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Won with words, conquered with looks: Christopher Marlowe and his Tamburlaine

Corpus Christi College Cambridge: Portrait of a Young Man Anno do mi ni Aetatis sua . 21 1585 ‘Quod me nutrit me destruit ’. Won with words, conquered with looks: Christopher Marlowe and his Tamburlaine. Christopher Marlowe: b. February 1564 d. May 1593, aged 29

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Won with words, conquered with looks: Christopher Marlowe and his Tamburlaine

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  1. Corpus Christi College Cambridge: Portrait of a Young Man Anno dominiAetatissua. 21 1585 ‘Quod me nutrit me destruit’ Won with words, conquered with looks: Christopher Marlowe and his Tamburlaine

  2. Christopher Marlowe: b. February 1564 d. May 1593, aged 29 • Situate Marlowe in a nexus of ideas: see him embodying the radical philosophical, political, ideological • and religious contradictions of the 1580s that figure the iconoclastic mind, the iconoclastic playwright • A product of Elizabethan expansionism: worlds and markets opening up; voyages of discovery to the • East &West; trade in objects, ideas, bodies; Drake circumnavigates globe (1578);Hakluyt’s Voyages (1600) • A product of Tudor expansionism: minds opening up; Erasmus, Thomas More, Humanism, Reformation, secularism, individualism • In religion and natural philosophy, competing explanations of who we are, how we function, where we are going (Virgil in Aeneidv. Christ in New Testament) produce competing language to represent ourselves to ourselves. Political philosophy: Machiavelli’s The Prince (Italian, 1532). Cosmology: Giordano Bruno’s La Cena de le Ceneri (supporting the Copernican as against the Ptolemaic view of the planetary system; theory of ‘infinite worlds’ and human omnipotence, free thought, free inquiry and liberty of expression). Thomas Gresham: The Royal Exchange (1565), first purpose-built London stock market; theory of how money exchange works. • Icons of aspiration: Prometheus, Dedalus/Icarus, Adam. Over-reaching as smashing artificial limits on human achievement, therefore heroic or as violations of human and divine laws, therefore idiotic? Magnificent explorers, experimenters, conquerors? Or doomed comic buffoons? • Personalising contradiction: read theology at Corpus Christi where he held a Parker scholarship, yet, in the Prologue to The Jew of Malta, Machiavel asserts that ‘religion [is] but a childish toy’ and that ‘there is no sin but ignorance’ while Faustus claims ‘This word “damnation” terrifies not him/For he confounds hell in Elysium’. Writes history – taking as his subject the reign of the sodomite English king Edward II. Writes politics – taking as his subject the slaughter of French Protestants on St. Bartholomew’s Day in 1573 in The Massacre at Paris. Writes love in Dido and Hero and Leander – in the deeply anti-romantic, irreverent voice of Mercutio: Shakespeare’s homage to Marlowe? • Tamburlaine the Great: 1587 (pub. 1590).The most important plays Shakespeare saw, arriving in London?

  3. A note Containing the opinion of one Christopher Marly • Concerning his Damnable Judgment of Religion, and scorn of gods word. • That the Indians and many Authors of antiquity haueassuredly writenaboue 16 thousand yearesagonewheras Adam is proued to haue lived within 6 thowsandyeares. • That the first beginning of Religioun was only to keep men in awe. • That Christ was a bastard and his mother dishonest. • That St John the Evangelist was bedfellow to Christand leaned alwaies in his bosome, that he vsed him as the sinners of Sodoma. • That all they that loue not Tobacco & Boies were fooles. • That ... the sacrament ... had ... bin much better being administred in a Tobacco pipe. • These thinges, with many other shall by good & honest witnes be aproved to be his opinions and ComonSpeeches, and that this Marlow doth not only hould them himself, but almost into every Company he Cometh he perswades men to Atheismwilling them not to be afeard of bugbeares and hobgoblins, and vtterly scorning both god and his ministers as I Richard Baines will Justify & approueboth by mine oth and the testimony of many honest men … (BL Harley MS.6848 ff.185-6) • * * * * * • Robert Greene: ‘I could not make my verse jet upon the stage, daring god out of heaven with that atheist Tamburlaine’. • Gabriel Harvey: ‘He naught admired but his wondrous self.’ • Thomas Kyd (extracted under torture): [Marlowe] ‘conceived monstrous opinions.’ Albrecht Dürer Aged 28 Self Portrait (as Christ) 1500 Thomas Nashe: Marlowe was ‘one of the wittiest knaves that ever God made. His pen was sharp and pointed like a poinard. No leaf he wrote on but was like a burning-glass to set fire on his readers. Learning he had and a conceit exceeding all learning to quintessence everything which he heard. His tongue…and his invention…what they thought, the world confidently utter. His life he contemned in comparison to the liberty of speech.’

