onson, gave to the world his _Tragical History of the Life and Death of
Doctor Faustus_, which many do not hesitate to compare favorably with
Goethe's great drama, and his _Rich Jew of Malta_, which contains the
portraiture of Barabas, second only to the Shylock of Shakspeare. Of
Marlowe a more special mention will be made.

PLAYWRIGHTS AND MORALS.--It was to the great advantage of the English
regular drama, that the men who wrote were almost in every case highly
educated in the classics, and thus able to avail themselves of the best
models. It is equally true that, owing to the religious condition of the
times, when Puritanism launched forth its diatribes against all
amusements, they were men in the opposition, and in most cases of
irregular lives. Men of the world, they took their characters from among
the persons with whom they associated; and so we find in their plays
traces of the history of the age, in the appropriation of classical forms,
in the references to religious and political parties, and in their
delineation of the morals, manners, and follies of the period: if the
drama of the present day owes to them its origin and nurture, it also
retains as an inheritance many of the faults and deformities from which in
a more refined period it is seeking to purge itself. It is worthy of
notice, that as the drama owes everything to popular patronage, its moral
tone reflects of necessity the moral character of the people who frequent
it, and of the age which sustains it.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE.--Among those who may be regarded as the immediate
forerunners and ushers of Shakspeare, and who, although they prepared the
way for his advent, have been obscured by his greater brilliance, the one
most deserving of special mention is Marlowe.

Christopher Marlowe was born at Canterbury, about the year 1564. He was a
wild, irregular genius, of bad morals and loose life, but of fine
imagination and excellent powers of expression. He wrote only tragedies.

His _Tamburlaine the Great_ is based upon the history of that _Timour
Leuk_, or _Timour the Lame_, the great Oriental conqueror of the
fourteenth century:

So large of limb, his joints so strongly knit,
Such breadth of shoulders as might mainly bear
Old Atlas' burthen.

The descriptions are overdrawn, and the style inflated, but the subject
partakes of the heroic, and was popular still, though nearly two
centuries had passed since the exploits of the historic