There is no doubt that Marlowe led an extremely irregular life, but the legend of his debaucheries must be much exaggerated, if only from the fact that, though he was cut off before his thirtieth year, he has yet left behind him so large and puissant a body of work. The legend that he passed his last hours in blaspheming God is rendered doubly improbable by Chapman's express statement that it was in compliance with Marlowe's dying request that he continued his friend's paraphrase of _Hero and Leander_. The passionate, defiant youth, surcharged with genius, was fair game for the bigots and Pharisees, who found it only too easy to besmirch his memory. It is evident that Marlowe's gorgeous and violent style, especially as it bursts forth in his earlier plays, made a profound impression upon the youthful Shakespeare. After Marlowe's death, Shakespeare made a kindly and mournful allusion to him in _As You Like It_ (iii. 5), where Phebe quotes a line from his _Hero and Leander_:-- "Dead shepherd! now I find thy saw of might: 'Who ever lov'd, that lov'd not at first sight?'" Marlowe's influence is unmistakable not only in the style and versification but in the sanguinary action of _Titus Andronicus;_ clearly the oldest of the tragedies attributed to Shakespeare. The evidence for the Shakespearian authorship of this drama of horrors, though mainly external, is weighty and, it would seem, decisive. Meres, in 1598, names it among the poet's works, and his friends included it in the First Folio. We know from a gibe in Ben Jonson's Induction to his _Bartholomew Fair_ that it was exceedingly popular. It is one of the plays most frequently alluded to in contemporary writings, being mentioned twice as often as _Twelfth Night_, and four or five times as often as _Measure for Measure_ or _Timon_. It depicts savage deeds, executed with the suddenness with which people of the sixteenth century were wont to obey their impulses, cruelties as heartless and systematic as those which characterised the age of Machiavelli. In short, it abounds in such callous atrocities as could not fail to make a deep impression on iron nerves and hardened natures. These horrors are not, for the most part, of Shakespeare's invention.