Tamburlaine the Great, Part 1

Tamburlaine is a play in 2 parts by Christopher Marlowe, loosely based on the life of Central Asian emperor Timur (Timur the Lame/ Tamerlane). Some scholars argue the 2 parts should be seen as 2 separate plays. 

Part 1 is dated 1587 and Part 2 about 1587-1588, so both are probably written before Doctor Faustus. 

1/ I’ve been told that Marlowe’s plays often have overreaching protagonists—Tamburlaine is one. See what he says to Theridamas. 

“TAMBURLAINE 

[…] Both we will walk upon the lofty clifts,

And Christian merchants that with Russian stems 

Plow up huge furrows in the Caspian Sea,

Shall vail to us, as lords of all the lake.

Both we will reign as consuls of the earth,

And mighty kings shall be our senators.

Jove sometimes masked in a shepherd’s weed,

And by those steps that he hath scaled the heavens,

May we become immortal like the gods.” 

(Act 1 scene 2) 

Tamburlaine, unlike the real Timur, is a Scythian shepherd and a nomadic bandit at the beginning of the play. Theridamas is a Persian lord, under king Mycetes. 

This is Tamburlaine’s speech when he tries to get Cosroe to join him against his brother Mycetes:

“TAMBURLAINE 

[…] Our quivering lances shaking in the air,

And bullets like Jove’s dreadful thunderbolts,

Enrolled in flames and fiery smouldering mists,

Shall threat the gods more than Cyclopian wars,

And with our sun-bright armour as we march,

We’ll chase the stars from heaven, and dim their eyes

That stand and muse at our admired arms.” 

(Act 2 scene 3) 

The language is grand, majestic, often bombastic, reminiscent of Doctor Faustus (and I guess, characteristic of Marlowe). The characters in some way appear rather cartoonish: Theridamas is a lord serving king Mycetes and he is meant to fight and catch Tamburlaine, but after a few speeches, is persuaded and joins his gang. Then Cosroe, brother of Mycetes, plots to overthrow the king and assume the throne, and joins Tamburlaine, but Meander, who seems to be Mycetes’s right-hand man, also joins Cosroe without much persuasion. 

2/ The characters don’t sound very different. For example, take Meander in his speech to Mycetes, talking about the enemies:  

“MEANDER

Suppose they be in number infinite,

Yet being void of martial discipline,

All running headlong after greedy spoils:

And more regarding gain than victory:

Like to the cruel brothers of the earth,

Sprung of the teeth of dragons venomous,

Their careless swords shall lanch their fellows’ throats

And make us triumph in their overthrow.” 

(Act 2 scene 2) 

This is Cosroe, talking to Meander after Tamburlaine changes his mind and wants the throne for himself: 

“COSROE 

What means this devilish shepherd to aspire

With such a giantly presumption,

To cast up hills against the face of heaven:

And dare the force of angry Jupiter?

But as he thrust them underneath the hills,

And pressed out fire from their burning jaws:

So will I send this monstrous slave to hell,

Where flames shall ever feed upon his soul.” 

(Act 2 scene 6) 

In the introduction, J. W. Harper notes: 

“Tamburlaine is the great drama of primal will, and nearly all of its characters are caught up in the same pattern as the hero, so that nearly all speak alike and the subtlety of characterization to which Shakespeare’s drama has accustomed us is scarcely to be found.” 

An exception is Mycetes, the weak and pathetic king. He sounds different, and at the beginning, often turns to Meander instead of deciding things himself. 

That being said, the language is good, exciting, full of vitality, and Tamburlaine helped establish blank verse for English drama. 

3/ There are a few female characters in Tamburlaine, most notably Zenocrate (daughter of the Soldan of Egypt and concubine of Tamburlaine) and Zabina (wife of Bajazeth, Emperor of Turkey). One may be tempted to compare them to Shakespeare’s female characters, such as Adriana and Luciana in the early play The Comedy of Errors, and say that Zenocrate and Zabina are not complex or realistic, but neither are Marlowe’s male characters really. Tamburlaine, like Doctor Faustus, is pretty much a one-man play, and the titular character is more like a mythical figure.  

I’m probably talking nonsense but I’m starting to suspect that people read Shakespeare for his characters but read Christopher Marlowe for Christopher Marlowe, and Ben Jonson for Ben Jonson. 

4/ On the internet I sometimes come across people who think Marlowe is the real Shakespeare. If only these people spent that time and energy reading and talking about Marlowe’s actual plays, because then they would realise that Marlowe and Shakespeare are vastly different. Take this speech: 

“TAMBURLAINE

Now clear the triple region of the air,

And let the majesty of heaven behold

Their scourge and terror treat on emperors.

