SOURCE: Miller, Paul D. “A Function of Myth in Marlowe's Hero and Leander.” Studies in Philology 50, no. 2 (April 1953): 158-67.

[In the following essay, Miller considers the relevance of the mythological elements in Hero and Leander.]

Christopher Marlowe's poetic fragment, Hero and Leander, has received high praise from the time of its composition to the present. Douglas Bush passes judgment on the poem and summarizes its history in this fashion:

All the best qualities of the Italianate Ovidian tradition are embodied, and transcended, in Hero and Leander It is equally true that the poem exhibits in high relief all the vices of the tradition. Yet it remains for us the most beautiful short narrative poem of its age, and for Marlowe's contemporaries and followers the causes of our partial dissatisfaction did not exist. It was immensely admired before and after its formal publication, and was enthusiastically quoted and plagiarized for two generations.¹

Una Ellis-Fermor accords the poem equally high praise:

[Almost all] that is beautiful in the imagery of the early plays returns in Hero and Leander with an added gravity of form, a firmness and maturity of moulding, that render it the highest work of his invention, and make the aspirations of Tamburlaine appear frenzied and forlorn.²

Yet despite their high praise of the poem, Marlowe's critics have usually regarded Hero and Leander merely as an unreflective hymn to sensuous beauty, as a poem of escape that implicitly denies the unpleasant realities of life by ignoring them.³ Bush remarks in this regard,

… Hero and Leander are not star-crossed lovers; the poem in its total effect is an unclouded celebration of youthful passion and fullness of physical life.⁴

Ellis-Fermor echoes Bush's belief that the poem is unblushingly optimistic,

… the poet of Hero and Leander does not “look before and after,” much less does he “pine for what is not.” There are no tears in his joy and his song is sweet without the aid of hinted sadness. Beauty is enough, and the love of beauty is neither an instinct in conflict with moral preoccupations and dark, obscure fears, nor a poignant devotion to a threatened and possibly doomed cause … the sunlight is unbroken; no northern twilight of the gods casts its shadow over the warm serenity of this mood.⁵

It may at once be granted that love and beauty are major issues in the poem. But it must further be insisted—what Bush and Ellis-Fermor deny—that the twin jewels of love and beauty shine with such breath-taking beauty chiefly because they are consistently set against the darkly contrasting foil of fate. Throughout the poem, Fate whispers persistently of Hero and Leander's doom. And it is Fate's “winged chariot” that makes their flight of love as briefly and intensely brilliant as a sparrow's passage through a brightly lighted mead hall into the darkness beyond.

In cherishing beauty and love apart from Fate, their proper foil in Hero and Leander, critics have lost sight of the poem's underlying unity. Consequently they have found only irrelevancy in the poem's abundant mythological content, particularly in its long account (I, ll. 385-484)⁶ of Mercury's intrigue with a country maid.⁷ Frederick S. Boas, for example, writes of this passage:

Influenced in part by Ovid, Marlowe crowds his canvas with such elaborate extraneous detail from the classical Pantheon that his hero and heroine become often obscured. This is flagrantly so in the last hundred lines of Sestiad I where quite irrelevantly Marlowe turns aside to tell a tale of Mercury, Jove, Cupid, and the Destinies. …⁸

The sense of Bush's comment on this passage is almost identical with that of Boas:

A hundred lines are occupied with a somewhat incoherent tale of Mercury, Cupid, and the Destinies; it is quite irrelevant, but furnishes occasion for more sensuousness.⁹

