Tamburlaine
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/09/Christopher_Marlowe.jpg/220px-Christopher_Marlowe.jpg)
Tamburlaine the Great is a play in two parts by Christopher Marlowe. It is loosely based on the life of the Central Asian emperor Timur (Tamerlane/Timur the Lame, d. 1405). Written in 1587 or 1588, the play is a milestone in Elizabethan public drama; it marks a turning away from the clumsy language and loose plotting of the earlier Tudor dramatists, and a new interest in fresh and vivid language, memorable action, and intellectual complexity. Along with Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, it may be considered the first popular success of London's public stage.
Marlowe, generally considered the best of that group of writers known as the
Whereas the real Timur was of
Plot
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8f/Chlebowski-Bajazyt_w_niewoli.jpg/220px-Chlebowski-Bajazyt_w_niewoli.jpg)
Part 1 opens in
The scene shifts to Scythia, where Tamburlaine is shown wooing, capturing, and winning Zenocrate, the daughter of the Egyptian king. Confronted by Mycetes' soldiers, he persuades first the soldiers and then Cosroe to join him in a fight against Mycetes. Although he promises Cosroe the Persian throne, Tamburlaine reneges on this promise and, after defeating Mycetes, takes personal control of the Persian Empire.
Now a powerful figure, Tamburlaine turns his attention to Bajazeth, emperor of the Turks. He defeats Bajazeth and his tributary kings, capturing the emperor and his wife Zabina. The victorious Tamburlaine keeps the defeated ruler in a cage and feeds him scraps from his table, releasing Bajazeth only to use him as a footstool. Bajazeth later kills himself on stage by bashing his head against the bars upon hearing of Tamburlaine's next victory. Upon finding his body, Zabina does likewise.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1d/Tamerlan_und_Bajazet_%28Celesti%29.jpg/220px-Tamerlan_und_Bajazet_%28Celesti%29.jpg)
After conquering Africa and naming himself emperor of that continent, Tamburlaine sets his eyes on Damascus, a target which places the Egyptian sultan, his to-be father-in-law, directly in his path. Zenocrate pleads with her future husband to spare her father. He complies, instead making the sultan a tributary king. The play ends with the wedding of Tamburlaine and Zenocrate, who is crowned Empress of Persia.
In Part 2, Tamburlaine grooms his sons to be conquerors in his wake as he continues to attack neighbouring kingdoms. His oldest son, Calyphas, preferring to stay by his mother's side and not risk death, incurs Tamburlaine's wrath. Meanwhile, the son of Bajazeth, Callapine, escapes from Tamburlaine's jail and gathers a group of tributary kings to his side, planning to avenge his father. Callapine and Tamburlaine meet in battle, where Tamburlaine is victorious. But finding that Calyphas remained in his tent during the battle, Tamburlaine kills him in anger. Tamburlaine then forces the defeated kings to pull his chariot to his next battlefield, declaring,
- Holla ye pampered jades of Asia!
- What, can ye draw but twenty miles a day?
