SOURCE: Williams, Martin T. “The Temptations in Marlowe's Hero and Leander.” Modern Language Quarterly 16, no. 3 (September 1955): 226-31.

In the following essay, Williams interprets the Neptune passage of Hero and Leander.

One episode in Marlowe's partial redaction of Hero and Leander has perplexed, distressed, and offended readers and scholars. Their reactions seem justified. It is the incident, roughly covering lines 159 through 226 of the second sestiad, wherein Neptune issues his salacious and bewildering invitation for dalliance to Leander. Marlowe, it seems, was having a capricious and smutty jest, which is quite uncalled for and, what is worse, quite without any larger integration into his poem. The traditional arguments against the episode are excellently summed up by Professor L. C. Martin in his 1933 edition of the R. H. Chase Collected Works:

it is impossible not to sympathize with those who feel that on this occasion the principle of unity has not...