience paid to come in.

3
   This is a reference to an early
Hamlet
which Shakespeare most likely used for his play. It is a matter of argument whether or not this
Hamlet
was by Kyd.

4
   According to a contemporary letter, when this scene was played in the theatre the stage effect misfired, killing a child and a pregnant woman in the audience.

A SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY

1.  Bibliography:

Read, Conyers.
Bibliography of British History: Tudor Period, 1485–1603
(1959)

2.  General Works:

(a) Contemporary

Hall, Edward.
Chronicle
; ed. H. Ellis (1809)

Harrison, William.
Description of England
(1577–87)

Holinshed, Raphael.
Chronicles
; ed. H. Ellis (1808)

Old English Ballads, 1553–1605
; ed. H. E. Rollins (1920)

Stow, John.
Chronicles & Annals
(1580–1605)

(b) Later Studies

Bindoff, S. T.
Tudor England
(1950)

Black, J. B.
The Reign of Elizabeth
(1936)

Einstein, L.
Tudor Ideals
(1921)

Elton, G. R.
England under the Tudors
(1955)

Garvin, Katherine.
The Great Tudors
(1935)

Hall, H.
Society in the Elizabethan Age
(1902)

Mackie, J. D.
The Earlier Tudors, 1485–1558
(1952)

Pollard, A. F.
History of England, 1547–1603
(1910)

Rye, W. B.
England as Seen by Foreigners
(1865)

Shakespeare’s England
; 2 vols. (1926)

3.  Tudor Monarchs:

(a) Contemporary

A Relation of the Island of England, 1498
; ed. C. A. Sneyd (1847)

Bacon, Francis.
History of the Reign of Henry VII
(1622)

Literary Remains of Edward VI
; ed. J. G. Nichols (1857)

(b) Later Studies

Elton, G. R.
England under the Tudors
(1955)

Neale, J.
Queen Elizabeth
(1958)

Pollard, A. F.
Henry VIII
(1913)

Scarisbrick, J. J.
Henry VIII
(1968)

4.  Thomas More:

(a) Contemporary

Harpsfield, Nicholas.
Life of Sir Thomas More
(Everyman 1963)

More, Sir Thomas.
Utopia
[in Latin and English]; ed. J. H. Lupton (1895)

More, Sir Thomas.
Works
; ed. W. E. Campbell (1927)

Roper, William.
Life of Sir Thomas More
(Everyman 1963)

(b) Later Studies

Allen, J. W.
History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century
(1951)

Chambers, R. W.
Thomas More
(1945)

Pollard, A. F.
Henry VIII
(1913)

5.  Robert Kett:

(a) Contemporary

Hales, John.
A Discourse of the Common Weal
; ed. E. Lamond (1929)

Tawney, R. H. and Power, Eileen.
Tudor Economic Documents
; 3 vols. (1924)

(b) Later Studies

Clayton, J.
Robert Kett and the Norfolk Rising
(1911)

Lipson, E.
Economic History of England
; v. 1 (1945)

Russell, F. W.
Kett’s Rebellion in Norfolk
(1859)

Tawney, R. H.
The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century
(1912)

6.  Mary Tudor:

Pollard, A. F.
History of England, 1547–1603
(1910)

Prescott, H. F. M.
Mary Tudor
(1953)

Waldman, Milton.
The Lady Mary
(1972)

7.  Thomas Gresham:

(a) Contemporary

Tawney, R. H. and Power, Eileen.
Tudor Economic Documents
; 3 vols. (1924)

Wilson, Thomas.
Discourse upon Usury
; introduction by R. H. Tawney (1925)

(b) Later Studies

Burgon, J. W.
Life and Times of Sir Thomas Gresham
; 2 vols. (1839)

Clapham, J. H.
Concise Economic History of Britain
(1949)

Cunningham, W.
Growth of English Industry
; 3 vols. (1903)

Lipson, E.
Economic History of England
; v. 1–2 (1945)

8.  Francis Walsingham:

(a) Contemporary

Smith, Sir Thomas.
De Republica Anglorum
[in English]; ed. L. Alston (1906)

(b) Later Studies

Black, J. B.
The Reign of Elizabeth
(1936)

Neale, J.
Elizabethan Government and Society
(1961)

Read, Conyers.
Mr. Secretary Walsingham
; 3 vols. (1925)

9.  Humphrey Gilbert:

(a) Contemporary

Gilbert, Sir Humphrey.
Queene Elizabethes Achademy
; ed. F.J. Furnivall (EETS 1869)

Hakluyt, Richard.
Principal Navigations
; v. 7–8 (1903)

Quinn, D. B.
Voyages and Colonizing Enterprises of Sir Humphrey Gilbert
; 2 vols. (Hakluyt Soc. 1940)

(b) Later Studies

Gosling, W. G.
Life of Sir Humphrey Gilbert
(1911)

Raleigh, Walter.
English Voyages of the Sixteenth century
(1906)

10.  Richard Hooker:

(a) Contemporary

Hooker, Richard.
Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
; ed. J. Keble (1888)

Walton, Izaak.
Life of Richard Hooker
(World Classics 1927)

(b) Later Studies

Allen, J. W.
History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century
(1951)

Frere, W. H.
The English Church, 1558–1625
(1904)

Gairdner, J.
The English Church in the Sixteenth Century
(1902)

Sisson, C. J.
The Judicious Marriage of Mr. Hooker
(1940)

11.  Philip Sidney:

(a) Contemporary

Correspondence of Sir Philip Sidney and Hubert Languet
; trans. & ed. S. A. Pears (1845)

Greville, Fulke.
Life of Sir Philip Sidney
(1652)

Sidney, Sir Philip.
Works
; ed. A. Feuillerat (1922–26)

(b) Later Studies

Boas, F. S.
Sir Philip Sidney
(1955)

Fox-Bourne, H. R.
Sir Philip Sidney
(1891)

Lewis, C. S.
English Literature in the Sixteenth Century
(1954)

12.  Robert Greene:

(a) Contemporary

Greene, Robert.
Complete Works
; ed. A. B. Grosart (1881–86)

Judges, A. V.
Elizabethan Underworld
(1930)

(b) Later Studies

Aydelotte, F.
Elizabethan Rogues and Vagabonds
(1913)

Jordan, J. C.
Robert Greene
(1915)

Jusserand, J. J.
English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare
(1890)

Lewis, C. S.
English Literature in the Sixteenth Century
(1954)