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    The Plays
    The Plays
    The Plays
    Ebook791 pages10 hours

    The Plays

    By Christopher Marlowe and Emma Smith

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    Tamburlaine the Great - I and II, Dr Faustus (A Text and B Text) The Jew of Malta, Edward II, The Massacre at Paris, Dido Queen of Carthage. With Introductions by Emma Smith.

    If Shakespeare had died at the age Marlowe died, there would have been no question that Marlowe was the leading figure in English Renaissance drama. This edition of all his plays shows why. The plays give us a clear picture of Marlowe as a radical theatrical poet of great linguistic and dramatic daring, whose characters constantly strive to break out of the social, religious and rhetorical bonds within which they are confined.

    Accused during his lifetime of blasphemy and homosexuality, Marlowe still has the power to challenge our assumptions about conventional morality, through his innovative theatricality. By placing less-known plays such as The Massacre at Paris and Dido Queen of Carthage alongside the acknowledged masterpieces Edward II and Dr Faustus, this edition gives a full picture of Marlowe's distinctive and provocative talent.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWordsworth Editions
    Release dateApr 5, 2000
    ISBN9781848704909
    The Plays
    Author

    Christopher Marlowe

    Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe, was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe is among the most famous of the Elizabethan playwrights.

    Read more from Christopher Marlowe

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      Uneven, but mostly humorous, especially the Importance of Being Earnest.

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    The Plays - Christopher Marlowe

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    Contents

    Chronology

    General Introduction

    Tamburlaine the Great I

    Tamburlaine the Great II

    The Tragedy of Doctor Faustus (A-text, 1604)

    The Tragedy of Doctor Faustus (B-text, 1616)

    The Jew of Malta

    Edward the Second

    The Massacre at Paris

    The Tragedy of Dido Queen of Carthage

    Chronology

    Christopher Marlowe (1564–93)

    1564. Christopher Marlowe born in Canterbury, son of a shoemaker.

    1579. Gained a scholarship to the King’s School, Canterbury

    1580. Obtained a scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he studied divinity.

    1584. Awarded the degree of Bachelor of Arts. There is some evidence that during his time at Cambridge he was also working as a spy for Sir Francis Walsingham, head of the Elizabethan secret service. While a student he translated from Latin Ovid’s erotic lyrics, and probably wrote his first play Dido, Queen of Carthage.

    1587. Awarded the degree of Master of Arts, following a letter from the Queen’s Privy Council to the University of Cambridge authorities who, it seems, suspected him of being a Catholic spy.

    1589. Marlowe arrested on the charge of murdering one William Bradley in a fight. In fact, Marlowe’s friend Thomas Watson had delivered the fatal blow. Marlowe was imprisoned in Newgate for a fortnight until he was bailed by friends; Watson was eventually pardoned, having been judged to have acted in self-defence.

    1590. Tamburlaine the Great published, including both Parts I and II. These are the only plays of Marlowe’s to be published during his lifetime. The dating of his other plays is difficult to determine, but it is conjectured that Tamburlaine was probably first performed in 1587–8, The Jew of Malta in 1588–9, Edward II somewhere between 1591–3 and Doctor Faustus in 1592.

    1593. The Massacre at Paris performed at the Rose Theatre. Most of Marlowe’s plays were probably performed here, but the Massacre is the only one which can be precisely dated. Marlowe was arrested after heretical papers were found in the room of Thomas Kyd, another playwright and one-time room-mate. Kyd insisted that the papers belonged to Marlowe, accusing him in a deposition of heresy, blasphemy and other ‘monstrous opinions’. A government agent, Richard Baines, was given the task of investigating the case while Marlowe was on bail, and he produced a note detailing other treasonable and blasphemous opinions supposedly uttered by Marlowe. These included the claims that ‘Christ was a bastard’, that ‘St John the Evangelist was bedfellow to Christ [and] used him as the sinners of Sodoma’, ‘that all they that love not tobacco and boys were fools’, and that ‘he has as good a right to coin as the Queen of England’. There was also the suggestion that some ‘great men, who in convenient time shall be named’ were also implicated in these opinions. Baines concluded that ‘all men in Christianity ought to endeavour that the mouth of so dangerous a member may be stopped’. Before Marlowe could be tried, he was stabbed to death by a drinking companion, Ingram Frizer, in a tavern in Deptford, supposedly over a dispute about the bill. Two former secret service colleagues were the only witnesses, and the suggestion that this was a cover-up has often been made, most cogently by Charles Nicholl in his book The Reckoning.

