him by name but who in London hath not heard of his dissolute and licentious living; his fonde disguisinge of a Master of Arte with ruffianly haire, unseemely apparell, and more unseemelye company; his vaine-glorious and Thrasonicall bravinge; his piperly extemporizing and Tarletonizing; his apishe counterfeiting of every ridiculous and absurd toy; his fine coosening of juglers, and finer jugling with cooseners; hys villainous cogging and foisting; his monstrous swearinge and horrible forswearing; his impious profaning of sacred textes; his other scandalous and blasphemous ravinge; his riotous and outragious surfeitinge; his continuall shifting of lodginges; his plausible musteringe and banquettinge of roysterly acquaintaunce at his first cumminge; his beggarly departing in every hostisses debt; his infamous resorting to the Banckeside, Shorditch, Southwarke, and other filthy hauntes; his obscure lurkinge in basest corners; his pawning of his sword, cloake, and what not, when money came short; his impudent pamphletting, phantasticall interluding, and desperate libelling, when other coosening shiftes failled; his imployinge of Ball (surnamed Cuttinge Ball), till he was intercepted at Tiborne, to leavy a crew of his trustiest companions to guarde him in daunger of arrestes; his keping of the foresaid Balls sister, a sorry ragged queane, of whome hee had his base sonne Infortunatus Greene; his forsaking of his owne wife, too honest for such a husband; -particulars are infinite ;— his contemning of superiours, deriding of other (others ?), and defying of all good order?"

A surfeit of pickled herrings and Rhenish wine carried off the egregious Robert Greene in the thirty second year of his age.

The career of Christopher Marlowe was SO conspicuously evil that it was honoured by being made the theme of a contemporary ballad. 1 quote some of the verses.

All you that have got eares to heare,
Now listen unto mee;

Whilst I do tell a tale of feare;

A true one it shall bee:

A truer storie nere was told,

As some alive can showe;

'Tis of a man in crime grown olde,
Though age he did not know.

Both day and night would he blaspheme,
And day and night would sweare,
As if his life was but a dreame,
Not ending in dispaire.

A poet was he of repute,
And wrote full many a playe,
Now strutting in a silken sute,
Then begging by the way.

He had alsoe a player beene
Upon the Curtaine-stage,

But brake his leg in one lewd scene,
When in his early age.

I This ballad was brought to light by J. P. Collier.

accepted as gennine by the cautious Dyce.

It is

Enquiries of Dr. Warner

at the British Museum and of Dr. A. H. Bullen fail to elicit any reason for assuming it to be a forgery.

He was a fellow to all those
That did God's laws reject,
Consorting with the Christians' foes
And men of ill aspect.

Ruffians and cutpurses hee

Had ever at his backe,

And led a life most foule and free,
To his eternall wracke.

He now is gone to his account,
And gone before his time,

Did not his wicked deedes surmount
All precedent of crime.

He had a friend, once gay and greene,
Who died not long before,

The wofull'st wretch was ever seene,
The worst ere woman bore,

His lust was lawlesse as his life,
And brought about his death ;
For, in a deadlie mortall strife,
Striving to stop the breath

Of one who was his rivall foe,
With his owne dagger slaine,

1

He groand, and word spoke never moe, Pierc'd through the eye and braine.

Thus did he come to suddaine ende

That was a foe to all,

And least unto himselfe a friend,
And raging passion's thrall.

1 A friend, once gay and greene; i. e. Robert Greene.

Among the Harleian Collection is a manuscript entitled A note, contayninge the opinion of one Christofer Marlye concernynge his damnable opinions and judgment of relygion and scorne of Gods worde. This document, as printed in Dyce's edition of Marlowe, is maimed by asterisks, which are explained by the editor as indicating passages of such an abominable nature that he did not choose to print them. The portions printed, if accurate, prove Marlowe to have been a foulmouthed creature who, "in almost every company he cometh persuadeth men to Atheisme." At the At the age of 29 he met with a violent death. In the course of a brawl in connection with a courtesan, he was stabbed in the eye by a serving man, in a Deptford tavern. It was said that "hee even cursed and blasphemed to his last gasp and, together with his breath, an oath flew out of his mouth."

The lives of these intellectuals grow monotonous in their sameness. No balled has immortalised George Peele, but his exploits or what purport to be lie embalmed in the Merry iests of George Peele gentleman, sometime a student in Oxford, wherein is shewed the course of his life; how he lived: a man very well known in the citie of London and elsewhere.

Buy, reade and judge,

The price doe not grudge;

It will doe thee more pleasure
Than twice so much treasure.

This literary hogwash is not unlikely part fiction assuming some probable foundation of fact Peele was a dissolute and contemptible rogue. He had previously been figured on the stage in

similar colours in the pseudo-Shakespearean play The Puritan. Of his discreditable end Meres wrote, "As Anacreon died of the pot, so George Peele by the pox. Thomas Nash another Parnassian prematurely cropped at the early age of 34 - is recorded to have been so harum scarum that at the University of Cambridge the term "A verie Nash " became a byeword. An epitaph among the Sloane MSS states that he "never in his life paid shoemaker or tailor. " 1

The rising genius of Thomas Randolph promised great things, but "he indulged himself too much with those who sought and delighted in his company and was too early cut off in the 29th year of his age. (Dodsley vol. vi).

2

Of the later dramatists some were men of education and morality, but the majority seem to have been mere children of misfortune, constantly figuring as borrowers in Henslowe's Note book. John Day, the delightful author of Humour out of Breath, is described by Ben Jonson as "a base fellow, and a cc rogue. If we may believe some lines written by a gentleman of Lincolns Inn" on his running away and bilking his landlord, "he was of rather light principle. "3 Middleton is characterised by Ben Jonson "but a base fellow. " Of Tourneur we are almost completely ignorant. Nothing is known of the character of John Webster. In "an unfortunate extreme — i. e. they were both in jail Massinger and Field write to Henslowe entrea

as

I

2

Dict. National Biography. Vol. 40, p. 107.
Beaumont was dead before he reached thirty.

3 Biographica Dramatica. Vol. 1, p. 179.

1812.