PRE-SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA
Variety and Abundance of Dramatic Output
The Elizabethan age is the golden age of the drama. While the influence of the classics and of foreign countries is everywhere to be felt, the drama is truly national, a true expression of the national genius, despite the various foreign influences to which it was subjected. The drama was everywhere; performances were given every night, and hence there was an amzing prodigality of dramatic output. The variety and abundance of the dramatic output even during the pre-Shakespearean period would be clearly brought out, if we briefly consider the various types of drama that flourished during the age: (1) there was the chronicle play based on events from national history and witnessing to the patriotism of the people. (2) The domestic drama presenting rather crudely scenes from domestic life as in Grammar Gurton's Needle. It developed into such plays as Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. (3) The courtly comedy intended for cultured and learned audiences and dealing with the life of the court and the courtiers. Its chief features were witty dialogues, jests and puns, rather than action. The appeal was to the intelligence and imagination of scholarly audiences. (4) The classical plays based on the drama of ancient Greece and Rome. (5) The melodrama which depended not upon plot or characterisation but on sensation and thrills. There was a heaping up of sensational events. (6) The revenge tragedy full of bloody events. (7) Farces full of clownage and appealing to the lower sections of the audience.
Causes of Its Popularity
Various factors account for the immense popularity of the drama: (1) The people wanted entertainment, and the drama was the only possible source of entertainment for them. The novels were few and could be enjoyed only by the lettered. (2) The drama was truly national, national themes were dramatised and national sentiments were expressed. It harmonised with the growing nationalism of the age. (3) It was an age of action as well as of thought and emotion. The whole man — his thoughts, feelings and actions—can be expressed only through the drama. It provides food for the mind as well as for the eyes. The people could get enough of energetic action on the stage. (4) It was the best way for authors in need of money to fill their pockets. The drama satisfied the needs both of the audience and the playwrights. (5) The Elizabethan drama was the fusion of various elements, popular, courtly and academic. It had enough of action, thrill and sensation, enough of clownage, supernaturalism, coarse and indecent jokes, music and spectacle, but it had also enough of refinement and courtly grace, resulting from a fusion of the popular tradition and the refined academic drama of the court. The fusion could take place as the same plays were staged in the public theatres as well as at the court. The actors and playwright were often the same. So it appealed to the people of most varied natures. It was the character of the audience that decided the character of the Renaissance drama, and made it entirely national. It is entirely different from the drama of France, Italy or other countries of Europe.
Dramatic Activity
The development of drama during the Age of Shakespeare was greatly influenced by the establishment of the private and the public theatres. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, dramatic activity was in full swing. The number of audiences day by day increased. Hence, the idea of establishing permanent theatres took shape. The first playhouse in London was erected in the year 1576 in Shoreditch, well out of the reach of civic authorities. During the next thirty years at least seven regular theatres and a dozen or more innyards, permanently fitted for performances, were established in the city of London and its immediate suburbs. The Theatre, the Rose, the Globe, the Swan, the Fortune were built in the Shoreditch area or on the Bankside. The Blackfriars was the only theatre within the city.
Theatres were of two kinds. First, the private theatres, which were roofed in and lit by artificial light, were attended by a better class audience. Blackfriars, Salisbury Court and Drury Lane were famous private theatres. Secondly, the public theatres were open to the sky and performances took place in broad daylight. All classes of contemporary society intermingled in yard or galleries.
The whole idea of these early theatres was like that of the Roman amphitheatre. These theatres were round or octagonal, with a stage set in the middle of a benchless open yard and tiers of galleries running round the entirety of the house. Over the stage was small roof supported by pillars and on top of all appeared a tiny turret.
