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Tamburlaine part 2 by Christopher Marlowe (1587)

Full title

The Second Part of The bloody Conquests of mighty Tamburlaine. With his impassionate fury, for the death of his Lady and loue faire Zenocrate; his fourme of exhortacion and discipline to his three sons, and the maner of his own death.

The sequel

Tamburlaine was such a phenomenal theatrical, cultural and financial success, that Marlowe was incentivised to rush out part two the same year (1587), something candidly confessed in the prologue:

The general welcomes Tamburlaine received,
When he arrivèd last upon our stage,
Hath made our poet pen his Second Part,
Where death cuts off the progress of his pomp,
And murderous fates throw all his triumphs down.
But what became of fair Zenocrate,
And with how many cities’ sacrifice
He celebrated her sad funeral,
Himself in presence shall unfold at large.

It’s interesting to compare Marlowe’s pithy prologues with Ben Jonson’s. Basically, the Jonson ones feel crabbed, contrived and contorted, whereas Marlowe’s flow, like everything he wrote, with marvellous ease and confidence.

Both parts of Tamburlaine were published in 1590. More even than part one, part two makes use of exotic locations and place names which Marlowe had borrowed extensively from Abraham Ortelius’ collection of 16th century maps, relying on five in particular, those of Europe, the Turkish Empire, Africa, Natolia, and the World. The way the verse is stuffed with high-sounding foreign names designed to awe and impress makes it a fore-runner of Milton’s similar overuse of exotic placenames in Paradise Lost.

Executive summary

Part one ended with Tamburlaine’s promise to marry Zenocrate, the daughter of the Soldan of Egypt who he captured early in the play but who fell in love with him. Well, enough time has passed for them to have had three grown-up sons (20 years?). (In reality, the historical Timur had over 40 wives and concubines, no such person as Zenocrate existed, and he had four sons.)

Despite their crushing defeat to Tamburlaine in Part One, the Ottomans have since recovered and reestablished control over Anatolia (and perhaps some parts of the Middle East, including a portion of Syria), and resumed their wars in Europe, where they have captured lands up to the Danube River in Hungary and the Balkans.

Tamburlaine is on the Sinai Peninsula, gathering his armies and preparing to march north. He has at some point captured, and now holds prisoner, Callapine, the son and heir of the previous Ottoman Sultan, Bajazeth, who we saw dash his own brains out in part one. The rulers of the various Ottoman territories must once again figure out how to defeat the Scythian peasant-turned-warlord.

Meanwhile 1. Tamburlaine is raising his sons to become conquerors like himself. He tends to do this via exemplary acts of extreme savagery against everyone, including the killing of one of his own sons who disappoints him. And 2. his beloved wife, Zenocrate, is dying.

The play ends when, after meting out extraordinary barbarism upon the Babylonians, Tamerlaine burns the Quran with contempt, falls ill and dies.

Act 1

Scene 1

As with part one, we are introduced to Tamburlaine’s enemies first, building up expectation before the entrance of the Great Man himself. These are Orcanes (King of Anatolia), Gazellus, Viceroy of Byron (just north of the Persian Gulf) and Uribassa – they all rule lands or cities controlled by the Ottomans. Their ruler, Callapine, has been captured by Tamburlaine who is right now camped at Gaza, in Palestine.

These ‘secondary’ rulers have brought their armies up into Europe, along the Danube as far as the border with Hungary. Here they are confronted by King Sigismund, who has brought a huge Christian army to face them. Now these ‘egregious rulers’ are at a decision point: should they venture all on a massive battle with Sigismund, with all the risks that entails? Or make peace with Sigismund, hang on to what they have conquered, and turn south to attack Tamburlaine? Orcanes chooses the second option, just as King Sigismund of Hungary enters with his entourage.

Scene 2

Enter Sigismund, Frederick, Baldwin and their train, with drums and trumpets. Orcanes reminds Sigismund that, at one point, the Turks were besieging Vienna itself; Sigismund replies yes, but now he has an army a thousand times stronger. So, after threatening each other a bit, both sides decide to make a deep and lasting peace settlement, the Christians swearing by Christ, the Turks by Mahomat, and they retire for a peace treaty feast.

Scene 3 Egypt, just south of Alexandria

Enter Callapine with Almeda, his Keeper Cut to Callapine, son of the former Sultan, Bajazir, who we saw beat his own brains out against the bars of his cage in despair in part one. Callapine has been captured by Tamburlaine and is being held a prisoner. In this short scene he offers his gaoler or warder, the rather dim Almeda, vast riches and kingships, if he will only release him (Callapine) and help smuggle him to a ship waiting just off the coast. It is notable that Callapine speaks with just the kind of soaring Marlovian rhetoric at other times given to Tamburlaine et al.

A thousand galleys, manned with Christian slaves,
I freely give thee, which shall cut the Straits,
And bring armados from the coasts of Spain
Fraughted with gold of rich America;
The Grecian virgins shall attend on thee,
Skilful in music and in amorous lays,
As fair as was Pygmalion’s ivory girl
Or lovely Iö metamorphosèd.
With naked negroes shall thy coach be drawn,
And, as thou rid’st in triumph through the streets,
The pavement underneath thy chariot wheels
With Turkey carpets shall be coverèd,
And cloth of arras hung about the walls,
Fit objects for thy princely eye to pierce.
A hundred bassoes, clothed in crimson silk,
Shall ride before thee on Barbarian steeds

Dazzled by the promise of riches, women and kingdoms, Almeda agrees, undoes Callapine’s chains, and the pair make off.

