Peele and Greene wrote plays in the new manner: Marlowe, the
greatest name in the English drama, except those of Shakspeare and Ben
Jonson, gave to the world his _Tragical History of the Life and Death of
Doctor Faustus_, which many do not hesitate to compare favorably with
Goethe's great drama, and his _Rich Jew of Malta_, which contains the
portraiture of Barabas, second only to the Shylock of Shakspeare. Of
Marlowe a more special mention will be made.
PLAYWRIGHTS AND MORALS.--It was to the great advantage of the English
regular drama, that the men who wrote were almost in every case highly
educated in the classics, and thus able to avail themselves of the best
models. It is equally true that, owing to the religious condition of the
times, when Puritanism launched forth its diatribes against all
amusements, they were men in the opposition, and in most cases of
irregular lives. Men of the world, they took their characters from among
the persons with whom they associated; and so we find in their plays
traces of the history of the age, in the appropriation of classical forms,
in the references to religious and political parties, and in their
delineation of the morals, manners, and follies of the period: if the
drama of the present day owes to them its origin and nurture, it also
retains as an inheritance many of the faults and deformities from which in
a more refined period it is seeking to purge itself.
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