Many of the critics who write on Marlowe feel compelled to pay tribute to the “mighty line,” perhaps even to rhapsodize upon it, and to note the new greatness that Marlowe brings to English blank verse; but mostly they fail to show explicitly Marlowe's achievement as a poet. There are only two essays that contribute materially to our understanding of the unrhymed iambic pentameter that alters into unshakable greatness in the hands of a cobbler's son from Canterbury: these essays were written by T. S. Eliot and C. F. Tucker Brooke. Both date from more than forty years ago, and both leave a great deal still to be said.

Eliot's statement is quite brief, and it abounds in those typical Eliotic pronouncements wherein the writer assumes, so infuriatingly, that the reader knows the exact nature of the unexpressed criteria that lie behind the given statement.

When Betti's Time of Vengeance was given its off-Broadway production, Harold Clurman wrote (The Nation, Jan. 2, 1960) that the central theme of the play is “evil as a means to satisfy a need for good of which the besmirched mortal does not seem capable.” This is true not only of this particular play but of all the “serious” plays Betti wrote. There is still, however, the task of clarifying the paradox contained in such a statement—a task which until now has been shirked by Betti's critics both in his native Italy and abroad.

The paradox is a faithful reflection of Betti's notion of life's absurdity, or “incongruity.“ In fact, he revealed his own awareness of this paradox and suggested that it stands at the core of his drama:

In the autumn of 1958, Lee Strasberg told the members of The Actors’ Studio that he was feeling worried and belligerent about the emphasis on individual excellence that seemed to have become the entire raison d'etre of the Studio, an emphasis which he considered to be taken at the expense of the concept of the ensemble. “We lose the sense,” he said, “of serving the theatre.” His worry, seen then or now, could be easily understood by the most casual observer of the American theatrical scene. His belligerence, then and now, can not be so easily understood, since it is not readily apparent to the naked—or should I say hungry?—eye.

Belligerence implies the will to change, and in the case of those who would lead American theatre, the will to do more than change a way of work. The word belongs to the vocabulary of war.

Marlowe wrote his plays before Shakespeare's masterpieces had been conceived; but we read him afterwards and in his successor's light. This causes many critical misapprehensions and theatrical mistakes. We stage Marlowe in a theatre accustomed to Shakespeare, with actors, directors, and designers who have all had experience of his plays: talents have been developed and techniques evolved for Shakespeare's dialogue in all its revolutionary subtlety, for Shakespeare's kind of dramatic action and characterization. A careful dissociation is necessary before reading and performing Marlowe for his own sake.

Marlowe had not been dead ten years before these difficulties arose. By the end of the century, Pistol in Henry IV, Part 2, was discharging his “high astounding terms,” which mocked the bragging language of Tamburlaine and other plays of that period.

Engaged as I am, at the moment of writing this article, in preparing to stage Edward II for the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, my thoughts are more immediately concerned with the problems that the texts of Marlowe's plays present to the actor than with those that they pose for the historian or the critic.

An actor wants to know from where and how he makes his entrance; where and how he is to make his exit. Confronted with the stage direction “Exeunt to the cave” or “Enter from the cave, Aeneas and Dido,” what the actor and actress want to know is where this cave is located on the stage, what sort of a cave it is, how wide the opening and how much head-room, whether it is equipped with a door or sliding panel, and so on.

Critics show more toleration than enthusiasm for Marlowe as a dramatic artist. They praise his thought, his poetry, his psychology, but they offer excuses for his stagecraft. This is a pity, for there is no need to excuse it. Marlowe handles his medium with imagination and subtlety.

The root of the difficulty lies in mistaking a drama of spectacle for a drama of character. Marlowe was writing in a period of transition, when an abstract theatre was fast becoming a narrative one, and the development entailed an important shift of emphasis. Narrative throws stress on the characters of men and the motives that lead to the actions portrayed, while the abstract world of the morality play uses the stage action as a projection of an inward and spiritual action of the soul. A drama in which action is image was changing to a drama in which action is fact.