This belief was founded upon the striking similarity of the strongest portions of his acknowledged works to passages of the Shakespere plays; the tendency of each to degenerate into pomposity and bombast in passages of tragic pathos [note 7]; the similar treatment of characters, and the like spirit that pervades them. (The Shakespere plays, free as they are from any trace of a hand during the period when it was moved by an immature mind, seem like a continuation of the works of the earlier master, and evolved when the author was at the meridian of his power.) It has been said that “Marlowe could not don alternately the buskin and the sock,” and that he “never attempted to write a comic scene,” and thus it would have been impossible for him to have written the light and witty portions of the plays. The conclusion of Bullen, above quoted, is not well founded. There are comic scenes in Faustus, and originally there were like scenes for “vain, conceited fondlings” in the “stately history” of Tamburlaine. Against the theory of the authorship of Marlowe, was the record of his death in June, 1593, when at the age of 29 years, a period of life all too short to have enabled him to have produced much, if any, more than the work which is known, beyond reasonable doubt, to be his. The accredited account is that he was slain with his own sword in a tavern brawl. Upon a careful examination of all the reports, I found them loose and contradictory. In September, 1593, Harvey wrote that his death was from the plague [note 8]; in 1597, Beard, the Puritan, wrote that he was killed in the streets of London [note 9]; in 1598, Meres referred to Beard’s account without correcting it [note 10]; in 1600, Vaughn wrote that he was killed by “one named Ingram” [note 11]; in 1600, Rowland attributed the death to drinking [note 12]; about 1680, Aubrey wrote that he was the victim of the famous duel of 1598, when Ben Jonson killed his adversary [note 13]; and the burial register of the parish church of St. Nicholas, in Deptford, contains the entry that he was slain by Francis Frazer [note 14]. But no investigation brought to light what became of his slayer. There is no record yet discovered of his escape or trial. Although Ben Jonson was thrown into prison and “brought near the gallows” for his duel on Bunhill, the alleged slayer of “kynd Kit Marloe” appears to have vanished so utterly that it was not until within the last quarter of this nineteenth century that even his name written in the burial register became correctly known to the world.