Scene 4

Enter Tamburlaine, Zenocrate, and their three sons, Calyphas, Amyras, and Celebinus, with drums and trumpets. Zenocrate is unwell. Tamburlaine tells her to rest. Zenocrate asks Tamburlaine when he will leave off fighting? Tamburlaine lambasts his sons for looking soft and effeminate. Zenocrate stands up for them, and each in turn declares they’re prepared to wade through blood to gain crowns and kingdoms. The youngest, Calyphas, initially says he will stay with his mummy, until Tamburlaine roars at him, when, realising his mistake, he changes his tune and declares he, too, will cleave the head of the Turkish deputy to gain his crown. You’d better, growls Tamburlaine.

CALYPHAS: If any man will hold him, I will strike
And cleave him to the channel with my sword.
TAMBURLAINE: Hold him, and cleave him too, or I’ll cleave thee.

Scene 5

Enter Theridamas, Tamburlaine’s oldest lieutenant, who gives an account of his army’s feats and march across North Africa.

Scene 6

Enter Tamburlaine’s other lieutenants, Techelles and Usumcasane – the kings of Fez and Morocco, respectively – who give an account of their armies marches around Africa. (Both these itineraries are based on the colourful and not-too-accurate contemporary book of maps, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius published in 1570.) Pleased with their efforts, Tamburlaine re-crowns them.

Now, he declares, they shall all march against the Turk and – with typical braggadocio – spill so much Turkish blood that Jove will send Hermes to make them stop, that the sun will be unable to bear the sight and go hide in the sea.

Act 2

Scene 1

Returns us to the Hungarian border, where Sigismund’s advisers recommend attacking the Turks while their guard is down. ‘But what about the vow I made in Christ’s name?’ asks Sigismund. ‘Promises made to infidels don’t count,’ they casuistically reply. ‘Yes, but we should set an example of good faith to prove our religion’, says Sigmismund. To which the lord of Buda uses stories from the Old Testament where God punished Israelite rulers for not attacking their enemies when they had the chance. Sigismund is persuaded, and tells them to go bid their forces arm.

Scene 2

Orcanes and his lords are discussing their aim to march their armies to attack Tamburlaine, when a messenger brings news that Sigismund’s armies are attacking. O faithless Christians! Orcanes rips up the articles of peace. Ironically, this Muslim leader no calls on Christ to assure them of victory.

Scene 3

Sounds of battle (i.e. a few trumpets and a few guns going off) and enter King Sigismund, badly wounded. He delivers a short soliloquy, confessing that his perjury and faithlessness means it’s only just that he should die, let his death be penance to his soul, so it can enter heaven. And he dies.

Enter Orcanes and his generals who look on the corpse of Sigismund with contempt. Orcanes has a vivid speech imagining Sigismund’s soul, rightfully, going down to hell and eternal torment. Orcanes orders Sigismund’s body to be left for the birds to eat. Having won this victory, they will march back to the Levant to confront Tamburlaine.

Scene 4

Zenocrate is in bed, ill, doctors are mixing medicines while Tamburlaine sits at her bedside. Tamburlaine delivers a long and moving speech saying the sun which gained his light from Zenocrate is waning. And describes how the cherubim are alerting other soul in heaven to expect her arrival, a page-long speech which includes the repeated refrain, ‘To entertain divine Zenocrate’:

Now walk the angels on the walls of Heaven,
As sentinels to warn th’ immortal souls
To entertain divine Zenocrate.

Zenocrate says his claims that he will die with her, upset her, deny her the happiness she hopes to attain in heaven. Do not die, Tamburlaine, live. Her speech is genuinely moving:

But let me die, my love; yet let me die;
With love and patience let your true love die!
Your grief and fury hurts my second life. −
Yet let me kiss my lord before I die,
And let me die with kissing of my lord.

Tamburlaine lyrically worships her world-beating beauty, says if she’d lived before the time of Troy nobody would have heard of Helen, Corinna and Lesbia (the dedicatees of poems by Ovid and Catullus) had never been heard of. (These are, of course, references Marlowe uses elsewhere, when he brings Helen of Troy onstage in Dr Faustus and in his translation of Ovid’s poem sequence dedicated to Corinna.)

When Zenocrate passes away his angry grief knows no bounds. He orders his generals to split the earth in half and then lead an assault on heaven itself.

What, is she dead? Techelles, draw thy sword
And wound the earth, that it may cleave in twain,
And we descend into th’ infernal vaults,
To hale the Fatal Sisters by the hair,
And throw them in the triple-moat of hell,
For taking hence my fair Zenocrate. −
Casane and Theridamas, to arms!
Raise cavalieros higher than the clouds,
And with the cannon break the frame of Heaven;
Batter the shining palace of the sun,
And shiver all the starry firmament.

He will have Zenocrate preserved in ‘cassia, ambergris, and myrrh’, placed in a golden casket and take her everywhere with him. As for the town where she died, Tamburlaine orders it to be burned to the ground.

Act 3

Scene 1

Enter the kings of Trebizond and Soria, one bringing a sword and the other a sceptre; next Orcanes (King of Natolia) and the King of Jerusalem with the imperial crown; after them enters Callapine, and after him, other lords and Almeda. Orcanes and the King of Jerusalem crown Callapine, and the others give him the sceptre Callapine, who we saw bribing his gaoler to set him free, is now restored to the bosom of his vassal lords who crown him the new Emperor of Turkey.

His vassal kings line up to tell him how many tens of thousands of men they have under arms, and Callipine concludes by saying, Right, let’s go and fight the Scythian thief. (And he is true to the vow he made Almeda, the gaoler who set him free: he makes him a king.)

