Tamburlaine the Great Re-discovered

Summary

JSC. The integrity of Tamburlaine, in virtually a full text, as a two-part play; its diversity and forcefulness as theatre; its resourcefulness as drama: Peter Hall’s production at the National Theatre has put such claims as these beyond reasonable doubt. Admirers of the play need no longer suspect that they may be wishfully imposing their cherished views on a primitive original.

RW. To those who (like myself) admired its poetic power but had fears about possible monotony, it provided a shatteringly convincing answer: virtually everything, virtually every single scene worked. Everything in this production came straight out of the text, though executed with quite exceptional flair and imagination. Peter Hall seized, for instance, on Marlowe’s visual symbolism of the white, red, and black tents and made such symbolism a basic principle of the whole production. In the first two scenes alone, the entire colour-scheme of the stage changed three times - pink for the court of the effeminate Mycetes, blue for the crowning of Cosroe, and gold for the arrival of Zenocrate and Tamburlaine.