parts, for the second part of the play gives us the story
of Tamburlaine without the illumination shed upon the first
part. The same, or nearly the same persons, the same or
nearly the same events and episodes are there ; it is, in
fact, substantially the same landscape, from which the
splendour of that strange light is fading even while the
poet works, lingering only upon the high pinnacles of thought
or of emotion. The informing spirit has departed from this
second play, and the story of Tamburlaine becomes again
a story of conquest, rapine, bloodshed and violence such
as the historians had set it forth ; a good stage version of
Perondinus, Mexia, Bonfinius ' and the rest '.
V
THE STAGE HISTORY OF TAMBURLAINE
The date of the first production of Tamburlaine is, of course,
unknown ; the references in Henslowe's Diary only cover
the later period of its Elizabethan career. From these we
learn, as Sir Edmund Chambers points out [The Elizabethan
Stage iii. 421-2), that the Admiral's company produced
62 TAMBURLAINE THE GREAT
* Tamberlan ' on August 28, (30), 1594, though probably
only the first part ; that fourteen more performances of
the first part followed before November 12, 1595, and that
there were seven performances of the second part between
December 19, 1594 and November 13, 1595.-^ A little
light is thrown upon the staging of these productions by
the inventories of the Admiral's men in 1598 which include
among their properties ' Tamberlyre brydell . . . ' and
among their apparel ' Tamberlynes cotte, with coper lace
. . . Tamberlanes breches of crymson vellvet . . . ' to
which we may probably add the ' j cage ' mentioned in the
first group of properties. ^ As Professor Brooke remarks
(see Vol. I of this series) Part I bears the marks of having
been written for performance in inns rather than in regular
theatres, but Part II, with its relatively more detailed
stage devices, seems to belong to the regular stage,
There appears to be no record of a later performance,
though the constant reference to the play during the early
years of the seventeenth century suggests that it must have
been performed as well as read. After the Commonwealth
even these allusions cease (see C. F. Tucker Brooke, The
Reputation of Christopher Marlowe, 1922), and the place
of Tamhurlaine is taken on the stage by the apparently
independent efforts of Saunders and of Rowe. With the
revival of interest in Marlowe at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, the Jew of Malta was staged, but there
was no attempt to produce Tamhurlaine. Nor, so far as
I have been able to discover, was any such attempt made
during the later years of that century or the early part of
the twentieth, until the production of the play in an abbrevi-
ated version by the Yale University Dramatic Association
in 1919.
1 That is, of Part I : Sept. 12, Sept. 28, Oct. 15, Oct. 17, Nov. 4, Nov. 27,
Dec. 17, Dec. 30, Jan. 27, Feb. 17, Mar. 11 ; 1595, May 21, Sept. 15,
Nov. 12, and of Part II : Dec. 19, Jan. i, Jan. 29, Feb. 18, Mar. 12 ; 1595,
May 22, Nov. 13. (See Henslowe's Diary, ed. W. W. Greg, 1904.)
2 See Henslowe Papers, ed. W. W. Greg, 1907.
TAMBURLAINE THE GREAT
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