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He is supposed to have been descended from a follower of Genghis Khan, founder of the Mongol empire; or, as some say, directly, by the mother's side, from Genghis himself. He is the Tamerlaine or Tamburlaine of Marlowe and other dramatists.
Once I was like Kit Marlowe's Tamburlaine: 'Threatening the world with high astounding terms, And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword. But now the flame has died and the ashes are cold. And I would not revive them if I could. There is nothing under heaven that I desire." The seaman's face was grave and kindly. "I think you have flown too high, Sir Walter.
The poem is still well worth reading; for as an expression of the artificial life of the age of its cards, parties, toilettes, lapdogs, tea-drinking, snuff-taking, and idle vanities it is as perfect in its way as Tamburlaine, which reflects the boundless ambition of the Elizabethans.
In 1581 Sir Philip Sidney praised the tragedy of Gorboduc, which he had seen acted by the gentlemen of the Inner Temple, because it was "full of stately speeches and well-sounding phrases." A few years later the young poet, Christopher Marlowe, promised the audience of his initial tragedy that they should "hear the Scythian Tamburlaine threatening the world with high astounding terms."
Why, he is but an adviser to the queen of half an island, whereas my Tamburlaine was lord of all the golden ancient East: and what does my Tamburlaine matter now, save that he gave Kit Marlowe the subject of a drama? Hah, softly though! for does even that very greatly matter?
His four plays are "Tamburlaine," "Faustus," "The Jew of Malta," and "Edward II." Shakespeare, his life, work, and influence. Shakespeare's Successors, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Webster, Middleton, Heywood, Dekker; and the rapid decline of the drama. Ben Jonson is the greatest of this group.
Part of it is written in blank verse, or at least in rhymeless lines; so that after all it probably followed in the wake of Tamburlaine, half adopting and half rejecting the innovations of that fiery reformer, who wrought on the old English stage no less a miracle than Hernani on the French stage in the days of our fathers.
Casaubon, who received this offhand treatment of symbolism very uneasily, and bowed with a neutral air. "The sketch must be very grand, if it conveys so much," said Dorothea. "I should need some explanation even of the meaning you give. Do you intend Tamburlaine to represent earthquakes and volcanoes?"
Tamburlaine, Pt. I, II, vii. Life. Marlowe was born in Canterbury, only a few months before Shakespeare. He was the son of a poor shoemaker, but through the kindness of a patron was educated at the town grammar school and then at Cambridge.
A play such as Marlowe's Tamburlaine can never be regarded as great drama. Amid scenes of magnificence and splendid savage rhetoric Tamburlaine passes on from triumph to triumph, the incarnation of the conquering will. There are numberless detached passages of what we may call lyrical poetry for a lyrical poem expresses no more than a moment's mood, a single phase of the sequence which is passion.
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