The main stage was open, with a curtain at the back and two or more doors through which the actors entered. The groundlings surrounded the platform, but gallants able to pay for the privilege sat on the stage itself. Two important consequences resulted from this. First, no scenery could be introduced on the main stage. Primitive scenic effects were created with the help of movable properties; for example, a tree in the tub might symbolise a forest. The absence of scenery necessitated the introduction of a large amount of explanatory reference. The audiences had to be told it was dark, a hall or a garden, and to this we owe a great deal of sheer poetry and the late sixteenth century and early seventeenth century drama. As the audiences surrounded the stage and the actors, there was close intimacy between the two. It resulted in the introduction of the device of soliloquy and aside. The audiences believed in superstitions and were fond of thrilling actions. So, Elizabethan plays abound in superstitions, ghosts, witches and fairies, blood curdling scences of murder and bloodshed, and revenge. In these plays female parts were taken up by boy actors, who evidently were more distressing than the crude scenery.
The university wits —Kyd, Nash, Lyly, Peele, Greene and Marlowe—completely revolutionised English drama and made it a suitable medium for the expression of the genius and temperament of their age. They brought the English drama to a point where Shakespeare began to experiment upon it. Let us now consider the contribution of the university wits to the remarkable development of the British drama.
The University Wits
Commenting on the contribution of the "University Wits" to the British drama, Nicoll writes: "The classicists had form, but no fire, the popular dramatists had interest but little sense of form. Drama, that is to say, was struggling between a well-formed chill and a structureless enthusiasm. The great merit of the University Wits was that they came with their passion and poetry, and their academicals training, to unite these two forces, and thus to give Shakespeare a pliable and fitting medium for the expression of his genius."
Some Pre-Shakespearean Dramatists
1. John Lyly (1554-1606) is the writer of a number of artistic and highly refuted courtly plays mostly comedies. He wrote solely for the fashionable lords and ladies of the court, and had no thought of the people or the popular stage. His plays are, therefore, models of refinement; he has the credit of writing the most artistic plays before Shakespeare. The best of his plays are (a) Campaspe, (b) Endymion, (c) Midas, (d) Love's Metamorphosis, (e) The Woman in the Moon , etc. His chief merits as a dramatist are:
Lyly wrote for private theatres. So his plays differ from those of other playwrights of this group. His contribution to English drama is historically very important:
(a) Lyly was essentially a court dramatist. He added to drama the qualities of delicacy, grace, charm and subtlety which were lacking in the rougher and bombastic pieces wrought for performance in public theatres.
(b) Lyly was the first who gave shape to romantic comedy. He found contemporary comedy lacking in form and atmosphere. He first of all elaborated the romantic sentiment and created an atmosphere infused with humour and romantic fancy. This romantic fancy with him is more idealistic than it was with Greene and Peele. There is in his comedies "a mellowed spirit under which seriousness and laughter meet, a world of poetic fancy wherein the deities of the classical mythology live and move by the side of human figures."
(c) Lyly did not completely reject the classical pattern. Terence taught him the technique which is displayed in his plays. The Greek myths, with which few Renaissance artists were acquainted, led him into a strange realm. "The classical age is seen through the eyes of romance. There are delicate colourings, a certain mellowed sadness, a linking of the earth with the spirit world Here are realism, classicism and romanticism welded into one."
(d) In Lyly's comedies for the first time we find a suitable blank verse for comedy. Marlowe's rich, imaginative and highly poetical blank verse was incapable of expressing lighter sentiments. Lyly's verse, delicate, if artificial, could convey excellently the quickness of his thought and the humorous images constantly fleeting through his brain. High comedy also demands a nice sense of phrase, and Lyly is the first great phrase maker in English. He knew the use of skilled phrases for purposes of character delineation and plot construction. He gave to English comedy a witty phraseology.
(e) Lyly definitely established prose as an expression of comedy. He deftly used prose to express light feelings of fun and laughter. The interweaving of prose and verse in his comedies corresponds to the two worlds of the reality and the ideal. Shakespeare learnt, it seems, this device of using both prose and verse in his comedies from Lyly.
(f) Lyly made an important advance at successful comic character portrayal. Although some of his plays show Terence's influence, he shakes himself free from the presentation of merely "imitative humours". Each of his characters is endowed with individuality.
(g) The device of the girl dressed as a boy is traced back to Lyly.
(h) The introduction of songs symbolical of the movement or mood of a particular comedy owes its popularity to Lyly.
