Upon looking into Marlowe's Tamburlaine

Tamburlaine the Great, Part 1 by Christopher Marlowe
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My rating is for the play (especially the verse) but mostly for the edition. I'm here to point you to it with my recommendation.

I hunted for an edition of any Marlowe plays organized the way I like to read difficult texts, with notes on the page so that you can get assistance with the language and the obscure references without flipping back and forth between the play and the notes in the back. (My favorite work of this type is Isaac Asimov's annotated Paradise Lost. You can get your own copy today for about $250.) None of the texts that I could find were like this. Finally, I found ElizabethanDrama.org, which had pdf's of all Marlowe's work annotated in just this way, using notes from a variety of properly-cited resources. I found this edition very readable, the notes useful and interesting, and the overall experience a pleasure.

It's true that this is a simple story, in a way. It was a popular play, written to be enjoyed by the average person. The plot is straightforward, though the language is spectacular. Here's a random bit. (I literally just flipped the pages.)

Tamburlaine:
So shall he have his life and all the rest:
But if he stay until the bloody flag
Be once advanced on my vermilion tent,
He dies, and those that kept us out so long,
And when they see us march in black array,
With mournful streamers hanging down their heads,
Were in that city all the world contained,
Not one should 'scape, but perish by our swords.

(Notice the strict adherence to blank verse. Ten-syllable lines as far as the eye can see, with just rare exceptions. Count the syllables! Check the rhythm! Seriously. It's like that all the way through. I'm impressed, anyway.)

Thematically, the play asks many questions, such as the nature of power, the justifications for violence, the morality of empire-building, the cost of pride, and the value of loyalty, along with many others. In terms of plot, though, it's very direct; this really is an action story. In a way, it is the equivalent of a bulldozer plowing through a row of shacks. You know how it's going to go once you've seen the setup, even if you didn't know the basic contours of the historical events. The only question you might have is whether Tamburlaine or anyone in his orbit will ever show any true mercy or humanity. (Spoiler--just barely.)

Part of the pleasure in reading the play is psychological and anthropological--mining it for insights into the author's mind as well as the world in which it was written. For example, we see rulers more concerned with their rights and their power than the survival and well-being their people, and in conjunction with that, we see people who are more angry with their leaders for foolishly opposing Tamburlaine than they are with him for attacking them. It doesn't matter much to the regular people who rules them--they're all bad. (Is this how the people thought? Or how Marlowe thought? Not sure.) The casual brutality of so many characters is shocking, and their selfishness. The only characters really likable are the virgins sent to Tamburlaine to plead for mercy. They were angry and brave and sympathetic, much more than the leaders who sent them out.

Yeah, he killed them. That's how he was. Nobody was terribly surprised.

I found all of that horrifying and interesting. Apparently, it gets worse in part II. We'll see!

Anyway, if you have a mind to read Marlowe (or other Elizabethan dramatists) and like the annotated versions, I recommend ElizabethanDrama.org. You can just read it all on your computer. I prefer to read on paper, and found there are pdf-printing services that can print and ship a couple plays spiral-bound into one book for about $15.


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