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Tamburtaine,—“daring God out of heaven with that atheist Tamburlan, or
blaspheming with the mad preest of the sonne.” It is therefore plain that Tamburlaine,
which was entered in the Stationers' books on 14th August 1590, and published in the
same year, had been presented on the stage in or before 1588 (probably in 1587); and
it is equally plain that Nashe
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had no share in the composition of a play which he so
unsparingly ridiculed in the epistle prefixed to Menaphon.
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It is difficult to over-estimate the importance of Tam-burlaine m the history of the
English drama. To appreciate how immensely Marlowe outdistanced at one bound all
his predecessors, the reader must summon courage to make himself acquainted with
such productions as Gor-boduc, The Misfortunes of Arthur, and Sir Clyomon and Sir
Clamydes. He will then perceive how real is Marlowe's claim to be_regarded as the
jathex.pf fhp F.ngll That the play is stuffed with bombast, that exaggeration is carried
sometimes to the verge of burlesque, no sensible critic will venture to deny. But the
characters, with all their stiffness, have life and movement. The Scythian conqueror,
“threatening the world in high astounding terms,” is an impressive figure. There is
nothing mean or trivial in the invention. The young poet threw into his work all the
energy of his passionate nature. He did not pause to polish his lines, to correct and
curtail; but was borne swiftly onward by the wings of his imagination. The absence of
chastening restraint is felt throughout; and, indeed, the beauty of some of the most
majestic passages is seriously marred by the introduction of a weak or ill-timed verse.
Take the following passage from the First Part:-
“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,
Wills 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.” (ii. 70)
The ear exults in the sonorous march of the stately verse as each successive line paces
more majestically than the preceding; but what cruel discomfiture awaits us at the
end! It seems almost inconceivable that the poet should have spoilt so magnificent a
passage by the lame and impotent conclusion m the last line. For the moment we are
half inclined to think that he is playing some trick upon us; that he has deliberately led
up to an anti-climax in order to enjoy the malicious satisfaction of laughing at our
irritation. 'The noble and oft-quoted passage on Beauty (i Tamburlaine, v. i) is injured
considerably by the diffuseness of the context. Marlowe seems to have blotted
literally nothing in this earliest play. But that he was responsible for the vulgar
touches of low comedy I am loth to allow. In the preface the publisher, Richard Jones,
writes:—” I have purposely omitted and left out some fond and frivolous gestures,
digressing, and, in my poor opinion, far unmeet for the matter, which I thought might
seem more tedious unto the wise than any way else to be regarded, though haply they
have been of some vain-conceited fondlings greatly gaped at, what time they were
showed upon the stage in their graced deformities : nevertheless now to be mixed in
print with such matter of worth, it would prove a great disgrace to so honourable and
stately a history.” It would be well if he had used his pruning-knife with even greater
seventy and had left no trace of the excrescences of buffoonery. There can be no
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doubt that these “vain and frivolous gestures,” of which the publisher complains, were
foisted in by the players.
The popularity of Tamburlaine must have been extraordinary. A prologue by
Heywood, written at the revival of the Jew of Malta in 1633, informs us that the part
of Tamburlaine was originally taken by the famous actor Edward Alleyn. The hero's
habiliments were of a most costly character. His breeches, as we learn from Hens-
lowe's Diary, were of crimson velvet, and his coat was copper-laced. It is easy to
conceive what roars of applause would be evoked by the entrance of Tamburlaine
drawn in his chariot by the harnessed monarchs.
One delightfully ludicrous line in his address to the captives:—
“Holla, ye pampered jades of Asia!“
was constantly parodied for the next half century. Greene, as we have seen, infuriated
at the success of the piece, railed against the “atheist Tamburlaine.” The satirist Hall,
in a passage quoted by Dyce, is equally severe:—
“One higher pitch'd doth set his soaring thought
On crowned kings that Fortune hath low brought,
Or some uprearèd high-aspiring swaine
As it might be the Turkish Tamburlaine.
Then weeneth he his base drink-drowned spright
Rapt to the three-fold loft of heaven hight,
When he conceives upon his famèd stage
The stalking steps of his great personage,
Graced with huf-cap termes and thund'nng threats
That his poor hearers' hayre quite upright sets.”
Then he proceeds to ridicule the comic business introduced by the players:—
“Now least such frightful showes of Fortune's fall
And bloudy tyrants' rage should chance apall
The dead-stroke audience, midst the silent rout
Comes tramping in a selfe-misformèd lout,
And laughs and grins, and frames his mimik face,
And justles straight into the prince's place:
Then doth the theatre eccho all aloud
With gladsome noyse of that applauding crowd
A goodly hoch-poch when vile rassettmgs
Are match with monarchs and with mightie kings.”
These lines were written in 1597. Ben Jonson. in his Discoveries observes:—” The
true artificer will not run away from Nature as he were afraid of her; or depart from
life and the likeness of truth; but speak to the capacity of his hearers. And though his
language differs from the vulgar somewhat it will not fly from all humanity, with the
Tamerlanes and Tamer-Chams of the late age, which had nothing in them but the
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scenical strutting and furious vociferation to warrant them to the ignorant gapers.”
Wither in Britain's Remembrancer (1628) alludes to “great Tamburlame upon his
throne “uttering
“A majestical oration
To strike his hearers dead with admiration.”
Taylor, the Water-Poet, in his Oration to the Great Mogul, states that Tamburlaine
“perhaps is not altogether so famous in his own country of Tartaria as in England.”
From a passage (quoted by Dyce) of Cowley's Guardian it appears that the old play
was revived at the Bull about 1650. In 1681 it had become almost wholly forgotten;
for in the preface to his play, Tamerlane, published in that year, Charles Saunders
writes :—” It hath been told me there is a Cock-pit play going under the name of The