...Dee, 1970). 16. This is Shakespeare's gloss on his rival Christopher Marlowe's description of Helen as "the face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium." Moviegoers who saw Shakespeare in Love will recognize the lines from the hilarious scene where Shakespeare...

...characteristic form in which Richard II's question is cast, with its obvious echo of Marlowe's Faust us: Was this the face that launched a thousand ships And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?29 When Shakespeare embarked on his own creation of Helen of Troy adulation of Elizabeth was...

...treatments of faces and bodies in late Elizabethan poetry, and even with such a passage as Marlowe's "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?"49 In such passages the Elizabethans' inquisitiveness is at its most apparent, as is their...

...the Norse goddess "Hel," though if he did, it would give further point to another overlapping sound: Was this the face that launched a thousand ships And...Ilium? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. When this Hellish Helen (whom he has just called "heavenly Helen," 5.1.85) does kiss him, he immediately...

...of Troy (or a spirit impersonating Helen) in Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus (1 604), 5. 1.945: 'Was this the face that launched a thousand ships / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?' I. 22 The first Adam. The first promptings of sexual feeling (playing on the phrase 'old Adam' meaning...

...and Helen of Troy, prompting Marlowe's best-known, and some of his most beautiful, lines, such as, 'Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?' But we never see Faustus make any attempt to gain the power he had promised himself in early speeches,...

...old age, that ill layer-up of beauty, can do no more spoil upon my face. — William Shakespeare • Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? — Christopher Marlowe • The eyes have one language everywhere. — George Herbert • What a blessing...

...for the thousand ships of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus provide a more prepossessing allegorical frame: "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?"37 (5.1.96—97) Faustus asks, as Mephistopheles conjures up Helen of Troy in order to deflect...

..."And Kathleen as Maud?" "Oh boy! Maud Gonne was a looker, Al. A real beauty. Like Helen of Troy, 'a face that launched a thousand ships/ And burnt the topless towers of Ilium.' And eyes! Eyes 'as stars of twilight fair.' Like Miss O'Halloran here." "And that's why he's been calling...

...probably the most famous passage in all Marlowe, Faustus's apostrophe to the spirit of Helen of Troy: Was this the face that launched a thousand ships And...Ilium? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. {They kiss] Her lips sucks forth my soul. See where it flies. Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again....