Tamburlaine the Great — Part 2 — Reading Companion

Captive Kings and Shifting Alliances

The play's first scene presents a coalition against Tamburlaine: Orcanes of Natolia, Gazellus, Uribassa, and Sigismund of Hungary. Their speeches are filled with oaths and vows, yet the text hints at fragility. Orcanes calls Sigismund 'the king of Hungary' and speaks of 'our warlike host' resting, but no battle follows immediately. Instead, the focus shifts to Callapine, 'prisoner to that slave / Which kept his father in an iron cage.' The captive son becomes a figure of potential rebellion, and his keeper Almeda is bribed or persuaded to aid his escape. This subplot introduces a pattern: Tamburlaine's enemies are not merely external but emerge from within his own system of imprisonment and humiliation.

Tamburlaine's Vision of Samarcanda

In Act IV, Scene III, Tamburlaine delivers a long speech envisioning his return to Samarcanda. He describes riding 'in golden armour like the sun' with a 'triple plume' of diamonds, and his coach 'like Saturn's royal son / Mounted his shining chariot gilt with fire.' The imagery is cosmic and architectural: 'shining turrets shall dismay the heavens,' and the streets are 'pav'd with bright crystal and enchas'd with stars.' Yet this vision is immediately undercut by the command 'To Babylon, my lords, to Babylon!'—a city he will destroy. The speech reveals Tamburlaine's self-conception as a godlike figure, but the play's action repeatedly shows him as a destroyer, not a builder. The almond-tree simile, with 'blooms more white than Erycina's brows,' introduces a rare note of delicacy, but it is surrounded by threats of whipping down cities.

The Governor's Defiance and the Siege of Babylon

In Act V, Scene I, the Governor of Babylon refuses to surrender despite the breach in his walls. He scoffs at Maximus's plea for submission, asking 'Villain, respect'st thou more thy slavish life / Than honour of thy country or thy name?' He invokes the 'famous lake of Limnasphaltis' that 'Makes walls a-fresh with every thing that falls,' a natural defense that seems to promise resilience. But a citizen kneels and begs for truce, fearing 'Tamburlaine's intolerable wrath.' The Governor's defiance is heroic but futile; the play's structure suggests that Tamburlaine's wrath will not be suppressed. The contrast between the Governor's rhetoric of honour and the citizen's plea for mercy echoes the play's larger tension between grandiose ambition and human cost.

Readers should attend to the play's treatment of time and mortality. The prologue promises that 'Death cuts off the progress of his pomp,' but the action delays that end, filling the stage with sieges, speeches, and the machinations of captive kings. Tamburlaine's own mortality is hinted at but not yet fulfilled in these excerpts. The play's language—alternately bombastic and precise—invites scrutiny of how Marlowe builds a world where conquest is both glorious and grotesque.

I keep thinking about how Tamburlaine’s empire-building feels so loud, yet his fear of his own sons is so quiet. That strange contrast stayed with me, like a room after a storm. The Birds — Story, Setting & Ideas has a similar hush underneath its tension—not about conquest, but about what unsettles us when everything is still. It lingered in my mind the way certain afternoons do.