[Sidenote: MARLOWE'S DRAMAS]

The succeeding plays of Marlowe are all built on the same model; that is,
they are one-man plays, and the man is dominated by a passion for power.
_Doctor Faustus_, the most poetical of Marlowe's works, is a play
representing a scholar who hungers for more knowledge, especially the
knowledge of magic. In order to obtain it he makes a bargain with the
devil, selling his soul for twenty-four years of unlimited power and
pleasure. [Footnote: The story is the same as that of Goethe's
_Faust_. It was a favorite story, or rather collection of stories, of
the Middle Ages, and was first printed as the _History of Johann
Faust_ in Frankfort, in 1587. Marlowe's play was written, probably, in
the same year.] _The Jew of Malta_ deals with the lust for such power
as wealth gives, and the hero is the money-lender Barabas, a monster of
avarice and hate, who probably suggested to Shakespeare the character of
Shylock in _The Merchant of Venice_. The last play written by Marlowe
was _Edward II_, which dealt with a man who might have been powerful,
since he was a king, but who furnished a terrible example of weakness and
petty tyranny that ended miserably in a dungeon.

After writing these four plays with their extraordinary promise, Marlowe,
who led a wretched life, was stabbed in a tavern brawl. The splendid work
which he only began (for he died under thirty years of age) was immediately
taken up by the greatest of all dramatists, Shakespeare.

* * * * *

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616)

"The name of Shakespeare is the greatest in all literature. No man