part of the play which can be traced. From Palmerius,
Platina, Pius II, Cambinus (either in the original or in
Shute's translation), Giovio (the original or Ashton's
translation), Cuspinian, Christopherus Richerius, Muenster,
Sagundinus, Curio (the original or Newton's translation),
Granucci or Lonicerus, from these he could have learnt
the simple outline of events that delighted European
romancers before they were tested by comparison with the
authentic oriental traditions.^
^ He would have learnt from practically all of them that Tamburlaine
was born in or near Scythia (I italicize the material in this common saga
which he actually used) of poor parents, that he was a shepherd and led a
troop of robbers with whose aid he conquered the adjoining country, variously
named, and, making for himself a foothold thereby, proceeded to greater and
greater conquests. That he was distinguished for courage, energy, fixity of
purpose, for transcendant military genius and great administrative ability.
Most of them would support this by a description of the orderliness of
Tamburlaine' s vast camp. After a career af conquest he met Bajazett
emperor of the Turks in Armenia or Bithynia, at Ancora or near Moun,
Stella. He conquered Bajazet and took him captive, some say together with
his wife who was kept in slavery ; Bajazet was loaded with chains, some
say of gold, put in a cage and carried about as a spectacle of ridicule on
Tamburlaine' s expeditions. He was put under Tamburlaine 's table at his
meals and forced to feed upon scraps that Tamburlaine threw to him like
a dog. Further, when Tamburlaine mounted his horse he used Bajazet
as a footstool or mounting-block. He continued an unbroken career of con-
quest, being only once turned back, by the Egyptian or Arabian desert.
Among his most famous military achievements were the sieges of Sebastia,
Aleppo, Damascus, which he took with a cleverly constructed siege engine.
When besieging a city it was his custom to change the colour of his tent day by
day, from white to red, from red to black. By the time the third day was
reached and the black tent erected, the town which had held out so defiantly
could expect no mercy. One city did indeed, after holding out till the third
day, send an embassy of women and children, or girls and boys, dressed
in white and carrying olive branches to beg for mercy. Tamburlaine ordered
them, to be slain by a charge of cavalry. A man in his camp who knew him
well expostulated with him for this act of brutality and Tamburlaine
replied with furiously flashing eyes, ' Do you think I am only a man ?
36 TAMBURLAINE THE GREAT
With so much common matter so widely diffused, is it
possible to say which are likeliest to have been Marlowe's
sources or to find any details which suggest that he must
at least have looked into a certain book ? I think it is.
The names of Chalcondylas, Haytoun, Fregoso, Mexia,
Perondinus and Primaudaye are conspicuously missing
from the formidable list of concurrent authorities mentioned
above because, happily, there are episodes or interpreta-
tions of character which Marlowe's play shares only ^ with
these writers and suggest that to these at least we can
point with some degree of probability. Chalcondylas alone,
of all the writers cited here, repeats the widespread eastern
tradition that Timur felt for his first and chief wife a respect
and affection unusual among his race. The wife of Themir,
in Chalcondylas's history, is a woman of power and wisdom
to whose judgement the Khan defers and whom he consults
even upon matters of state and military policy. She tries
to prevent a war between Pajasites and Themir and Themir
listens to her advice and adopts a conciliatory attitude
until the conduct of the Turkish ruler becomes unsuffer-
able and she of her own accord gives consent to the war.
Here, and here alone, seems to be the outline of that rela-
tionship from which Marlowe draws so much of the poetry
of the first part of his play and the poignancy of the second.
The love of Tamburlaine for Zenocrate may have been his
own supreme addition to the story, but it is perhaps worth
noticing that he could have chanced upon this part of
I am the wrath of God and the ruin oj the world.' At some point in his
career a certain city named Capha was forced to yield up its treasure by a
clever stratagem of Tamburlaine 's. After a life of conquests he returned to
his own country laden with spoils and captives and established himself
there in his own city of Samarqand. He left two sons behind him who
were incapable of carrying on their father's career, and lost his
Empire.
1 Or, to be more precise, there is one aspect of Tamburlaine's character
which finds a counterpart only in Chalcondylas 's version, another which
appears similarly in Haytoun 's, and a series of interesting episodes in
Marlowe's play traceable only to Fregoso, Mexia, Perondinus, Primau-
daye and Bizarus, from any one of whom or from all jointly, Marlowe
may have gathered them.
INTRODUCTION 37
the Byzantine narrative without reading the account of
Themir's career in the third book, for it comes by itself at
the end of the second. Chalcondylas is a discursive writer,
and, though he was available in a Latin translation from
1556 onward,^ Marlowe may well, as an editor is unhappily
not permitted to do, have thrown the book aside after a
few pages of the third part and turned to more succinct
and graphic sources.
