Marlowe’s mighty line.

Ben Jonson’s phrase “Marlowe’s mighty line” is a celebrated tribute to the playwright Christopher Marlowe, praising the power and grandeur of Marlowe’s blank verse. Jonson uses it in a poem written as part of his prefatory commendations for Shakespeare in the First Folio (1623). In that context Jonson is situating Shakespeare among (and above) notable predecessors and contemporaries—Marlowe, Kyd, Lyly, and others—while acknowledging what each contributed to English drama. The remark reflects early seventeenth-century critical awareness of Marlowe’s role in transforming English tragic style through forceful, elevated verse.

The phrase condenses a critical judgment: Marlowe’s distinctive achievement was the “mighty” sweep of his poetic line—his commanding, high rhetorical blank verse that helped redefine what English drama could sound like. Jonson’s compliment is not merely personal admiration; it marks a historical turning point in literary style, crediting Marlowe with giving English tragedy a new amplitude and musical force. In the First Folio setting, the allusion also functions comparatively: Jonson can acknowledge Marlowe’s formidable verse while still arguing that Shakespeare ultimately surpasses all rivals in range, naturalness, and imaginative power.