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Tamburlaine and Marlowe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Leslie Spence
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Extract

It is a widely accepted commonplace in Marlowe criticism that the character of Tamburlaine was essentially created by Marlowe himself. From this assumption it was easy to advance a step further and declare that in creating this character the dramatist was actually drawing his own spiritual portrait, so that we may accept the figure of the Tartar conqueror as a faithful expression of Marlowe's own personality. Indeed, from this point of view Tamburlaine, being free from the hampering restrictions of flesh and blood, might be regarded perhaps as more genuinely Marlowe than Marlowe in the flesh.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , September 1927 , pp. 604 - 622
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1927

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References

1 Marlowe and his Poetry, p. 45. Six pages farther, however, Mr. Ingram admits that Tamburlaine considered himself the Scourge of God. Cf., also his Christopher Marlowe and his Associates, pp. 105-6.

2 The sources for Tamburlaine I were announced by Professors C. Herford and A. Wagner in The Academy, October 20, 1883, as Mexia's Sylva de varia lecion (Seville, 1543), translated into English by Fortesque under the title The Foreste (London, 1571 and 1576) Part II, Chapter 14; and Perondinus' Vita Magni Tamerlanis (Florence, 1551).

3 The Foreste, p. 83. (The 1571 edition is quoted; but the u's and v's are modernized.)

4 Perondinus, pp. 26, 27, and 47. Cf. also pp. 7, 8, 52, 54.

5 The Foreste, p. 86.

6 A prima adolescentia et ipse Tamerlanes opilio tenuique fortuna fuit, cseterum callido ingenio, nauo, elato, ac supra æquum ambitioso, ita vt obsublimes quos gerebat animos quandam regii oris indolem præferre, et non obscura summi futuris ducis indicia præbere videretur; validis robustisque viribus haud magnitudo animique robur et ad agilitas corporis defuere, nam quicquid tum ad saltandi, tum ad sagittandi peritiam attinebat (est enim Scythis id proprium peculiareque studium) ipsi adeo mirifice e sententia succedebat, longeque, cæteris præstabat, opilionibus, vt omnium ferè Sogdianæ regionis hominum beneuolentiam sibi et gratiam conciliauerit ingentem; ac talem se quotidie præstitit, vt nullis præsentium voluptatum blandiciis, quibus magnopere adolescentium animi deliniti conspiciuntur addictus esse videretur. (Perondinus, p. 8).

7 Professors Herford and Wagner first pointed out Marlowe's indebtedness to Perondinus for details of Tamburlaine's physique:

Statura fuit procera, et eminenti barbatus, latus ab humeris et pectore, cæterisque membris æqualis et congruens integra valetudine, excepto altero pede, quo non perinde valebat, vt inde claudicare ac deformiter incedere prospiceretur, oris truculenti atque obductae suæ frontis oculi introrsus recedentes præferocis animi sui sæuitiem spirantes intuentibus terrorem et formidinem incutiebant, vadida erat vsque adeo neruorum compage, vt validissimum quemque è Scythis in palestra prosterneret, ac Parthici ingentis arcus chordam lacertosis brachiis vltra aurem facile posset extendere, æneumque mortarium excussi iaculi spiculo transfodere (p. 46).

Of stature tall, and straightly fashioned,

Like his desire lift upward and divine;

So large of limbs, his joints so strongly knit,

Such breadth of shoulders as might mainly bear

Old Atlas' burthen—'twixt his manly pitch,

A pearl, more worth than all the world, is placed,

Wherein by curious sovereignty of art

Are fixed his piercing instruments of sight,

Whose fiery circles bear encompassèd

A heaven of heavenly bodies in their spheres,

That guides his steps and actions to the throne,

Where honour sits invested royally:

Pale of complexion, wrought in him with passion,

Thirsting with sovereignty and love of arms;

His lofty brows in folds do figure death,

And in their smoothness amity and life;

About them hangs a knot of amber hair,

Wrappèd in curls, as fierce Achilles' was,

On which the breath of Heaven delights to play,

Making it dance with wanton majesty.—

His arms and fingers, long and sinewy,

Betokening valour and excess of strength—

In every part proportioned like the man

Should make the world subdued to Tamburlaine.

(II, 1, 7-30).

8 “Christopher Marlowe,” Fortnightly, LXXXIV, 483.

9 Christopher Marlowe and his Associates, p. iii. The same opinion is expressed by Mr. Ingram in Marlowe and his Poetry, pp. 42-43.

