Tamburlaine the great

Tamburlaine the Great has been evaluated from several perspectives, with critics focusing on theological and historical problems in the play. What has received less attention is the hero's violent motivations and acts, which are his primary way of gaining power. As tragic defects, the protagonists' inordinate hunger for power is a recurring motif in Christopher Marlowe's plays. Dr. Faustus in The Tragedy of Dr. Faustus, for example, is a pompous guy; to some extent, the same is true of the character of the Jew, Barabas, in The Jew of Malta, who, while attempting to avenge himself from his Christian oppressors, shows himself to be a pompous man. Marlowe attempts to demonstrate the dangers that can follow from an exaggerated display of power in these tragedies.
Most critics attempt to demonstrate Machiavelli's influence on Marlowe and his career as a playwright. This impact can be attributed to Marlowe's concern in the subject of power and ambition. All of his heroes subscribe to the Machiavellian notion of the end justifying the means. In their quest for power, each of his heroes use witty and diabolical ways to achieve their goals. Faustus feeds his pomposity with magic; Barabas, who is, as most critics think, the archetypal incarnation of Machiavelli, uses money and all the wicked methods at his disposal to achieve his goals; and Tamburlaine seeks power via bloodshed.
"Tamburlaine is a self-made man, motivated to dominate the world by his ambitions of power,"⁵ as previous Marlovian heroes are. Tamburlaine is a Machiavellian hero, according to Irving Ribner.
man who can master fortune and bend her to his will, for the classical fortune … is a woman who can easily be swayed. … Tamburlaine throughout both parts is a figure who controls completely his own fate. History is created by his strength and will, and even by his whim.⁶
Tamburlaine the Great's framework aids in demonstrating the hero's evolution. He is characterized as a Scythian shepherd in the prologue⁷, and later in Act I, he is "seen against the background of quarrelling between the brothers in the Persian court"⁸. Later, he catches Zenocrate and manipulates Theridamas into joining him. With the help of Cosroe, he is able to overcome Mycetes in Act II. He later ascends to the throne of Persia. He defeats the Turkish Emperor, Bajazeth, in Act III. As the Egyptian Sultan prepares to combat Tamburlaine in Act V, Act IV sets the stage for Tamburlaine's final victory. The scene concludes with Tamburlaine's victory⁹. Chapter II, on the other hand, deals with the tragic collapse of the hero "where death cuts off the march of his pomp,/ And bloodthirsty Fates tosses all his glories down," as the Prologue to this part indicates (p.77). This section is as bloody as Part I, and violence propels the hero's deeds in this section as well. This image appears to be a horrible one, "wrapped with a liquid purple veil" and "sprinkled with the brains of dead men" (Act I, Scene iv, p.88).
The two parts of Tamburlaine the Great, however, are thematically distinct. Helen Gardner remarks on each section's topics, saying:
The theme of the first part is the power and splendour of the human will, which bears down all opposition and by its own native force achieves its desires. … The theme of the second part is different. Man's desires and aspirations may be limitless, but their fulfilment is limited by force outside the control of the will. There are certain facts, of which death is the most obvious, which no aspiration and no force of soul can conquer. There is a sort of stubbornness in the stuff of experience which frustrates and resists the human will. The world is not the plaything of the ambitious mind."¹⁰
Tamburlaine the Great enacts and recounts several violent episodes, including as the devastation of cities and armies, suicide, filicide and regicide, the ravishing of Turkish concubines, and even self-mutilation. Infanticide occurs twice in the play: once when Tamburlaine stabs his son onstage, and again when Olympia resolves to kill her son, despite the fact that her motivation is different: she does not want him captured and tortured by Tamburlaine. Tamburlaine, on the other hand, mutilates himself in Part II for the sake of his sons' education. He injures himself with his sword to demonstrate to his sons that they should follow in his footsteps as a conqueror defying death, and that "blood and wounds should not be feared".:
A wound is nothing, be it ne'er so deep;
Blood is the God of War's rich livery.
Now look I like a soldier, and this wound
As great a grace and majesty to me,
Come, boys, and with your fingers search my wound,
And in my blood wash all your hands at once,
While I sit smiling to behold the sight.
(Part II, Act III, Scene iii, pp.107-8)
He then stabs his son Calyphas, whom he regards as a coward for refusing to fight against the Turkish army, referring to him as "not my son/ But traitor to my name and dignity" (Part II, Act IV, Scene i, P.121). He expresses no sorrow for this deed because he only sees his sons in terms of their bravery and tenacity. Tamburlaine's son's death exemplifies his "inhuman striving"13. He refuses to give up his military aim for love and human impulses. When he invades her land, he does not listen to Zenocrate's appeals to pity her people. To appease her, he saves her father's life, makes him a tributary king, and gives him more lands. Furthermore, in Part II, his brutality, which includes burning the city in which she dies, is largely motivated by his grief over her death. Tamburlaine clearly struggles between his desire for conquest and his desire for Zenocrate, which drives him to feel an instinct toward sympathy and, ultimately, to spare Zenocrate's father.
