David Bruce

Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine, Parts 1 and 2 David Bruce

This is an easy-to-read retelling of Christopher's Marlowe's TAMBURLAINE: PART 1. People who read this version first will find the original much easier to read and understand. Zenocrate's beauty tempts Tamburlaine to show mercy to her father and at least some Egyptians. Indeed, his meditation now is evidence that he was tempted to show mercy to the virgins of Damascus. To Tamburlaine, to show mercy is to break his word. To Tamburlaine, no poet can explain how virtue can lead to lack of virtue. The virtue is appreciating beauty, and the lack of virtue is not doing what he said he would do - not following his military code. For Tamburlaine to be true to himself, he has to kill the people he said he would kill. Tamburlaine continued: "But we must admit that beauty merits applause, and we must admit that the soul of man is touched instinctively by beauty, and we must admit that every warrior who is rapt and smitten with love of fame, of valor, and of victory, must necessarily have beauty beat on his thoughts. "I thus both conceiving of and responding to beauty and subduing and controlling that response, shall cause the world to believe, for all my low birth, that virtue - excellence, which in my case is excellence as a military commander - solely is the high point of glory, and forms men with true nobility."Tamburlaine believed that he could be a man of true nobility if he could both appreciate and respond to beauty and yet resist the temptations that beauty led him to - such as the temptation of showing mercy when he had sworn he would not show mercy. He continued: "What is it that I must conceive of and respond to and that I must subdue and control?"It is that which has stooped the topmost of the gods and stopped the tempest of the gods who have come even from the fiery star-spangled veil of Heaven, to feel the lovely and lowly warmth of shepherds' flames and enter cottages strewn with reeds."The classical gods often fell in love with and slept with mortals. In order to sleep with the mortal woman Mnemosyne, Jupiter, the King of the gods, disguised himself as a humble shepherd, and so the topmost of the gods stooped. Jupiter is the god of xenia, which is often translated as hospitality. He grew angry at mortals in a certain region because of their lack of hospitality, and he and Mercury went in disguise to that region and knocked on doors and asked for hospitality. Ancient Greece had no inns, and so this was the accepted way of getting a meal and a place to stay. All of the heads of households in the region refused them hospitality except for an elderly couple named Baucis and Philemon, who invited them into their humble cottage. In gratitude, Jupiter and Mercury destroyed all the homes in the region except for the home of Baucis and Philemon. Here, the beauty of hospitality had stopped the tempest - anger - of the gods and caused them to be merciful. Tamburlaine continued: "Let me repeat: I thus both conceiving of and responding to beauty and subduing and controlling that response, shall cause the world to believe, for all my low birth, that virtue - excellence, in my case excellence as a military commander - solely is the high point of glory, and forms men with true nobility."Tamburlaine was as good as his word: While meditating on Zenocrate's beauty, he had allowed his soldiers to slaughter all the inhabitants - men, women, and children - of Damascus. He knew that this would cause Zenocrate anguish because Damascus was in the territory controlled by her father, the Sultan of Egy