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e else. However these are probably the same people who think Marlowe and Shakespeare are the same man. Even so, these scenes were unmatched in their word play and metre until Shakespeare. This play is timeless because its subject matter is still interest

ing today and because the force of Marlowe’s conviction cannot help but invoke emotions in even the most soulless of critics.

Possibly Marlowe’s greatest gift to English literature was his metre. Marlowe was the real creator of the most famous, most versatile and noblest of English measure, the unrhymed decasyllabic (ten syllables) line called blank verse. Blank verse or iambic

pentameter as it is known was first used twenty or so years before Marlowe, however it was intolerably monotonous. The metre comes from the Greek Iambic trimeter, which was a twelve-syllable line with six feet. The experimenters were perceptive enough to

see that the more slowly moving English language would require five feet instead of six. The result was such lifeless pieces as this from Gorboduc:

Your lasting age shall be their longer stay,

For cares of kings, that rule as you have ruled,

For public wealth and not for private joy,

Do waste man’s life, and hasten crooked age,

With furrowed face and with enfeebled limbs,

To draw on creeping death a swifter pace.

They two yet young shall bear the parted reign

With greater ease, than one, now old, alone,

Can wield the whole, for whom much harder is

With lessened strength the double weight to bear.

This piece is unbelievably tedious, and without a sensitive ear like Marlowe’s, blank verse would never have been the great measure that it is.

What Marlowe did was to revise the internal structure of the single line. In some lines he substituted an iamb (- / ) for a spondee (- – ), a tribrach (/ / / ) or a dactyl (- / / ) in certain feet, which made each line more interesting and versatile. Als

o, while having a few lines strictly conform to the norm, he created lines with four, three even two groups of sounds. By using these devices, Marlowe transformed blank verse from a stiff and monotonous to a varied and flexible metre, as can be seen in Fa

ustus’ invocation to Helen:

Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships?

And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?-

Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.-

The first line is regular, with five feet and five stresses. The second has the same number of stresses, but the grouping of the words is irregular. Whereas the third is completely irregular. It is Marlowe’s greatest gift to English literature that he ma

naged to develop a metre which gave the author more creative freedom than any other before or since.

Marlowe’s writing is reflective of the spirit of the Elizabethan age in a number of ways. His subject matter and characters in his plays often question the validity of the church. He has been criticised for being an atheist, for example he was accused of

blasphemy in his portrayal of Helen in Dr. Faustus She is seen as a goddess who has the power to cleanse Faustus’ soul, even though God cannot. She is more powerful than the virgin Mary, and the fact that Marlowe presents the proposition that God is inca

pable of redeeming Faustus’ soul farther aggravated the church. This new thinking about the church is part of the spirit of the Elizabethan age due to King Henry VIII’s reformation.

In many Elizabethan plays, the main character is a merchant of some sort, due to the rise in power of these middle class businessmen. This can be seen in many plays of Shakespeare, as well as Marlowe’s The Rich Jew of Malta. Also the protagonists in Mar

lowe’s plays are often similar to Everyman, particularly Dr. Faustus, except that these characters are individuals, and not mankind in general, in that the character learns something which is important to the audience as well. The Everyman plays were writ

ten shortly before Marlowe’s birth, and again this re-characterisation by Marlowe is a reflection of the spirit of the times in his works.

Lastly, the fact that Marlowe used iambic pentameter, as well as having drama as his writing style is representative of the Elizabethan age. Although these were contributions to English literature, Marlowe really set the trend for this age, and many cont

emporaries of his used these techniques. In that sense, one of Marlowe’s contributions to English literature was that he defined a lot of the aspects of Elizabethan literature. Marlowe’s revolutionary use of literature is both representative of the age, a

s well as a contribution to English literature.

Marlowe contributed greatly to English literature. His works are excellent on their own; though he also revitalised the tragedy as well as developing blank verse, one of the most beautiful, flexible and versatile of metres. His work is representative of

the spirit of the Elizabethan age in that Marlowe used drama as his chief form of writing, his subject matters were demonstrative of this age, for example the loss of belief in the church, and he wrote in iambic pentameter which became very popular before

the end of this age.

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