Tamburlaine: A Critical Reader

Description

Arden Early Modern Drama Guides offer students and academics practical and accessible introductions to the critical and performance contexts of key Elizabethan and Jacobean plays. Essays from leading international scholars give invaluable insight into the text by presenting a range of critical perspectives, making the books ideal companions for study and research. Key features include: The blockbuster Tamburlaine plays (1587) instantly established Marlowe’s reputation for experimenting with subversive, outrageous and immoral material. The plays follow the meteoric rise of a Scythian shepherd-turned-warlord, whose conquests of eastern emperors soon sees him established as the most powerful man in the world. The visual tableaux featured in the plays are iconic. He uses his enemy Bajazeth as a footstool, and has other emperors pull his chariot like horses. He burns the Qur’an on stage. The plays were memorable, too, for how they sounded: they showcased the power and variability of iambic pentameter, the meter that Shakespeare would go on to perfect. No history of Shakespeare’s theatre is complete without understanding the influence and significance of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine plays. Tamburlaine: A Critical Reader offers the definitive introduction to these plays and new perspectives on these seminal works. It provides an overview of their reception on stage and by critics, and offers fresh insights into the teaching of these plays in the classroom. Cover page Halftitle page Series page Title page Copyright page CONTENTS ILLUSTRATIONS SERIES INTRODUCTION NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Introduction 1 The Critical Backstory: Tamburlaine, 1587–2000 – A Reception History I. Beginnings to 1900 II. 1900–1964 III. 1964–2000 2 The Performance History: ‘High Astounding Terms’ – Tamburlaine and Tamburlaine on Stage Tamburlaine at the Rose Tamburlaine’s afterlives before the twentieth century Reviving Tamburlaine in the twentieth century Tamburlaine in the twenty-first century Conclusion 3 The State of the Art: The Critical Landscape, 2000–Present I. Anglo-Ottoman studies II. Environmentalism III. Religion IV. Book history/theatre history V. The new philology VI. Marlowe’s debt to the literary past VII. Tamburlaine in Marlowe biography 4 New Directions: Mending Tamburlaine Tamburlaine in the early modern book trade: Allusions, availability, authorship Book in hand: Reading and repairing Tamburlaine (1606) Acknowledgements 5 New Directions: Tamburlaine the Weather Man 6 New Directions: Towards a Racialized Tamburlaine Early modern race Geo-humoral theory, affect and Scythians Tamburlaine’s material blackness 7 New Directions: Retooling Timür Timürid legacies Worldly riches Conclusion: Revisiting Thomas Roe’s Mughal confusion 8 Three Tents for Tamburlaine: Resources and Approaches for Teaching the Play The White Tent: Equipping for the campaign The Red Tent: Learning from those who went before The Black Tent: Entering the fray NOTES WORKS CITED AND SELECTED FURTHER READING INDEX