Scene 2

Tamburlaine orders the town be burned to the ground and a memorial placed there to Zenocrate, and vows that he will take her embalmed body and her picture everywhere to look over his battles.

He then embarks on a long speech about the art of war and an extensive description of the art of storming towns (cribbed from a contemporary book on the subject). When the feeblest of his sons, Calyphas, says this all sounds a bit dangerous, Tamburlaine loses his temper, launches a furious tirade about how wounds and blood are nothing.

To prove it, Tamburlaine cuts his own arm, lets the blood and tells his sons to touch and even poke their fingers in it. Tis nothing. The two eldest sons ask to have their arms cut the same way, but Tamburlaine fondly denies them. The readiness was all he wanted to see. Now let’s go and fight the Turk and, in particular, seek out and decapitate the traitor, Almeda.

Scene 3

Techelles and Theridimas have gone ahead of Tamburlaine’s main forces and arrived outside the city of Balsera. They parley with the captain of the town who refuses to surrender, so Techelles instructs the pioneers i.e. siege engineers, to get on with building ramps and digging tunnels under the town walls.

Scene 4

The siege has succeeded and Tamburlaine’s forces are storming the town. The captain’s wife, Olympia, urges him to escape but he has been shot in the side, gives a vivid description of what it feels like, and dies. His wife begs death to take her, draws a knife and cuts her son’s throat, to prevent him being tortured by the barbaric Scythians.

She lights a funeral pyre for her menfolk as Theridamas enters, and is impressed by her fierce loyalty. He prevents her throwing herself on the pyre and insists she comes to meet Tamburlaine.

Scene 5

Enter Callapine, Orcanes, and the Kings of Jerusalem, Trebizond, and Soria, with their train and Almeda. A messenger tells Callapine and his entourage that Tamburlaine approaches. Calapine’s entourage (again) reiterate the numbers of men they have, and (again) Callapine vows to crush the Scythian upstart.

At that moment Tamburlaine enters and a strange scene ensues: Tamburlaine and Calapine exchange insults and threats, Tamburlaine taunting the Turks to single combat, both sides promising what they will do to each other once they have won the battle. Then, instead of actually attacking each other, they exit different sides of the stage, as if going off to lead their armies into battle.

Act 4

Scene 1

Tamburlaine’s sons. The two eldest, Amyras and Celebinus, issue from their tents ready to fight, and try to rouse their lazy brother, Calyphas, from his sleep. When he does wake he gives a cynic’s view of fighting, that who gets shot and who survives is random, that Tamburlaine is going to win anyway, and so he will stay in his tent playing cards with his servant till it’s all over.

With Ruper Everettesque camp insouciance, he deprecates the sound of the battle, drolly pointing out that someone’s liable to get hurt.

As you can imagine, when Tamburlaine enters, triumphant, accompanied by his generals and leading the defeated Turkish kings, he is angry beyond bounds with lazy Calyphas, who he says is no son of his. His generals, Theridamas, Usumcasane and Techelles all kneel and beg forgiveness for the boy, saying they’ll take him in hand and put him at the front of the next battle.

But Tamburlaine makes a big speech of contempt and then stabs him to death. The captured kings (of Jerusalem, Trebizond and Soria) all express their disgust at this inhuman act.

Tamburlaine explains that God has given him a mission, to be ‘the scourge of God and terror of the world’, not to exercise effeminate ideas of ‘honour and nobility but to prosecute war and blood and death and cruelty.

He tells his generals to round up all the Turks’ concubines from their tents and force them to bury the boy, since no soldier should defile his hands. When the kings protest, again, Tamburlaine bellows a speech of blistering vengeance:

I will, with engines never exercised,
Conquer, sack, and utterly consume
Your cities and your golden palaces;
And, with the flames that beat against the clouds,
Incense the heavens, and make the stars to melt,

The total, world-shattering, god-defying, morality-smashing extravagance of Tamburlaine’s deeds and speeches raise the hairs on the nape of your neck, give you goosepimples, make you believe you are in the presence of the uttermost of human power and depravity. He promises to bridle them like horses and make them draw his chariot.

Scene 2

In this scene Olympia laments her dead husband and son and longs for death. Theridamas – who we saw falling for her at first sight in Act 3 scene iv, enters and tries to win her heart, but she is set on dying. Then – in a ridiculous contrivance – she persuades Theridamas that she possesses a rare and precious ointment which makes you invulnerable. She says she’ll smear some on her neck, then he can try to stab her with his sword and, when it fails, he can have the ointment and distribute it through the army.

So she anoints her throat and tells him to stab her and, like an idiot, he does, the ointment of course doesn’t work, and she falls dead. Theridamas is amazed and dumbfounded. The reader reflects that maybe, at one point, Marlowe intended Olympia to become a replacement for Zenocrate, but then realised he didn’t have room so had to get rid of her somehow. This is certainly a ridiculous contrivance.

Scene 3

Enter Tamburlaine, whip in hand, riding a chariot pulled – as he threatened – by two of the conquered kings (Trebizon and Soria) bridled like horses and prompting the most famous line from the play, one repeated and parodied for decades afterwards:

TAMBURLAINE: Holla, ye pampered jades of Asiä!
What! can ye draw but twenty miles a day,
And have so proud a chariot at your heels,
And such a coachman as great Tamburlaine

The other kings are led in chains and vigorously abuse Tamburlaine, who is amused. His generals say he needs to bridle the other kings and his son offers to get another chariot so he can bridle them, but Tamburlaine says no, he needs to rotate the kings so they don’t get too exhausted to pull him.

