iman._ Hark, Brusor; she calls on Christ:
I will not send her to him. Her words are music,
The selfsame music that in ancient days
Brought Alexander from war to banqueting,
And made him fall from skirmishing to kissing.
No, my dear love would not let me kill thee,
Though majesty would turn desire to wrath:
There lies my sword, humbled at thy feet;
And I myself, that govern many kings,
Entreat a pardon for my rash misdeed.

(2)

[BASILISCO _is asked to declare his country and past
achievements._]

_Basilisco_. Sooth to say, the earth is my country,
As the air to the fowl or the marine moisture
To the red-gill'd fish. I repute myself no coward,
For humility shall mount; I keep no table
To character my fore passed conflicts.
As I remember, there happened a sore drought
In some part of Belgia, that the juicy grass
Was sear'd with the Sun-God's element.
I held it policy to put the men-children
Of that climate to the sword,
That the mother's tears might relieve the parched earth:
The men died, the women wept, and the grass grew;
Else had my Friesland horse perished,
Whose loss would have more grieved me
Than the ruin of that whole country.

* * * * *

Christopher Marlowe, the greatest of all the University Wits, has been
reserved to the last because in his work we rise nearest to the
excellence of Shakespearian drama. By the inexhaustible force of his
poetic genius he created literature for all time. We read the plays of
his contemporaries chiefly for their antiquarian interest; we are
pleased to discover in them the first beginnings of many features
popular in later productions; one or two appeal to us by their own
beauty or strength, but the majority are remembered only for their
relationship to greater plays. This is not so with Marlowe's works.
Having once been so fortunate as to have had our attention directed to
them, we return again and again for the sheer joy of reading his
glorious outbursts of poetry, of being thrilled with the intensity of
his greater scenes.

Marlowe placed upon the stage men who live intensely, terrible men, for
the most part, endued with surpassing power for good or evil. Around
them he grouped hostile, enchaining circumstances, which they confront
fearlessly and, for a time perhaps, master, until the hour comes when
they can no longer conqu