Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Tamburlaine, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Honor
Fortune and Destiny
Beauty and Violence
Religion and Blasphemy
Summary
Analysis
Act 1, Scene 1. Years after the events of the first play, Orcanes, king of Natolia, and his eastern viceroys, have come to encounter King Sigismund of Hungary in the field. Orcanes pushes for total assault on the Christian kingdom, but the viceroys advise that he save their strength to ward off Tamburlaine, now marching northward from Cairo. Orcanes agrees, acknowledging Tamburlaine’s might, and therefore they plan to make peace with Sigismund.
Though years have passed and Tamburlaine has risen from an unknown Scythian raider to a mighty warlord, Part Two nevertheless opens much like Part One: with a group of eastern leaders discussing the encroaching threat of Tamburlaine. The Scythian’s goals, it seems, remain the same.
Themes
Act 1, Scene 2. Sigismund arrives, and after a tense exchange, he and Orcanes make peace. Orcanes makes him swear on it by Christ’s name, which Sigismund does. Orcanes swears by Mahomet in turn, and they promise mutual military aid.
The onstage introduction of Christians in Part Two adds a further element to the chaos of religions that permeates the play—an element that more directly implicated Marlowe’s Christian audience.
Themes
Act 1, Scene 3. In Egypt, Bajazeth’s son Callapine—encaged by Tamburlaine just like his father—convinces Almeda, the henchman assigned to guard him, to set him free. He claims to have an escape route to friendly Turkish seas, whereupon he can reward Almeda with riches and kingship. Almeda agrees, and they escape. Callapine swears to revenge his father’s death on Tamburlaine.
The play positions Callapine as a young rival and genuine threat to Tamburlaine. The very fact that a member of Tamburlaine’s army betrays him to free the prisoner would have been unthinkable in Part One, and it possibly indicates the slipping of Tamburlaine’s incontestable power.
Themes
Act 1, Scene 4. In Larissa, Tamburlaine and Zenocrate arrive with their three sons, Calyphas, Amyras, and Celebinus. Tamburlaine frets that they are not warlike, but Zenocrate assures him they are. Tamburlaine tells them to be “a scourge and terror to the world” like himself, or else they are not really his sons. Calyphas expresses no interest in war, enraging Tamburlaine. The other two boys act valiant and brutal to win their father’s approval, while Calyphas remains rather noncommittal.
Tamburlaine has become a family man in the intervening years, raising three sons that seem to only bring him anxiety and grief, especially when it comes to whether they will fail to live up to his example. In the case of the seemingly lazy Calyphas, he is surely correct. Yet his harsh handling of his sons brings out a further unattractive side of his personality that ultimately foreshadows more serious conflict down the line.
Themes
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Act 1, Scenes 5-6. Theridamas, Techelles, and Usumcasane arrive to report the vast armies they have gathered for assaulting Natolia. Tamburlaine is gleeful, looking forward to gloriously routing Orcanes.
The pattern of carrying out one devastating attack after another has apparently lost none of its luster for Tamburlaine.
Themes
Act 2, Scene 1. Sigismund’s Christian allies recall the Turks’ recent slaughter of Christians and propose that they revenge themselves now, while the Turks are distracted by Tamburlaine. Sigismund recalls how they just swore an alliance with the Turks on Christ’s name, but his allies convince him to disregard it, saying the Turks would do no better.
This scene offers a scathing indictment of pseudo-Christian morality, deployed selectively and only when convenient. It takes not much self-convincing at all for the Christian leaders to default on their oath of allegiance sworn in Christ’s name and vaguely justify that decision.
Themes
Act 2, Scenes 2-3. As Orcanes prepares to battle Tamburlaine, he’s told that the Christians are attacking. Shocked and outraged, he (a Muslim) calls on Christ to keep his word and rout the dishonest oath-takers. In short order, the Turks slaughter Sigismund and the Christians.
Once again, the clash and confusion of religions produces interesting results: Christ seems to aid and inspire the Muslim forces against the Christians who falsely swore in his name.
Themes
Act 2, Scene 4. In his camp, Tamburlaine delivers an extended poetic lament: Zenocrate is dying. Tamburlaine curses and threatens the gods, while Zenocrate urges that he hold to patience and love as she dies. Her death sends Tamburlaine into a rage, but Theridamas urges him to be patient and accept it. A crazed Tamburlaine decides to burn down the town he’s in since, as he sees it, it took Zenocrate from him.
Zenocrate’s death inspires Tamburlaine to perhaps his greatest poetic heights, yet the beautiful outpouring nevertheless reflects the delirium that takes hold of him essentially for the rest of the play. From here on out, he seeks to vent his baffled rage on anyone in his path.
Themes
Act 3, Scene 1. Orcanes and assembled Eastern kings hail Callapine, who has returned, and swear their armies to him to fight Tamburlaine. Callapine reaffirms his promise to make Almeda a king.
Callapine standing by his promise to a lowly henchman shows him to be a man of his word—again paralleling the young Tamburlaine.
Themes
Act 3, Scene 2. As promised, Tamburlaine ruefully burns the town, while establishing elaborate shrines to Zenocrate. Then, he takes to teaching his son the “rudiments of war.” Calyphas again expresses unmanly disdain for bloodshed. Again enraged, Tamburlaine gives a violent speech, cutting his arm to prove that wounds are nothing. Calyphas remains unconvinced.
Tamburlaine’s speech on the “rudiments of war” veers into technical language that bespeaks the death of poetic inspiration in his life with Zenocrate’s passing. Her death also means no one is there to protect the intractable Calyphas from Tamburlaine’s rages, foreshadowing a grim showdown.
