the reign of Edward the Sixth, but this can hardly be correct; and the conjecture of Mr. Ellis, who places his birth about 1562, carries with it an air of greater probability. He was of Benet College, Cambridge, where he took the degree of B. A. in 1583, and of M. A. 1587; and on leaving the university he became, like his great cotemporary Shakspeare, at once an actor and writer for the stage. So vague and uncertain are all the notices we have of Marlow, that a late ingenious writer in the Monthly Review[1] has endeavoured to show that Marlow and Shakspeare may have been one and the same person! This paradox is sustained by some very specious arguments, but there is quite sufficient cotemporary evidence of Marlow's existence to overthrow it altogether. Thus Robert Greene in his Groatsworth of Wit addresses him, "thou famous gracer of tragedians." Francis Meres praises him together with Sidney, Spenser, Shakspeare, Daniel, &c. for having "mightily
- ↑ See vol. Ixxxix. p. 361, &c. and vol. xciii. p. 61, &c.
