Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great

(1564-1593) made his mark with his pivotal contribution to English theatre history with such significant plays as Doctor Faustus (1592), The Jew of Malta (1592), The Massacre at Paris (1593) and Edward II (1594). Written in two parts (Part I in 1587 and Part II in

1588), and becoming “an overnight success” (Hopkins xii), Tamburlaine the Great is a tragedy about conquests, “published in octavo form in 1590, but the first recorded performances were in 1594” (Geckle 15). In the play, a Scythian shepherd, Tamburlaine, gradually ascends to the position of the conqueror of the Earth, which helps him establish his full identity as the ultimate ruler and the scourge and wrath of God on earth. This, consequently, illustrates how the ecophobic psyche prevails in human practices towards nature since the desire for conquest evokes the colonial enslavement and rape of the earth along with the desire to conquer the world.

Acquiring more control over more land, Tamburlaine gradually extends and develops his subjective identity since his anthropocentric reign is more powerfully established by conquering nature. As the play “depicts more clearly Tamburlaine’s lust for power”

(Waith 231), this power is directly illustrated as domination over nature. Within this framework, so as to consolidate his so-called power and control over the natural elements, Tamburlaine adopts a human-centred perspective elevating himself to the status of ‘pure intellect.’ Nonetheless, in order to achieve this supposed separation between human and nonhuman, he has to detract himself from any natural ties.

Accordingly, “Tamburlaine, after all, dramatically casts off his shepherd’s garb when he embarks on his career as a conqueror” (Borlik, Ecocriticism 138).

Likewise, in the second part of the play, Tamburlaine connects the precondition of being a good warrior and conqueror to the ultimate control of the four elements while talking about his sons’ future careers after his death:

I’ll have you learn to sleep upon the ground, March in your armour thorough watery fens, Sustain the scorching heat and freezing cold, Hunger and thirst – right adjuncts of the war;

And after this to scale a castle wall, Besiege a fort, to undermine a town,

And make whole cities caper in the air. (III. ii. 97)

Therefore, so as to attain a centric reign, one has to dominate and domesticate the natural environment, echoing the Neo-Platonic idea of taking the body under the control of the human mind to ascend towards the intellective soul. From this viewpoint, one’s dominion is directly measured by his/her control over the elements. Similarly, he/she

should also properly train the body as it is the only material intersection point of the physical environments and the human being. Therefore, the human mind uses the body as the non-fissile element of human existence, and ordains it to utilise the elements on his/her behalf.

Ironically, although Tamburlaine alienates himself from the material and natural bonds to feature his intellectual dominion over earth, he still needs earthy materials to accomplish his full identity as a conqueror of the Earth. The most significant symbol of a successful conquest of a land is to be handed-over a crown coated with precious stones and gold. Theridamas, the former chief captain of, and traitor to, Mycetes (the king of Persia), compares the satisfaction of confiscating a crown as the symbol of the ultimate power over nature and the people of that land, to even heavenly joys:

A god is not so glorious as a king.

I think the pleasure they enjoy in heaven Cannot compare with kingly joys in earth:

To wear a crown enchased with pearl and gold, Whose virtues carry with it life and death;

To ask, and have; command, and be obeyed;

When looks breed love, with looks to gain the prize – Such power attractive shines in prince’s eyes. (II. v. 24-25)

In order to obtain the power of a conqueror, one is supposed to declare his/her control and dominion over earth. Interestingly though, this power is celebrated by a stipulation enriched with earthy materials. As these materials are processed according to the requirements and aesthetics human civilisation imposes, it acknowledges an attempt to prove the superiority of human culture over nature. On the other hand, however hard one tries not to be associated with nature, natural but especially earthy materials are essential even in establishing one’s developed social identity. This underlines that discursive formations are bound to material and natural ones. Apart from the crown offered after the conquest of a land, the soldiers’ motives in the battlefield are also supported with promises of booty. The Persian lord Ceneus draws attention to the desire of the soldier to obtain earthy materials:

The warlike soldiers and gentlemen That heretofore have filled Persepolis With Afric captains taken in the field,

Whose ransom made them march in coats of gold With costly jewels hanging at their ears

And shining stones upon their lofty crests. (I. i. 7)

Hence, earthy materials processed according to human aesthetics become the symbol of triumph. Matter and discourse (nature and culture), in this sense, can be said to inter-, or more correctly intra-dance. To pronounce social and discursive superiority over a land demands a symbol embellished with earthy materials. Hence, the delusional detachment and boundary between nature and culture is annihilated, and it is uncovered that matter and discourse, that is earth and discursive dominion, are inter-twined.

