Thirst After Unrighteousness

                    Of Marlowe, Kyd, Greene, and Peele, the “University Wits” [1] who fused the academic and the popular drama, and by giving the latter a sense of literature and leaning to mould it to finer issues, gave us Shakespeare, only Marlowe can be treated here... Marlowe ranks amongst the greatest. It is not merely that historically he is the head and fount of the whole movement, that he changed blank verse, which had been a lumbering instrument before him, into something rich and ringing and rapid and made it the vehicle for the greatest English poetry after him. Historical relations apart, he is great in himself. More than any other English writer of any age, except Byron, he symbolizes the youth of his time; its hot-bloodedness, its lust after knowledge and power and life inspires all his pages. 

                    The teaching of Machiavelli, misunderstood for their own purposes by would-be imitators, furnished the reign of Elizabeth with the only political ideals it possessed. The simple brutalism of the creed, with means justified by ends and the unbridled self-regarding pursuit of power, attracted men for whom the Spanish monarchy and the struggle to overthrow it were the main factors and politics. Marlowe took it and turned it to his own uses. There is in his writings a lust of power, “a hunger and thirst after unrighteousness,” a glow of the imagination unhallowed by anything but its own energy which is in the spirit of the time. 

                    In Tamburlaine it is the power of conquest, stirred by and reflecting, as we have seen, the great deeds of his day. In Dr. Faustus it is the pride of will and eagerness of curiosity. Faustus is devoured by a tormenting desire to enlarge his knowledge to the utmost bounds of nature and art and to extend his power with his knowledge. His is the spirit of Renaissance scholarship heightened to a passionate excess. The play gleams with the pride of learning and a knowledge which learning brings, and with the nemesis that comes after it. “Oh! gentlemen! hear me with patience and tremble not at my speeches. Though my heart pant and quiver to remember that I have been a student here these thirty years; oh! I would I had never seen Wittemburg, never read book!” And after the agonizing struggle in which Faustus's soul is torn from him to hell, learning comes in at the quiet close. 

Yet, for he was a scholar once admired, 

For wondrous knowledge in our German Schools; 

We 'll give his mangled limbs due burial; 

And all the students, clothed in mourning black 

Shall wait upon his heavy funeral.

M. H. Mair

“The Drama”
English Literature, Modern, 1450-1939

Notes:

1. Coined in the 19th century by journalist and author, George Saintsbury: “In the first place, we have the group of university wits, the strenuous if not always wise band of professed men of letters, at the head of whom are Lyly, Marlowe, Greene, Peele, Lodge, Nash, and probably (for his connection with the universities is not certainly known) Kyd. In the second, we have the irregular band of outsiders, players and others, who felt themselves forced into literary and principally dramatic composition, who boast Shakespeare as their chief...”

Links:

•  Mair, G. H., English Literature, Modern, 1450-1939, Oxford University Press, 1911