Despite her sway over Tamburlaine, Zenocrate is powerless to stop her lover's ruin and bloodshed. Women have no voice in such a male-dominated environment of brutality and violence, and are viewed and treated as property. Her comments and entreaties had no effect on her spouse. When Tamburlaine threatens her city, she is powerless to save her people. Her quiet could be interpreted as a sign of submission in the face of Tamburlaine's desire for dominance. That is why, when she reminds him of his love for her, her plea to him to spare her town and people is not that of a wife to her husband. She utilizes terms that are symbols of his possession and authority in her request:
My lord, to see my father's town besieg'd,
The country wasted, where myself was born.
How can it but afflict my very soul?
If any love remain in you, my lord,
Or if my love unto Your Majesty
May merit favour at your highness' hands,
Then raise your siege from fair Damascus' walls,
And with my father take a friendly truce.
(Italics mine. Part I, Act IV, Scene iv, pp.55-56)
Furthermore, Zenocrate is unable to save a group of virgins sent by the governor of Damascus, whose city is besieged by Tamburlaine's army, to appeal for compassion with Tamburlaine, believing that the virgins' innocence will persuade Tamburlaine to spare the city. Tamburlaine is a term used to give a besieged city two days to consider whether or not to surrender. He does not wait another day if the city does not surrender; instead, he destroys the city and kills its inhabitants14. Tamburlaine asks the virgins what they see at the tip of his blade before killing them, and the answer is terror. He claims:
Your fearful minds are thick and misty, then,
For there sits Death; there sits imperious Death,
Keeping his circuit by the slicing edge.
But I am pleas'd you shall not see him there;
He now is seated on my horsemen's spears,
And on their points his fleshless body feeds.
Techelles, straight go charge a few of them
To charge these dames, and shew my servant Death,
Sitting in scarlet on their armed spears.
(Part I, Act V, Scene i, p.61)
The virgins are then brutally murdered and hoisted on the city walls. Tamburlaine's threat to Damascus' virgins demonstrates his desire for violence and slaughter. He is ruthless beyond words and possesses an enormous capacity for violence. Tamburlaine is at war throughout the two halves of the play, "threatening the world and scouring kingdoms"15. He is so merciless and nasty that the other characters assume "he was never born of the human race" (Part I, Act II, Scene iv, p.29).
Tamburlaine's friends and adversaries both know he is a guy ruled by his fierce temper. Amyras, his son, states, "I would not bide my father's rage" (Part II, Act IV, Scene I, p.120). "Barbarous and bloodthirsty Tamburlaine," according to Cosroe (Part I, Act II, Scene vii, p.30). Tamburlaine is a man "whose vengeance is death," according to Almeda, one of his disciples (Part II, Act I, Scene iii, p.84). Tamburlaine threatens Callapine, the son of his rival, Bajazeth, in a scene reminiscent of his violent temper:
… rip thy bowels, and rend out thy heart,
T' appease my wrath; or else I'll torture thee,
Searing thy hateful flesh with burning irons
And drops of scalding lead, while all thy joints
Be rack'd and beat asunder with the wheel;
For, if thou livest, not any element
Shall shroud thee from the wrath of Tamburlaine.
(Part II, Act III, Scene v, p.117)
Many of the characters in the play do not wait for this warning and instead take his suggestion to commit suicide in order to avoid agony and humiliation at his hands. This exemplifies his despotism. He even informs Zenocrate that his goal is to "be the world's dread" (Part I, Act I, Scene ii, p.11). Tamburlaine is capable of displaying severe violence if anything stands in the way of his ambitions for power. In an act of extraordinary brutality, he tells his soldiers to use the Turkish concubines as they see fit. The women beg forgiveness. "Injurious tyrant, would thou thus defame/ The bitter fortunes of thy victory,/ To exercise upon such guiltless dames/ The brutality of thy common solders' lust?" protest the captive kings. (Page 130, Part II, Act IV, Scene III) Tamburlaine, however, is unmoved by all of their pleadings and objections. Opposition is suppressed, cries for peace and justice are ineffective, and moral remarks are rejected by this despotic, pretentious figure.
Tamburlaine also ruins Babylon, judging the entire population to perish: "Drown them all, man, woman, and kid; leave no Babylonian in the town" (Part II, Act V, Scene i, p.137). He even binds the Babylonian "burghers hand and foot,/ And throws them headlong into the city's lake" (Ibid.).
Tamburlaine sees his violent activities as expressions of his honor and authority. He says this after killing the King of Arabia and learning about Bajazeth and Zabina's suicide:
The Turk and his great empress, as it seems,
Left to themselves while we were at the fight,
Have desperately dispatch'd their slavish lives;
With them Arabia, too, hath left his life;
All sights of power to grace my victory;
And such are objects fit for Tamburlaine,
Wherein, as in a mirror, may be seen
His honour, that consists in shedding blood
When men presume to manage arms with him.