Yet does it not appear odd that Marlowe, who reveals such a rigid pattern elsewhere in the fragment, should in one section break away from his plan to invent an irrelevant myth one hundred lines in length?¹⁰ Surely there is evidence in his description of the lovers, for example, that Marlowe was following a strict plan of composition in Hero and Leander. To establish a clear structural parallel, he successively describes the hair, celestial paramours, outward appearance and surpassing beauty, first of Hero, then of Leander. He reveals parallel structure in details as well as in outline. Cupid, Marlowe observes, is reported to have fallen in love with Hero; in a parallel passage, Leander, it is revealed, wins the barbarous Thracian soldier's love. Marlowe shows sound judgment and a sense of proportion in these descriptions. Because she reflects the perfect beauty of Venus, the poet fittingly describes Hero's appearance more completely than Leander's. Small wonder Ellis-Fermor is impressed by the poem's “gravity of form,” its “firmness and maturity of moulding.”¹¹ It is of course conceivable, but is it probable that a poet who reveals such strict adherence to plan elsewhere in his poem would fall into a hundred-line irrelevancy merely because he loves Ovid to excess or because he revels in sensuousness?

Continuing to ponder the judgment of Boas and Bush, one may also be puzzled that this incident in the lives of the gods should be included irrelevantly, when in his other writings Marlowe introduces the gods purposefully. In The Tragedy of Dido, Hermes has the function of foreshadowing the fates of men (V, I, 1459-62).¹² In the same drama Cupid represents the inexplicable but irresistible force of love:

Now Cupid cause the Carthaginian Queene,
To be inamourd of thy brothers lookes …

(III, I, 635-36)

And as Ellis-Fermor points out regarding Tamburlaine:

‘Jove,’ ‘Jupiter,’ ‘the gods,’ ‘heaven,’ appear alternately as mild euphemisms for the ideas the modern world conveys—equally evasively—under terms like Providence.¹³

If Marlowe's general practice makes it doubtful that he would sacrifice relevance to his sensuous love of myth, or functional to purely ornamental deities, then it may be well to look deeper for the purpose of the passage in question.

It may, in fact, be argued that the Mercury incident, whether or not it has a clear function in the poem, has some relevance to Marlowe's fragment. Mercury's courtship of a country maid, with its unhappy consequences, is significantly similar to Leander's courtship of Hero. Both pairs of lovers are alike in their personal characteristics. Both courtships are perilous affairs, and both, as it appears, end unhappily.

The two sets of lovers have similar talents and attributes. Both Mercury, the god of eloquence, and Leander, a sophister of no mean skill, irresistibly court their ladies with “speeches full of pleasure and delight.”¹⁴ Both Mercury's country maid and Hero are noted for innocence, but innocence undivorced from pride in their seductive charm. Marlowe has mixed reactions to the country maid:

Her mind pure, and her tongue untaught to gloze;
Yet proud she was, for lofty pride that dwells
In towered courts is oft in shepherds' cells …

(I, ll. 392-94)

He praises her innocence, yet censures her pride. Hero's innocence extends to her finger-tips. She has hands

… so pure, so innocent, nay such
As might have made heaven stoop to have a touch …

(I, ll. 365-66)

Her scorn, a mark of pride similar to the country maid's, is kindled by a host of lovers' fires (I, ll. 122-23).

Both maidens make their lovers undergo fearful tests of love. Just as Mercury gets stiff resistance from the country maid on their first encounter in the grass, so Leander finds that Hero will not yield her virginity on their first meeting in the tower. In order to win perfect favor, “mad Leander” must tempt the raging Hellespont, and Mercury must dare to steal Jove's nectar. Not satisfied with thievery, his usual crime, Mercury tries to get revenge on Jove for punishing him. Leander runs a double risk also; even before swimming the Hellespont, he invites Venus' displeasure by courting her sacred nun. And Hero, coyly accepting her lover's attentions, shares his risk. The country maid, whose desire for nectar reveals her proud aspiration to immortality or even godhead, must take the risk of all mortals who seek or presume equality with the gods. Witness the punishments of those heinous sinners against the gods, Ixion, Tantalus, Sisyphus and Peleus, all appropriately and significantly alluded to in Hero and Leander.

