,
Spenser, sweet Spenser, I adopt thee here;
And merely of our love we do create thee
Earl of Gloucester and Lord Chamberlain.

_Spen_. My lord, here is a messenger from the barons,
Desires access unto your Majesty.

_Edw_. Admit him.

_Herald_. Long live King Edward, England's lawful lord!

_Edw_. So wish not they, I wis, that sent thee hither."

This, to be sure, does not read much like, for instance, Hotspur's
speech, beginning,

"O, then the earth shook to see the heavens on fire,"

nor is there any thing in Marlowe that does. In the passage quoted,
however, (and there are many more like it,) we have the rhymeless
ten-syllable iambic verse as the basis; but this is continually
diversified, so as to relieve the ear and keep it awake, by occasional
spondees, dibrachs, anapests, and amphibrachs, and by the frequent use
of trochees in all parts of the verse, but especially at the
beginning, and by a skilful shifting of the pause to any part of the
line. It thus combines the natural ease and variety of prose with the
general effect of metrical harmony, so that the hearing does not
surfeit nor tire. As to the general _poetic_ style of the performance,
the kindling energy of thought and language that often beats and
flashes along the sentences, there is much both in this and in
_Faustus_ to justify the fine enthusiasm of Drayton:

"Next, Marlowe, bathed in the Thespian springs,
Had in him those brave translunary things
That the first poets had: his raptures were
All air and fire, which made his verses clear;
For that fine madness still he did retain
Which rightly should possess a poet's brain."

Before leaving the subject, I must notice a remark by Charles
Lamb,--the dear, delightful Charley. "The reluctant pangs," says he,
"of abdicating royalty in Edward furnished hints which Shakespeare
scarce improved in his _Richard the Second_; and the death-scene of
Marlowe's king moves pity and terror beyond any scene, ancient or
modern, with which I am acquainted." Both the scenes in question have
indeed great merit, but this praise seems to me far beyond the mark.
Surely, there is more of genuine, pity-moving pathos in the single
speech of York,--"As in a theatre the eyes of men," etc.,--than in all
Marlowe's writings put together. And as to the moving of terror, there
is, to my mind, nothing in _Edward the Second_ that comes up to
_Faustus_; and there are