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A Tentative Chronology of Marlowe's and Some Other Elizabethan Plays
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
The anonymous plays, The Tragical Reign of King John, Arden of Feversham, Soliman and Perseda, The First Part of the Contention between the Houses of York and Lancaster, and The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York, contain numerous parallels to Marlowe's Edward II and The Massacre at Paris, which have frequently been urged as proof either that he wrote some of these anonymous plays or that he borrowed from them. When all such parallels are brought together, however, acceptance of them as proof of Marlowe's borrowing would prove him to have been a greater borrower than previously supposed or than his admirers will admit.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1936
References
1 That Marlowe borrowed on occasion cannot be doubted. The line, “Because he loves me more than all the world” in Edward II differs slightly from “Because she loved me more than all the world” in The Spanish Tragedy. The line in Edward II, “And let these tears distilling from mine eyes,” bears a suspicious resemblance to a passage in Greene's Alphonsus of Aragon, “the salt brine tears,/Distilling down poor Fausta's withered cheek.” Bellamira's lament over her enforced chastity in The Jew of Malta echoes a similar lament of the courtesan in Whetstone's Promos and Cassandra.
2 The investigation grew from a mistrust of the conclusions announced by Dugdale Sykes after applying a vocabulary test to some of these plays, and was undertaken to learn if one can determine individual vocabularies and mannerisms of style for Elizabethan playwrights. It proceeds by comparing the anonymous plays word by word with the usage of Kyd and Marlowe as recorded in Crawford's concordances, and noting resemblances and differences. The data thus obtained are supplemented by reading in critical and scholarly comment, and by numerous readings of each play alongside the plays of Greene, Peele, and Lodge, and other Elizabethan literature dramatic and non-dramatic.
3 The very words parallel passage provoke controversy. The truth, cynically stated, is that everybody uses parallel passages but mistrusts them in the hands of others.
4 Line numbers to Marlowe's plays, here and elsewhere in the article, refer to Tucker Brooke's edition of Marlowe's works (Oxford Press, 1925). Line numbers to the Tragical Reign are my own to the version printed in Hazlitt's Shakespeare's Library, second edition, Vol. v (1875), and do not include the two prologues. Throughout this article I have taken the liberty of modernizing the spelling even when quoting an unmodernized text. Some of the plays mentioned were, at the time of writing, available only in modernized editions.
5 This list includes cases of all but the weakest degrees of parallelism. They are presented in the order of occurrence. Only those short-phrase or single-word parallels are included which the concordances show to be infrequent or lacking in Marlowe and Kyd and also are in the notes taken from other authors.
6 Hop headless is found in the York-Lancaster plays. It occurs in Lodge's Alarum Against Usurers, printed in 1584.
7 The line in T.R. seems really a blend of the line from E.II and lines 859 and 3242 from Tamburlaine, “And death arrests the organ of my voice,” and “And sorrow stops the passage of my speech.”
8 The Marlowe concordance shows rancor only in Locrine and Edward III. The phrase rancorous minds occurs in line 835 of Edward II.
9 To plant the true succession of the crown and true succession in other phrases occur in The Battle of Alcazar. But M.P. seems the more likely source for T.R. since the following line in T.R., 1085, imitates Edward II.
10 Here the references to Peele are to pages in the first volume of A. H. Bullen's two-volume edition of Peele's works (London, 1888).
11 Cottens occurs in Preston's Cambyses.
12 The resemblance in wording here is strengthened by the general resemblance of the context in both plays, the entrance of the prophet.
13 Quotations are from Brooke's edition in The Shakespeare Apocrypha (1918).
14 The line numbering is my own to the version printed in Hazlitt's Shakespeare's Library, vi, 2d ed. In quoting, I have used the single line as it appears in the second edition of The True Tragedy in 1600.
15 The line numbering is my own to the version printed in Hazlitt's Shakespeare's Library, v, 2d ed. I quote the lines, however, as they appear in the second edition of The Contention in 1600; in the first edition of 1594 the last line is misplaced.
16 State Papers, Foreign, 1586–88, p. 369.
17 Bain, Robert Nisbit, “Denmark,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed. (1910), viii, 32.
18 Hill, Charles E., The Danish Sound Dues and the Command of the Baltic (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1906).
19 5. P. Foreign, 1586–87, p. 252.
20 Deardoff, Neva Ruth, “English Trade in the Baltic during the Reign of Elizabeth” in Studies in the History of English Commerce in the Tudor Period (University of Pennsylvania, 1912), p. 274.