Illustrating geological knowledge through numerous references to the locations of several countries, the play portrays Tamburlaine’s longing for power and control over the land with references to the mapping practices in the Renaissance: “I will confute those blind geographers/ That make a triple region in the world,/ Excluding regions which I mean to trace/ And with this pen reduce them to a map, / Calling the provinces, cities, and towns / After my name and thine, Zenocrate” (IV. iv. 52). Believed to be granted to human beings by nature, naming unravels the delusional power of the human over the nonhuman. Naming provides to limit the named to the knowledge and perception of the namer. This, automatically, reduces the intrinsic value of the named by subjugating her/him/it to the status of ‘non-being.’ Stripping off one’s essence of life means labelling that thing as non-existent and passive matter. In this sense, the mapping practices pertinently squeeze an independently living earth into a passive category.

Apart from earth as a physical and environmental entity, Tamburlaine also subjugates some human beings. For instance, he forces Bajazeth, the Turkish emperor, to eat his own flesh, and urges him to kill his wife. Thus, this analogy with cannibalism reinforces the usurpation of both Bajazeth’s land and his kingly soul by Tamburlaine. Behaving as if Bajazeth and his wife are just a piece of flesh, Tamburline inwardly strips off their humanity and intellective soul, and precipitates them to a nonhuman status. Enclosed in cages like nonhumans, Bajazeth and his wife Zabina forget their human essence, as a result of which they both kill themselves by hitting their heads against the cage. On similar grounds, reducing the people of the conquered land to the status of passive earth by stating that “[c]onqu’ring the people underneath our feet,/ And be renowned as never

emperors were” (IV. iv. 53), Tamburlaine countervails the community out of his imperial agency with a piece of land. Nonetheless, only when the land is conquered by the mighty Tamburlaine can the people on that land obtain an agential unique identity.

That is to say, when the non-agential bodies of the people gain agency by the intellective and rational influence of the mighty ruler Tamburlaine, he leaves his dominating mark both on the land and the people he conquers.

Marlowe also makes numerous references to the elemental philosophy acquired as a result of the rediscovery of the ancient sapienta in the Renaissance. Daniel Drew points to Marlowe’s wisdom consolidated in the character of Tamburlaine since “Tamburlaine dynamically experiences the human body as an elemental assemblage, materially composed of earth, air, fire, and water, set eternally in conflict with itself” (289). To exemplify the elemental consciousness portrayed in the play, Tamburlaine demands his followers to take an oath of allegiance by swearing until their “bodies turn to elements, and both … [their] souls aspire celestial thrones” (I. ii. 15). More specifically, Tamburlaine talks about his material becoming with the recognition of his material elemental formation:

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. (II. vii. 28)

According to Tamburlaine, the necessity of acquiring aspiring minds is to perceive the material and elemental formations within one’s own soul. Likewise, the traitor brother of the King of Persia, Cosroe hints at the equal agency of the human and the elements:

“[S]ince we all have sucked one wholesome air,/ And with the same proportion of elements/ Resolve, I hope we are resembled,/ Vowing our loves to equal death and life”

(II. vi. 26-27). This ideology is in direct contrast with the anthropocentric point of view

which strictly separates the intellectual existence of human beings (discursive formations) from the merely instrumental presence of nonhumans (material formations).

Claiming to exist within the elemental and intellectual intertwinement, Tamburlaine presupposes the co-existence of mind and body.

Similar to the material influences on the human body, humans also impinge on the material surroundings especially with their bodily imprints on the earth. In the play, the battle scenes are vividly described as slaughter houses where earth is fed with human blood and bones. Terrible war scenes are violently depicted with the representation of the “human trampled under feet of horses, crushed among stones, dying cries of agony”

(Spence 611). In this way, just as much as the human is framed by nature and elemental forces, nature is also framed by human agency. In relation to this reciprocal formation, Jeffrey Cohen asks: “How long does it take … for a body to be no longer a person or a life, but material that can be moved, that can be used to build a place like this?” (Stone 70). Likewise, in the play, Bajazeth, draws attention to the cascade fossilisation process by stating: “Let thousands die, their slaughtered carcasses/ Shall serve for walls and bulwarks to the rest” (III. iii. 38). As another example, Tamburlaine’s wife Zenocrate also underlines this trans-corporeality⁷ in the battle:

Wretched Zenocrate, that liv’st to see

Damascus’s walls dyed with Egyptian blood, Thy father’s subjects and countrymen,

Thy streets strewed with dissevered joints of men And wounded bodies gasping yet for life,

But most accurst to see the sun-bright troop. (V. i. 63)

The more the human body gets entangled with the earthy formations through decay, deterioration, and decomposition, the more it turns into another being born out of the earth. The body or its parts left in the field dissolve into other beings because, as Orcanes, the king of Natolia, also remarks, the body of the defeated is denied the imperial agency, and simply left to become disintegrated into the elements: “Now shall his barbarous body be a prey/ To beasts and fowls, and all the winds shall breathe/

Through shady leaves of every senseless tree/ Murmurs and hisses for his heinous sin”

(II. iii. 88-89). Everything in life bears another potential of life within itself, and this material link with the earth is uncovered especially through the battle scenes in the play.

