But now begins th’ extremity of heat To pinch me with intolerable pangs: Die, life! fly, soul! tongue, curse thy fill, and die! It is something which Shakespeare could not do, and which he could not have understood. _Dido_ appears to be a hurried play, perhaps done to order with the _Æneid_ in front of him. But even here there is progress. The account of the sack of Troy is in this newer style of Marlowe’s, this style which secures its emphasis by always hesitating on the edge of caricature at the right moment: The Grecian soldiers, tir’d with ten years war, Began to cry, “Let us unto our ships, Troy is invincible, why stay we here?”... By this, the camp was come unto the walls, And through the breach did march into the streets, Where, meeting with the rest, “Kill, kill!” they cried.... And after him, his band of Myrmidons, With balls of wild-fire in their murdering paws ... At last, the soldiers pull’d her by the heels, And swung her howling in the empty air.... We saw Cassandra sprawling in the streets ... This is not Vergil, or Shakespeare; it is pure Marlowe. By comparing the whole speech with Clarence’s dream, in _Richard III._, one acquires a little insight into the difference between Marlowe and Shakespeare: What scourge for perjury Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence? There, on the other hand, is what Marlowe’s style could not do; the phrase has a concision which is almost classical, certainly Dantesque. Again, as often with the Elizabethan dramatists, there are lines in Marlowe, besides the many lines that Shakespeare adapted, that might have been written by either: If thou wilt stay, Leap in mine arms; mine arms are open wide; If not, turn from me, and I’ll turn from thee; For though thou hast the heart to say farewell, I have not power to stay thee. But the direction in which Marlowe’s verse might have moved, had he not “dyed swearing,” is quite un-Shakespearean, is toward this intense and serious and indubitably great poetry, which, like some great painting and sculpture, attains its effects by something not unlike caricature. Hamlet and His Problems