Smile stars that reigned at my nativity;

And dim the brightness of their neighbour lamps,

Disdain to borrow light of Cynthia,

For I the chiefest lamp of all the earth,

First rising in the east with mild aspect,

But fixed now in the meridian line,

Will send up fire to your turning spheres,

And cause the sun to borrow light of you,

My sword struck fire from his coat of steel,

Even in Bithynia, when I took this Turk:

As when a fiery exhalation

Wrapped in the bowels of a freezing cloud,

Fighting for passage, makes the welkin crack,

And casts a flash of lightning to the earth.

But ere I march to wealthy Persia,

Or leave Damascus and the Egyptian fields,

As wars the fame of Clymene’s brain-sick son,

That almost brent the axle-tree of heaven,

So shall our swords, our lances and our shot

Fill all the air with fiery meteors,

Then when the sky shall wax as red as blood,

It shall be said, I made it red myself,

To make me think of naught by blood and war.” 

(Act 4 scene 2)

I don’t see that kind of language, that kind of speech, that kind of character in Shakespeare. In Tamburlaine, other characters may love or admire or fear or hate him, but it all makes Tamburlaine appear even larger, more powerful, more dominant—other characters invoke heaven or hell when talking about him—Tamburlaine thus turns into some kind of mythical figure.  

I’m generalising again: Marlowe seems fascinated by overreachers, by exceptional, extraordinary, and larger-than-life characters who dominate the plays they’re in and tower above everyone else, whereas Shakespeare seems fascinated by humanity as a whole, by all kinds of people. 

5/ Bajazeth is the Emperor of Turkey. At the beginning, he is majestic, proud, and disdainful of Tamburlaine, the shepherd and common thief. 

After his triumph, Tamburlaine becomes the new emperor, captures Bajazeth and his wife Zabina, makes them slaves, and humiliates them both for amusement (Tamburlaine isn’t exactly a likable guy).  

Now look at their final moments:

“ZABINA 

Then is there left no Mahomet, no God,

No fiend, no fortune, nor no hope of end

To our infamous monstrous slaveries? 

Gape earth, and let the fiends infernal view

A hell, as hopeless and as full of fear

As are the blasted banks of Erebus:

Where shaking ghosts with ever-howling groans,

Hover about the ugly ferryman

To get a passage to Elysium.

Why should we live, O wretches, beggars, slaves, 

Why live we Bajazeth, and build up nests,

So high within the region of the air,

By living long in this oppression,

That all the world will see and laugh to scorn

The former triumphs of our mightiness,

In this obscure infernal servitude?” 

(Act 5 scene 2) 

I can’t copy the entire thing, but Bajazeth has a great soliloquy:  

“BAJAZETH 

O life more loathsome to my vexed thoughts,

Than noisome parbreak of the Stygian snakes,

Which fills the nooks of hell with standing air,

Infecting all the ghosts with cureless griefs:

O dreary engines of my loathed sight,

That sees my crown, my honour and my name,

Thrust under yoke and thraldom of a thief! 

Why feed ye still on day’s accursed beams,

And sink not quite into my tortured soul?...” 

(ibid.) 

And another soliloquy, after Zabina leaves the room to get him some drink: 

“BAJAZETH 

Now Bajazeth, abridge thy baneful days,

And beat thy brains out of thy conquered head:

Since other means are all forbidden me, 

That may be ministers of my decay.

O highest lamp of ever-living Jove,

Accursed day infected with my griefs,

Hide now thy stained face in endless night,

And shut the windows of the lightsome heavens.

Let ugly Darkness with her rusty coach

Engirt with tempests wrapped in pitchy clouds,

Smother the earth with never-fading mists:

And let her horses from their nostrils breathe

Rebellious winds and dreadful thunderclaps:

That in this terror Tamburlaine may live,

And my pined soul resolved in liquid air,

May still excruciate his tormented thoughts.

Then let the strong dart of senseless cold,

Pierce through the centre of my withered heart,

And make a passage for my loathed life.” 

(ibid.) 

What a marvellous speech. We are used to Shakespeare, but before him was Marlowe—imagine the excitement of the first audience of Tamburlaine, they (probably) never heard anything like that on the stage before. 

6/ After these striking speeches enters Zenocrate (daughter of the Soldan of Egypt and concubine of Tamburlaine), with her maid Anippe. She is lamenting the deaths of her people and destruction of her town when she notices the dead bodies of Bajazeth and Zabina. 

The language and imagery are good but the characterisation’s weak: Zenocrate seems to have forgotten her own role in the humiliation and degradation of both Bajazeth and Zabina. Later, she is torn between her duty to her father and her former lover (the King of Arabia) and her current love for Tamburlaine, but she, like other characters in the play, is crudely depicted. Without meaning to compare, I can’t help noticing that Shakespeare’s much more advanced in his understanding and depiction of human nature: forget Macbeth, Hamlet, or Iago, I’m again thinking of The Comedy of Errors, in which the characters all have an inner life and appear complex even though the play is a farce.

Marlowe’s importance lies in his language, his innovations, and how he paved the way for Shakespeare and other playwrights in England. Not in psychology or characterisation.