    General Introduction

    This chronology lists all the known facts about Marlowe’s life, and some widely-accepted and informed conjecture about his activities. Fact and fiction – both his own creations and those of others – are peculiarly intertwined in responses to Marlowe’s work. Since his violent death in a tavern brawl in Deptford at the age of twenty-nine, the playwright has become the stuff of literary myth, fuelled by speculation in fiction and scholarship about this mysterious man of the Elizabethan theatre. Variously identified as a spy, a double agent, a free-thinker, an atheist, a homosexual or all of these, Marlowe’s bad-boy reputation threatens to distort our reading of the plays. Even where his role is incidental, as in the recent Oscar-winning film Shakespeare in Love which presents him as saturnine and brilliantly, morosely creative, he is portrayed as an enigma. We have no evidence other than self-interested hearsay to confirm his dangerous reputation – no evidence, for example, that any of his plays was ever censored – but it is striking that critics have been so unwilling to let go of this powerful myth. The response of the more morally orthodox strain of literary criticism was to castigate the author-sinner for what William Hazlitt described as ‘a lust for power in his writings, a hunger and thirst after unrighteousness, a glow of the imagination, unhallowed by any thing but its own energies’. Recent criticism has, without significantly changing the terms of the commentary, radically revalued these qualities: ‘millennial Marlowe’, according to the editor of a recent collection of critical essays on the plays and poetry, ‘will be canonised . . . not for pious orthodoxy but for the perversion, violence, cruelty and excess that formerly disqualified him from sainthood’ (Richard Wilson, in Christopher Marlowe, Longman 1999).

    The elision of the sensationalised accounts of his short life with the events and characters of the plays he wrote began soon after his death. As a satirical play produced in 1600 in Cambridge, Marlowe’s alma mater, described him:

    Marlowe was happy in his buskind [i.e. tragic] muse,

    Alas unhappy in his life and end.

    Pity it is that wit so ill should dwell,

    Wit lend from heaven, but vices sent from hell.

    Numerous critics have identified Marlowe’s morally ambiguous heroes with their creator: Marlowe the atheist is thus figured by Faustus, who enters into a pact with the devil; Marlowe the amoral outsider merges with Barabas; Marlowe the homosexual is expressed in Edward; Marlowe the ambitious wordsmith is echoed by Tamburlaine. While it is impossible entirely to separate the colourful accounts of his life from the plays, such biographical readings are fraught with speculation. Marlowe’s plays are distinctive for their shifting quality, their refusal to allow for moral certainties, and as such they may reflect the shadowy world in which their author moved. Beyond this association, it is as difficult to discover Marlowe’s own opinions from the evidence of his writings as it is from those accusatory and moralistic contributions published just before and after his death. Marlowe’s drama is characteristically challenging, unsettling and unconventional, and the introductions in this volume, which includes his entire dramatic corpus, will attempt to demonstrate these qualities. Marlowe’s early death deprived the English theatre of a great talent. It is as if all we had of Shakespeare was the Henry VI plays, Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet and The Comedy of Errors. Marlowe’s particular legacy was linguistic: his gift for dramatic poetry, what Ben Jonson famously described as his ‘mighty line’, the iambic pentameter which was to transform theatrical writing. The scope of his plays and their characteristic mode of hyperbole and bombast, demonstrate the high aspirations of his dramatic imagination.

    Emma Smith

    Hertford College, Oxford

    The First Part of Tamburlane the Great

    Introduction

    The two parts of Tamburlaine were probably performed during 1587–8, by the Lord Admiral’s Men at the Rose Theatre. They were published together in 1590, with the graphic extended title Tamburlaine the great; who, from a Scythian shepherd, by his rare and wonderful conquests became a most puissant and mighty monarch, and for his tyranny and terror was termed the scourge of God. There is no indication of authorship on this first printed version of the plays. The question of the relationship between the two parts will be considered in more detail in the introduction to Part II: the available evidence seems to suggest that Part I was originally conceived as a single, self-standing play, but it was so popular with the theatregoing public that a sequel was hastily commissioned and performed to cash in on this initial success. This introduction will consider Part I as it must have been experienced by Elizabethan playgoers: as a complete and completed dramatic narrative.

    The Prologue to the play identifies it as a dramatic departure, away from ‘jigging veins of rhyming mother-wits’, Marlowe’s disdainful reference to the doggerel rhythms and home-spun predictability of his fellow dramatists. Leaving such inconsequential forms behind, the audience is to be led ‘to the stately tent of war’, to hear Tamburlaine ‘threat’ning the world with high astounding terms’. A sense of geographical scope is suggested in the phrase ‘scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword’. This is a play of powerful, effective language, a blank verse drama of action, not of contemplation or reflection. We are invited to ‘view but his picture in this tragic glass,/And then applaud his fortunes as [we] please’. As so often in Marlowe’s plays, the prologue offers an immediate introduction to significant themes on which the play will discourse at more length. Firstly, this is a new kind of play - both in ideological and dramatic terms. Its subject matter, too, is a departure, and the play will be concerned with the theatre of war. Tamburlaine’s character is defined in terms of his linguistic prowess, and this power over and through language is, of course, a highly theatrical one, analogous to the authority of the actor. The play is identified as a ‘tragic glass’, but here, too, Marlowe is innovative. Tragedies conventionally end in the death of their major protagonist, but Tamburlaine is not dead at the end of Part I, and thus the prologue alerts the generic expectations of tragedy only to frustrate them. Finally, the audience is invited, even commanded, to respond to the play as they see fit. Moral responsibility, the authority to endorse or criticise the play’s actions and characters, is smartly devolved onto the audience. This is not a play which is going to give us the satisfaction of telling us what to think, but rather one which offers a thoroughgoing challenge to our expectations of genre, style, characterisation, and moral standpoint. Our active participation is demanded.

