Chapter 1 - Poetry Meets Power: Tamburlaine the Great

Summary

Early in graduate school, I audited a survey of Renaissance drama taught by Alfred Harbage, then near the close of his career. About a dozen undergraduates were enrolled, and about 15 graduate students sat at the back of the room listening with fascination to a splendid lecturer. At the time I knew virtually nothing about the subject: I had read only a couple of plays by Shakespeare's contemporaries in college. So, when I encountered Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great, it was a surprise. Here was a play that glorified war and celebrated a conquering warrior capable of great cruelty. At the time, the catastrophe of Vietnam had not yet entirely poisoned the body politic of America, and I had few qualms about identifying with military might. Only later did the subject matter of Marlowe's play begin to pall. Initially, I was an enthusiastic reader of what has been called an epic biography, the story of a brutal figure whom Elizabethan culture would have almost certainly called heroic. Few of us would apply that term without reservation today.

Years later, I found myself teaching Tamburlaine and sensed that at least some of the students were not engaged by our discussion. I paused and addressed a woman in the front row who looked especially dyspeptic: “You’re not engaged by this play, are you?” With disgust, she answered, “Naah.” Why? I asked. She replied, “because it's about all that male stuff.” This exchange clarified a growing feeling: the play suffered not only from doubts about military action that has proved singularly self-destructive in our national life (think of Afghanistan and Iraq) but also from a sense that drama no longer speaks to us unless it spotlights women characters and their issues. Admittedly, Marlowe's play brings onstage Zenocrate, the title character's wife, and her speeches express romantic attraction: “As looks the sun through Nilus’ flowing stream, / Or when the morning holds him in her arms, / So looks my lordly love, fair Tamburlaine” (3.2.47–9). Yet it's also true that she figures in few scenes; she's secondary to the play's principal business—confrontation. I began to realize that, despite the appeal of Marlowe's poetry, students would no longer warm to the play.