THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE BY ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON MCMVIII TO THE MEMORY OF CHARLES LAMB When stark oblivion froze above their names Whose glory shone round Shakespeare's, bright as now, One eye beheld their light shine full as fame's, One hand unveiled it: this did none but thou. Love, stronger than forgetfulness and sleep, Rose, and bade memory rise, and England hear: And all the harvest left so long to reap Shone ripe and rich in every sheaf and ear. A child it was who first by grace of thine Communed with gods who share with thee their shrine: Elder than thou wast ever now I am, Now that I lay before thee in thanksgiving Praise of dead men divine and everliving Whose praise is thine as thine is theirs, Charles Lamb. CONTENTS CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE JOHN WEBSTER THOMAS DEKKER JOHN MARSTON THOMAS MIDDLETON WILLIAM ROWLEY THOMAS HEYWOOD GEORGE CHAPMAN CYRIL TOURNEUR INDEX THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE The first great English poet was the father of English tragedy and the creator of English blank verse. Chaucer and Spenser were great writers and great men: they shared between them every gift which goes to the making of a poet except the one which alone can make a poet, in the proper sense of the word, great. Neither pathos nor humor nor fancy nor invention will suffice for that: no poet is great as a poet whom no one could ever pretend to recognize as sublime. Sublimity is the test of imagination as distinguished from invention or from fancy: and the first English poet whose powers can be called sublime was Christopher Marlowe.