Upon reaching
Characters
- In both Parts
- Tamburlaine – in Part 1 a Scythian shepherd; in Part 2 King of Persia
- Techelles – in Part 1 a follower of Tamburlaine; in Part 2 King of Fez
- Usumcasane – in Part 1 a follower of Tamburlaine; in Part 2 King of Morocco
- Theridamas – in Part 1 a Persian lord, later a follower of Tamburlaine; in Part 2 King of Algiers
- Zenocrate – daughter of the Soldan of Egypt; in Part 2 wife of Tamburlaine
- Only in Part 1
- Mycetes – King of Persia
- Cosroe – brother of Mycetes
- Ceneus – a Persian lord
- Ortygius – a Persian lord
- Meander – a Persian lord
- Menaphon – a Persian lord
- Bajazeth – Emperor of Turkey
- Zabina – wife of Bajazeth
- Ebea – maid of Zabina
- King of Algier
- King of Fez
- King of Morocco
- Alcidamus – King of Arabia
- Soldan of Egypt
- Governor of Damascus
- Agydas
- Magnetes[1]
- Capolin – an Egyptian
- Anippe – maid of Zenocrate
- Virgin of Damascus 1
- Virgin of Damascus 2
- Only in Part 2
- Calyphas – son of Tamburlaine
- Amyras – son of Tamburlaine
- Celebinus – son of Tamburlaine
- Orcanes – King of Natolia
- King of Jerusalem
- King of Soria
- King of Trebizon
- Gazellus – Viceroy of the city of Byron
- Uribassa
- Sigismund – King of Hungary
- Frederick – peer of Hungary
- Baldwin – peer of Hungary
- Callapine – son of Bajazeth
- Alameda – keeper of Callapine
- King of Amasia
- Governor of Babylon
- Captain of Balsera
- Son of the Captain of Balsera
- Olympia – wife of the Captain of Balsera
- Captain
- Maximus
- Peridicas
Sources
Marlowe chiefly based his work on an abridged translation of
The decision to portray Tamburlaine and the Persians as Hellenistic pagans rather than Muslims in the play was apparently made for dramatic purposes and cannot be attributed to a lack of sources on life in the East.[4] For similar reasons, Marlowe departs from his sources in being far more hostile towards Bajazeth and far more sympathetic towards Tamburlaine.[4] Marlowe largely exhausted his historical sources in writing Part I of the play; Part II therefore relies on more extraneous sources and episodes and lacks some of the cohesion of the preceding part.[4]
Publication
The play (in both parts) was entered into the
Although Christopher Marlowe was not actually cited as the author in the first printings of the play – no author is named – and the first clear attributions to Marlowe are much later than 1590, scholars attribute the play to Marlowe based on similarities to his other works. Many passages in Tamburlaine foreshadow and echo passages from others of his works, and there is a clear parallel between the character development in Tamburlaine and that of the majority of Marlowe's other characters. This evidence alone leads scholars to believe with virtual unanimity that Marlowe wrote Tamburlaine.[6]
Critical reception
The influence of Tamburlaine on the drama of the 1590s cannot be overstated. The play exemplified, and in some cases created, many of the typical features of high Elizabethan drama: grandiloquent imagery, hyperbolic expression, and strong characters consumed by overwhelming passions. The first recorded comments on the play are negative. A letter written in 1587 relates the story of a child being killed by the accidental discharge of a firearm during a performance, and the next year
By the early years of the 17th century, this hyberbolic language had gone out of style. Shakespeare himself puts a speech from Tamburlaine in the mouth of his play-addled soldier Pistol (2 Henry IV II.4.155).[8] In Timber, Ben Jonson condemned "the Tamerlanes and Tamer-chams of the late age, which had nothing in them but the scenical strutting and furious vociferation to warrant them to the ignorant gapers".
Subsequent ages of critics have not reversed the position advanced by Jonson that the language and events in plays such as Tamburlaine are unnatural and ultimately unconvincing. Still, the play was regarded as the text above all others "wherein the whole restless temper of the age finds expression" (Long). Robert Fletcher notes that Marlowe "gained a high degree of flexibility and beauty by avoiding a regularly end-stopped arrangement, by taking pains to secure variety of pause and accent, and by giving his language poetic condensation and suggestiveness" (Fletcher)[citation needed]. In his poem on Shakespeare, Jonson mentions "Marlowe's mighty line", a phrase critics have accepted as just, as they have also Jonson's claim that Shakespeare surpassed it. But while Shakespeare is commonly seen to have captured a far greater range of emotions than his contemporary, Marlowe retains a significant place as the first genius of blank verse in English drama.
Themes
The play is often linked to
Jeff Dailey notes in his article "Christian Underscoring in Tamburlaine the Great, Part II" that Marlowe's work is a direct successor to the traditional medieval morality plays,[9] and that, whether or not he was an atheist, he had inherited religious elements of content and allegorical methods of presentation.
