Tamburlaine the Great - Softcover

Christopher Marlowe

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1546943277 ISBN 13: 9781546943273

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017

Synopsis

Tamburlaine the Great is a play in two parts by Christopher Marlowe. It is loosely based on the life of the Central Asian emperor, Timur (Tamerlane/Timur the Lame, d. 1405). Written in 1587 or 1588, the play is a milestone in Elizabethan public drama; it marks a turning away from the clumsy language and loose plotting of the earlier Tudor dramatists, and a new interest in fresh and vivid language, memorable action, and intellectual complexity. Along with Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, it may be considered the first popular success of London's public stage.

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About the Author

Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe (baptised 26 February 1564 – 30 May 1593), was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe was the foremost Elizabethan tragedian of his day. He greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was born in the same year as Marlowe and who rose to become the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright after Marlowe's mysterious early death. Marlowe's plays are known for the use of blank verse and their overreaching protagonists.

Review

First play by Christopher Marlowe, produced about 1587 and published in 1590. The play was written in two parts, each of which has five acts, and was based on the earlier Silva de varia leccion (1540; The Foreste; or, Collection of Histories) by the early 16th-century Spanish scholar and humanist Pedro Mexia. Marlowe's "mighty line," as Ben Jonson called it, established blank verse as the standard for later Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatic writing. The play recounts the brutal rise to power and the mysterious end of the bloody 14th-century Mongol conqueror Timur, or Tamburlaine. Marlowe's gifts are displayed not only in his supple poetry but also in his ability to view his tragic hero from several angles, revealing both the brutality and the grandeur of the character. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1546943277
• ISBN 13: 9781546943273
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 170