2. George Peele (1558-98), another of the University Wits, is one of the important predecessors of Shakespeare. Like Lyly he also writes courtly plays. Then he unsuccessfully attempts national history in his Edward I. By far the most original of his plays is The Old Wives' Tale (1952) in which Milton found some suggestions for his Contras. It is a pleasing extravaganza. It has poetic qualities of a high order; but George Peele has no dramatic sense and can write only masques and lyrical pieces.
(a) He widened the range of English drama by writing a romantic tragedy, a chronicle history, a kind of mystery play and a romantic literary satire. In all of them we notice a high level of poetic attainment.
(b) As a humorist he showed the way to Shakespeare. He could induce laughter of a peculiar mellowed sort by the juxtaposition of reality and romance, and he could create an atmosphere which unites these two worlds in one harmony.
(c) Into the purely romantic fantasy, Peele succeeded in introducing an amount of literary satire. The Old Wives' Tale is the first dramatic literary satire in English. In it he does not create laughter by comic presentation or clownery, but by dramatic irony in the contrast of romantic plot and realistic diction.
3. Robert Greene (1560-92), also one of the University Wits, is known primarily for his Friar Bacon and Friar Bungey. The comedy is a fusion of most diverse elements and marks a stage in the development of the English drama. (1) Its blank verse has the energy, vigour and flexibility of the blank verse of Marlowe in Tamburlaine and Faustus. (2) The tricks which the two magicians play on each other again remind us of Dr. Faustus. They provide the comic underplot. (3) Real pictures of English countryside, have been introduced through the details of the work of dairy— farming. We get idyllic, romantic scenes of love against a country background. (4) Its heroine, Margaret, is a real English girl, but a halo of romance has been cast over her. It is an idyllic portrait of a real English country girl. "The character of Margaret, really a pure English girl in love, has no precedent in drama" (Legouis). She is like a first sketch of Shakespeare's heroines.
(a) Greene paid great attention to plot. He was a master of the art of plot construction. With him the love story becomes central in the art of drama. He supplied what Lyly lacked— complicated story and simple human feeling. His Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay illustrates this point. In this play he contributed much to the development of romantic comedy. Its plot is based on the theme of love.
(b) Greene deftly interwove diverse moods and surroundings in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, and James the IV, which are his best romantic comedies. We have three distinct worlds mingled together – the world of magic, the world of aristocratic life, and the world of the country. In this way he guided Shakespeare in the writing of A Midsummer Night's Dream. There is peculiar romantic humour and rare combination of realism and idealism in these two plays.
(c) Greene's contribution to the portrayal of women characters, especially of romantic heroines, is noticeable. He is the first to draw the Rosalinds and Celias. Margaret and Dorothea are excellent portraits of women. The real and the ideal are commingled in the portrayal of these characters.
4. Thomas Lodge (1558-1625). Thomas Lodge's The Wounds of Civil War contains hardly anything that is new. He does not rise above mediocrity. Lodge, who has decided power over the lyric and a charm in his fiction, gave practically nothing to the theatre.
5. Thomas Nash (1558-1625). He was a pamphleteer and story writer. He also tried his hand at drama. He collaborated with Marston in his Dido and in The Isle of Dogs.
6. Thomas Kyde (1558-94) a university scholar and a law student, is known for his The Spanish Tragedy. The tragedies of the Greek dramatist Seneca were his faourite reading and the chief characteristics of the Senecan tragedy re-appear in his masterpiece. The Spanish Tragedy (1585) is a landmark in English tragedy due to following reasons:
(a) It is a well-constructed play. The author has skilfully woven passion, pathos and fear until they reach a climax. The play is full of strong external action. The stage effects are well managed and murders are thrillingly committed.
(b) Kyd succeeded in producing dialogue that is forceful and capable.
(c) Kyd brought the revenge theme to the stage. He, thus, influenced Shakespeare's Hamlet and Webster's The Duchess of Mal fi.
(d) The device of play within play, which Shakespeare employed in Hamlet, is used for the first time in The Spanish Tragedy.