  4. Tamburlaine as atrocity play, as audacity play? Atrocity play: atrox(Latin) ‘savage enormity, horrible or heinous wickedness’; earliest English usage in OED = Sir Thomas More, 1534 Audacity play: audeō(Latin, ‘I dare’). Marlowe’s boldness is to cut aspiration free from the constraints of conventional morality, that actions produce consequences; a play that dares to think the unthinkable and to do the unimaginable.

  5. Cosroe: (first installed by conquest as King of Persia by Tamburlaine, then instantly toppled by Tamburlaine): What means this devilish shepherd to aspire With such a giantly presumption…? (2.6.1-2) Tamburlaine: The thirst of reign and sweetness of a crown, That caused the eldest son of heavenly Ops To thrust his doting father from his chair… Moved me to manage arms against they state. What better precedent than mighty Jove? 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 wand’ring 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. (2.7. 12-29)

  6. Sequence of conquests: 1. Zenocrate (en route from Media through Turkey to Egypt; 2. Lieutenants of Mycetes, imbecilic king of Persia; 3. Mycetes; 4. Cosroe brother to Mycetes; 5. Bajazeth, Emperor of Turkey; 6. Governor of Damascus; 7. Sultan of Egypt (father of Zenocrate) + King of Arabia

  7. ‘Won with thy words and conquered with thy looks’

  8. Tamburlaine: Lie here ye weeds that I disdain to wear… Disdains Zenocrate to live with me? Or you, my lords, 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 Than the possession of the Persian crown Which gracious stars have promised at my birth. A hundred Tartars shall attend on thee, Mounted on steeds swifter than Pegasus. Thy garments shall be made of Median silk, Enchased with precious jewels of mine own, More rich and valurous that 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 Which with thy beauty will be soon resolved; My martial prizes, with five hundred men, Won on the fifty-headed Volga’s waves Shall all we offer to Zenocrate. And then myself to fair Zenocrate. Techelles: What now? In love? Tamburlaine: Techelles, women must be flatterèd. But this is she with whom I am in love. (1.2.82-107) Antony Sher(Tamburlaine), Claire Benedict (Zenocrate), RSC, directed by Terry Hands 1992.

  9. Soldier: News, news! … A thousand horsemen are at hand, Sent from the king to overcome us all… Tamburlaine: A thousand horsemen! We, five hundred foot! An odds too great for us to stand against… Then shall we fight courageously with them Or look you I should play the orator? Techelles: No. Cowards…/ Look for orations when the foe is near… Usumcasane: Come, let us meet them at the mountain top… Tamburlaine: Stay, Techelles, ask a parley first. Open the mails, yet guard the treasure sure. Lay out our golden wedges to the view, That their reflections may amaze the Persians… Theridamas: Tamburlaine? / A Scythian shepherd, so embellish’d With nature’s pride and richest furniture? His looks do menace heaven and dare the gods … Tamburlaine: In thee, thou valiant man of Persia, I see the folly of thy emperor. Art thou but captain of a thousand horse…? 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… + 50 lines of ‘magical thinking’ Theridamas: Won with thy words and conquered with thy looks, I yield myself, my men, and horse to thee… (1.2.109-230)

  10. Zenocrate: My lord … my father’s town besieged, 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 fail Damascus walls And with my father make a friendly truce. Tamburlaine: Zenocrate, were Egypt Jove’s own land, Yet would I with my sword make Jove to stoop. (4.4.68-77) * * * * * * * * Zenocrate: Wretched Zenocrate, that liv’st to see Damascus’ walls dyed with Egyptian blood, Thy father’s subjects and thy countrymen, The streets strewed with dissevered joints of men… But most accurst to see the sun-bright troop Of heavenly virgins and unspotted maids … On horsemen’s lances to be hoisted up…! Ah, Tamburlaine, wert thou the cause of this, That term’stZenocrate thy dearest love— Whose lives were dearer to Zenocrate Than her own life, or aught save thine own love?... Ah, Tamburlaine, my love, sweet Tamburlaine, That fight’st for sceptres and for slippery crowns, Behold the Turk and his great empress!! Ah, mighty Jove and holy Mahomet, Pardon my love, O, pardon his contempt Of earthly fortune and respect of pity. (5.1.318-63) Tamburlaine: Ah, fair Zenocrate, divine Zenocrate… Whose sorrows lay more siege unto my soul Than all my army to Damascus’ walls… What is beauty, saith my sufferings, then? If all the pens that ever poets held Had fed the feeling of their masters’ thoughts And every sweetness that inspired their hearts, Their minds and muses on admired themes; If all the heavenly quintessence they still From their immortal flowers of poesy, Wherein as in a mirror we perceive The highest reaches of a human wit; If these had made one poem’s period And all combined in beauty’s worthiness Yet should there hover in our restless heads One thought, one grace, one wonder at the least Which into words no virtue can digest. (5.1.134 – 73)

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