Playing with Promethean Fire: Dido, Queen of Carthage and Tamburlaine the Great

This article attempts to consider Marlowe's Promethean imagination in the context of Denis Donoghue's Thieves of Fire (1973). It focuses on two plays Dido, Queen of Carthage and Tamburlaine the Great, but the project extends further to 'Marlowe's Journey', the working title of a book culminating in a new look at Doctor Faustus. The general idea is to link the plays with acting, the inbuilt histrionic style of Marlowe's characterization, with the concept of the Promethean, understood as subversion on the moral and political scales.

L’IMAGE D’AMIR TIMOUR DANS LA DRAMATURGIE DE L’EUROPE OCCIDENTALE

Le but de recherches consiste en étude des particularités de tragédies sur Amir Timour crées et mises en scène en Europe occidentale aux XVIXX siècles, de leur sources, la vérité historique et la fiction artistique. Ce sont "Tamburlaine the Great" de Christopher Marlowe, "Tamerlan ou la Mort de Bajazet" de Jacques Pradon, "Tamerlan, a Tragedy" de Nicolas Rowe, "Tamerlan" de Lucien Kehren et autres. La nouvauté scientifique de recherche est en fait que les originaux des différentes tragédies sur Tamerlan créees dans les littératures de l’Europe de l’Ouest durant les XVI-XX siècles, sont analysés du point de vue philologique, leur particularités et généralités sont déterminés pour la première fois. Les résultats obtenus: La vie de mythe est plus dure que l’approche historique: si en Europe tout le monde a entendu le nom de Tamerlan peu connaissent son oeuvre et encore moins savent que son vrai nom est Amir Timur, nos recherches permettent donc de progresser dans la connaissance d’un personnage historique qui aura marqué l’Occident comme l’Orient. Conclusion: Il aura falut attendre les festivités du 660e anniversaire d’Amir Timour pour permettre aux spectateurs d’Ouzbékistan la découverte de ces belles oeuvres, mise en scène par les troupes des Théâtre National d’Opéra et de Ballet de Tachkent et Théâtre dramatique de Samarkand.

Making a Scene

Chapter 3 shows how typography responded to the increasing formal complexity of vernacular plays. The central case study is the printer-publisher Richard Jones’s octavo of Tamburlaine the Great (1590). Jones used numbered scene headings to carve the plays into discrete units of action and tease out their episodic dramaturgy for readers. In particular, he removed divisions where characters are described as clearing the stage to “enter to the battle.” The absence of divisions at these moments in a playbook with an unusually full complement of divisions anticipated the treatment of numbered scene divisions in other plays that, like Tamburlaine, were styled as “histories.” The kinesis and noise of battle sequences invited the continuity of audience focus, not rupture. This typographic mediation of the iterative, “rotating door” strategy of staging battle scenes with limited resources exposes “the scene” as a shape-shifting entity of dramatic form.

The iconoclastic theatre: transgression in Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine

This article examines Christopher Marlowe’s iconoclasm as a dramatist by probing transgressive features in his Tamburlaine the Great, parts I and II. By depicting instances of excessive violence, from the perspective of this study, Marlowe flouts everything his society cherishes. His Tamburlaine demystifies religious doctrines and cultural relations; it challenges the official view of the universe and customary theatrical conventions of Renaissance drama. It destabilizes the norms and values of the Elizabethans and brings about a crisis between the Elizabethan audience and their own culture. Furthermore, Marlowe’s experimentalism in Tamburlaine expands the imaginative representations to include areas never formerly visited, consequently creating an alternative reality for his audience and transforming the popular English theatre in an unprecedented manner. Keywords: Drama, Christopher Marlowe, Elizabethan theatre, Literature, Iconoclasm

Populist Improvisation

Successfully creating polarizing narratives, several populist leaders have come to dominate the global political sphere in recent times. However, the coronavirus pandemic has raised serious questions over their ability to respond to its challenges effectively. Whether they will remain in power after the pandemic is an intriguing question. The key to understanding the dynamics of power among populist leaders lies in analyzing the tactics they employ for the appropriation of political power. In this context, reading Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great (1587) can play an important role. This essay, therefore, argues that through a unique characterization of Tamburlaine the Great, Marlowe critiques Queen Elizabeth’s aggressive political maneuvers of improvisation, which enabled her to reinforce her divine claim over the throne of England. Yet striking historical and literary references suggest that Queen Elizabeth and Marlowe’s Tamburlaine attempted to achieve improvisation through similar means but in the end encountered the transience and limits of their temporal powers, while facing the biological realities of barrenness and heredity – a fact that should serve as a warning to the current populist leaders across the world.

Helen Gifford’s Marlovian Regarding Faustus

Australian composer Helen Gifford’s Regarding Faustus (1983) is an innovative musical theater setting of Christopher Marlowe’s tragedy Doctor Faustus, with additional adaptation from Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great, verse by Marston and Shakespeare, Greene’s Historie of Frier Bacon, and Frier Bongay, and Australian indigenous ceremonial practices. Developing the piece for performance by tenor Robert Gard, Gifford makes effective use of dissonance, with pitched and non-pitched percussion, and pre-recorded chorus, oscillating between diegetic and non-diegetic sounds. Her libretto underplays the visceral aspects of the Faustus character, who damns himself yet still invites our pity. The work is distinctive in its intercultural scope and creative synthesis.