Tamburlaine orders the camp followers and whores of the captured kings to be brought in and distributes them among his soldiers. The kings angrily criticise this behaviour but Tamburlaine doesn’t care. He gives an extraordinarily powerful and vivid speech describing how he will gather treasure from the four corners of the Levant in order to decorate his native city of Samarkand.

Act 5

Scene 1

Cut to the city walls of Babylon, where a succession of captains and citizens try to persuade the governor to surrender to Tamburlaine’s besieging forces. He refuses. Theridamas shouts up at the walls telling the governor to surrender. He refuses. The army then scales the walls and takes the city. Enter Tamburlaine still in the chariot pulled by the kings of Trebizon and Soria.

Execution of the governor The wretched governor is dragged before him. Tamburlaine orders him to be hung in chains from the city walls and shot to death. He has noticed the two kings pulling him are exhausted.

TAMBURLAINE: These jades are broken-winded and half-tired;
Unharness them, and let me have fresh horse.

Execution of the kings He orders them to be released from their harnesses, and executed. They’ll be replaced by the other two kings who’ve been dragged along by soldiers, namely Orcanes and the king of Jerusalem.

Massacre of the Babylonians Then he orders his soldiers to bind the inhabitants of Babylon and throw them all into the lake of oil nearby. Kill them all.

TAMBURLAINE: Techelles, drown them all, man, woman, and child;
Leave not a Babylonian in the town.

Burning of the books Then he orders his soldiers to gather and burn all the books found in Babylon. He singles out the Koran and defies Mohammed to come down from heaven and strike him dead if he really exists. They troops burn the books and, suddenly, in the last lines of the scene, Tamburlaine for the first time feels a touch of illness, of ‘distemper’.

Scene 2

Callapine, who we last saw in Act 3 scene v, discusses with the king of Amasia how they are now the last major force left in the Levant who can challenge Tamburlaine. Callapine is realistic about Tamburlaine’s forces and luck but makes the analogy with the moon which, at its height, begins to wane. Maybe Tamburlaine’s fortune is at its height and about to turn…

Scene 3

His three oldest generals, Theridamas, Usumcasane and Techelles, take it in turn – in the manner of a Greek chorus – to lament the growing illness of Tamburlaine.

Then the man himself enters, still riding in a chariot drawn by two conquered kings, but puzzled that his body is now failing him. His mind is still superstrong and overweening:

Come, let us march against the powers of Heaven,
And set black streamers in the firmament,
To signify the slaughter of the gods. −

But, in fact, he can barely stand. He sees Death waiting for him and defies him. He tells his generals to call down Apollo to minister him.

A messenger appears to say the army of Callapine is approaching. In an odd moment, Tamburlaine appears to leave the stage for a few moments – and scare off the entire army – putting them to rout, before returning to the stage to carry on the dialogue.

He commands a map to be brought and traces on it, for his sons, all his conquest, luxuriating in the high exotic names of lands he’s conquered. As in the lament over Zenocrate, Marlowe uses the repetition of a line, as in the repetition of a refrain or chorus in a song:

And shall I die, and this unconquerèd?

He asks to be helped out of the chariot so he can crown his two lovely boys before he dies. He crowns Amylas, who mounts (reluctantly and tearfully into the chariot).

Then they bring in the hearse of his beloved Zenocrate, that has accompanied him through all his latter conquests. Joys that he will soon be with her. Then warns his son he will need the skill of Phaëton to guide the chariot he has given him. Then dies.

It falls to Amyras, his son, to speak five brief lines of elegy (which, for some reason, reminded me of the brisk afterword of Horatio at the end of Hamlet).

Thoughts

Many critics think the sequel is not as good as the original, but I think it’s better. Better because it feels quite a lot more outrageously cynical, violent and amoral than the first play. The exorbitance of Tamburlaine’s grief at Zenocrate’s death in part 2 is more heaven-climbing, more defiant and nihilistic than his love for her in part 1. The sight of Bajazeth beating his own brains out against the bars of his cage in part 1 was pretty extreme, but most contemporaries’ image of the play is of Tamburlaine riding a chariot pulled by the conquered kings of Asia, whipping them and roaring, ‘Holla, ye pampered jades of Asiä!’ – and that conceit or device is in part 2.

To understand the play’s lasting impact and appeal you’d have to investigate what it is in human beings’ psychology that attracts us to death and destruction. Or the spectacle of death and destruction, and that’s a deep one.

Related links

Marlowe’s works

History

More Elizabethan and Jacobean reviews

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Posted by Simon on October 21, 2020

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2020/10/21/tamburlaine-part-2-christopher-marlowe/

Tamburlaine Part I by Christopher Marlowe (1587)

‘I that am termed the scourge and wrath of God,
The only fear and terror of the world…’

Full title of the first printed edition, 1590

Tamburlaine the Great. Who, from a Scythian Shephearde, by his rare and woonderfull Conquests, became a most puissant and mightye Monarque. And (for his tyranny, and terrour in Warre) was tearmed, The Scourge of God.

Provenance

The first written record we have refers to Tamburlaine being performed in 1587 which was the year Marlowe arrived in London from Cambridge, so he was quick off the mark.

Scholars guess that there was only ever meant to be a part one but that the play proved so phenomenally popular (and lucrative) that Marlowe was quickly commissioned to produce a sequel. Hollywood’s cynical way with sequels is nothing new.

Both part one and two were published in 1590 and, although there was no name on the title page, no-one doubts that its author was Marlowe, not least because so many contemporary and later authors associate the two.