    This typically Marlovian start is developed through the play. The play deals with the rise to power of Tamburlaine, a Scythian shepherd. Through an alliance with Cosroe who has rebelled against his brother Mycetes, King of Persia, Tamburlaine’s power increases until he defeats Cosroe himelf. He conquers the Turkish emperor Bajazeth and humiliates him and his wife into a violent suicide by imprisoning and goading them in a cage. Only Zenocrate, Tamburlaine’s captive and later his wife, can mediate his ruthless ambition; she persuades him to spare her father when he captures Damascus, slaughtering its population. From the outset, then, Tamburlaine refuses to acknowledge limitations. Elizabethan social hierarchy held that the upper classes were born to their rank and wealth because they were natural leaders. Tamburlaine discards this convention, proclaiming at his first appearance on stage, ‘I am a lord, for so my deeds shall prove,/ And yet a shepherd by my parentage’, drawing on the mythic iconography of Jove, the king of the gods who took the form of a shepherd on earth. And if Tamburlaine proclaims this, it must be so, for throughout the play he is characterised as a man whose words, however extravagant, are never empty, vainglorious delusions but firm prophecies we see enacted before our eyes. ‘Forsake thy king,’ he tells Theridamas, ‘and do but join with me,/ And we will triumph over all the world.’ Theridamas does, and they do. Like Zenocrate in the same scene, Theridamas is won over by Tamburlaine’s rhetoric, and the play makes it clear that it is this control over language which both symbolises and enacts the hero’s power. As he tells Theridamas, ‘ will and shall best fitteth Tamburlaine’ (3.3): this purposive grammar is the means of his success. Even his name, repeated some eighty times in the play, takes on a talismanic power. Tamburlaine’s words are literally irresistible, for characters onstage and for the audience in the theatre. Those who do not succumb to this seduction are summarily despatched, so there is small wonder that Elizabethan audiences fell for this hero. A play which seemed to offer ultimate moral judgement to the intellectually-engaged spectator of the play turns out to countermand this offer within minutes: perhaps the prologue, rather than inviting us to judge as we please, was issuing a challenge, daring us not to yield to its supremely powerful, charismatic hero. There is no room for us to dissent from this dramatisation of absolutism, and indeed, we may well be excited by its representation of power, wealth and excess. The characteristically Marlovian tension between revulsion and admiration, between identifying with and distancing from the major protagonist, is established.

    What is so unorthodox about Tamburlaine’s linguistic vaunting is that it does not undergo any setback. In the second scene of the play, he boasts:

    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.

    Conventions of tragedy lead us to expect that any man who so clearly sets himself above the control of fortune is going to be brought low. Tamburlaine’s cosmic words seem like an archetypal instance of hubris – that pridefulness which, according to Aristotle’s theory of classical tragedy, was always and inevitably followed by a fall. But Tamburlaine’s supreme force of will does seem, in this play at least, to control his destiny. He is untouchable, both by the mortals he encounters in his sweep across half the globe, and by the unseen forces thought to control human existence. Tamburlaine acknowledges no such limitations, either physical or metaphysical, and it is as if by not believing in them, he renders them impotent. There is no nemesis in the form of divine or human intervention. Opponents of Tamburlaine’s expansion are expeditiously killed, or, sometimes, as in the case of Bajazeth who brains himself to death in his cage, put to a brutal and bloody death. While we may feel repelled by this summary brutality, even these actions do not fundamentally fix our response to Tamburlaine himself, since none of these challengers is dramatically or morally worthy of our respect – from the ineffectual Mycetes, whose impotence is tellingly revealed by his own initial admission that he is not good with words, to Cosroe, whose dying curse on Tamburlaine is bathetic in its ineffectiveness. The play ends not with the expected reversal of Tamburlaine’s fortunes according to the tragic model, but with a conclusion more akin to the structures of contemporary comedy: a marriage. The ‘dead bodies’ borne off in the final stage direction do not, as they might in Shakespearean tragedy, include that of the eponymous hero.

    All this is not to say that Marlowe’s portrait of his hero is entirely favourable. Tamburlaine is presented as pitiless and tyrannical. Moments of uncharacteristic tenderness – his feelings about Zenocrate in Act 5, for example – are quickly erased by the force of his brutality, in the murder of the innocent virgins of Damascus. The banquet before the gates of Damascus dramatises the excesses of his appetite for power, as he serves up crowns to his captains and carves up the world with his dagger. Tamburlaine is terrifyingly irresistible, both within the play and within the theatre, not least because his power, as in this banquet scene, is preeminently theatrical: his greatest acts are coups de theatre. His is not a story of inner psychology but of external self-presentation, of declaiming rather than musing, of action, including linguistic action, rather than contemplation. If we look for realist or three-dimensional characterisation in Marlowe’s works, we look in vain, for the concern of the plays is in developing action and poetry rather than personality.