21 S. P. Foreign, 1586–88, p. 357.
22 Ibid., p. 60.
23 Hatfield Papers, Part 3, p. 257 and p. 263, in Hist. MSS Commission Report, ix.
24 S. P. Foreign, 1586–88, p. 494.
25 Camden, William, The History of the Renowned and Victorious Princess Elizabeth, Late Queen of England. Translation (London, 1675), p. 421.
26 Cheyney, E. P., “England and Denmark in the Later Days of Queen Elizabeth,” J. Mod. Hist. (1929), pp. 9–39.
27 The Works of Spenser, edited by R. Morris with a memoir by John W. Hales, the so-called Globe edition (London, 1904), p. 616.
28 These two names are spelled variously, but all spellings represent the same pronunciation of the original Irish words.
29 For the career and activities of Tirlogh Luineagh O'Neil, see Bagwell, Richard, Ireland Under the Tudors, 3 vols. (London, 1890), esp. Vol. iii.
30 Curtis, Edmund, A History of Medieval Ireland from 1110 to 1513, (L., 1923), p. 229. 31 Besides the history by Bagwell, previously mentioned, the article on Hugh O'Neil, Earl of Tyrone, in D.N.B. has served as authority for this sketch.
32 Those interested in pushing further the topical allusions in Edward II might find in the Bannockburn passage (lines 990–997) a reference to an occurrence on June 27, 1585, as told by Camden (op. cit., p. 313). At a meeting between Sir John Foster and Thomas Carre (Ker) of Fernihurst, English and Scottish wardens of the Middle Marches respectively, the Scots came armed in battle array with ensigns spread and drums beating, in number above 3000. The English numbered less than 300. A tumult ensued, the Scots fired, Russell, an Englishman, was slain, the English fled, and the Scots pursued them four miles into England. Lines 2328–29,
O miserable is that commonweal, where lords
Keep court, and kings are locked in prison,
might cloak an allusion to factional troubles in Scotland during the 1580's.
33 The line numbering is my own to the text of Arden of Feversham printed in Brooke's The Shakespeare Apocrypha.
34 This line seems modeled on one in Edward I. The resemblance to The Jew of Malta lies in the vocative, sir sauce.
35 New-made also occurs in J.M. 551, 1249. The concordances show it used elsewhere only in The Contention, The True Tragedy, and once in Marlowe's translation of Ovid, and in The Murder of John Brewen.
36 Brat is a frequent word in Greene's plays.
37 Boas, F. S., ‘The Taming of a Shrew’ Being The Original of Shakespeare's ‘Taming of the Shrew‘ (London, 1908), pp. 91–98.
38 Line numbers are my own to the text printed in Thomas H. Dickinson's edition of Greene's Plays, Mermaid Series (London and New York, n.d.).
39 So late a date would explain the lack of the promised second part of this play as due to Greene's difficulties with the actors at about this date, and to his failure to perform the task once amicable relations were renewed.
40 Acceptance of Marlowe's imitation of Greene here might weaken the theory on which this tentative chronology was built. In the plays already discussed, however, parallels such as these have been supported by stronger parallels and more similar parallels.
41 Since real plots are few, likeness of situation may be pushed too far in seeking to establish relationships. But the author of Fair Em is suspected of having taken ideas for plot from Greene's Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. It seems not too much, then, to suspect him of having pilfered from Alphonsus of Aragon.
42 Faustus, lines 439, 620, 623, 626, 692, 1356, 1370, 1381, 1421.
43 The issue is not so simple as it seems. Lodge in his Alarum against Usurers in 1584 had written, “You shall desire the mountains to fall upon you and the hills to cover you from the fearful indignation of the Lord of Hosts.” (Hunterian Club ed., p. 51.) This passage more closely resembles Marlowe's than does that in the play, and might evidence imitation on Marlowe's part of the Alarum against Usurers. But why did not the passage in A Looking Glass for London and England more closely resemble Lodge's earlier expression? Perhaps the resemblance between Marlowe and Lodge is purely fortuitous, for each could derive from Revelations vi.12–13 and Hosea x. 8.
44 This line itself echoes Tamburlaine 2966–67,
And happily with full Natolian bowls
Of Greekish wine.
45 Gayley, C. M., in Representative English Comedies, From the Beginnings to Shakespeare (New York, 1903), p. 408.
46 Dickinson, op. cit., xxxix, for a summary of the correspondences of the two plays.
47 It might be noted that the author of Fair Em, after first referring to William the Conqueror as “the Norman Duke,” later, with no explanation or justification, calls him “the Saxon Duke.” This may be a thrust at Greene, who in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, Act II. Scene ii, associated “the Saxon Duke” with “the Almain Monarch” and Castile, and Saxony with the same in Act iii. Scene ii, without providing any speeches for such a character or any part in the action. The author of Fair Em would then seem to imply that Greene's stage directions must be intended for the King of England, who was present in those scenes, and would thus be chafing Greene for historical inaccuracy. This, however, may be very far-fetched.
