Peele lamented his friend's unhappy death in the
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fter theeWhy hie they not, unhappy in thine end,Marley,^) the Muses' darling for thy verse,Fit to write passions for the souls below,If any wretched souls in passion speak?*) lines which also contain the right key to Marlowe'swhole character. All his poetry, all his life waspassion. 'His characters are not so much men astypes of humanity, the animated moulds of humantliought and passion which include, each one of them,a thousand individuals. The tendency to dramatizeideal conceptions is very strong in Marlowe. Wereit not for his own deep sympathy with the passionsthus idealized and for the force of his conceptive fa-culty, these gigantic personifications might have beeninsipid or frigid. As it is, they are very far fromdeserving such epithets. The lust of dominion inTamburlaine, the lust of forbidden power and know-ledge in Faustus, the lust of wealth and blood inBar abas, are all terrifically realized. The* poet him-self sympathizes with the desires which sustain hisheroes severally in their revolt against humanity, Godand society. Tamburlaine's confidence in his missionas "the scourge of the immortal Grod", or the intrepiditywith which Faustus, ravished by the joys of hisimagination, cries — ''Had I as many souls as there be stars,I'd give them all for Mephistopheles !*' ') Marley, Marlye, and other spellings of the name occur*«) Peele's Works edited by Dyee, 1861, p. 583.
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