(e) Kyd contributed a new type of tragic hero to the stage. The main characters in tragedy up to his time had been afflicted princes or grandiloquent supermen. In the character of Hieronimo, Kyd presented the hesitating type, seen most magnificently in Hamlet, and allied that with madness, feigned or real. It was the subtlety of characterisation that appealed to his generation. Hieronimo brings English drama to Hamlet.
7. Arden of Feversham (1586) is a remarkable domestic tragedy from the pen of some unknown writer. Its greatness lies in its psychological truth, and its character-drawing. Its theme is the murder of a husband by his adulterous wife and her lover. The dramatist shows keen insight into the souls of the guilty, the tortures they undergo, and the scorpions they have wilthin them. Their suffering souls are laid bare before the auidence and the readers. "The dramatic force and truth of characterisation have led some to attribute the play to Shakespeare, assigning it to his early period." However, there is so much of vulgarity and crudity in it that it cannot be reconciled with the works of Shakespeare.
Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)
Life Christopher Marlowe, the son of a shoemaker of Canterbury, is the only dramatist before Shakespeare, who is still read with enthusiasm. A patron sent him to Cambridge from where he graduated at the age of nineteen. He came to London, became an actor and led a reckless life. He lived in a low tavern atmosphere of excess and wretchedness His was a godless life and he enjoyed a reputation as 'Atheist and Epicure', contemner and mocker of religion. At the age of twenty-three he dazzled London stage by his first play Tamburlaine. In five years he produced all his great work. His plays have been widely appreciated through the ages. It is unfortunate that such a great dramatist led a dissipated life which cast him his life at the age of twenty-nine. He was stabbed in a drunken brawl and died in a tavern
Marlowe's Works: During the short span of his life, Marlowe reoriented British drama by imparting to it a new mould, technique, conception and versification. Below is given an analysis of his plays:
1. Tamburlaine (1587-88): Marlowe's first play Tamburlaine marks a bold departure from the morality tradition. The protagonist, Tamburlaine, who is a poor Scythian shepherd, is for the first time made a true tragic hero. He embodies the Renaissance urges of attaining power infinite; and enjoying limitless prosperity. He is obsessed with the idea of becoming the mightiest man on earth, to be the "scourge of God" and a terror to the world till "Immortal Jeve says, cease Tamburlaine". Tamburlaine pursues his course and conquers the Eastern monarchs with the blood-thirstiness of a savage beast". His savageness is calmed down by his love for Zenocrate. The play ends tragically because both Tamburlaine and Zenocrate die.
Although Tamburlaine is deficient in humour, in the portrayal of female characters and plot construction, it for the first time gave a tragic protagonist in the character of Tamburlaine, and introduced blank verse for dramatic writing. Rickett remarks that it is an important play "by reason of its impetuous force, splendid command of blank verse, and its sensitiveness to beauty." J. B. Steane writes: "Tamburlaine is the most solid and unflawed of Marlowe's plays: more consistent in quality than Dido or Faustus, more whole and substantial than the Jew of Malta and more vigorous in imagination and sustaining power than Edward II."
2. Dr. Faustus (published in 1587): It comes after Tamburlaine in order of time, as it shows development in Marlowe's dramatic art and style. In Faustus, Marlowe's conception of tragedy matures. Dr. Faustus has the passion of attaining power infinite through knowledge. To attain his desired mission, Faustus falls into the temptations of evil and does not care even for his conscience. Ultimately evil consumes him. Faustus is a true tragic hero who faces downfall and ultimately death due to one fatal flaw in his character, that is, overambition. The tragic conflict within the protagonist's heart is suggested by the Good Angel and the Evil Angel. The idea of Nemesis underlies the play because it suggests that the evil doer who transcends earthly limitations is caught in his own trap. These are the elements which Shakespeare was to use in his tragedies.
