Charles Lamb says: "The growing horrors of Faustus are awfully marked by the hours and half-hours which expire and bring him nearer and nearer to the enactment of his dire compact.

It is indeed an agony and bloody sweat." _Edward II._ presents in the assassination scene wonderful power and pathos, and is regarded by Hazlitt as his best play.
Marlowe is the author of the pleasant madrigal, called by Izaak Walton "that smooth song": Come live with me and be my love.
The playwright, who had led a wild life, came to his end in a tavern brawl: he had endeavored to use his dagger upon one of the waiters, who turned it upon him, and gave him a wound in the head of which he died, in 1593.
His talents were of a higher order than those of his contemporaries; he was next to Shakspeare in power, and was called by Phillips "a second Shakspeare." OTHER DRAMATIC WRITERS BEFORE SHAKSPEARE.
Thomas Lodge, 1556-1625: educated at Oxford.

Wrote _The Wounds of Civil-War_, and other tragedies.

Rosalynd, a novel, from which Shakspeare drew in his _As You Like It_.

He translated _Josephus_ and _Seneca_.
Thomas Kyd, died about 1600: _The Spanish Tragedy, or, Hieronymo is Mad Again_.