ABSTRACT
Christopher Marlowe's career as a dramatist was very brief, but it was also very varied, and even on the basis of the seven plays we can attribute to him with certainty it is possible to trace a development not only in dramatic technique but also in philosophical scope. It is with the second of these that I wish to deal, for Marlowe's great achievement lay in the development of English tragedy, and tragedy depends upon ethical and metaphysical assumptions which the dramatist must invite his audience to share with him, Marlowe, perhaps more surely than any of his contemporaries, mirrored in his plays his own changing vision of man's place in the universe; thus at some point in his intellectual progression tragedy became possible. Certainly it could never have sprung from the view of the world reflected in his earliest plays. Dido Queen of Carthage falls far short of tragedy in spite of the death of its heroine, and if we are to view Tamburlaine in a "tragicke glasse," as the prologue invites us to do, this glass reveals only pathos in the deaths of those lesser figures who must be destroyed to prepare the path of the conquering superman with whom Marlowe is primarily concerned. Marlowe came slowly to tragedy; only when he came to recognize the frailty and limitation of humanity did this mode of drama become possible for him.