In both affairs the fruition of love is followed by misfortune. Although Mercury apparently wins his love's favor by giving her Jove's nectar, his success is short-lived. Jove is soon restored to his rightful place, and Mercury, in the rôle of Learning, is afflicted with poverty. Moreover, Marlowe adds, had it not been for Learning's special immunity from Fate's decrees, Mercury would have suffered a much severer punishment for his lèse-majesté. Leander's love has a development and implied consequence similar to Mercury's. Cupid attempts to assist Leander as he assisted Mercury. Leander succeeds in swimming the Hellespont, and the two lovers enjoy at least one perfect union. At this point Marlowe's fragment ends. But it is apparent that Marlowe meant Leander's love affair to end as unhappily as Mercury's. Its disastrous end is foreshadowed from the beginning,

On this feast day, oh, cursed day and hour!
Went Hero through Sestos, from her tower
To Venus' temple, where unhappily,
As after chanced, they did each other spy.

(I, ll. 131-34)

Even in the first line of Hero and Leander, where Marlowe reveals that the Hellespont is “guilty of true love's blood,” there is a portent of disaster.

So many striking correspondences between the Mercury episode and the love of Hero and Leander can scarcely be fortuitous. The mythological incident, regardless of its origin or significance, surely bears some relation to the remainder of the fragment.

But may not the Mercury incident merely parallel the human relationship without illuminating it? These six lines from the passage in question deny this possibility:

Still vowed he love, she wanting no excuse
To feed him with delays, as women use,
Or thirsting after immortality—
All women are ambitious naturally—
Imposed upon her lover such a task
As he ought not perform, nor yet she ask [italics mine].

(I, ll. 425-30)

Here Marlowe makes absolute condemnation of the country maid's request for, and Mercury's consent to, upheaval of the divine order. The country maid would exercise a god's prerogative by drinking Jove's nectar. Mercury, by acceding to her request, makes himself a party to her crime. Rebellious against the just punishment accorded this crime, Mercury incurs even greater guilt by taking revenge on Jove and temporarily destroying his order. Here is the woeful spectacle of a criminal acting as judge! In re-establishing his order, it is fitting that Jove should punish Mercury severely. And he does so, as already recounted.

In view of the striking relationship between Mercury's love affair and the love of Hero and Leander, one is tempted to ask whether Marlowe's criticism of Mercury and his lover may not apply with equal justice to Hero and Leander.

Surely Hero and Leander's offenses to the gods rival Mercury's treason to Jove. Why should these lovers not be similarly culpable? To appreciate fully the enormity of their offense, one must realize that Hero, before she yields to Leander, is entirely devoted to Venus. She plays daily with Venus' swans and sparrows, she worships in Venus' church and does Venus sacrifice. Even Hero's garments express her devotion to the goddess. They celebrate the goddess' love of Adonis. Marlowe presents a vivid portrait of Venus' nun. (Green, it should be remarked, is Venus' own color.)¹⁵

Her wide sleeves green, and bordered with a grove
Where Venus in her naked glory strove
To please the careful and disdainful eyes
Of proud Adonis, that before her lies …

(I, ll. 11-14)

She also wears the sacred sparrows of Venus on her buskins (I, ll. 31-33). Even in small details of dress she is faithful to Venus.

Hero has progressed so far in devotion that even in appearance she now so resembles Venus that Cupid himself often mistakes Hero for his mother. A final mark of dedication is her vow of chastity to the goddess, a vow symbolized by the sacred ring she wears.¹⁶

Is it not monstrous that Leander should pay court to such a “nun” as this, bound by all that is sacred to keep her vow of chastity to Venus? How should he dare to utter such blasphemies as this, even in the temple of the goddess he profanes?

This sacrifice, whose sweet perfume descending
From Venus' altar to your footsteps bending,
Doth testify that you exceed her far,
To whom you offer, and whose nun you are.

(I, ll. 209-12)

Not content to pay court to Hero, and to win her heart even in the goddess' temple, Leander must flaunt her ring, now a symbol of her violated chastity (II, ll. 108-10).

The offense of Hero is even greater. She consents by silence to his blasphemy against her goddess, and encourages Leander's attentions. Then, in a supreme ironic manifestation of her guilt, Hero, who so lately sacrificed doves to Venus, offers herself as a sacrifice to Leander,

To slake his anger if he were displeased,
Oh, what god would not therewith be appeased?