3. Edward II (1593): It is the first historical play in English. It is a drama of more sustained power and of greater dramatic excellence. It is the most flawless of Marlowe's plays, though not the most magnificent. Like Dr. Faustus, it is not a collection of unconnected scenes, it is a complex and organic whole, working up by natural stages to a singularly powerful climax. Charlton and Waller remark: "The dramatist sometimes seems like a man trying to tie up a parcel in a piece of paper too small for it." In Edward II, Marlowe boldly and effectively handles the chronicle, and, in this respect he influenced Shakespeare's Richard II. In it, Marlowe moves towards a new subtlety in character portrayal. Language and versification also show signs of change. Boas remarks that "the language is of chastened simplicity, verging at times on baldness, but full .for the most part, of silvery charm and grace. "The measure," as has been well said, "that had thundered the threats of Tamburlaine is now made to halter the sobs, of a broken heart." The death-scene in this play is one of the most moving scenes in all drama, ancient or modern.
4. The Jew of Malta (1592): It foreshadows the world of Ben Jonson's Volpone and Shakespeare's Shylock. Steane remarks: "Barbas (the Jew of Malta) is the most successful representative of a materialistic society which also victimises and condemns him: a society where those in power are hypocrites, and where low life, nasty, brutish and shorter than usual, thrives on blackmail, prostitution and theft."
5. The Tragedy of Dido, the Queen of Carthage (1594): In Dido, Nashe is openly named on the title page as a sharer in the work. Giving an estimate of Dido, Steane writes: "But energy remains the quality that most often impresses and in Dido it is found in its best form: a vigorous delighridt, a rare expression of enthusiasm and relish for the realms of gold, glorying in man's stature, respect for the sorrows and loyalties, and a glorying in romantic love which is certainly immature."
6. The Massacre of Paris (1596): It is regarded as the crudest work of Marlowe. The material is weakly arranged and the characters are poorly drawn.
Marlowe's Contribution to British Drama: Christopher Marlowe, the most shining star among the University Wits, was, in the words of Swinburne, "the first great poet, the father of English tragedy and the creator of blank verse". G. Smith writes about his contribution to drama: "Marlowe, more truly than any of his contemporaries, is the protagonist of the tragic drama in England and in a more intimate sense, the forerunner of Shakespeare and his fellows." Nicoll calls him "the most individual and the most talented of the pre-Shakespearians". He was the first English dramatist, who, according to Rickett, "saw clearly enough that the romantic drama was better suited to the exigencies of insular geniush ". Marlowe contributed the following elements to the development of English drama:
(i) Heroic Themes: Marlowe raised the subject matter of drama to a higher level, and this he did by providing big heroic subjects that appealed to his imagination. Charles Hastings writes: "Marlowe transformed the substance of drama, suppressing trivial situations, and introducing a new class of heroic subjects which breated the spirit of the time." His main themes are the insatiable w spirit of adventure, the master passions of love and beauty, the greatness and littleness of human life. Tamburlaine is the conqueror; Faustus is in pursuit of universal knowledge; Barabas has world fabulous dreams of wealth; Edward II, with his mingling of nobility and worthlessness, sounds the heights and depths of human nature."
(ii) Dignity and Individuality of the Hero: Marlowe for the first time imparted in and dignity to the tragic hero. In this respect he departed from the morality tradition. His protagonists are living and breathing individuals, and we can feel "the fierce exaltation of the conqueror, Tamburlaine; has vibrant passion and rapturous longing of his Faust, the fierce selfishness of Barabas.
In his emphasis on the individuality of the hero, Marlowe was influenced by Machiavelli's Prince. Nicoll writes: "Machiavelli had made a god of Virtue, that quality in a man, which drives him to find full and free expressions of his own thoughts and emotions. So he presents his heroes, Tamburlaine, Dr. Faustus and Barabas, overriding the ordinary moral codes of their times in an effort to find the complete realization of their particular ideals."
Marlowe deviates radically from the medieval conception of tragedy. During the Middle Ages tragedy was a thing of princes and princes only, for Marlowe it was a thing of individual heroes. Nicoll writes: "Thus his Tamburlaine, king though he may be by the end of drama, is born a peasant. The Jew is but a Mediterranean money lender and Faustus an ordinary German doctor and alchemist. The medieval conception of the royalty of tragedy is here being supplanted by the Renaissance ideal of individual worth. It is the union of the two which gives us the majesty of Macbeth and of Lear."