Performance history
The first part of Tamburlaine was performed by the
The stratification of London audiences in the early Jacobean period changed the fortunes of the play. For the sophisticated audiences of private theatres such as
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/da/Bajazeth_-_Timur_-_J_N_Geiger.jpg/220px-Bajazeth_-_Timur_-_J_N_Geiger.jpg)
While it is likely that Tamburlaine was still revived in the large playhouses, such as the Red Bull Theatre, that catered to traditional audiences, there is no surviving record of a Renaissance performance after 1595. Tamburlaine suffered more from the change in fashion than did Marlowe's other plays like Doctor Faustus or The Jew of Malta of which there are allusions to performances. Edward Phillips, in his Theatrum Poetarum (1675), is so unfamiliar with the play that he attributes its writing to Thomas Newton.[10] A further sign of the obscurity this one-time audience favourite had fallen into is offered by playwright Charles Saunders. Having written his own play in 1681 on Tamburlaine, he was accused by critics of having plagiarised Marlowe's work, to which he replied,
I never heard of any Play on the same Subject, untill my own was Acted, neither have I since seen it, though it hath been told me, there is a Cock Pit Play going under the name of the Scythian Shepherd, or Tamberlain the Great, being a thing, not a Bookseller in London, or scarce the Players themselves, who Acted it formerly cou'd call to remembrance.[11]
Following the
In 1919, the
The
In 1993 the Royal Shakespeare Company performed an award-winning production of the play, with
Jeff Dailey directed both parts of the play, uncut, at the American Theatre of Actors in New York City. He presented Part I in 1997 and Part II in 2003, both in the outdoor theatre located in the courtyard of 314 West 54th Street.
Avery Brooks played the lead role in a production of the play for the Shakespeare Theatre Company. The play ran from 28 October 2007 to 6 January 2008 and was directed by Michael Kahn.[14]
A new production combining Parts I and II ("trimming Marlowe’s two five-act plays to three hours of stage time [with a half-hour intermission]")[15] edited and directed by Michael Boyd opened at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center, Brooklyn, New York on 16 November 2014 with John Douglas Thompson as Tamburlaine, Merritt Janson as Zenocrate/Callapine and a "large, multipurpose ensemble" cast.[15]
A production of Tamburlaine was delivered by the Lazarus Theatre Company in London West End at the Tristan Bates Theatre between 25 August and 12 September 2015.[16]
On 1 November 2014, Tamburlaine opened at Theatre for a New Audience where it won the 2015 Obie Award for John Douglas Thompson's Performance.[17] It closed on 14 January 2015.[18]
In August 2018, the Royal Shakespeare Company began a run of Tamburlaine in Stratford-upon-Avon, England.[19]
While the play has been revived periodically over the past century, the obstacles it presents—a large cast and an actor capable of performing in such a challenging role chief among them—have prevented more widespread performance. In general, the modern playgoer may still echo F. P. Wilson's question, asked at mid-century, "How many of us can boast that we are more than readers of Tamburlaine?"[20]
Islamophobia
The play has long been criticised for being anti-Muslim.[citation needed]
In November 2005, a production of Tamburlaine at the
Some groups claimed the altering of this scene was a show of 'political correctness' and pandering to Muslim sensibilities. The director strongly denied this, stating:
One other thing should be made clear. Never in our rehearsal discussions did we receive any pressure from the Muslim community – this was never the question. Never did we receive any pressure from the Young Vic or the Barbican to change any scenes. Never did I receive external pressure of any kind. The decision to focus the play away from anti-Turkish pantomime to an existential epic was artistic, mine alone, and I stand by it.[21]
Other adaptations
There have been two adaptations on BBC radio, both of which have combined both parts into one broadcast. The first was on BBC Radio 3 on 26 September 1993 and directed by Michael Fox, starring Michael Pennington as Tamburlaine, Samantha Bond as Zenocrate, Clive Rowe as Theridamas, Louis Hilyer as Techelks, Peter Guinness as Usumcasane, Rudolph Walker as Bajazeth/Orcanes and Timothy Walker as Mycetes/Calyphas.[22] The second adaptation, again on BBC Radio 3, was broadcast on 16 September 2012 and directed by Peter Kavanagh, with Con O'Neill as Tamburlaine, Susie Riddell as Zenocrate, Oliver Ford Davies as Mycetes, Kenneth Cranham as Cosroe, Shaun Prendergast as Techelles, Ewan Bailey as Theridamas and Edward de Souza as the Sultan.[23] Klingon Tamburlaine, an unofficial fan production adapted from Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great, Parts I and II and reset in the Star Trek universe, was performed at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in 2019.[24]
See also
Notes
- ^ Restored from "Mag." in text
- ^ a b Izard, Thomas C. (1943). "The Principal Source for Marlowe’s Tamburlaine" in Modern Language Notes, vol. 58, no. 6, Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 411–17, https://doi.org/10.2307/2911032
- ^ Mexía, Pedro (1543); trans. Fortescue, Thomas (1571). The foreste or Collection of histories no lesse profitable, then pleasant and necessarie, dooen out of Frenche into Englishe, by Thomas Fortescue. London: [H. Wykes and] Ihon Kyngston, for Willyam Iones. Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership, http://name.umdl.umich.edu/a07463.0001.001, accessed 3 December 2021.
