Hero and Leander

The legend of Hero and Leander is so well-known that likely everyone who has read Marlowe’s epic, from his own time to ours, knows that the story ends in tragedy. Marlowe’s poem ends after the lovers consummate their love and does not show their deaths by drowning. Throughout the poem, the narrator frequently implies that love and tragedy are thus often inextricably linked.

The early part of the poem foreshadows the eventual unhappy ending. Line 52, for example, refers to Leander “Whose tragedy divine Musaeus sung”—Musaeus was the Greek poet who wrote of the legend. Marlowe alludes further to tragedy in the next lines. After Leander, “dwelt there none / For whom succeeding times make greater moan” (Lines 53-54), that is to say, there is no one after Leander who was more strongly mourned. Later, of the feast of Adonis, where Hero and Leander meet, the narrator comments, “oh cursèd day and hour!” (Line 131). The fatal encounter takes place when Hero goes from her tower to her temple, “where unhappily / As afterchanced, they did each other spy” (Lines 133-34, emphasis added). The love affair is therefore framed as doomed from the very start.