The medieval tragedy was didactic. Drama had to show the downfall of the hero into misery or adversity from prosperity and happiness, because it had to inculcate a moral purpose. There is no moral of this sort in the plays of Marlowe. All Marlowe's tragic heroes die but "the kernel of his dramas lies rather in the struggle of a brave human soul against forces which in the end prove too great for it." In Marlowe's plays the interest centres wholly on the personality of the hero and the pleasure derived from drama comes from watching that personality, comes from the sense of greatness which that personality brings with it." This is one of Marlowe's "most outstanding contributions to the development of a truly august type of English tragedy. His main conception of serious drama—Renaissance Virtu battling on to success and then. falling unconquered before fate —is at the root of all the great seventeenth century tragic activity, only Shakespeare made his figures more human and stressed more the fatal flaw in the greatness of their characters." (Nicoll)
(iii) Tragic Conflict: Marlowe, first of all, presented the tragic conflict between good and evil forces in Dr. Faustus. It has great psychological significance. The good and the evil angels in Dr. Faustus are "beings from a real supernatural world and externalizations of conscience". In the words of Pinto, Marlowe "reveals for the first time in English drama the full possibilities of psychological tragedy, the anguish of mind at war with itself". In Dr. Faustus, Marlowe vividly describes the struggle Faustus' soul before he finally surrenders to the powers of darkness.
In Edward II Marlowe dramatises the conflict represented by external forces. In this play it takes place between two opposite groups — King Edward II, Gaveston and Spencer on the one side; and Mortimer, Lancaster, Pembroke and other rebellious lords on the other. Shakespeare imparted greater psychological subtlety, variety and depth to the dramatisation of tragic conflict, which Marlowe introduced
(iv) Inevitability, Pity and Terror: In his insistence on tragic inevitability, Marlowe foreshadows Shakespeare's belief in fate. The feeling of inevitability is present throughout Dr. Faustus and is recognized explicitly in the end:
You stars that reigned at my nativity
Whose influence has allotted death and hell.
Steane writes: "It is above all this sense of man's captivity that makes the tragedy in Faustus.
A good tragedy arouses the feelings of pity and terror. In the history of English drama, Marlowe is the first dramatist to make artistic and psychological use of the feelings of pity and terror. In Tamburlaine pity and terror are found when divine Zenocrate dies and mighty Tamburlaine in a fit of exasperation burns the whole town. A feeling of awe pervades the play when we see Tamburlaine, who has been a terror to gods, has to yield before the mightier conqueror, Death.
The last scene of Dr. Faustus is a fine presentation of the feelings of pity and terror. We feel pity for damned Faustus who is undergoing the intolerable pains of dissolution due to one fatal flaw, that is, the desire for limitless power; and terror at the utter impossibility of changing what has been done. The last soliloquy of Dr. Faustus is a burning and eloquent expression of an agonised soul which attracts both our pity and sympathy.
The murder scene in Edward II moves the feelings of pity and terror. Charles Lamb says that the murder of the King "moves pity and terror beyond any scene, ancient or modern, with which I am acquainted ...... In any case there can be no doubt that the Act V of Marlowe's tragedy far surpasses the corresponding portion of Shakespeare's Richard II."
(v) Nemesis, Exaltation and Depression: All evil doers have to suffer for their misdeeds. Nemesis does not spare anyone. Marlowe, it seems, had faith in retributive justice. Tamburlaine, the savage and blood-thirsty world conqueror, dies miserably; Faustus is condemned to eternal damnation; King Edward II, who neglected his kingly duties, is imprisoned and killed for his misdeeds; Mortimer, who under the false pretext of patriotism, usurps all power after the assassination of Edward II, is mercilessly killed. Thus, the plays of Marlowe have an ethical significance. He is the first tragic dramatist who used the device of Nemesis in an artistic and psychological manner.
The final note of Marlowe's famous tragedies Tamburlaine and Dr. Faustus is elevating and not depressing because they tell us about the dignity of man and his untired courage and persistent endeavour in the presence of odds and hazards.
