part of Tamburlaine, very few had been omitted. There
was, consequently, little left of the original legend when
a second part was to be written. He had, beyond
doubt, a clear conception of the development the chief
character should suffer, and this differed so far from the
conception of the first part as to endanger the effective-
ness of a play written on similar lines. His sympathies and
comments seem, in the same way, to be continually break-
ing away from the tradition he himself had established ; he
must have longed already to be at work on other material.
In this situation, then, with his sources for the life already
drained and his sympathies no longer strongly enough
engaged to stimulate his imagination to constructive plot-
ting, he seems to have been driven to eke out his material
by introducing irrelevant episodes, some of which he weaves
in skilfully, others of which are, and look like, padding.
The earliest and chief of these is an elaborate sub-plot, the
series of episodes whereby Orcanes, now the Turkish leader,
enters into a peace treaty with Sigismund of Hungary and
the European Christians, is betrayed and taken in the rear by
them, yet nevertheless defeats them in the battle they had
sacrificed their honour to bring about. The name Sigis-
mund is that of the Hungarian leader contemporary with
Tamburlaine, who endeavoured to raise the siege of Con-
stantinople in 1397, from which Bajazet was only drawn
by the approach of the Tartar forces which he was forced
to meet at Ancora. All the rest is a neat transposition of
the events that led up to the battle of Varna in 1444, wherein
42 TAMBURLAINE THE GREAT
Amurath II defeated Vladislaus of Poland and Hungary,
who had sworn a truce with him and then, urged by the
other nations of the Christian League, had taken him at a
disadvantage and marched into his territory after he had
withdrawn his forces. It all seems a little irrelevant both
to the action and to the general sentiment of the play, for
Orcanes' triumph serves few purposes in the narrative ; it
does not serve to make him appear a great potentate and
his subsequent defeat by Tamburlaine is expected before
it comes, while, on the other hand, his rather poignant
and suggestive speeches on treachery and the chivalric
law of arms make a jarring contrast with the frivolous and
fantastic mood of the scenes in which he and the other
captive kings ultimately appear. This is partly because
Marlowe, lacking a truer incentive, follows his sources fairly
closely for the details of the episode without regarding
the effect which the episode would have upon the continuity
of sentiment or action. The source was, as has been recently
pointed out,^ the account of Bonfinius, Antonii Bonfinii
Rerum Ungaricarum decades quattuor (1543), supplemented
by Callimachus, Callimachi Experientis de clade Varnensi
(1556). This was reprinted in the popular Turcicorum
Chronicorum Tomi Duo ... of Philippus Lonicerus (1578).
These accounts, but particularly that of Bonfinius, are
closely followed by Marlowe. The pact between the Turks
and the Christians, sought by the Turks, was confirmed by
an oath on both sides, the Christians swearing by the Gospel
and the Turks by the Koran. ^ Amurath then withdrew
his forces into Carmania, leaving Turkish Europe unde-
fended. Meanwhile the other members of the Christian
League were ill-satisfied with this peace concluded by one
of their members singly and pressure was brought to bear
on the Hungarians. The Papal Legate, Cardinal Julian, in
an impassioned oration besought them to consider that the
1 E. Seaton, Times Lit. Supp., June i6, 1921, p. 388.
2 For the close parallels between the Latin of Bonfinius and Marlowe's
play, see the notes to the second Act of Part II.
INTRODUCTION 43
league with the Turk was but a breaking of faith with the
rest of the Christian League ; that it was the duty of a
Christian to circumvent the infidel by any means in his
power ; that the Turk had never kept faith with the Chris-
tians and therefore could not expect faith from them ;
that it had ever been accounted a crime to observe oaths
that were manifestly evil in themselves.^ He ended by
absolving them in the Pope's name from their oath to
Amurath, who had meanwhile faithfully carried out his
side of the terms. Vladislaus then gathered an army and
marched into Bulgaria, the Cardinal urging him on and the
Turkish forts and towns falling without resistance. Am-
urath heard the news, gathered an army, recrossed the
Hellespont and marched to Varna on the Black Sea coast.
The fight was long and bitter and fate seemed against
the Turks when Amurath caught sight of the Crucifix on
the Christian banners and pulling out from the fold of his
robe the treaty broken by the Christians, lifted it to heaven
and exclaimed (to use the words in which Knolles later
translated) 2 ' Now if thou be a God as they say thou art,
and as we dreame, revenge the wrong now done unto thy
name and me.' Thereafter the fate of the battle changed
and the Christians were defeated. Vladislaus and the
Cardinal were killed and large numbers of their host who
were not drowned in the Danube were made slaves by the
Turks. Marlowe's likeness to this account is striking, even to
verbal resemblance, so much so as to suggest hasty assimila-
tion of matter which could be used to eke out his play.
The next event in the play, the escape of Callapine, who
is defeated in the last Act but saves his life through the
death of Tamburlaine, is generally referred to in many
of the histories of Bajazet's life and is very slightly treated
by Marlowe, It is set in motion before the episode of
Sigismund and Orcanes is completed, but it is unconnected
1 For the close reproduction of these arguments in Marlowe's version
of the story, see, again, II. II. i and the notes passim.
^ See II. II. ii. and the notes.
44 TAMBURLAINE THE GREAT
with it and does not bear any relation to the other episodes
of the play, most of which are similarly borrowed and
loosely affiliated to the figure of Tamburlaine without any
further linking together. The episodes with Tamburlaine,
Zenocrate and their sons are developed by Marlowe perhaps
from the slight hints of some biographers that Tambur-
laine's children fell below their father in military achieve-
ments, though one Oriental source, probably unknown to
Marlowe, tells of the Spartan upbringing he gave them. All
his own is the character of Calyphas,in which it seems he
preferred to isolate and develop the hint of degeneracy
which some of the chroniclers give to both of Tamburlaine 's
sons ; Marlowe thus, by a stroke of nature, leaves the two
surviving sons respectful and awestruck, but utterly un-
endowed with genius. The death of Zenocrate, like the
rest of the domestic episodes of this part, has not yet been
traced to a source. It is probably Marlowe's own ; there
are passages in the scene as mature as Edward II and
touched with the same weary fullness of reflection ; a strange
revelation of the rapidity of imaginative experience.
The next episode of any magnitude, is the taking of
Balsera by Theridamas and Techelles in which the capture
of Olympia can also be traced to a popular source, the story
of Isabella and her persecution by Rodomont in Cantos
XXVIII and XXIX of Orlando Furioso, combined with
an episode narrated by Belief orest in his Cosmographie.
Ariosto gives the story at some length. In Marlowe's
hands it suffers dramatic condensation, and we no longer
follow in detail the process by which the herbs for the magic
ointment (it is a lotion with Ariosto) are culled and brewed
under the strict surveillance of the lover. The author's
long eulogy of Isabella and account of her apotheosis gives
place to a brief epitaph fitly spoken by Theridamas, who
has never perjured himself or proved so base or so heartless
as Rodomont.
The resemblance of Marlowe's story to Ariosto 's is so
INTRODUCTION 45
general and so few of the more notable elements of Marlowe's
dialogues appear in Ariosto that the adaptation of the story
makes it mainly his own. If he used Ariosto at all it must
have been either through a report of the tale or from a
memory of it recurring from a perhaps not very recent
reading.^
Yet another though far briefer portion of this second
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