Tamburlaine: Christopher Marlowe (Revels Student Editions) [Student Edition] [Paperback]

I love the "Tamburlaine" of Christopher Marlowe, because I've read it and couldn't resist it. The story is not melodramatically forced, but rather follows in a smooth and epic line, giving it the texture of a documentary. As a tragedy it's weird, encompassing all drifts of literature: darkly humorous, rhetorical, romantic, violent and deep, with an indescribable grandeur. People commenting on Marlowe's work usually regard him as psychologically shallow, but in this play the terrifying hero is so charismatically evoked in his language, sometimes rhetoric and sometimes commonplace, that I left the book with a queer sense of something between love and dread. Even Tamburlaine's worst deeds, like his cursory humiliation of the captive kings, gain an odd flavour of predestination: they're more of the hijinx of a power-drunk teenager than the actions of a cynical tyrant. Everyone should read this work, in which the dark-tinted wonders of the mediaeval Orient are called up in some of the most steelishly beautiful poetry I've ever read.

I'm not going to attempt to review the Tamburlaine plays, except to say that if you enjoy Shakespeare and haven't read Marlowe, get started. I love these plays.

The quality of this edition of the plays, however, is worth describing. I purchased this edition for my students in an Honors High-School English class. It's a reasonable edition to teach with. The footnotes do a good job of identifying and explaining the concepts and terms my students weren't familiar with, and thankfully they are on the bottom of each page, rather than at the end of the book (which very few students will bother to turn to). The introductory material is OK, but not fabulous; if you want your students do to any serious background reading, you'll probably be making photocopies of other sources.

The price was right, and the edition was fine for the classroom; I'd probably buy this edition again for students.

"You shall have honors as your merits be," Tamburlaine promises the Persian turncoat, Theridimas (1.2.254). Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine makes no apologies for the rise of his shepherd to the heights of power, and frustrates the traditional tragedy by letting a ruthless character with an arsenal of tragic flaws fly through the play untouched. For readers, the boundless Tamburlaine becomes almost absurd, but a theme of the play resonates with the modern world, as Tamburlaine operates like an rogue entrepreneur who leaves the farm to become the owner of Persia, all while rejecting the forms of entitlement common to his age and redefining the rules of the game. He pulls himself up by his own bootstraps, like various modern leaders of the 20th century. However, his goal has no mapped out ideal behind it, other than the blind ambition and ruthless tactics he needs to uproot the status quo.

The play begins with infighting among the Persian nobles, with Cosroe tormenting his brother, the king, Mycetes. At first sight, their banter seems comedic, but the subtext of the opening scene leads to further simplicities and exposes the single-minded holes in the mindset of the aristocracy, as the royal brothers beset themselves with power plays and infighting. They represent the entitled party, the assuming elite, and they label Tamburlaine as a "fox," a "thief" who "robs your merchants," he is "incivil," and operates through "barbarous arms" (1.1.31-40).

The initial portrayal of a fox contrasts with the following scene, where the characterization changes to a "lion" (1.2.52). Techelles, who at first seems a pandering subordinate, believes in Tamburlaine: "Methinks I see kings kneeling at his feet" (1.2.55). Likewise, Usumcasane praises his lord Tamburlaine, pledging his life to the cause, with the contract being his own promotion to king. These first compliments to Tamburlaine feel like gross ambition, like ruthless men willing to cut throats simply for power. And soon enough we realize that the goal of Tamburlaine has no admirable literary novelty propelling it; no, this is blind ambition, and Tamburlaine seeks men to work with him of the same mindset.

To retreat to the first scene again, the tone of the play begins with Mycetes and Cosroe bickering over the throne, and by allowing the initial treatment of Tamburlaine to come from a royal court, the reader's perception of Tamburlaine sails off with a handicap of condescension. As a petty shepherd, he challenges the highest authorities, without cause. However, what precedes the play remains in the background. Mycetes, an inept leader, enjoys the fruits of one of his ancestor's ambition, and whoever founded the power that he enjoys, surely did not come to his position by goodwill.

Brought up to believe fallacies regarding power, Cosroe complains, "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" (2.6.1-4). In other words, he thinks that Tamburlaine should step back and follow the old adage, "know thyself."

In reading the play, Tamburlaine's own words seem like ominous foreshadowing, as time and again he refers to death. In recruiting the traitor of Persia, Theridimas, Tamburlaine says, "And sooner shall the sun fall from its sphere / Than Tamburlaine be slain or overcome" (1.2.175-176). We wait for the sun to fall somehow, yet it doesn't. Next to Theridimas he says, "Thus shall thy heart be still combined with thine / Until our bodies turn to elements" (1.2.234-235). We wait for a cardiac event, but none arrives.

Unlike a traditional tragedy, Tamburlaine rides out the end as if the play were a comedy: he gets married to beautiful and noble Zenocrate, who he met via a kidnapping. In a traditional tragedy, Tamburlaine would have to suffer an awful death for his actions, yet Marlowe ignores a full deck of tragic flaws, and lets his hero exit as a king who enjoys a mutual love with Zenocrate, his queen.

The play has a lot of action, but gets very repetitive. The minor characters are not that interesting, except for Mycetes and Cosroe, who don't live for very long.