ull
scope to genius like his. He became both playwriter and actor. All his
extant work was written in about six years. When he was only
twenty-nine he was fatally stabbed in a tavern quarrel. Shakespeare
had at that age not produced his greatest plays. Marlowe unwittingly
wrote his own epitaph in that of Dr. Faustus:--

"Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,
And burned is Apollo's laurel-bough."

[Illustration: MARLOWE'S MEMORIAL STATUE AT CANTERBURY.]

Works.--Marlowe's great tragedies are four in number _Timberline,
Dr. Faustus, The Jew of Malta, and Edward, II._. No careful student of
English literature can afford to be unacquainted with any of them.
Shakespeare's work appears less miraculous when we know that a
predecessor at the age of twenty-four had written plays like
_Timberline_ and _Dr. Faustus_.

_Timberline_ shows the supreme ambition for conquest, for controlling
the world with physical force. It is such a play as might have been
suggested to an Elizabethan by watching Napoleon's career. _Dr.
Faustus_, on the other hand, shows the desire for knowledge that would
give universal power, a desire born of the Renaissance. _The Jew of
Malta_ is the incarnation of the passion for the world's wealth, a
passion that towers above common greed only by the magnificence of its
immensity. In that play we see that Marlowe--

"Without control can pick his riches up,
And in his house heap pearl like pebble stones,
* * * * *
Infinite riches in a little room."

_Edward II._ gives a pathetic picture of one of the weakest of kings.
This shows more evenness and regularity of construction than any of
Marlowe's other plays; but it is the one least characteristic of him.
The others manifest more intensity of imagination, more of the spirit
of the age.

_Dr. Faustus_ shows Marlowe's peculiar genius at its best. The legend
on which the play is based came from Germany, but Marlowe breathed his
own imaginative spirit into the tragedy. Faustus is wearied with the
barren philosophy of the past. He is impatient to secure at once the
benefits of the New Learning, which seems to him to have all the
powers of magic. If he can immediately enjoy the fruits of such
knowledge, he says:--

"Had I as many souls as there be stars,
I'd give them all."

In order to acquire this knowledge and the resulting power for
twenty-four years, he sells his soul to Mephistopheles. Faustus th