Abstract:
Criticism of the drama of the Renaissance has yielded
an abundance of Marlovian scholarship, great and varied in
scope. Particularly, there has been an immense interest in
Marlowe's creation of the superhuman hero--the Tamburlaine
or the Faustus who so completely dominates the stage that
all other characters are assumed to be mere figureheads,
symbols, abstractions, or embodiments. It is partly because
of this interest in the overpowering hero that Marlowe's
women have been neglected by many critics. Allardyce Nicoll
makes a particularly sweeping statement when he claims that
the absence of the "feminine element ... mars the dramas
of Marlowe" and that "the consistent elimination of women"
in his works "proves in him a lack of sympathy with the whole
of life. I would maintain that the "feminine element" is
not absent in Marlowe, but rather too often slighted by
critics.