(vi) Blank Verse or the Mighty Line: As the creator of blank verse for writing drama, Marlowe is insurpassable. A. C. Swinburne once observed that "the father of English tragedy and the creator of English blank verse was therefore also the teacher and the guide of Shakespeare". T. S. Eliot also writes that "he introduced several new tones into blank verse, and commenced the dissociative process which drew it farther and farther away from the rhythms of rhymed verse, and that when Shakespeare borrowed from him, which was pretty often at the beginning, Shakespeare either made something inferior or something different."
Marlowe saved the drama from "rhyming mother wits", freed it from such conceits "clownage keeps in pay", and let it to stately tents of war. In short, he provided a new medium in which heroic actions could be expressed with the pomp of a new style. Marlowe's blank verse, which Ben Jonson calls "Marlowe's mighty Line" is notable for its splendour of diction, picturesqueness, vigour and energy, variety in pace and it responsiveness to the demands of varying emotions. His dramatic poetry is full of bold primary colours and vivid imagery from the classics, from astronomy and from geography.
Commenting on Marlowe's blank verse, F. Boas writes: "In the blank verse of Senecan school each line ended with a strongly accented syllable and stood by itself, separated by a pause from the preceding and the following verse. The effect was thus tame and monotonous, and would certainly never have held the ear of a popular audience. But Marlowe, breaking through conventional restraints, altered the structure of the metre, varied the pauses, and produced an entirely novel rhythm of surpassing flexibility and power ...... he led the leaden ore of the metre of Gorboduc into the liquid gold of his mighty line." Marlowe made it a vehicle for the expression of varied human emotions, as no one had done before him. J. A. Symonds remarks: "Touched by his hands the thing became an organ capable of rolling thunders and of whispering sighs or moving pompous volubility or gliding like silvery stream, of blowing trumpet blasts to battle or sounding the soft secrets of lover's heart ...... But what he did with it unlocked the secret of the verse and taught his successors how to play hundred stops on it."
(vii) Conclusion: Marlowe, "the Columbus of the new literary world", emancipated English drama from classical notions of stiff decorum, and by doing so, opened up infinite possibilities to the dramatist. He gave drama passion and poetry. Marlowe first taught the art of designing tragedies on a grand scale. Charles Hastings remarks that Marlowe "created the romantic tragedy, the highest expression of the dramatic temperament in England. Marlowe has been termed the father of English tragedy. He was in fact the first to feel that romantic drama was the sole form in harmony with the temperament of the nation, and consequently the only type with a future before it." Marlowe made blank verse a suitable medium for dramatic expression. To employ blank verse, instead of rhyme, for the romantic drama was the first step in the revolution he brought about. Marlowe was the first step in the revolution he brought about. Marlowe was the first to divide the drama into Acts and Scenes, and thus to impart to it structural coherence. He also introduced a new class of heroic subjects, eminently fitted for dramatic subjects. He moulded characters and formed a vigorous conception of the parts they had to play. Marlowe, thus, created authentic romantic tragedy in English and paved the way for the full blossoming of Shakespeare's dramatic genius.
Marlowe's Limitations
Rickett says that Marlowe "had, of course, the defects of his age, a frequent, overluxuriance of imagination, a lack of restraint, an extravagance bordering on the ridiculous." His plays suffer from the persistent hyperbole, weak construction, lack of humour and want of human characters. His characters show little dramatic development. What development we find is the outcome of a purely literary process, showing eloquence rather than action, a stately epical movement rather than the playwright's surprises of situation and character.
His Influence — According to Schelling "Marlowe gave the drama passion and Poetry: and poetry was his most precious gift. Shakespeare would not have been Shakespeare had Marlowe never written or lived. He might not have been altogether the Shakespeare we know". In this very connection Minto writes: "Marlowe was really the Columbus of the new literary world. He emancipated the English mind from classical nations of stiff decorum and by so doing, opened up infinite possibilities to the dramatist. Now, indeed, drama could be a representation of passionate life. "Men struggling passionately after antagonistic aims could now be brought face to face; and the ups and downs, the hopes and fears, the shrinkings and the darings of the struggle and the characters of the combatants, could be placed in swift and dazzing heart-shaking succession visibly before the eye of the spectators.
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