(Part I, Act V, Scene i, p.71)

Tamburlaine seemed to be content despite the horrible circumstances. He is oblivious to the devastating implications of his violent actions. He sees these occurrences as reflections of his victory, honor, and authority. Ironically, the death of the Turkish monarch and his empress reflects more respect on their part than Tamburlaine's because their suicide demonstrates their preference for honor over life in captivity and humiliation like animals. According to M. C. Bradbrook, these violent occurrences "are not meant to elicit pity or convey a sense of physical agony at all." They are not considered in and of themselves, but merely as a method of demonstrating Tamburlaine's total strength and superhuman inflexibility"¹¹.

Tamburlaine seizes the crown and places it on his head after defeating Cosroe, while the bleeding Cosroe dies at his feet. His response to Cosroe, who criticizes him for assuming the throne, exposes his pretentious personality and boundless ambition:
The thirst of reign and sweetness of a crown,
That caus'd the eldest son of heavenly Ops
To thrust his doting father from his chair,
And place himself in the imperial heaven,
Mov'd me to manage arms against thy state.
What better precedent than mighty Jove?
Nature, that fram'd us of four elements
Warring within our breasts for regiment,
Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds:
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.
(Part I, Act II, Scene vii, p.30)
Tamburlaine's victories and sense of dominance reach a pinnacle when he defeats Bajazeth the Turk. At this point, he climbs into his chair, using Bajazeth as a footrest, and triumphantly declares:
Now clear the triple region of the air,
And let the Majesty of Heaven behold
Their scourge and terror tread on emperors.
Smile, stars that reign'd at my nativity,
And dim the brightness of their neighbour lamps;
Disdain to borrow light of Cynthia,
For I, the chiefest lamp of all the earth,
First rising in the east with the mild aspect.
(Part I, Act IV, Scene ii, p.49)
The scene in which Tamburlaine harnesses the captured monarchs of Asia to his chariot and drives them across the stage is regarded as "one of the best-known stage images in the entire history of Renaissance theatre."¹². According to Siobhan Keenan, the dramatization of this symbolic moment "highlights Tamburlaine's (and Marlowe's) grasp of the political potency of spectacle"¹³.
Tamburlaine's enemies and victims foresee his sad end throughout the play, claiming that it will be the outcome of his tyranny and brutality. For example, the defeated king of Jerusalem claims that Tamburlaine would be punished by the sky:
Thy victories are grown so violent,
That shortly heavens, fill'd with the meteors
Of blood and fire thy tyrannies have made,
Will pour down blood and fire on thy head,
Whose scalding drops will pierce thy seething brains,
And with our bloods revenge our bloods on thee.
(Part II, Act IV, Scene i, p.123)
Similarly, Zenocrate is irritated by her husband's responsibilities after seeing Zabina and Bajazeth dead in prison and seeing her people's blood shed at the hands of Tamburlaine. "Fearing that Tamburlaine may have to pay for his brutality or may be subjected to the turn of Fortune's wheel," she predicts his sad end¹⁴
Tamburlaine, as previously said, is a pompous man with a tragic defect of excessive ambition. Even as he dies at the end of Part II, he dreams of fame. He requests a map in order to "see how much of the globe is left for him to overwhelm"20. Despite conquering most of North Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and India, he is dissatisfied with the scope of his triumphs and conquests. He has an insatiable desire for power and superhuman ambition. He is aware that he is terminally ill. Seeing that death is his final foe, he challenges God, vowing to conquer the sky:
Come, let us march against the powers of Heaven,
And set black streamers in the firmament,
To signify the slaughter of the gods.
Ah, friends, what shall I do? I cannot stand.
Come, carry me to war against the gods,
That thus envy the health of Tamburlaine.
(Part II, Act V, Scene iii, p.142)
Tamburlaine's ending is both tragic and humorous. It is tragic because the hero fails to see his tragic weakness, which is his obsessive desire for power. He cannot repent of all his wicked deeds because he was responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. His terrible end is paradoxical because he celebrates the deaths of his victims as mirrors of his power and honor throughout the two halves of the play, but they are not. There is no honor in the slaughter of four innocent virgins, nor in the drowning of Babylon's children and women. Now, at the end, he must drink from the same cup of death that he offers his victims¹⁵. Death, which, as Alexander Leggatt points out, "is embodied as a live entity" throughout the play¹⁶, becomes Tamburlaine's servant. It eventually devolves into "a rebellious slave turning against his master."¹⁷. "This irony reveals the truth that Tamburlaine is not what he perceives himself to be, and in misreading his own worth, he is not different from all the overconfident adversaries he has previously conquered,"¹⁸ says Terry Box. Though he destroys all those who stand in his path of obtaining power, he is ultimately defeated due to his mortality.