    A decade after Tamburlaine was performed at the Rose, the rivals of the Admiral’s Men, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, associated with Marlowe’s most famous contemporary, William Shakespeare, opened a new theatre on London’s Bankside. They called it the Globe. Marlowe, however, anticipates this analogy between the theatre and the world by bringing the world on to the stage of Tamburlaine. Part of the play’s triumphant appeal, then, is to the armchair traveller, the Elizabethan hungry for fantastic news of farflung and unfamiliar places. Thomas Platter, a German who visited the Globe theatre during his tour of England in 1599, observed that the English enjoy ‘learning at the play what is happening abroad . . . since for the most part they do not travel much, but prefer to learn foreign matters and take their pleasures at home’. Tamburlaine seems to fit this role perfectly. The play’s rhetoric is a gazetteer of place-names, rather like the contemporary catalogues of exotic locations mapping out the newly opening trade routes which contributed to London’s prosperity and England’s increasing international ascendancy. It has been suggested that in his subjugation of the world, Tamburlaine prefigures and triumphantly symbolises the emerging practice of colonisation through trade and conquest. The ‘scourge of God’ is, seen in this light, the ideal Englishman, and the ambivalence of the audience to this figure who is at once barbarously foreign and also recognisable, even admirable, is considerable. Tamburlaine is untrammelled by geographical place. He scorns the ‘blind geographers’ who seek to divide the world into the ‘three regions’ of Europe, Africa and Asia. He reduces the world ‘to a map’, inscribing it with his power to name: ‘Calling the provinces, cities, and towns/ After my name and thine, Zenocrate’ (5.1). At the end of Part I he is instructing his noblemen how to rule over these newly acquired dominions, taking ‘truce with all the world’ – a truce declared, of course, on his own terms.

    Characters in the play

    Mycetes, King of Persia

    Cosroe, his Brother

    Meander, Theridamas, Ortygius, Ceneus, Persian lords

    Menaphon

    Tamburlaine, a Scythian shepherd

    Techelles, Usumcasane, his followers

    Bajazeth, Emperor of the Turks

    King of Fez

    King of Morocco

    King of Argier

    King of Arabia

    Soldan of Egypt

    Governor of Damascus

    Agydas, Magnetes, Median lords

    Capolin, an Egyptian

    Philemus, Basseos, Lords, Citizens, Moors, Soldiers and Attendants

    Zenocrate, daughter to the Soldan of Egypt

    Anippe, her maid

    Zabina, wife to Bajazeth

    Ebea, her maid

    Virgins of Damascus

    The First Part of

    Tamburlaine the Great

    The Prologue

    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.

    View but his picture in this tragic glass,

    And then applaud his fortunes as you please.

    Act One

    Scene 1

    Enter Mycetes, Cosroe, Meander, Theridamas, Ortygius, Ceneus, Menaphon, with others

    Mycetes. Brother Cosroe, I find myself agriev’d;

    Yet insufficient to express the same,

    For it requires a great and thundering speech:

    Good brother, tell the cause unto my lords;

    I know you have a better wit than I.

    Cosroe. Unhappy Persia – that in former age

    Hast been the seat of mighty conquerors,

    That, in their prowess and their policies,

    Have triumph’d over Afric, and the bounds

    Of Europe where the sun dares scarce appear [10]

    For freezing meteors and congealed cold –

    Now to be rul’d and govern’d by a man

    At whose birthday Cynthia with Saturn join’d,

    And Jove, the Sun, and Mercury denied

    To shed their influence in his fickle brain!

    Now Turks and Tartars shake their swords at thee,

    Meaning to mangle all thy provinces.

    Mycetes. Brother, I see your meaning well enough,

    And through your planets I perceive you think

    I am not wise enough to be a king: [20]

    But I refer me to my noblemen,

    That know my wit, and can be witnesses.

    I might command you to be slain for this –

    Meander, might I not?

    Meander. Not for so small a fault, my sovereign lord.

    Mycetes. I mean it not, but yet I know I might –

    Yet live; yea, live; Mycetes wills it so.

    Meander, thou, my faithful counsellor,

    Declare the cause of my conceived grief,

    Which is, God knows, about that Tamburlaine, [30]

    That, like a fox in midst of harvest-time,

    Doth prey upon my flocks of passengers;

    And, as I hear, doth mean to pull my plumes:

    Therefore ’tis good and meet for to be wise.

    Meander. Oft have I heard your majesty complain

    Of Tamburlaine, that sturdy Scythian thief,

    That robs your merchants of Persepolis

    Trading by land unto the Western Isles,

    And in your confines with his lawless train

    Daily commits incivil outrages, [40]

    Hoping (misled by dreaming prophecies)

    To reign in Asia, and with barbarous arms

    To make himself the monarch of the East:

    But, ere he march in Asia, or display

    His vagrant ensign in the Persian fields,

    Your grace hath taken order by Theridamas,

    Charg’d with a thousand horse, to apprehend

    And bring him captive to your highness’ throne.

    Mycetes. Full true thou speak’st, and like thyself, my lord,

    Whom I may term a Damon for thy love: [50]

    Therefore ’tis best, if so it like you all,

    To send my thousand horse incontinent

    To apprehend that paltry Scythian.

    How like you this, my honourable lords?

    Is it not a kingly resolution?

    Cosroe. It cannot choose, because it comes from you.

    Mycetes. Then hear thy charge, valiant Theridamas,

    The chiefest captain of Mycetes’ host,

    The hope of Persia, and the very legs

    Whereon our state doth lean as on a staff, [60]

    That holds us up and foils our neighbour foes:

    Thou shalt be leader of this thousand horse,

    Whose foaming gall with rage and high disdain

    Have sworn the death of wicked Tamburlaine.

    Go frowning forth; but come thou smiling home,

    As did Sir Paris with the Grecian dame:

    Return with speed; time passeth swift away;

    Our life is frail, and we may die today.

