John Vytal
A Tale of the Lost Colony
9781465632463
118 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
It is not to yesterday that we would take you now, but to a day before innumerable yesterdays, across the dead sea of Time to a haven mutable yet immortal. For the Elizabethan era is essentially of the quick, although its dead have lain entombed for centuries. The world of that renascent period, alight with the spontaneous fire of intellectual and passionate life, shines through the space of ages as though then, for the first time, it had been cast off from a pregnant sun. Overcoming the remoteness of the epoch by an appreciation of this vivid reality, we pause at the outset near the great south gate of London Bridge as it stood three centuries ago. On a certain April afternoon the massive stones and harsh outlines served to heighten by contrast the effect of lithe grace and nonchalance apparent in the figure of a young man, who, leaning lightly against the barbacan, presented a memorable picture of idleness and ease. Yet a fleeting expression in the youthful face belied the indolence of attitude. For in more ways than one “Kind Kyt Marlowe” resembled the spring-tide, whose tokens of approach he intuitively recognized. His eyes, usually soft and slumberous with the light of dreams, now and again shone brilliant like black diamonds. With all his careless incontinence, he possessed a latent power, a deep, indeterminable force, portending broad hot days and nights of storm. His face, mobile dark and passionate, showed an almost alarming intensity. His brow, lofty but not massive, was surmounted by silken hair so black as to appear almost purple in the sunlight. He wore no beard, a small mustache adding to the refinement of his features, save for the fulness of his lips, which it could not hide. Taken as a whole, his face was the face of a man who had no common destiny; of a man who would drain the cup and leave no dregs, be the draught life-elixir or poison; of a man, in short, who might all but transcend his humanity by the fulness of life within him, or be suffocated and overwhelmed by the very superabundance of that life. For there are some seeming to be born with a double share of vitality, a portion far greater than was meant for man; and when this vitality, maturing, begins its re-creation, threatening all feebler forms with a new revolutionary condition, then the error is apparently discovered and the entire share of life recalled. Christopher Marlowe was one of these men, but as he leaned against the Southwark Gate, that afternoon in early life, looking up the High Street through the gathering dusk, his eyes showed little more than the cheerful glow of a wood-fire, the mere hint of an unrestrainable flame underlying their expression. Soon, however, the poet’s reverie was broken. The afternoon’s bear-baiting being over, and Southwark’s amphitheatre empty of its throngs, a number of the earliest to leave were now upon the High Street, known then as Long Southwark. Seeing them approaching him on their way to London, Marlowe turned and walked in the same direction. At the sign of “The Three Bibles” books and broadsides were for sale. It was this small, antiquated den on London Bridge that the author sought with the unconscious step of one who follows a familiar way. He had but just entered the low-studded, gloomy shop, and greeted Paul Merfin, its owner, when the scabbard of a sword clanked on the threshold, and a man of great stature, accoutred as a soldier, darkened the doorway. With no prelude of salutation, the new-comer demanded of Merfin, in a voice of anxiety, “Tell me, hast seen—?” Then for the first time he became aware of Marlowe’s presence, and, lowering his heavy tones to a whisper, finished his query in the bookseller’s ear.
