_Faustus_, the second play, is one of the best of Marlowe's works.[141] The story is that of a scholar who longs for infinite knowledge, and who turns from Theology, Philosophy, Medicine, and Law, the four sciences of the time, to the study of magic, much as a child might turn from jewels to tinsel and colored paper. In order to learn magic he sells himself to the devil, on condition that he shall have twenty-four years of absolute power and knowledge. The play is the story of those twenty-four years. Like _Tamburlaine_, it is lacking in dramatic construction,[142] but has an unusual number of passages of rare poetic beauty. Milton's Satan suggests strongly that the author of _Paradise Lost_ had access to _Faustus_ and used it, as he may also have used _Tamburlaine_, for the magnificent panorama displayed by Satan in _Paradise Regained_. For instance, more than fifty years before Milton's hero says, "Which way I turn is hell, myself am hell," Marlowe had written: _Faust_. How comes it then that thou art out of hell? _Mephisto_. Why this is hell, nor am I out of it. * * * * * Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one self place; for where we are is hell, And where hell is there must we ever be. Marlowe's third play is _The Jew of Malta_, a study of the lust for wealth, which centers about Barabas, a terrible old money lender, strongly suggestive of Shylock in _The Merchant of Venice_. The first part of the play is well constructed, showing a decided advance, but the last part is an accumulation of melodramatic horrors. Barabas is checked in his murderous career by falling into a boiling caldron which he had prepared for another, and dies blaspheming, his only regret being that he has not done more evil in his life. Marlowe's last play is _Edward II_, a tragic study of a king's weakness and misery. In point of style and dramatic construction, it is by far the best of Marlowe's plays, and is a worthy predecessor of Shakespeare's historical drama. Marlowe is the only dramatist of the time who is ever compared with Shakespeare.[143] When we remember that he died at twenty-nine, probably before Shakespeare had produced a single great play, we must wonder what he might have done had he outlived his wretched youth and become a man. Here and there his work is remarkable for its splendid imagination, for the stateliness of its verse, and for its rare bits of poetic beauty; but in dramatic instinct, in wide knowledge of human life, in humor, in delineation of woman's character, in the delicate fancy which presents an Ariel as perfectly as a Macbeth,--in a word, in all that makes a dramatic genius, Shakespeare stands alone. Marlowe simply prepared the way for the master who was to follow.