The historical Timur-i-Leng

Who knows what inspired Marlowe, living in an age characterised by courtly romances, dainty pastoral verse and witty sonnet sequences, to devote a play to one of the greatest megalomaniac conquerors and mass killers of all time? The play’s short prologue suggests the author despised the jiggling verse and feeble comedies of his day and wanted to blast them aside with the Elizabethan version of the Terminator movies.

From jigging veins of rhyming mother wits,
And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay,
We’ll lead you to the stately tent of war,
Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine
Threatening the world with high astounding terms,
And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword.

Timur-i-Leng (meaning Timur the lame) was born in 1336, the son of a Mongol chieftain in Uzbekistan. He was described by Marlowe’s sources as coming from Scythian tribesmen north of the Caspian Sea. He united the Mongol tribes and embarked on a campaign to conquer all of Asia, heading south to defeat the Moghuls at Delhi, west to ravage through Persia, taking on the Egyptian army in Syria and then the Ottoman Turks in Anatolia.

Timur became legendary for his brutality, laying waste to entire cities if they defied him, and massacring every single inhabitant. It’s thought he was responsible for the deaths of as many as 17 million people representing as much as 5% of the world’s entire population at the time. Timur died in 1405, somewhere in his 60s, as he was planning yet another campaign east into China.

Act 1

Scene 1

The play opens in the court of the king of Persia, Mycetes, who is shown as being weak and ineffective. He asks his brother to make a speech which quickly turns into a traitorous critique of himself, Mycetes, so he threatens his brother but then does nothing. From this squabbling it emerges that the Persians are worried by the approach of the Scythian warlord, Tamburlaine, but Mycetes in his delusion, thinks he’ll be able to deal with him by sending a thousand horsemen. He dispatches Theridimas, a general, to bring this about.

Meanwhile, Cosroe his brother, insults Mycetes to his face and says his subjects despise him for his feebleness. The king and his entourage depart leaving Cosroe who explains to Menaphon there is a conspiracy afoot to crown him king (Cosroe) of Asia, and next minute a crowd of courtiers and generals enter who explain that, because the current king is weak and his soldiers languishing while the provinces of the empire are being seized by Tamburlaine, they hereby elect Cosroe king of Persia. Cosroe accepts and promises to restore the empire’s former glory (don’t they all).

Scene 2 Tamburlaine’s camp

Enter Tamburlaine leading Zenocrate, Techelles, Usumcasane, Agydas, Magnetes, Lords, and Soldiers, laden with treasure. Tamburlaine is in his early Scythian bandit phase. He and his band of robbers have intercepted the princess Zenocrate and her entourage as they were returning with all their treasure from Medea in Persia to her father, the Soldan of Egypt.

Tamburlaine tells them to have no fear, he will treat them well, he needs men and allies to grow his empire as part of his aim to become ‘a terror to the world’. Meanwhile – is Zenocrate married, by any chance? Her beauty should grace the bed of he who plans to conquer Asia. He takes off his shepherd’s or rustic wear and straps on a suit of armour to impress her, saying he will become emperor of the world and indicates his two lieutenants, Techelles and Usumcasane, who will command armies so large they will make mountains shake.

Zenocrate and her followers are sceptical of all this big talk, whereupon Tamburlaine decides they shall all stay with him to see these prophecies come true. Tamburlaine delivers another of Marlowe’s trademark speeches packed with lush and sensual luxury:

A hundred Tartars shall attend on thee,
Mounted on steeds swifter than Pegasus;
Thy garments shall be made of Median silk,
Enchased with precious jewèls of mine own,
More rich and valurous than Zenocrate’s.
With milk-white harts upon an ivory sled,
Thou shalt be drawn amidst the frozen pools,
And scale the icy mountains’ lofty tops,
Which with thy beauty will be soon resolved.
My martial prizes with five hundred men,
Won on the fifty-headed Volga’s waves,
Shall all we offer to Zenocrate, −
And then myself to fair Zenocrate.

At this point a messenger announces the sighting of the 1,000 Persian cavalry led by Theridamas. Tamburlaine teases his auditors. He asks Zenocrate if she is not now secretly thrilled at the prospect of being freed? He asks his two lieutenants whether they should attack the approaching Persians and they, of course, enthusiastically say yes.

And then Tamburlaine surprises everyone by saying he will parlay with the approaching forces, instead. Theridamas enters and addresses Tamburlaine respectfully, and Tamburlaine invites Theridamas to join him.

Forsake thy king, and do but join with me,
And we will triumph over all the world;
I hold the Fates bound fast in iron chains,
And with my hand turn Fortune’s wheel about:
And sooner shall the sun fall from his sphere,
Than Tamburlaine be slain or overcome.

This is Marlowe’s mighty line in action, but the lines are merely reflecting the mightiness of the thought of the conception – and that is always straining to be world beating, world leading, strive with the gods, thinking globally, at the uttermost limits of human achievement. Tamburlaine tells Theridamas that together they will conquer the world and become as immortal as the gods.

Overcome by his planet-striding rhetoric, Theridamas announces he will join Tamburlaine and become his partner and Tamburlaine greets him with open arms.

Act 2

Scene 1 Persia

In the court of Cosroe, who we saw being crowned alternative king of Persia. He asks a general who has seen him, for a description of Tamburlaine which is predictably hyperbolic. Cosroe says he plans to ally with Tamburlaine and Theridamas and overthrow Mycetes, then he will go a-conquering and leave Tamburlaine as his regent in Persia. His lackeys agree that it was a good decision to crown him — I think the point is, Cosroe – although smarter than ‘the witless king’ Mycetes – is still totally underestimating Tamburlaine. They all are.

