SCENE III.--_A wood_. BENVOLIO, MARTINO _and_ FREDERICK.

MARTINO: Nay, sweet Benvolio, let us sway thy thoughts From this attempt against the conjurer.

BENVOLIO: Away! You love me not, to urge me thus. Shall I let slip so great an injury, When every servile groom jests at my wrongs, And in their rustic gambols proudly say, "Benvolio's head was graced with horns to-day?" If you will aid me in this enterprise, Then draw your weapons and be resolute. If not, depart; here will Benvolio die, But Faustus' death shall quit my infamy.

FREDERICK: Nay, we will stay with thee, betide what may, And kill that doctor, if he comes this way. Close, close! The conjurer is at hand, And all alone comes walking in his gown. Be ready, then, and strike the peasant down.

BENVOLIO: Mine be that honour, then. Now, sword, strike home! For horns he gave, I'll have his head anon!

[_Enter_ FAUSTUS.

No words; this blow ends all. Hell take his soul! His body thus must fall.

[BENVOLIO _stabs_ FAUSTUS, _who falls_; BENVOLIO _cuts off his head_.

FREDERICK: Was this that stern aspect, that awful frown Made the grim monarchs of infernal spirits Tremble and quake at his commanding charms?

MARTINO: Was this that damnéd head, whose art conspired Benvolio's shame before the emperor?

BENVOLIO: Aye, that's the head, and there the body lies. Justly rewarded for his villainies. [Faustus _rises_. Zounds, the devil's alive again!

FREDERICK: Give him his head, for God's sake!

FAUSTUS: Nay, keep it; Faustus will have heads and hands, Aye, all your hearts, to recompense this deed. Then, wherefore do I dally my revenge? Asteroth! Belimoth! Mephistophilis!

[_Enter_ MEPHISTOPHILIS, _and other_ DEVILS.

Go, horse these traitors on your fiery backs, And mount aloft with them as high as Heaven; Thence pitch them headlong to the lowest hell. Yet stay, the world shall see their misery, And hell shall after plague their treachery. Go, Belimoth, and take this caitiff hence, And hurl him in some lake of mud and dirt; Take thou this other, drag him through the woods, Amongst the pricking thorns and sharpest briars; Whilst with my gentle Mephistophilis This traitor flies unto some steepy rock That rolling down may break the villain's bones. Fly hence! Dispatch my charge immediately!

FREDERICK: He must needs go, that the devil drives.

[_Exeunt_ DEVILS _with their victims_.

FOOTNOTES:

[X]: Christopher Marlowe was born at Canterbury in February, 1564, the year of Shakespeare's birth. From the King's School he went to Cambridge, at Corpus, and took his degree in 1583. For the next ten years, he lived in London; a tavern brawl ended his career on June 1, 1593. During those ten years, when Greene and Nashe and Peele were beginning to shape the nascent drama, and Shakespeare was serving his apprenticeship, most of the young authors were living wild enough lives, and none, according to tradition, wilder than Kit Marlowe; who, nevertheless, was doing mightier work, work more pregnant with promise than any of them, and infinitely greater in achievement; for Shakespeare's tragedies were still to come. That "Tamburlaine the Great," the first play of a lad of twenty-three, should have been crude and bombastic is not surprising; that "The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus" should have been produced by an author aged probably less than twenty-five is amazing. The story is traditional; two hundred years after Marlowe, Goethe gave it its most familiar setting (see Vol. XVI, p. 362). But although some part of Marlowe's play is grotesque, there is no epithet which can fitly characterise its greatest scenes except "tremendous." What may not that tavern brawl have cost the world!