However, through the attempt to preserve the body of a dead person, a denial of the material dissolution of the human body into earth is demonstrated throughout the play, as well. For instance, when his wife dies, Tamburlaine denies giving her body to earth since it would mean to give birth to another being at that locale out of his wife’s essence. In order not to “beautify Larissa plains” (III. ii. 97), Tamburlaine wants to delay his wife’s bodily decay as much as possible:

Where’er her soul be [turning to address Zenocrate’s body], thou shalt stay with me,

Embalmed with cassia, ambergris, and myrrh, Not lapped in lead but in a sheet of gold;

And till I die thou shalt not be interred.

Then in as rich a tomb as Mausolus. (II. iv. 93)

Tamburlaine does not want her body to be digested by other beings in earth, and in a sense stops her from transforming into a kind of vermin in the soil. However, previously in the play, Zenocrate herself defines death on a very material level: “… when this frail and transitory flesh/ Hath sucked the measure of that vital air/ That feeds the body with his dated health,/ Wanes with enforced and necessary change” (II. iv. 91). Nevertheless, Tamburlaine disrupts this natural process by closing his beloved’s dead body into a hearse, which, once more, signifies his anthropocentric role-adoption in the play. In relation to Tamburlaine’s placing Zenocrate’s body into a spectacular hearse, Robert N.

Watson states that “[p]erhaps an effort to isolate such vermiculation in corpses helps to explain the … fascination with transi tomb-sculptures” (50). This again hints at an anthropocentric impulse to put human beings into a distinct category from nonhuman beings.

Tamburlaine’s way of suffering Zenocrate’s death is also remarkable. He immediately denounces that the city in which his lover died is cursed from then on, and commands his men to start such a big fire that the flames would be seen from afar. Furthermore, he wants to impoverish the land so that it will lose its fertility which will, consequently, lead to destruction for the inhabitants. Tamburlaine, in this sense, punishes the people of the town through emaciating their soil which is essential for their survival. He further utters a threat of famine to the people: “So, burn the turrets of this cursed town,/ Flame to the highest region of the air/ And kindle heaps of exhalations/ That, being fiery

meteors may presage/ Death and destruction to th’inhabitants;/ Over my zenith hang a blazing star/ That may endure till heaven be dissolved,/ Fed with the fresh supply of earthly dregs,/ Threat’ning a death and famine to this island!” (III. ii. 96). Tamburlaine, in this way, directs his agony towards the physical environment as he wants to annihilate that locale. Though he is the scourge of God conquering all the lands and the people on it, he cannot overcome the material and natural cycle of human biological existence. This proves the anthropocentric dilemma at large. That is to say, Tamburlaine claims to be the master of the material earth which, he thinks, is passive and mute towards human conquests. However, he is conclusively defeated by the natural cycle of earth. By denying to bury Zenocrate, Tamburlaine tries to have more control over her body since, in this way, he will delay the body from becoming earth itself. In other words, this implies the denial of the material side of the human, and ironically at the same time the acknowledgement of material awareness. Yet still, Tamburlaine endeavours to alienate the material agency of his wife from the physical environments.

This, in return, points to ecophobia as Tamburlaine tries to control both Zenocrate’s body and the lands with the purpose of taming them within his terms. This claim grants him the agency of a bigger and wiser substance than nature itself.

The tragedy Tamburlaine the Great portrays the anthropocentric endeavours of a shepherd to dominate earth, and his gradual ascent towards being an ultimate ruler and an earthy god. Although Tamburlaine aims at taking earth under his control, he cannot escape from being entangled in earthy formations, which hints at the equal agency and existence of human beings and the elements. Marlowe’s play portrays the colonial enslavement of the earth in terms of scourging the land at the expense of its intrinsic agency with Tamburlaine’s specific desire to acquire an anthropocentric and ultimate subjective identity.

On the other hand, another early modern playwright Ben Jonson presents a different perspective of earth in his play, drawing attention to its material existence in our culture in the form of food, which will be brought to the forefront in the further analysis of the play.