IV
39 lines✦
ouses in the Town^); and we may, therefore, justlyclaim for Marlowe the great merit of having been thefirst to use this highly effective metre in a play in-tended for the public at large* But Marlowe possessesalso another merit inasmuch as in his hand the newmetre became something entirely different from whatIt had been before. Ben Jonson, in his famouspoem on Shakespeare (prefixed to the first folio ofShakespeare's collected works, 1623) speaks of * Mar-lowe's mighty line.' In 'Gorboduc' the lines are mono-tonous and somewhat wearisome; they run smoothly likea quiet and peaceable brook; but in Marlowe's Tam-burlaine we seem to listen to the varied and lively noiseof a youthful river dashing from the rocks and wakingthe echoes around, now hasteningforward over stones andsweeping everything before it in its wild and impetuouscareer, now again flowing calmly and placidly, a pictureof strength and power as well as of beauty and love.It was Marlowe who breathed life into blank verseand whose treatment of it was so successful that thesubsequent dramatists gave up the practice of writingin rhymed lines and adopted this metre. But besides this, Marlowe achieved a further progressin dramatic art, even in his very first play. 'He madeblank verse what it was for Shakespeare, Jonscn andFletcher, and he first taught the art of designing tra-gedies on a grand scale, displaying unity of action,unity of character, and unity of interest. Before hisday plays had been pageants and shows. He firstproduced dramas. Before Marlowe it seemed seriouslydoubtful whether the rules and precedents of classicauthors might not determine the style of dramaticcomposition in Engird as in France : after him it wasimpossible for a dramatist to please the people byany play which had not in it some portion of the ') Ulrici, 'Shakespeare's dramatische Kunst' (1868) vol. 1,p. 184 thinks it very probable that *Gorboduc' was also re-presented before town audiences; but there are no positiveproofs for an assumption of this kind.
✦