Scene 2 Georgia

In the camp of King Mycetes who rails against his brother’s treachery, and promises they’ll soon conquer this thievish villain Tamburlaine. An example of Mycetes’s follish superficiality is that, in a report about Tamburlaine, he pays no attention to the military facts but is distracted by mention of the myth of Cadmus, who was said to have slain a dragon and sowed its teeth in the earth, from which sprang up an army of warriors.

General Meander tells the troops the plan, which is to scatter gold around the battlefield to distract what they expect to be Tamburlaine’s undisciplined and thievish rabble, and while they scatter to retrieve it, massacre them. Mycetes sounds as frail and peevish as Justice Shallow in Henry IV.

MYCETES: He tells you true, my masters: so he does.

Scene 3

Cosroe has allied with Tamburlaine and Theridamas. They hear that Mycetes and the Persian army are approaching and gird for battle, inspired by Tamburlaine’s rhetoric.

Scene 4

Enter Mycetes fleeing as if after a defeat, lamenting how horrible war is and trying to find somewhere to hide his crown. Enter Tamburlaine who abuses Mycetes for hiding in the heat of the battle, then seizes the crown from the wimp, sizes it up, Mycetes feebly begs for it back and Tamburlaine jocularly returns it, saying he’ll be back and exits.

Scene 5

The allies have defeated Mycetes’ army and their leaders now gather. Tamburlaine officially hands the crown of the Persian Empire to Cosroe who proceeds to give orders. One of his armies will march east to reclaim ‘the Indies’, he will take the main body to march in triumph through Persepolis, and he exits.

Tamburlaine takes up the phrase:

TAMBURLAINE: ‘And ride in triumph through Persepolis!’
Is it not brave to be a king, Techelles?
Is it not passing brave to be a king,
‘And ride in triumph through Persepolis?’

He and the generals disquisit on the glories of being a king and then, abruptly, Tamburlaine says he wants it – he wants the power and glory of the crown. He wants the crown he has just given Cosroe. And – rather mind-bogglingly – he gives the order for their combined armies to attack Cosroe and his forces who only departed a few minutes earlier.

Scene 6

Scandalised that his ally of five minutes ago, Tamburlaine ‘that grievous image of ingratitude’ has turned against him, Cosroe gives a speech rallying his troops.

Scene 7 The Big Battle

Enter Cosroe, wounded; then Tamburlaine, Theridamas, Techelles, Usumcasane, with others. Cosroe is badly wounded and curses his enemies. Tamburlaine gives a definitive speech arguing that treacherous ambition is a) according to the pattern set by the father of the gods, Jove, who overthrew his own father, Saturn b) in our natures:

Nature that framed us of four elements,
Warring within our breasts for regiment,
Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds:
Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend
The wondrous architecture of the world,
And measure every wandering planet’s course,
Still climbing after knowledge infinite,
And always moving as the restless spheres,
Will us to wear ourselves, and never rest,
Until we reach the ripest fruit of all,
That perfect bliss and sole felicity,
The sweet fruition of an earthly crown.

Cosroe describes in poetic language what it feels like to die, and dies, his last words a curse on Tamburlaine and Theridamas. Tamburlaine places Cosroe’s crown upon his own head and all his followers hail him King of Persia!

Act 3

Scene 1 Anatolia, near Constantinople

Enter Bajazeth, the Kings of Fez, Morocco and Algier, with others in great pomp. Bajazeth is emperor of the Turks, or, as he describes himself:

Dread Lord of Afric, Europe, and Asia,
Great King and conqueror of Graecia,
The ocean, Terrene, and the Coal-black sea,
The high and highest monarch of the world…

He is a completely different beast from either Mycetes or Cosroe: he truly believes himself the most powerful man in the world and his host covers the earth so completely as to hold back the spring, because rainwater cannot penetrate through the army to the soil, etc. He and this mighty host are besieging Constantinople.

Bajazeth explains he has heard the threats coming from Tamburlaine and the eastern thieves. He charges one of his ‘bassos’ (‘Bashaws, or Pashas, Turkish governors or military commanders) to go and meet Tamburlaine and tell him to desist. If he insists on advancing, Bajazeth and his army will meet him. The messenger sent, Bajazeth returns to discussing with his generals details of the siege of Constantinople.

Scene 2

Enter Zenocrate, Agydas, Anippe, with others. In which it becomes clear Zenocrate has fallen in love with Tamburlaine who has treated her and hers with respect. Tamburlaine enters at the back of the stage and, as was the convention in Elizabethan theatre, overhears without being seen, Zenocrate admitting how much she has fallen in love with him. He also hears her adviser Agydas, bitterly criticise him.

Then Tamburlaine comes forward and gallantly takes her by the hand, giving black looks at Agydas who is left alone to curse the fact he was overheard and lament Tamburlaine’s dark looks. Enter Techelles carrying a naked dagger which he hands to Agydas, with Tamburlaine’s expectation that he will do the right thing. Agydas makes a speech then stabs himself. Techelles and Usumcasane are impressed  how nobly Agydas spoke and acted.

Scene 3

Enter Tamburlaine, Techelles, Usumcasane, Theridamas, a Basso, Zenocrate, Anippe with others. The Basso sent by the Turkish Sultan Bajazeth has conveyed his warning to Tamburlaine. Tamburlaine scorns him and says he will fight and overthrow the Turk and then free all the Christian slaves he keeps.

Rather surprisingly, Sultan Bajazeth himself enters with his attendants. The two parties exchange abuse, like gangs of schoolboys. Both men address their queens, Bajazeth setting Zabina, mother of his three sons, on a throne to watch the battle, while Tamburlaine sets up Zenocrate. Then the boys fall to abusing each other again, vaunting and threatening and promising to defeat and enslave the other.