    Theridamas. Before the moon renew her borrow’d light,

    Doubt not, my lord and gracious sovereign, [70]

    But Tamburlaine and that Tartarian rout

    Shall either perish by our warlike hands,

    Or plead for mercy at your highness’ feet.

    Mycetes. Go, stout Theridamas; thy words are swords,

    And with thy looks thou conquerest all thy foes.

    I long to see thee back return from hence,

    That I may view these milk-white steeds of mine

    All loaden with the heads of killed men,

    And, from their knees even to their hoofs below,

    Besmear’d with blood that makes a dainty show. [80]

    Theridamas. Then now, my lord, I humbly take my leave.

    Mycetes. Theridamas, farewell ten thousand times.

    [exit Theridamas

    Ah, Menaphon, why stay’st thou thus behind,

    When other men press forward for renown?

    Go, Menaphon, go into Scythia,

    And foot by foot follow Theridamas.

    Cosroe. Nay, pray you, let him stay; a greater [task]

    Fits Menaphon than warring with a thief:

    Create him pro-rex of all Africa,

    That he may win the Babylonians’ hearts, [90]

    Which will revolt from Persian government,

    Unless they have a wiser king than you.

    Mycetes. Unless they have a wiser king than you!

    These are his words; Meander, set them down.

    Cosroe. And add this to them – that all Asia

    Lament to see the folly of their king.

    Mycetes. Well, here I swear by this my royal seat –

    Cosroe. You may do well to kiss it, then.

    Mycetes. Emboss’d with silk as best beseems my state,

    To be reveng’d for these contemptuous words! [100]

    O where is duty and allegiance now?

    Fled to the Caspian or the Ocean main?

    What shall I call thee? Brother? No, a foe;

    Monster of nature, shame unto thy stock,

    That dar’st presume thy sovereign for to mock!

    Meander come: I am abus’d, Meander.

    [exeunt all except Cosroe and Menaphon

    Menaphon. How now my lord! What, mated and amaz’d

    To hear the king thus threaten like himself!

    Cosroe. Ah, Menaphon, I pass not for his threats!

    The plot is laid by Persian noblemen [110]

    And captains of the Median garrisons

    To crown me emperor of Asia:

    But this it is that doth excruciate

    The very substance of my vexed soul,

    To see our neighbours, that were wont to quake

    And tremble at the Persian monarch’s name,

    Now sit and laugh our regiment to scorn;

    And that which might resolve me into tears,

    Men from the farthest equinoctial line

    Have swarm’d in troops into the Eastern India, [120]

    Lading their ships with gold and precious stones,

    And made their spoils from all our provinces.

    Menaphon. This should entreat your highness to rejoice,

    Since Fortune gives you opportunity

    To gain the title of a conqueror

    By curing of this maimed empery.

    Afric and Europe bordering on your land,

    And continent to your dominions,

    How easily may you, with a mighty host,

    Pass into Graecia, as did Cyrus once, [130]

    And cause them to withdraw their forces home,

    Lest you subdue the pride of Christendom!

    [trumpet within]

    Cosroe. But, Menaphon, what means this trumpet’s sound?

    Menaphon. Behold, my lord, Ortygius and the rest

    Bringing the crown to make you emperor!

    Re-enter Ortygius and Ceneus, with others, bearing a crown

    Ortygius. Magnificent and mighty prince Cosroe,

    We, in the name of other Persian states

    And commons of this mighty monarchy,

    Present thee with th’ imperial diadem.

    Ceneus. The warlike soldiers and the gentlemen, [140]

    That heretofore have fill’d Persepolis

    With Afric captains taken in the field,

    Whose ransom made them march in coats of gold,

    With costly jewels hanging at their ears,

    And shining stones upon their lofty crests,

    Now living idle in the walled towns,

    Wanting both pay and martial discipline,

    Begin in troops to threaten civil war

    And openly exclaim against their kings:

    Therefore, to stay all sudden mutinies, [150]

    We will invest your highness emperor;

    Whereat the soldiers will conceive more joy

    Than did the Macedonians at the spoil

    Of great Darius and his wealthy host.

    Cosroe. Well, since I see the state of Persia droop

    And languish in my brother’s government,

    I willingly receive th’ imperial crown,

    And vow to wear it for my country’s good,

    In spite of them shall malice my estate.

    Ortygius. And, in assurance of desir’d success, [160]

    We here do crown thee monarch of the East,

    Emperor of Asia and Persia;

    Great lord of Media and Armenia;

    Duke of Africa and Albania,

    Mesopotamia and of Parthia,

    East India and the late-discover’d isles;

    Chief lord of all the wide vast Euxine Sea,

    And of the ever-raging Caspian Lake.

    All. Long live Cosroe, mighty emperor!

    Cosroe. And Jove may never let me longer live [170]

    Than I may seek to gratify your love,

    And cause the soldiers that thus honour me

    To triumph over many provinces!

    By whose desires of discipline in arms

    I doubt not shortly but to reign sole king.

    And with the army of Theridamas

    (Whither we presently will fly, my lords)

    To rest secure against my brother’s force.