10 Marlowe and his Poetry, p. 64.

11 There are probably a few exceptions. Tamburlaine's indignation at the treatment of Christians by pirates, as it is strong reaction for an atheist accustomed to cruelty, may reflect Marlowe's personal feeling, or that of England:

. . . . I

Will first subdue the Turk, and then enlarge

Those Christian captives, which you keep as slaves,

Burthening their bodies with your heavy chains,

And feeding them with thin and slender fare;

That naked row about the Terrene Sea,

And when they chance to rest or breathe a space,

Are punished with bastones (III, 3, 46-52).

12 “Teragay, who was Timour's father, appears to have resigned the office, preferring the retirement of Kesh, and the society of learned men, to the turbulent strife of the court of Samarcand.” Hakluyt Society, XXVI, xiii.

13 p. 26.

14 p. 32.

15 p. 39.

16 pp. 46-7. Cf., also, pp. 28, 30, 13.

17 “Agros ac villas populabundi, innumeris vel sibi multis pollicitationibus adiunctis,” and other passages on p. 10.

18 Is quidem paucis interiectis diebus supra duo millia hominum in vnum collegit, copulata etiam sibi magna ex perditis et facinorosis manu. (p. 10.)

19 On p. 24 are such details as: “Armeniam inuaserat quam totam ferè cædendo, rapiendo, incendendo, sacraque omnia et fana depeculando ad sui imperium adiunxerat.”

20 p. 26.

21 In Perondinus' account, a band of boys and girls is sent out from the beleaguered city; in Mexia's the women and children. In both, Tamburlaine sees the emissaries when they are at a great distance, and orders the horsemen to kill them, every one. Marlowe, for dramatic presentation substitutes four virgins who come into Tamburlaine's presence to make their plea.

22 Insontes, nihilque tale meritos confertim equorum pedibus calcandos subiecit, et obterendos calcibus qui inter maxime miserandos eiulatus et voces animas expirarunt dein cum suis intra vrbem irruens, cuncta ferro et flammis absumptum iri pronunciauit (p. 43).

23 pp. 30-31.

24 The Foreste, p. 86.

25 p. 84.

26 Bajazeth's easy acceptance of flattery and his overconfidence may have been suggested by a few phrases in the sources, which, however, do not picture him as absurd:

Qua re audita Turcarum rex Baiazithes, qui tunc ad obsedendum Byzantium castra promouerat, non ob id exterritus animoque fractus repentino tanti exercitus aduentu, statim soluta obsidione è Byzantio transmittens in Armeniæ finibus castra collocauit, ad radices Stellæ montis (Perondinus, p. 24).

This puissante Emperour, (Bajazeth), determined to meete hym, and to give hym present battaile, havyng merveilous affiance in the approved manhoode, and vertue of his Souldairs (The Foreste, p. 84).

27 From Perondinus, whom the dramatist followed closely for the details of Bajazeth's torment, however, Marlowe probably got the suggestion for the Turk's imprecations under his sufferings:

quod indignissime ferens Baiazithes, ira percitus, moeroreque confectus tanta oneratus ignominia, mortem sibimet dire imprecabatur (p. 31).

28 The Foreste, p. 83.

29 II, 6, 38.

30 II, 7, 52.

31 The most significant of Professor Courthope's statements follow: “External and internal evidence shows also that Marlowe had closely studied the works of Machiavelli, and had thus settled on a line of thought which he before long found means of expressing in a dramatic form” (A History of English Poetry, II, 403).

“What we do find in Marlowe is Seneca's exaltation of the freedom of the human will, dissociated from the idea of necessity, and joined with Machiavelli's principle of the excellence of virtù. This principle is represented under a great variety of aspects; sometimes in the energy of a single heroic character, as in Tamburlaine” (Ibid., II, 405).

“[Sidney and Spenser] reflect the chivalrous element that was still strong in English society, the high principle of honour, the elevation of sentiment, the sense of duty and religion. From all these restraining principles in the conscience of the nation Marlowe cut himself off; and by his exaltation of the Machiavellian principle severed his connection, not only with Puritanism, but with whatever was most lofty and noble in the history of England” (Ibid., II, 421).

32 Professors Herford and Wagner were the first to note the curious omission of the defect that gave the hero his name, Timur Lang (Timur the lame) vulgarized to Tamerlane. (Academy, Oct. 20, 1883.)

33 pp. 53-4.

34 Marlowe's Edward II, p. xcv.