(II, ll. 49-50)

It is little wonder that Marlowe calls her yielding “treason” (II, l. 293), or that she is ashamed of her broken vow:

He asked, she gave, and nothing was denied. …
Yet she this rashness suddenly repented,
And turned aside, and to herself lamented,
As if her name and honor had been wronged
By being possessed of him for whom she longed …

(II, ll. 25-36)

As implied earlier in the paper, Leander's offense is not merely against Venus. By swimming the Hellespont without placating Neptune, its special deity, and by rejecting the sea god's love, Leander further invites divine displeasure. Neptune has ordained permanent division between Abydos and Sestos,

On Hellespont, guilty of true love's blood,
In view and opposite, two cities stood,
Sea-borderers, disjoined by Neptune's might …

(I, ll. 1-3)

Can any mortal flout this decree with impunity? Undeterred by fear of Neptune's judgment, Leander leaps boldly into the sea. And Leander is a peculiarly fortunate mortal; the god actually falls in love with him (II, ll. 179-91) and admits the fact. But Leander, as with a yawn, rudely interrupts the god's roundabout confession of love, and wishes himself in Hero's arms,

                    Ere half this tale was done,
“Ay me,” Leander cried, “th' enamored sun,
That now should shine on Thetis' glassy bower,
Descends upon my radiant Hero's tower.
Oh, that these tardy arms of mine were wings!”

(II, ll. 201-5)

The god is justly angry (II, ll. 207-8), but soon, falsely thinking himself beloved of the youth, forgives Leander. Then, while Neptune is seeking gifts from the ocean for the ungrateful youth, Leander abuses the god's trust and generosity by passing illicitly through his realm to the shore. Just as he commits the sacrilege of courting Hero in her goddess' church, so Leander takes profane advantage of Neptune's trusting love to speed to Hero's tower. Had Marlowe concluded the poem, it appears likely that he would have made Neptune, angered beyond endurance at Leander's repeated crossing of the sea and rejection of divine love, join Venus in taking mortal revenge on the youth. Thus Hellespont, Neptune's sacred demesne and the agent of his revenge, would become figuratively responsible for the spilling of “true love's blood” (I, 1).

Hero and Leander, then, like Mercury and the country maid, have rebelled against divine authority. Because they are subject to the same order, and guilty of similar offenses, Marlowe's disapproval must apply to Hero and Leander as well as to the other set of lovers. Death is the just punishment of these young offenders against the gods.¹⁷

And paradoxically, Marlowe sympathizes with Hero and Leander even as he condemns them. They are wrong to flout divine authority. But since their love is decreed by Fate

(It lies not in our power to love or hate,
For will in us is over-ruled by fate.)

(I, 167-68)

and since by loving one another they necessarily offend the gods, Marlowe is moved by pity for them, as his always tender treatment of their love reveals.

It cannot be true that man, ruled by fate, is responsible for his actions. And yet, sub specie aeternitatis it is true, as the myth implies. This is the cruel and baffling reality presented by Marlowe in Hero and Leander. What Ellis-Fermor writes in her summary of Faustus applies also to Hero and Leander. “For man's career, free though it appear, is only that of an animal in a trap, the conclusion prearranged.”¹⁸

The Mercury incident, vital to this interpretation of the poem, shows Marlowe's final acceptance of divine justice (harsh though it seems), and greatly enriches the meaning of Hero and Leander, while if this mythological incident is denied its function, the poem appears to be little more than a brilliant verse description of sensuous love.

Notes

1. Douglas Bush, Mythology and the Renaissance Tradition in English Poetry (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1932), p. 124.

2. Una Ellis-Fermor, Christopher Marlowe (London: Methuen and Company, 1927), p. 124.

3. Tucker Brooke's criticism of the poem is an exception, for it insists, not too convincingly, that Hero and Leander's love is chaste and that Marlowe's treatment of their love is pure. See Charles Frederick Tucker Brooke, Essays on Shakespeare and Other Elizabethans (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948), pp. 195-96.