    Ortygius. We knew, my lord, before we brought the crown,

    Intending your investion so near [180]

    The residence of your despised brother,

    The lords would not be too exasperate

    To injury or suppress your worthy title:

    Or, if they would, there are in readiness

    Ten thousand horse to carry you from hence,

    In spite of all suspected enemies.

    Cosroe. I know it well, my lord, and thank you all.

    Ortygius. Sound up the trumpets, then.

    [trumpets sounded]

    All. God save the king!

    [exeunt

    Scene 2

    Enter Tamburlaine leading, Zenocrate, Techelles, Usumcasane. Agydas, Magnetes, Lords and Soldiers loaden with treasure

    Tamburlaine. Come, lady, let not this appal your thoughts;

    The jewels and the treasure we have ta’en

    Shall be reserv’d, and you in better state

    Than if you were arriv’d in Syria,

    Even in the circle of your father’s arms,

    The mighty Soldan of Aegyptia.

    Zenocrate. Ah, shepherd, pity my distressed plight!

    (If, as thou seem’st, thou art so mean a man)

    And seek not to enrich thy followers

    By lawless rapine from a silly maid, [10]

    Who, travelling with these Median lords

    To Memphis, from my uncle’s country of Media,

    Where, all my youth, I have been governed,

    Have pass’d the army of the mighty Turk,

    Bearing his privy-signet and his hand

    To safe conduct as thorough Africa.

    Magnetes. And, since we have arrived in Scythia,

    Besides rich presents from the puissant Cham,

    We have his highness’ letters to command

    Aid and assistance, if we stand in need. [20]

    Tamburlaine. But now you see these letters and commands

    Are countermanded by a greater man;

    And through my provinces you must expect

    Letters of conduct from my mightiness,

    If you intend to keep your treasure safe.

    But, since I love to live at liberty,

    As easily may you get the Soldan’s crown

    As any prizes out of my precinct;

    For they are friends that help to wean my state

    Till men and kingdoms help to strengthen it, [30]

    And must maintain my life exempt from servitude­ –

    But. tell me, madam, is your grace betroth’d ?

    Zenocrate. I am, my lord – for so you do import.

    Tamburlaine. I am a lord, for so my deeds shall prove;

    And yet a shepherd by my parentage.

    But, lady, this fair face and heavenly hue

    Must grace his bed that conquers Asia,

    And means to be a terror to the world,

    Measuring the limits of his empery

    By east and west as Phoebus doth his course – [40]

    Lie here, ye weeds, that I disdain to wear!

    This complete armour and this curtle-axe

    Are adjuncts more beseeming Tamburlaine –

    And, madam, whatsoever you esteem

    Of this success, and loss unvalued,

    Both may invest you empress of the East;

    And these that seem but silly country swains

    May have the leading of so great an host

    As with their weight shall make the mountains quake.

    Even as when windy exhalations, [50]

    Fighting for passage, tilt within the earth.

    Techelles. As princely lions, when they rouse themselves,

    Stretching their paws, and threatening herds of beasts,

    So in his armour looketh Tamburlaine.

    Tamburlaine. Methinks I see kings kneeling at his feet,

    And he with frowning brows and fiery looks

    Spurning their crowns from off their captive heads.

    Usumcasane. And making thee and me, Techelles, kings,

    That even to death will follow Tamburlaine.

    Tamburlaine. Nobly resolv’d, sweet friends and followers! [60]

    These lords perhaps do scorn our estimates,

    And think we prattle with distemper’d spirits:

    But, since they measure our deserts so mean,

    That in conceit bear empires on our spears,

    Affecting thoughts coequal with the clouds,

    They shall be kept our forced followers

    Till with their eyes they view us emperors.

    Zenocrate. The gods, defenders of the innocent,

    Will never prosper your intended drifts,

    That thus oppress poor friendless passengers. [70]

    Therefore at least admit us liberty,

    Even as thou hop’st to be eternised

    By living Asia’s mighty emperor.

    Agydas. I hope our lady’s treasure and our own

    May serve for ransom to our liberties:

    Return our mules and empty camels back,

    That we may travel into Syria,

    Where her betrothed lord, Alcidamus,

    Expects the arrival of her highness’ person.

    Magnetes. And wheresoever we repose ourselves, [80]

    We will report but well of Tamburlaine.

    Tamburlaine. Disdains Zenocrate to live with me?

    Or you, my lord, to be my followers?

    Think you I weigh this treasure more than you?

    Not all the gold in India’s wealthy arms

    Shall buy the meanest soldier in my train.

    Zenocrate, lovelier than the love of Jove,

    Brighter than is the silver Rhodope,

    Fairer than whitest snow on Scythian hills,

    Thy person is more worth to Tamburlaine [90]

    Than the possession of the Persian crown,

    Which gracious stars have promis’d at my birth.

    A hundred Tartars shall attend on thee,

    Mounted on steeds swifter than Pegasus;

    Thy garments shall be made of Median silk,

    Enchas’d with precious jewels 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, [100]

    Which with thy beauty will be soon resolv’d:

    My martial prizes, with five hundred men,

    Won on the fifty-headed Volga’s waves,

    Shall we all offer to Zenocrate,

    And then myself to fair Zenocrate.

    Techelles. What now! In love?

    Tamburlaine. Techelles, women must be flattered:

    But this is she with whom I am in love.

