©Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia

INTRODUCTION
on the First, was such as to place its author, though
~e can hardly have been known except as a playwright,
III the forefront of those who commanded the attention
of the London public. The extraordinary popularity
of Tamburlaine is attested by the concurrent evidence
o~ parodistic quotation and of imitation by a would-be
rIval (Greene in Alphonsus, King of Arragon), not to
speak of the demand for a Second Part. Nor was the
mark which it made in our literature evanescent;
'it initiated,' says Mr. Churton Collins, 'the history
?f our rOmantic drama'; and the solid strength of
Its ve:sification was symbolical of a general earnestness
and Vigour of workmanship sufficient at once to elevate
the form of poetry of which it was the first great
example on our stage. The Second Part was worthy
of the first; and though the character of Zenocratc,
as has been well said, showed that the young poet' had
not yet learned to depict a woman', it was the occasion
Of. SOme beautiful and impassioned verse. And now,
WIth, this sudden triumph, came Marlowe's own time
of tl'!a~ . ~e great times of which an echo made ltse!f
~e~rd III his second play, Doctor Faustu,s, were at thell'
eIght; and the life of the theatre, like that of the
:h 0rld it mirrored, was being lived at high pressure. And
yere were few anchorages on the coast of Bohemia.
Met we should be slow in fOlmding conclusions as to
. a~lowe's ways of life in London on the two isolated
fCldents of which, apart from the recorded pertormances
of his plays, a record has alone come down
p ,us. In May, 1593, he was summoned before tbe
hi fJvy COlmcil; and in the same month he met with
S