Moralities and Marlowe

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 477, 13 August 1948, Page 20

Moralities and Marlowe

‘HE initial tale | in the History of the Theatre series from 4YA, on Greek drama, was followed by a discussion of the. medieval and Elizabethan plays by D. Grey, Lecturer in Philosophy | at Otago University. In this talk the speaker confined himself to playwrights

other than Shakespeare, who, we were told; would be dealt with in our next. Even without Shakespeare, the scope of the subject was enormous, and the speaker made the fullest use of his opportunities, giving us, together with the historical background, a taste of the Morality plays and a generous slice of Marlowe. The gap between the Greeks and Marlowe didn’t seem so amazing as the gap between the Moralities and Marlowe; an analogy exists, possibly, in painting, if we contrast an Italian primitive with something by Raphael-or in music, if a Gregorian chant be contrasted with a madrigal. In these later examples, whether of painting, poetry, or music, a flower is seen in bloom whose full beauty could scarcely have been predicted by observation only of the bud. The illustra‘tions to this talk, I thought, were not quite as effective as those to Greek drama in the preceding programme, In

the examples from the early plays’ such as the Moralities, the extracts were just right-but Marlowe? Unfortunately Dr. Faustus has been broadcast several times recently, as produced by the BBC, and after the agony of the final speech in the World Theatre presentation, any other rendering of the scene must come as an anti-climax.