    Enter a Soldier

    Soldier. News, news!

    Tamburlaine. How now! What’s the matter? [110]

    Soldier. A thousand Persian horsemen are at hand,

    Sent from the king to overcome us all.

    Tamburlaine. How now, my lords of Egypt and Zenocrate!

    Now must your jewels be restor’d again,

    And I, that triumph’d so, be overcome?

    How say you, lordlings? Is not this your hope?

    Agydas. We hope yourself will willingly restore them.

    Tamburlaine. Such hope, such fortune, have the thousand horse.

    Soft ye, my lords, and sweet Zenocrate!

    You must be forced from me ere you go – [120]

    A thousand horsemen! We five hundred foot!

    An odds too great for us to stand against.

    But are they rich? And is their armour good?

    Soldier. Their plumed helms are wrought with beaten gold,

    Their swords enamell’d, and about their necks

    Hang massy chains of gold down to the waist;

    In every part exceeding brave and rich.

    Tamburlaine. Then shall we fight courageously with them?

    Or look you I should play the orator?

    Techelles. No; cowards and faint-hearted runaways [130]

    Look for orations when the foe is near:

    Our swords shall play the orators for us.

    Usumcasane. Come, let us meet them at the mountain-top.

    And with a sudden and an hot alarum

    Drive all their horses headlong down the hill.

    Techelles. Come, let us march.

    Tamburlaine. Stay, Techelles; ask a parle first.

    The Soldiers enter

    Open the mails, yet guard the treasure sure:

    Lay out our golden wedges to the view,

    That their reflections may amaze the Persians; [140]

    And look we friendly on them when they come:

    But, if they offer word or violence,

    We’ll fight, five hundred men-at-arms to one,

    Before we part with our possession;

    And ’gainst the general we will lift our swords,

    And either lance his greedy thirsting throat,

    Or take him prisoner, and his chain shall serve

    For manacles till he be ransom’d home.

    Techelles. I hear them come: shall we encounter them?

    Tamburlaine. Keep all your standings, and not stir a foot: [150]

    Myself will bide the danger of the brunt.

    Enter Theridamas, with others

    Theridamas. Where is this Scythian Tamburlaine?

    Tamburlaine. Whom seek’st thou, Persian? I am Tamburlaine.

    Theridamas. Tamburlaine!

    A Scythian shepherd so embellished

    With nature’s pride and richest furniture!

    His looks do menace heaven and dare the gods;

    His fiery eyes are fix’d upon the earth,

    As if he now devis’d some stratagem,

    Or meant to pierce Avernus’ darksome vaults [160]

    To pull the triple-headed dog from hell.

    Tamburlaine. Noble and mild this Persian seems to be,

    If outward habit judge the inward man.

    Techelles. His deep affections make him passionate.

    Tamburlaine. With what a majesty he rears his looks!

    In thee, thou valiant man of Persia,

    I see the folly of thy emperor.

    Art thou but captain of a thousand horse,

    That by characters graven in thy brows,

    And by thy martial face and stout aspect, [170]

    Deserv’st to have the leading of an host?

    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.

    Draw forth thy sword, thou mighty man-at-arms,

    Intending but to raze my charmed skin,

    And Jove himself will stretch his hand from heaven

    To ward the blow, and shield me safe from harm.

    See, how he rains down heaps of gold in showers,

    As if he meant to give my soldiers pay!

    And, as a sure and grounded argument

    That I shall be the monarch of the East,

    He sends this Soldan’s daughter rich and brave,

    To be my queen and portly emperess.

    If thou wilt stay with me, renowmed man,

    And lead thy thousand horse with my conduct,

    Besides thy share of this Egyptian prize, [190]

    Those thousand horse shall sweat with martial spoil

    Of conquer’d kingdoms and of cities sack’d:

    Both we will walk upon the lofty cliffs;

    And Christian merchants, that with Russian stems

    Plough 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 scal’d the heavens [200]

    May we become immortal like the gods.

    Join with me now in this my mean estate

    (I call it mean, because, being yet obscure,

    The nations far-remov’d admire me not)

    And when my name and honour shall be spread

    As far as Boreas claps his brazen wings,

    Or fair Boötes sends his cheerful light,

    Then shalt thou be competitor with me,

    And sit with Tamburlaine in all his majesty.

    Theridamas. Not Hermes, prolocutor to the gods, [210]

    Could use persuasions more pathetical.

    Tamburlaine. Nor are Apollo’s oracles more true

    Than thou shalt find my vaunts substantial.

    Techelles. We are his friends; and if the Persian king

    Should offer present dukedoms to our state,

    We think it loss to make exchange for that

    We are assur’d of by our friend’s success.

    Usumcasane. And kingdoms at the least we all expect,

    Besides the honour in assured conquests,

    Where kings shall crouch unto our conquering swords, [220]

    And hosts of soldiers stand amaz’d at us,

    When with their fearful tongues they shall confess,

    These are the men that all the world admires.

    Theridamas. What strong enchantments tice my yielding soul

    To these resolved, noble Scythians!

    But shall I prove a traitor to my king?

    Tamburlaine. No; but the trusty friend of Tamburlaine.

    Theridamas. Won with thy words, and conquer’d with thy looks,

    I yield myself, my men, and horse to thee,

    To be partaker of thy good or ill, [230]

    As long as life maintains Theridamas.

