Marlowe’s Amplification of Musaeus in Hero and Leander

Abstract

Comparing Christopher Marlowe's Hero and Leander with its source in Musaeus reveals that Marlowe's amplification of words, phrases, and brief passages from Musaeus transforms them and creates a vision which is funnier, pyschologically richer, and attuned to a much different understanding of the human condition. Marlowe's use of amplification clusters particualrly around the appearance and beauty of Hero and Leander, their sexual immaturity and Hero's seduction, the consumation of their affair, the role played by the narrator, and the presentation of fate within the poem.