The significance of Edward II is not only in the fact that Marlowe's concern turns, as it did in Dr. Faustus, to human sufferings, but in that the hero here is drawn, if imperfectly, as a character with a fatal trait with the result that Marlowe had created the tragedy of character before Shakespeare did. The present essay aims at substantiating the last point after making a brief survey of his other plays concerning the first two points. On the treatment of sufferings. In Dido the heroine's sufferings were hardly dwelt upon unless the plot requires; Marlowe's aim was to narrate an ill-fated love in the dramatic form. In the rest of his plays, the hero is a superman with power and undaunted will and none but Dr. Faustus undergoes sufferings. Tamhurlaine is a "hymn of human will" in the purest form. Death-theme is introduced in Part II, but it is used only to emphasize the greatness of the spirit which is indomitable in the face of death. Barabas in the Jew of Malta encounters difficulties, but with few groans he rises up against them. The Massacre at Paris, except the monologue where Guise declares his arrogant will, simply follows the thread of the plot. On creation of character. As above mentioned, Dido is, after all, a narrative of love affair. Tamburlaine is not so much a human being as "Voice" of the authour's longing for infinite self-realization. As he is always a victor, there is no chance of testing his character. Barabas may be said to have an individuality at first. His sole passion is to conquer the world by wealth and to love his daughter, and this character is revealed through his struggle against the antagonistic powers. But his figure changes suddenly in Act II, and thenceforward he becomes a vehicle to show "machiavellism" and to satirize lust for wealth. Dr. Faustus is, indeed, a man who plunges into Hell, of his own accord, and invites the tragic fall on his head purely on his own responsibility. Marlowe, however, adopted "Morality" form to depict him. There is no human interplay; no man who suffers for his will, nor one who gives him sufferings. What is shown, is purely Faustus' state of mind torn between longing of intellect for infinite knowledge and powers, and salvation of soul. Though Marlowe splendidly humanizes this allegory and heightens "everyman" in "Morality" to an "individual," it is impossible to characterize him in this simple form. In Edward II the cause of his sufferings, for the first time, is sought in a trait of his nature. He is not a tyrant, but an epicurean, a man of culture, unbecoming of the bloody medieval world, so he cannot control the powerful peers. But weak as he is, he has an intense self-consciousness as a king. His love of Gaveston is, so to speak, the utmost he could do to resist the interference of the peers about all things. Unfortunately, he cannot objectively measure his own strength or the real state of things, and insists on his will blindly. This is the trait that drives him to the tragic end. Indeed, Marlowe cannot yet depict him consistently; Edward II changes suddenly into a strong king in the midst, and regains the former status as soon. But the essential process of his fall never fails, so that his death leaves strong impression on our mind.

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The full title of Robinson Crusoe runs as follows : The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner : who lived eight and twenty years, all alone in an uninhabited island on the coast of America, near the mouth of the great river of Oroonoque;... Are there no contradictions between "all alone in an uninhabited island" and "the great river of Oroonoque"? The valley of "the great river of Oroonoque" is closely related to El Dorado where Sir Walter Ralegh led his five ships to explore gold, and also to the colony of Guiana where the 17th-century English merchants sold the surplus wool of England. Thus the main scene of Robinson Crusoe was set in the area of the activities of the 16th-century colonists and the 17th-century mercantilists. Robinson Crusoe, the hero of this novel, however, is not a colonist nor a mercantilist. His stay in the island lasts about twenty-eight years, but he never deals with gold nor wool; Crusoe is, in general, not aggressive, but defensive. He endures solitude, and manages to preserve his life; he is not a 16th-century colonist, nor a 17th-century mercantilist. Why is there such a contradiction between the setting and the character in Robinson Crusoe? This is one of the most important points to be solved in order to arrive at the true meaning of Robinson Crusoe. Encountering the death of Queen Anne and the succession of George I in 1714, Defoe realized that his days were over. He was clever enough to see that the political and moral climate had changed. It was inevitable for Defor to make public that he was not a die-hard, collective colonist, but that he was ready to adjust himself to the new regime. It is, however, quite natural that he could not discard all the older elements at a stroke; and some of the older elements remained in the setting of the novel. Hence in Robinson Crusoe the older elements and the newer elements exist side by side. Thus Robinson Crusoe is not a myth, nor an allegory, but is Daniel Defoe's manifesto of his new decision to adjust himself to the new regime after 1714.