Themes
Act 3, Scenes 3-4. At a town near the Natolian frontier, Theridamas and Techelles fail to convince a Captain inside to surrender and thus commence laying deadly siege. Inside, the Captain dies, and his wife Olympia kills their son and plans to kill herself to save them from enemy hands. Before she can kill herself, however, Theridamas and Techelles come upon her and are awed by her beauty. She pleads for death, but Theridamas declares he is in love with her, and they take her away while remaining courteous.
The Theridamas-Olympia subplot is an odd and somewhat unaccountable feature of the play, though it does serve to add another layer to Theridamas’s character. The very fact that he is capable of failing so profoundly in love contradicts the image of Tamburlaine’s henchmen as anonymous and bloodthirsty toadies.
Themes
Act 3, Scene 5. Tamburlaine and his men encounter Callapine, Orcanes, and the Eastern forces. They exchange verbal barbs and plan for a decisive battle. Tamburlaine berates the traitorous Almeda.
This verbal prelude to the spar of swords recalls the same sequence in Part One, with Bajazeth and Zabina. Tamburlaine remains totally assured of his victory, despite recent griefs in his family.
Themes
Act 4, Scene 1. Amyras and Celebinus eagerly prepare for battle. They try to rouse Calyphas, but he will not go; he remains dandyish and does not “care for blood when wine will quench my thirst.” His brothers insist that their father will have a terrible wrath when he discovers Calyphas did not fight, but he will not be swayed. He finds an attendant to remain behind with him and play cards in the tent.
Calyphas hardly seems related to Tamburlaine, both in his laziness and in his perhaps accidental gentleness and distaste for war and slaughter. The foreshadowing for poor Calyphas, however, is all too clear.
Themes
Tamburlaine returns, having routed the Turks. He drags the cowardly Calyphas from his tent. His other sons and his men plead for him to forgive Calyphas, but he gives an impassioned speech decrying that his essence has been passed on to such a coward. He fatally stabs Calyphas, to the disgust and disbelief of the captured Turkish kings. Against their condemnations, Tamburlaine reasserts his unswerving violent will, which seems now to be directed against the gods themselves.
Tamburlaine’s speech on the corruption of his “essence” is delivered entirely in the lingo of medieval Scholastic philosophy, another unaccountable feature of Part Two that marks it as more of a stylistic grab-bag than its predecessor. His killing of his own son marks the completion of his descent into unfathomable cruelty, all while following his own creed of masculine honor.
Themes
Act 4, Scene 2. In the camp, Olympia tries to find a way to kill herself and settles on a vial, presumably of poison. Before she can swallow it, Theridamas comes wooing. She dupes him into thinking it is an invincibility potion, putting it on her neck and inviting him to stab her there. He does, and she dies. Theridamas is distraught.
The Olympia subplot resolves as quickly as it began. Her character and death recall those of Zabina in Part One.
Themes
Act 4, Scene 3. Tamburlaine appears in a chariot drawn by the Turkish kings yoked like horses. He simply overflows with directionless rage. His surviving sons join in tormenting the Turks. Tamburlaine soliloquizes about his ever-greater ambitions for conquest and slaughter, setting his sights on Babylon.
Nothing will stop the mad Tamburlaine from either his ambitions or his displays of cruelty. His goal of world domination is closer than ever, but without Zenocrate to share it with, he has only the rage resulting from her death to impel him onward.
Themes
At Babylon, the Governor of Babylon refuses to surrender. Tamburlaine arrives and orders him to be hung from the city walls, despite the Governor revealing where Babylon’s supply of gold lies. He is hung from the walls, and Tamburlaine’s men shoot him. Tamburlaine orders every man, woman, and child in Babylon to be drowned.
Tamburlaine’s unwarranted and sadistic treatment of the governor is only a prelude to the genocidal slaughter he orders against Babylon. At this point, he simply wants to watch the world burn.
Themes
Act 5, Scene 1. Tamburlaine then orders the Koran and other Islamic holy books to be gathered and burnt. Over the flames, he says men worship Mahomet in vain, for Tamburlaine has never been stopped. Techelles returns to announce that everyone has been drowned, and Tamburlaine readies to return the army to Persia. Suddenly, he is taken ill.
High on the debauched thrill of his own transgression, Tamburlaine tries to go even further by making a concrete physical display of the blasphemy he has exhibited in speech all his life. Whether through coincidence or divine punishment, his downfall is immediate.
Themes
Act 5, Scene 2. Callapine and his allies plan to lie in wait for Tamburlaine, acknowledging his great force and fortune but asserting it must come to an end.
Again, Callapine asserts the necessary end of Tamburlaine and seems to recognize his own fitness as a spiritual successor of sorts.
Themes
Act 5, Scene 3. Theridamas, Techelles, and Usumcasane lament and curse the heavens: Tamburlaine is seriously ill. Tamburlaine ragingly challenges the gods who torment him to battle. A doctor informs him that his prospects are grim. As he is told that Callapine is near, he musters the strength for a last fight but must admit his weakness and stop before he’s captured Callapine.
The denial of a last battle between Tamburlaine and Callapine is a surprising sort of anticlimax, but perhaps a fitting end for a man who could only be defeated by himself.
Themes
Tamburlaine calls for his sons and a map. He points to all the regions he lamentably must die without having conquered. As his men and sons lament around him, Tamburlaine says he must be buried beside Zenocrate. He passes his crown to a grief-stricken Amyras and exhorts him not to fly too close to the sun. He dies, and the mood is apocalyptic.
The tragedy surrounding Tamburlaine’s death speaks to the dissatisfaction inherent in his sole ambition for world domination: anything short of this is considered a failure, even if he is still the greatest conqueror in the world.
Themes