- ^ a b c d e f Ahsan, Syed Mohammad (1969). The Image of the East in the Plays of Marlowe and Shakespeare, pages 114-130
- ^ Chambers, Vol. 3, p. 421.
- ^ Marlowe, Christopher (1971). J.W. Harper (ed.). Tamburlaine. London: Ernst Benn Limited.
- ^ Greenblatt, Stephen Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, pp. 189–249
- ^ Della Hilton, Who Was Kit Marlowe?, "Tamburlaine in London Archived 26 January 2012 at the Wayback Machine", Taplinger Publishing Company, p. 42
- ^ Dailey, J "Christian Underscoring in Tamburlaine the Great, Part II", Journal of Religion and Theatre, Vol. 4, No. 2, Fall 2005. (At Association for Theatre in Higher Education. Accessed 23 August 2012.)
- ^ Quoted in Frederick S. Boas, Christopher Marlowe: A biographical and critical study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953), p. 70
- ^ Quoted in Boas, Christopher Marlowe, p. 300
- ^ Boas, Christopher Marlowe, p. xiii
- ^ Louis Negin at the Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia.
- ^ http://www.broadwayworld.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=16340 Brooks, Page, Etc. Set for New Shakespeare Theatre Season
- ^ a b Brantley, Ben (19 November 2014). "It's Best Not to Make Him Angry: Marlowe's 'Tamburlaine, Parts I and II,' in Brooklyn". The New York Times. Retrieved 23 January 2015.
- ^ "Lazarus Theatre Company".[permanent dead link]
- ^ Obie Awards, 2015 Winners.
- ^ Theatre for a New Audience, [1].
- ^ Cavendish, Dominic (25 August 2018). "Tamburlaine, RSC: a very modern reading of Marlowe's violent play, review". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 16 September 2018.
- ^ Wilson, F. P. Marlowe and the Early Shakespeare (Clark Lecture) Clarendon Press, Oxford 1953
- ^ a b David Farr, "Tamburlaine wasn't censored". The Guardian, 25 November 2005.
- ^ "Tamburlaine the Great". Radio Times. No. 3638. BBC. 23 September 1993. Retrieved 3 March 2019.
- ^ "BBC Radio 3 – Drama on 3, Tamburlaine". BBC.
- ^ "Hollywood Fringe – klingon tamburlaine". hollywoodfringe.org.
References
- Bevington, David. From Mankind to Marlowe: Growth of Structure in Elizabethan Drama. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965.
- Chambers, E. K.The Elizabethan Stage. 4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923.
- Geckle, George L. Tamburlaine and Edward II: Text and Performance. New Jersey: Humanities Press International, 1988.
- Kuriyama, Constance Brown. Christopher Marlowe: A Renaissance Life. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2002.
- Simms, J.G. War and Politics in Ireland, 1649–1730. A&C Black, 1986.
- Waith, Eugene. The Herculean Hero in Marlowe, Chapman, Shakespeare, and Dryden. New York: Columbia University Press, 1967.
- Wilson, F.P. Marlowe and the Early Shakespeare. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953.
External links
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/30px-Commons-logo.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Wikiquote-logo.svg/34px-Wikiquote-logo.svg.png)
- Project Gutenberg etext of part I
- Project Gutenberg etext of part II
- *Tamburlaine at the Internet Broadway Database
- Masoncode.com – Esoteric symbolism in Tamburlaine
- Times Online article about the censorship of the play at the Wayback Machine (archived 13 May 2006)
- Tamburlaine the Great retrieved 3 August 2006.
- Long, William. English Literature: Its History and Significance.
- Fletcher, Robert. A History of English Literature. 1918. Archived 18 September 2005 at the Wayback Machine
Tamburlaine the Great public domain audiobook at LibriVox