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Reading of these two historians, William Bradford (1590-1657) and Cotton Mather (1663-1728), reveals an interesting change in the psychology of early New England people within half a century. The purpose of this essay is to illustrate by a stylistic analysis how this change occurred in the New England Mind. In William Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation, one may find frequent use of doublet, parallelism and antithesis. He consciously imitates the style of the Geneva version of the Bible. His whole syntactical structure, -the well-balanced and rather slowing-down effect of doublets and parallelisms, -is certainly an indication of his firm condefince, all the way through his history, in the final triumph of God's Will in His Promised Land, New England. God's ways are slow but steady. Thus, Bradford's Style is not something merely external to meaning. His manipulation of all these stylistic devices clearly indicates his own concept of history as a disclosure of Divine Will. On the other hand, Cotton Mather's style is complex and heavy. As has already been pointed out by several critics like Austin Warren, Mather's style in "General Introduction" to Magnalia Christi Americana is a specimen of belated Baroque prose in Colonial New England. Mather's style, however, is often accused of being prolix, with pedantic quotations, and fantastic in its conceits. But a careful analysis of the "General Introduction" well indicates that these traits are not necessarily to be considered as faults, but rather the reflections of the mode of Mather's thinking, and his attitude towards history. Like Bradford, Mather also believes that history is a revelation of God's Will and a historian not only records what has happened, but must interpret its meaning, which is His epiphany to man. But when compared with Bradford's, Mather's history is not steady. His abundant quotations in the "General Introduction" are nothing but his unconscious attempt to justify his history. In quotations he seeks the historical sanction, a feeling of security. As in the case of Bradford, if he were confident enough in God's blessing on New England, he would not have to seek the security, protecting himself by quotations. These curious traits are the expressions of his mixed feeling of self-glorification and self-chastisement, humility and arrogance, justification and apology, confidence and sceptisicm-characteristics of Baroque style. New England for Bradford was a geographical reality, but for Cotton Mather, New England began shifting its existence from the geographical to the psychographical. For Mather, to use Austin Warren's phrase, "New England is a state of mind like Heaven and Hell."

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Tennessee Williams is a playwright who has persistently tried to represent on the stage what is true of human beings. When he made his debut on Broadway with The Glass Menagerie, he declared in it that he would show "truth" to the audience. He thought the realistic plays of the past gave the audience only illusion that had the appearance of truth, and he determined to give the audience truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion. "Disguise" used here also means "transformation" in his plays. He realized that truth is an organic thing which the poetic imagination can represent or suggest, in essence, only through changing into other forms than those which are merely present in appearance. Accordingly he has devised and used various kinds of symbolic technique to represent truth on the stage. Then what approach has he actually made to truth? His approach is rather paradoxical. He has tried to represent truth through writing about "illusion" or "mendacity" of human beings. Williams' conception of human beings is that they are more or less losers, though there seem to be both losers and winners in life. Human beings are, in essence, weak, defenceless and lonely. They struggle very hard to live through life controlled by the merciless power of reality. Williams thinks God is here, it is true, but He is never a merciful being we expect Him to be. He is like a senile delinquent, and gets furious and shouts some fierce things at human beings. God is here just behind the merciless power of reality, ready to denounce any errors of human beings. So they, weak and defenceless, are destined to be defeated by reality. In order to live on and survive against this destiny, they have to hold on to "illusion" or "mendacity" as their shield. This shield is too fragile to protect them from reality, but they have nothing else to hold on to. However hard they may hold on to it, illusion or mendacity is, from the start, quite helpless against reality. So defeat is the human destiny, but human beings have to struggle on against this fate with the vain shield of illusion. Thus the main characters Williams has created on the stage have great difficulty in living through life. Theatrically speaking, the greater their difficulty is, the greater becomes the compassion of the audience upon their defeat. So to make life more difficult and also to make illusion or mendacity more convincing to the audience, Williams chooses for the characters those who are bound up with something in the past. Some of them have a sad personal experience which took place in their past and still hovers over their mind, while others are fettered by a social tradition-"genteel tradition" of the Southern aristocracy. They cannot face what actually happened, and to escape from this reality, they live in the world of illusion. They cannot face what is now taking place in the world, as they hold on to the old "genteel tradition." So they have to create the world of mendacity to run into for shelter. These characters are typical losers of our age, but Tennessee Williams sees truth in their pathetic course of defeat. Through writing about them, I believe, he is telling us, "Life with illusion or mendacity is a true life to them, and even to us."

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