SOURCE: Morris, Brian. “Comic Method in Marlowe's Hero and Leander.” In Christopher Marlowe, edited by Brian Morris, pp. 115-31. London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1968.

In the following essay, Morris analyzes Marlowe's comic manner in Hero and Leander.

Marlowe's Hero and Leander is a great comic fragment. Professor Leech has analysed some parts of it and claimed it as a ‘major comic poem’.¹ ‘Fragment’ seems to me more appropriate than ‘poem’, but I agree with Leech's verdict, and welcome its implications. It supposes a comprehensive comic vision on Marlowe's part, which he did not (perhaps could not) impose on the whole story; it suggests an attitude to human love which is neither the celebration of rarified passion nor the simple enjoyment of the flesh; it asks us to believe that Marlowe deliberately denied the lovers what his exemplars, Ovid and Musaeus,² had considered their true decorum. All three implications can...