Home. That clever, versatile, and energetic
writer never went so far out of his depth or floundered so pitifully in
such perilous waters as when he ventured to put verses of his own into
the mouth of Christopher Marlowe. These errors we must all hope to see
rectified in a second issue of the text: and meantime we can but welcome
with all possible gratitude and applause the magnificent series of old
plays by unknown writers which we owe to the keen research and the fine
appreciation of Marlowe's latest editor. Of these I may find some future
occasion to speak: my present business is with the admirable poet who
has been promoted to the second place in Mr. Bullen's collection of the
English dramatists.
The selection of Middleton for so distinguished a place of honor may
probably not approve itself to the judgment of all experts in dramatic
literature. Charles Lamb, as they will all remember, would have advised
the editor "to begin with the collected plays of Heywood": which as yet,
like the plays of Dekker and of Chapman, remain unedited in any serious
or scholarly sense of the term. The existing reprints merely reproduce,
without adequate elucidation or correction, the corrupt and chaotic text
of the worst early editions: while Middleton has for upward of half a
century enjoyed the privilege denied to men who are usually accounted
his equals if not his superiors in poetic if not in dramatic genius.
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