The menfolk exit, presumably to go off and fight, leaving the two queens on thrones to hurl insults at each other like two fishwives, and bring in their servants to affirm that the other wife won’t even have the rank of scullion once her husband is overthrown. This must have been very entertaining to watch. Trumpets sound and cannon roar offstage to indicate the battle and both wives insist their husband is winning.

Until Bajazeth runs onstage pursued by Tamburlaine who overcomes him and makes him concede. Zabina laments. Theridamas takes Zabina’s crown and gives it to Zenocrate. By defeating the Sultan, Tamburlaine has come into possession of his lands including most of North Africa. Bajazeth begs to be ransomed but Tamburlaine says he’s not interested in money; when he conquers India all its rulers will throw gold and jewels at him.

He orders Bajazeth and Zabina to be bound and led away.

Act 4

Scene 1

Enter the Soldan of Egypt, Capolin, Lords and a Messenger. The Soldan of Egypt enters shouting at his men to wake and sound trumpets, his daughter is held by the Scythian thief and bandit etc. (It needs to be explained that having conquered the Turks besieging Constantinople, Tamburlaine has moved south east and is now besieging Damascus, capital of Syria. Syria was owned by Egypt, hence the involvement of the Soldan.)

A messenger tells the Soldan Tamburlaine’s horde now consists of 300,000 armed men and 500,000 foot soldiers. The Soldan says he defies him, but an adviser warns that Tamburlaine’s forces are armed and ready while the Egyptians are unprepared. He goes on to explain Tamburlaine’s method of siegecraft:

On the first day of a siege, Tamburlaine’s tents and accoutrements are white: if the town surrenders to him on this day, its citizens will suffer no harm. But on the second morning his tents, dress and banners are changed to red. If a town surrenders on the second day, he will kill only those who wield weapons i.e. soldiers – Thomas Fortescue, the author of Marlowe’s source for the play, The Collection of Histories (1571), wrote that if a city submitted on the second day, Tamburlaine would only ‘execute the officers, magistrates, masters of households, and governors, pardoning and forgiving all others whatsoever’. But if these threats did not move, on the third day his pavilion, ‘His spear, his shield, his horse, his armour, plumes’ were changed to black and then the inhabitants of the besieged town could expect to be massacred to the last man, woman and child.

Outraged at this breaking of all the traditions of war, the Soldan orders a courtier, Capolin, to go request his ally, the king of Arabia to whom Zenocrate was engaged, to send the Soldan his army.

Scene 2 Outside Damascus’ walls

Enter Tamburlaine, Techelles, Theridamas, Usumcasane, Zenocrate, Anippe, two Moors drawing Bajazeth in a cage and Zabina following him. Tamburlaine is reaching full-blown megalomania now. He has Bajazeth taken from his cage, and forces him to kneel on the ground so Tamburlaine can use him as a step up to his throne.

Bajazeth bitterly complains and  his wife says Tamburlaine is not fit to kiss her husband’s feet which have been kissed by so many African kings. Tamburlaine tells Zenocrate to discipline her slave, a message Zenocrate passes on to her handmaid who warns Zabina she’ll have her stripped and whipped. Tamburlaine has Bajazeth returned to his cage and tells his wife she shall feed him with the scraps from Tamburlaine’s table like a dog.

He turns his attention to the siege of Damascus and repeats the process described above: white flags on the first day, red on the second, black for total massacre on the third.

Scene 3

Enter the Soldan, the King of Arabia, Capolin and Soldiers with colours flying. The Soldan and his army are approaching Damascus to engage Tamburlaine. The Soldan repeats all their mutual grievances against the upstart peasant Tamburlaine to his ally, the king of Arabia. The Soldan orders the trumpets sound to warn of their arrival.

Scene 4

A Banquet set out; to it come Tamburlaine, all in scarlet, Zenocrate, Theridamas, Techelles, Usumcasane, Bajazeth in his cage, Zabina and others. Tamburlaine and colleagues fall to a feast taunting Bazazeth who calls down dire curses on their heads. They offer him scraps which he throws away. They give him a knife so he can kill his wife, Zabina, while she’s still got some meat on her, but Bajazeth throws it away. Tamburlaine says maybe he’s thirsty and his servants give him water which Bajazeth throws away.

Attention switches to Zenocrate who is sad. She explains it is because this is her father’s city and her father’s land she’s seeing being laid waste, she asks Tamburlaine to make a peace with him. Tamburlaine says he will make peace with no man but aims to become emperor of the world. He will spare the Soldan’s life, however. Anticipating victory, Tamburlaine awards his closest followers the Soldanship and kingdoms of Fess and Moroccus.

Act 5

Scene 1 Inside Damascus

Enter the Governor of Damascus, with several Citizens, and four Virgins having branches of laurel in their hands. It is day two of the siege and Tamburlaine’s tents have turned to red, The governor and military leaders know their lives are forfeit. They have called together four virgins and give them the task of pleading with Tamburlaine for their lives.

Scene 2 Tamburlaine’s camp outside Damascus

Enter Tamburlaine, all in black and very melancholy, Techelles, Theridamas, Usumcasane, with others. The virgins piteously plead with Tamburlaine but tells them death sits at the tip of his sword and they shall taste. He orders them taken away and killed. A messenger enters to say they have been killed and their bodies hauled up the walls of Damascus.

