All the force and humour
alike of character and situation belong to Shakespeare's eclipsed and
forlorn precursor; he has added nothing; he has tempered and enriched
everything. That the luckless author of the first sketch is like to
remain a man as nameless as the deed of the witches in _Macbeth_, unless
some chance or caprice of accident should suddenly flash favouring light
on his now impersonal and indiscoverable individuality, seems clear
enough when we take into account the double and final disproof of his
imaginary identity with Marlowe, which Mr. Dyce has put forward with such
unanswerable certitude. He is a clumsy and coarse-fingered plagiarist
from that poet, and his stolen jewels of expression look so grossly out
of place in the homely setting of his usual style that they seem
transmuted from real to sham. On the other hand, he is of all the Pre-
Shakespeareans known to us incomparably the truest, the richest, the most
powerful and original humourist; one indeed without a second on that
ground, for "the rest are nowhere." Now Marlowe, it need scarcely be
once again reiterated, was as certainly one of the least and worst among
jesters as he was one of the best and greatest among poets.
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