Such sources he would have found in the Latin (a language
that certainly was familiar to him) of Fregoso or Perondinus,
in the Spanish of Mexia or the Italian, French, or English
of his translators, in the French of Primaudaye or the
English of his translator. One series of episodes, already
remarked in Fregoso's account, ^ the steps by which Tam-
burlaine passes from a Scythian shepherd to become king
of Persia — the winning over of the leader of the thousand
horse, the support given to the brother who is intriguing
against the king of Persia and the final displacement of
that brother by Tamburlaine from the throne he had
raised him to — appears to be unhistorical and to be found
only in Fregoso, Mexia, Perondinus, Bizarus and Primau-
daye. Mexia undoubtedly drew much from Fregoso, as
he himself acknowledges, and from any one of these five
Marlowe could derive also the other features of the com-
posite story as it is outlined above. A certain amount of
importance has been attached to Mexia's phrasing in the
description of Tamburlaine's three sets of tents ^ but we
cannot, I think, build upon this the assumption that
Marlowe read the Spanish original, though there is nothing
to prove that he did not. The description of Bajazet
serving as footstool to Tamburlaine, which, owing to the
manipulations of the translators did not appear in For-
tescue's English version,* might have been found by Mar-
1 Clauserus, Laonici Chalcocondylae A theniensis, de origine et rebus
gestis Turcorum Libri Decern, etc. Basle, 1556.
2 See ante, p. 28. 3 See note, p. 139.
* See Appendix C and notes.
38 TAMBURLAINE THE GREAT
lowe in the chapter on Bajazet in the Itahan or French
tianslations or in the chapter on Tamburlaine in Mexia's
original, but here again it might have been drawn from
Perondinus's brief but sufficiently graphic comment or
any one of the authors who reproduce it. Perhaps the only
passage in Marlowe's play which carries us back to Mexia
(or his translators) rather than to Fregoso, Perondinus or
Primaudaye is the lament of Zenocrate over the deaths
of Bajazet and Zabina (Act. V. Sc. ii.) which holds the very
note of those meditations upon the transitoriness of earthly
glory that is the key to Mexia's interpretation and is other-
wise disregarded by Marlowe. With Perondinus, however,
there are close likenesses of phrasing, especially in the
description of Tamburlaine (Granucci also gives such a
description, but it does not suggest Marlowe's as does
Perondinus's), besides the strong main likenesses of tone and
purpose.
It is then, as has been long acknowledged, with Mexia
and with Perondinus that we are mainly concerned as the
written sources of Marlowe's Tamburlaine, and to these we
may add the interpretation put upon the character by
Haytoun.^ Marlowe's treatment of both of these is in
many ways similar. He takes from them the salient
elements of the career of Tamburlaine, simplifying and
condensing so as to give the clear impression of a swift
and unchecked rise surmounting by its power all opposition
until opposition itself falters and Tamburlaine moves
through a world of subject kings and prostrate empires. He
omits, as is inevitable in the conversion of narrative into
drama, all those episodes which lie outside this or are
redundant. Thus, the early years of Tamburlaine are only
hinted at and the events that followed his death, the
break-up of his empire, are but dimly forecast in the char-
acters of his three sons. He passes directly from the
1 To these we may add again the brief summary given by Primaudaye
obviously from Perondinus and Bizarus's account which often quotes
him verbatim. In either case the original is still Perondinus.
INTRODUCTION 39
winning of Theridamas to the preparations against Bajazet ;
omitting a list of minor conquests which would clog the
action and take from the effect of Tamburlaine's comet-
like movements. For the same reason he does not dwell
upon the organization of the Scythian camp and the mili-
tary engines used, especially for sieges, both of which are
treated at length by the historians and are historical facts
of some importance.^ He admits no checks to Tambur-
laine's career, such as his turning back before the impass-
able Arabian desert, for it is the essence of this spirit to
transcend all earthly bounds. His is a magnificent but
dizzy progress. All that could diminish or humanize him
by partial failure is stripped away. By such means as
these a swiftness of movement is given to the play which
is lacking to the far shorter prose accounts. The character
of Tamburlaine is isolated in its fearless splendour, its
insolence and its command by a number of other omissions.
The love of his own country with which both Mexia and
Perondinus credit him is reduced to a phrase or two about
* Samarcanda, where I breathed first ', for the Tamburlaine
of the play is of no age and of no country ; he is the ever-
lasting embodiment of the unslaked_aspiration of youth^
So again, little details that in Perondinus's account make
for individuality are wiped out, particularly that occasional
meanness, craftiness, perfidy which colours the Italian
author's description. Marlowe drew his colours from a
surer poetic source and had no need of such worldly know-
ledge as that of the astute and mature Perondinus. The
story of the friend of Tamburlaine who expostulated with
him for his ruthlessness has gone, except for the ringing
phrase about the Scourge of God. No man, in the first
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