Then Tamburlaine delivers a very long soliloquy about his feelings for sad Zenocrate… before pulling himself together. His generals enter to tell him Damascus has fallen but the army of the Soldan and king of Arabia approach. Theridamas pleads for the Soldan’s life to please Zenocrate and Tamburlaine agrees.

He has Bajazeth pulled onstage in his cage to watch him prepare for war. Tamburlaine exits and Bajazeth and Zabina lament their humiliating destiny, at considerable length. Zabina exits and Bajazeth beats his brains out on the bars of his cage. Zabina returns, sees her dead husband, has a hysterical fit and also dashes her brains out against the bars of the cage.

Enter Zenocrate bitterly lamenting what she has seen in Damascus, awash with the blood of the massacred population and virgins hoisted up on spears and killed. So saying she comes across the bodies of the suicided Bajazeth and Zabina. She is horrified, and moralises that this is what even the highest most powerful emperors come to. Is this to be the end of her and Tamburlaine?

A messenger arrives to announce that her father, the Soldan of Egypt, and his ally the king of Arabia, have arrived and are engaging Tamburlaine’s army in battle. Zenocrate’s duty and love are torn apart (remember she had been engaged to Arabia).

In staggers the king of Arabia badly wounded, declaring he has fought and is dying for Zenocrates’ honour. She goes to him, cradles him, laments their fates, and he dies.

Re-enter Tamburlaine, leading the Soldan, Techelles, Theridamas, Usumcasane, with others. Zenocrate is delighted to see her father still alive. The Soldan laments his defeat, but Tamburlaine says he will restore him as a tributary king. Tamburlaine has now reached stratospheric heights of mania, convinced the god of war has handed over power to him, the king of the gods is terrified of him, hell is overflowing with the souls he has sent there.

The god of war resigns his room to me,
Meaning to make me general of the world:
Jove, viewing me in arms, looks pale and wan,
Fearing my power should pull him from his throne.
Where’er I come the Fatal Sisters sweat,
And grisly Death, by running to and fro,
To do their ceaseless homage to my sword;
And here in Afric, where it seldom rains,
Since I arrived with my triumphant host,
Have swelling clouds, drawn from wide-gasping wounds,
Been oft resolved in bloody purple showers,
A meteor that might terrify the earth,
And make it quake at every drop it drinks.
Millions of souls sit on the banks of Styx
Waiting the back return of Charon’s boat;
Hell and Elysium swarm with ghosts of men,
That I have sent from sundry foughten fields,
To spread my fame through hell and up to Heaven. −

The climax of this train of thought is to crown Zenocrate Queen of Persia, and all the kingdoms and dominions he has conquered. He declares all these nations will have to pay her father, the Soldan, an annual tribute. He vows to give Bajazeth and Zabina and the King of Arabia worthy funerals. And he will marry Zenocrate.

And there, abruptly and suddenly, the play ends.

Footnotes

Timur’s Hellenisation

It’s so ubiquitous that it’s easy to overlook the fact that Tamburlaine refers incessantly to Greek mythology whether it be replacing Mars as god of war or challenging Jove king of the gods or causing a backlog for Charon to ferry over the River Styx and hundreds of other references. But Timur was a Sunni Muslim of Turco-Mongolian ancestry. In other words, the historical Timur would have thought and spoken in terms of Turkish, Mongolian and Muslim concepts, legends, traditions and language which we know nothing of. The Timur depicted in the play has been thoroughly Europeanised or Hellenised or Marlowised, and has more in common with those other early Marlovian heroes, Leander and Aeneas out of whose mouths poured a never-ending stream of classical references.

Timur’s romanticisation

Another indicator of Timur’s domestication by Marlowe is the way the central spine of the play is, arguably, Tamburlaine’s noble, chaste and dignified love for Zenocrate, which conforms completely to European tropes of romantic love developed during the Middle Ages. The real-life Timur was nothing at all like this, instead collecting dozens of women as wives and concubines as he conquered their fathers’ or erstwhile husbands’ lands, totting up some 43 wives and concubines that we know about.

Timur the Muslim

Another token is the speech in which, on the eve of fighting the Turkish Sultan, Tamburlaine is made to vow that he will liberate the Christian slaves from their Turkish servitude. It is extremely unlikely that Timur ever thought like this. He was a devout Muslim who described himself in documents as ‘the Sword of Islam’, founded Muslim schools and hospitals and forced the rulers he conquered to convert to Islam. In fact, far from being a friend of Christians, Timur is now credited with virtually exterminating the Church of the East, which had previously been a major branch of Christianity.

In this as in so many other of his behaviours the real-life Timur was unknowably different from the reassuringly Europeanised figure Marlowe depicts.

My enemy’s enemy

However, throughout the Renaissance Timur was a well-known figure because popular opinion had it that, by attacking the Ottoman Turks when he did – defeating then Ottoman Sultan Bayezid in the Battle of Ankara on 20 July 1402 – Timur not only lifted the Ottoman siege of Byzantium, which gave that city another 80 or so years of Christian freedom, but stalled the Ottoman advance into Europe. He may have been a mass murderer on a colossal scale, but he hamstrung Christian Europe’s chief enemy for a generation.

White slavery

‘From 1530 to 1780, it is estimated that over one million Europeans were captured and enslaved by African pirates. The pirates not only made prizes of European shipping, but also raided the extensive European coastline for slaves, even descending on English villages occasionally, as they did in Cornwall in 1625 – right in the middle of the great era of English Renaissance drama.’

Related links

Marlowe’s works

History

More Elizabethan and Jacobean reviews

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by Simon on October 19, 2020  •  Permalink
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Posted by Simon on October 19, 2020

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