4. Bush, op. cit., p. 125.

5. Ellis-Fermor, op. cit., pp. 123-24.

6. Line references to Hero and Leander are from Roy Lamson and Hallett Smith (eds.), The Golden Hind (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1942), pp. 170-90.

7. See also L. C. Martin (ed.), The Works and Life of Christopher Marlowe (London: Methuen and Co., 1931), IV, p. 7.

8. Frederick S. Boas, Christopher Marlowe (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1940), p. 227.

9. Bush, op. cit., p. 131. Bush assumes, somewhat dubiously, that Marlowe frequently introduces purely ornamental imagery in Hero and Leander. For convincing expression of a view generally opposed to Bush, see Hereward T. Price, “Function of Imagery in Venus and Adonis,” Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters, XXXI (1945), 275-97. Price insists that the imagery of such Renaissance poems as “Venus and Adonis” is not merely ornamental, but consistently functional in terms of “a common centre of reference.” For a less clear but extremely thought-provoking statement of a similar view, see Rosamond Tuve, Elizabethan and Metaphysical Imagery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947), pp. 251-80.

10. Except for just a hint of this incident in Ovid, Metamorphoses, II, 708 sqq., the story appears to be of Marlowe's invention. See George Sandy's Ovid's Metamorphosis (Oxford, 1632), p. 77. “Mercury is in love with Herse, solicites her sister Aglauros for accesse: shee demands a masse of Gold. …”

11. Ellis-Fermor, op. cit., p. 124.

12. All line references except those to Hero and Leander are to C. F. Tucker Brooke (ed.), The Works of Christopher Marlowe (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1910).

13. Ellis-Fermor, op. cit., p. 32.

14. See Vincenzo Cartari, The Fountaine of Ancient Fiction, trans. Richard Linche (London, 1599), p. 119. Mercury “sometimes was taken to be the god and patron of gaine and profit, sometime of eloquence, and sometime also of theft, subtiltie, and deceit.” In Marlowe's myth, the god is eloquent in courtship, steals from Jove, undertakes a subtle revenge on the superior deity, and deceives even the Destinies. But he appears not to be represented in Marlowe's myth as the god of gain or profit.

15. Frederic Portal, Des Couleurs Symboliques (Paris: Treuttel et Wurtz, 1837), p. 188.

16. The reference in the original story of Musaeus is probably not to the “vulgar Venus,” daughter of Jupiter and Dione, but to the daughter of Coelus, celestial Venus, a Syrian goddess renowned for her purity. It is quite in order that Hero should make a vow of chastity to such a goddess. Marlowe apparently confuses the two Venuses. The goddess to whom Hero takes her oath seems chaste indeed, yet on the floor of Venus' temple, “heady riots, incest, rapes” are portrayed. Such scenes as these could delight only the wanton, lascivious Venus. See Antoine Banier, The Mythology and Fables of the Ancients Explain'd from History (London: Printed for A. Millar, 1740), II, p. 325 and John Bell, New Pantheon (London: J. Bell, 1790), II, pp. 303-8.

17. Marlowe's fatalistic persuasion, unlike Jonathan Edwards' “delightful conviction” of “God's absolute sovereignty and justice,” is far from appearing “exceeding pleasant, bright, and sweet” to the poet. See Jonathan Edwards, “Personal Narrative,” The Literature of the United States, ed. by Walter Blair, Theodore Hornberger and Randall Stewart (Chicago: Scott Foresman and Company, 1946), II, 163. Edwards accepts and glories in the damning as well as the saving judgments of God. Marlowe accepts the cruel dooms of fate, but with sympathy for its victims rather than with delight in its workings. If Marlowe had delighted in Fate's judgment against the lovers, his treatment of their love would probably have been as harsh as Chapman's in his conclusion to Hero and Leander.

18. Ellis-Fermor, op. cit., p. 75.