48 Gayley, op. cit., pp. 411–412.
49 Hudson, Ruth, “Greene's James IV and Contemporary Allusions to Scotland,” PMLA, xlvii, 652–667.
50 It occurs in Promos and Cassandra, Part i, scene vi:
Tis but some usual qualm you have, pitiful Dames, to fear.
51 The concordances show crabbed to be an infrequent word. It occurs also in Selimus.
52 The concordances show coistrel to be infrequent; it occurs also in The Contention and Soliman and Perseda.
53 Cf. The Spanish Tragedy, line 1908, “Needs must he go that the devils drive.” Of course, the lines in both Arden of Feversham and Edward I may derive independently from The Spanish Tragedy. Crawford, in his Marlowe concordance gives a line which he lists as 2 Faustus, 1489, “He needs must go that the devil drives.”
54 Sanctuary seems a common word, but the concordances quote it only from Arden of Feversham and The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York. The context does not often demand it.
55 Cf. Edward II, 2651, “Nay, to my death, for too long have I lived.” Arden of Feversham and Edward I agree in avoiding the inversion of the earlier line.
56 Line numbers are my own to the text printed by F. S. Boas, The Works of Thomas Kyd, Oxford, 1901.
57 This is a translation of a Latin phrase, A blata causa, tollitur effectus. The Latin form occurs in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay.
58 A better parallel to the line in Soliman and Perseda is in Arden of Feversham, 1295, And then—conceal the rest, for 'tis too bad.
59 These last two sets of parallels, of course, bear some resemblance to the poison scenes in The Massacre at Paris.
60 Camden, op. cit., pp. 448–449.
61 The opening stanza of Melpomene's complaint.
62 Away, I say is not reported in Kyd's undoubted plays. In Marlowe's it occurs in Edward II, only, at line 328, “Away I say with hateful Gaveston,” where the meaning is somewhat different.
63 Neither verb is shown in the undoubted plays of Kyd. Both verbs occur separately in Marlowe.
64 See parallels between Arden and Edward I, and note 54.
65 See the parallels between Arden and Edward I, and note 55. Observe that the Contention line is nearer the line in Edward II. Arden, Edward 7, and Contention avoid Marlowe's inversion. The Arden line is the second of a ryhming couplet.
66 Just as the parallels on Qualm linked Arden of Feversham, Soliman and Perseda, and The Contention together in a relation to Greene's James IV, so these parallels on -est knave in Christendom link the same three together. The similarly patterned line in The True Tragedy links it to them. All these lines seem patterned on line 766 of The Massacre at Paris, And sure, if all the proudest kings in Christendom.
67 Cf. Tamburlaine, 2204–05,
Ah that the deadly pangs I suffer now
Would lend an hour's license to my tongue.
68 These are the only cases of hence in the temporal sense in the Marlowe concordance. Elsewhere it is spatial. The word is not shown in the Kyd concordance, which lists few adverbs.
69 Cf. The Troublesome Reign of King John,
Aye, there's the grief, confusion catch the brain.
70 Cf. The Spanish Tragedy, 869,
O save his life, and let me die for him.
71 Cf. The Spanish Tragedy, 329,
My years were mellow, his but young and green
72 Mere mention of these York-Lancaster plays provokes immediately the question of priority between them and Shakespeare's Henry VI trilogy, but the topic does not properly enter into this discussion. Obviously lines common to them and the triology and parallel to lines in other plays establish the same relationships for both groups.
73 Expostulate does not occur in the undoubted plays of Marlowe and Kyd. It occurs in Peele's David and Bethsabe, i, 81
Then do not thou expostulate with him
74 Before proceeding to a summary I wish to say again that this article aims only to set forth material, gathered during another investigation and to indicate its possible meaning, in the hope that it may contribute something to the discovery of a way to truth. Readers are reminded of the simile of the jig-saw puzzle. Some mistakes may have occurred. My notes, still incomplete for the original purpose, are not catalogued, and since they cover word by word 12,000 lines of the five plays used, with references to all the plays of Marlowe and Kyd, and include notes from Greene's and Kyd's plays, Greene's and Lodge's prose, Euphues, and other Elizabethan literature, there is room for error. The reader interested chiefly in making a case has only to cancel in the lists those parallels he considers weak. Evidence to prove that words I have admitted are common in other Elizabethan writings will only advance the original purpose of my investigation, and will therefore be welcome.