tten after the
"Massacre" and certainly not published in his lifetime. It was entered
at Stationer's Hall in July, 1593, a little more than a month after
Marlowe's death. But here stands the "Contention" with a fixed date,
proved to have been in existence "in or close upon the first half of
the decade commencing in 1585," and the admission of all scholars that
it preceded Marlowe's "Edward II." If, therefore, Marlowe wrote one or
both parts of the "Contention," the extravagant assumption must be made
"that his mind was so thoroughly disciplined at the period when he
produced 'Tamburlaine,' 'Faustus' and the 'Jew of Malta' that he was
able to lay aside every element, whether of thought or expression, by
which those plays are characterized, adopt essentially different
principles for the dramatic conduct of a story, copy his characters from
living and breathing models of actual men; come down from his pomp and
extravagance of language, not to reject poetry, but to ally poetry with
familiar and natural thoughts; and delineate crime not with the glaring
and fantastic pencil that makes demons spout forth fire and blood ...
but with a severe portraiture of men who walk in broad daylight upon the
common earth, rendering the ordinary passions of their fellows,--pride,
and envy, and ambition, and revenge,--most fearful, from their alliance
with stupendous intellect and unconquerable energy. This was what
Marlowe must have done before he could have conducted a single sustained
scene of either part of the 'Contention'; before he could have depicted
the fierce hatreds of Beaufort and Gloster, the never-subdued ambition
of Margaret and York, the patient suffering, amidst taunting friends and
reviling enemies, of Henry, and, above all, the courage, the activity,
the tenacity, the self-possession, the intellectual supremacy and the
passionless ferocity of Richard."

Does it need more to show that Marlowe was not the author of the
"Contention"? Here is the proof, and it does not rest upon conjecture,
or inference from disputed facts, but upon records that have survived
the waste of three centuries. The "First Part of the Contention" was
printed by Thomas Creed, for Thomas Millington, in 1594; "The True
Tragedy of Richard," the old name of the "Second Part of the
Contention," by "P. S." for Thomas Millington, in 1595. The title page
gives the name of no author for either play, and it is claimed by
eminent authority that both were piratic