    Tamburlaine. Theridamas, my friend, take here my hand,

    Which is as much as if I swore by heaven,

    And call’d the gods to witness of my vow.

    Thus shalt my heart be still combin’d with thine

    Until our bodies turn to elements,

    And both our souls aspire celestial thrones –

    Techelles and Casane, welcome him.

    Techelles. Welcome, renowmed Persian, to us all!

    Usumcasane. Long may Theridamas remain with us! [240]

    Tamburlaine. These are my friends, in whom I more rejoice

    Than doth the king of Persia in his crown;

    And, by the love of Pylades and Orestes,

    Whose statues we adore in Scythia,

    Thyself and them shall never part from me

    Before I crown you kings in Asia.

    Make much of them, gentle Theridamas,

    And they will never leave thee till the death.

    Theridamas. Nor thee nor them, thrice-noble Tamburlaine,

    Shall want my heart to be with gladness pierc’d, [250]

    To do you honour and security.

    Tamburlaine. A thousand thanks, worthy Theridamas –

    And now, fair madam, and my noble lords,

    If you will willingly remain with me,

    You shall have honours as your merits be;

    Or else you shall be forc’d with slavery.

    Agydas. We yield unto thee, happy Tamburlaine.

    Tamburlaine. For you, then, madam, I am out of doubt.

    Zenocrate. I must be pleas’d perforce – wretched Zenocrate!

    [exeunt

    Act Two

    Scene 1

    Enter Cosroe, Menaphon, Ortygius, and Ceneus, with Soldiers

    Cosroe. Thus far are we towards Theridamas,

    And valiant Tamburlaine, the man of fame,

    The man that in the forehead of his fortune

    Bears figures of renown and miracle.

    But tell me, that hast seen him, Menaphon,

    What stature wields he, and what personage?

    Menaphon. Of stature tall, and straightly fashioned

    Like his desire, lift upwards and divine;

    So large of limbs, his joints so strongly knit,

    Such breadth of shoulders as might mainly bear [10]

    Old Atlas’ burden; ’twixt his manly pitch,

    A pearl more worth than all the world is plac’d,

    Wherein by curious sovereignty of art

    Are fix’d his piercing instruments of sight,

    Whose fiery circles bear encompassed

    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; [20]

    His lofty brows in folds do figure death,

    And in their smoothness amity and life;

    About them hangs a knot of amber hair

    Wrapped 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 proportion’d like the man

    Should make the world subdu’d to Tamburlaine. [30]

    Cosroe. Well hast thou pourtray’d in thy terms of life

    The face and personage of a wondrous man:

    Nature doth strive with Fortune and his stars

    To make him famous in accomplish’d worth;

    And well his merits shew him to be made

    His fortune’s master and the king of men,

    That could persuade, at such a sudden pinch,

    With reasons of his valour and his life,

    A thousand sworn and overmatching foes.

    Then, when our powers in points of swords are join’d, [40]

    And clos’d in compass of the killing bullet,

    Though strait the passage and the port be made

    That leads to palace of my brother’s life,

    Proud is his fortune if we pierce it not;

    And, when the princely Persian diadem

    Shall overweigh his weary witless head,

    And fall, like mellow’d fruit, with shakes of death,

    In fair Persia noble Tamburlaine

    Shall be my regent, and remain as king.

    Ortygius. In happy hour we have set the crown [50]

    Upon your kingly head, that seeks our honour

    In joining with the man ordain’d by heaven

    To further every action to the best.

    Ceneus. He that with shepherds and a little spoil

    Durst, in disdain of wrong and tyranny,

    Defend his freedom ’gainst a monarchy,

    What will he do supported by a king,

    Leading a troop of gentlemen and lords,

    And stuff’d with treasure for his highest thoughts!

    Cosroe. And such shall wait on worthy Tamburlaine. [60]

    Our army will be forty thousand strong,

    When Tamburlaine and brave Theridamas

    Have met us by the river Araris;

    And all conjoin’d to meet the witless king,

    That now is marching near to Parthia,

    And with unwilling soldiers faintly arm’d,

    To seek revenge on me and Tamburlaine;

    To whom, sweet Menaphon, direct me straight.

    Menaphon. I will, my lord.

    [exeunt

    Scene 2

    Enter Mycetes, Meander, with other Lords; and Soldiers

    Mycetes. Come, my Meander, let us to this gear.

    I tell you true, my heart is swoln with wrath

    On this same thievish villain Tamburlaine,

    And of that false Cosroe my traitorous brother.

    Would it not grieve a king to be so abus’d,

    And have a thousand horsemen ta’en away?

    And, which is worse, to have his diadem

    Sought for by such scald knaves as love him not?

    I think it would: well, then, by heavens I swear,

    Aurora shall not peep out of her doors, [10]

    But I will have Cosroe by the head,

    And kill proud Tamburlaine with point of sword.

    Tell you the rest, Meander: I have said.

    Meander. Then having pass’d Armenian deserts now,

    And pitch’d our tents under the Georgian hills,

    Whose tops are cover’d with Tartarian thieves,

    That lie in ambush, waiting for a prey,

    What should we do but bid them battle straight,

    And rid the world of those detested troops?

    Lest, if we let them

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