Gods and religion dominate the talk in Tamburlaine. One of the play’s most striking features is its expansive depiction and willful blending of different religions. Tamburlaine’s enemies are generally either Muslim or Christian, while the Scythian warlord himself seems to acknowledge some form of Greco-Roman paganism. Yet the boundaries between these belief systems are not always solid, with both Christians and Muslims at times invoking the pagan Jove, and Tamburlaine occasionally making positive reference to the Islamic Mahomet. For Tamburlaine, however, the reverence and submission that most readers associate with religion are simply not present: depending on his mood, he references Jove and Mahomet as either his obedient allies or his direct rivals whom he claims he will easily crush and surpass. Tamburlaine has no trouble believing in his gods, but he outrageously places his own stature above theirs: “A god is not so glorious as a king./ I think the pleasure they enjoy in heaven/ cannot compare with kingly joys on earth.” Indeed, Tamburlaine’s unstoppable success confirms this status in others’ eyes: the henchman Techelles calls him “our earthly god,/ whose looks make this inferior world to quake.”
Tamburlaine never seems to suffer from encouraging this kind of blasphemy. Rather, it is the Christians led by Hungarian king Sigismund who seem to suffer God’s wrath in immediate response to their double-crossing of their Muslim allies. In depicting the interaction of all these creeds, Marlowe seems to show Tamburlaine’s vigorous and uncomplicated paganism gliding to victory where the monotheists are hamstrung by their rule-bound and inward-looking faiths. And yet, the play almost too neatly concludes with Tamburlaine defiantly burning a Koran and then suddenly being struck with a fatal illness. Is this an endorsement of Islam? A more general indication that any form of hubris cannot forever go unchecked? Or is it mere coincidence, suggesting that Tamburlaine’s death as an undefeated world-conqueror leaving his empire to his valiant sons is not so bad? Marlowe leaves such questions for the audience to ponder.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Religion and Blasphemy ThemeTracker
Religion and Blasphemy Quotes in Tamburlaine
Zenocrate, lovelier than the love of Jove,
Brighter than is the silver Rhodope,
Fairer than whitest snow on Scythian hills,
Thy person is worth more to Tamburlaine
Than the possession of the Persian crown,
Which gracious stars have promised at my birth.
A hundred Tartars shall attend on thee
Mounted on steeds swifter than Pegasus […]
Art thou but captain of a thousand horse,
That by characters graven in thy brows
And by thy martial face and stout aspect
Deservest to have the leading of an host?
Forsake thy king and do but join with me
And we will triumph over all the world.
I hold the Fates bound fast in iron chains
And with my hand turn Fortune’s wheel about,
And sooner shall the sun fall from his sphere
Than Tamburlaine be slain or overcome.
A god is not so glorious as a king.
I think the pleasure they enjoy in heaven
Cannot compare with kingly joys in earth.
The thirst of reign and sweetness of a crown,
That caused the eldest son of heavenly Ops
To thrust his doting father from his chair
And place himself in the empyreal heaven,
Moved me to manage arms against thy state.
What better precedent than mighty Jove?
Nature […]
Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds:
Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend
The wondrous architecture of the world
And measure every wand’ring planet’s course,
still climbing after knowledge infinite
And always moving as the restless spheres,
Wills us to wear ourselves and never rest
Until we reach the ripest fruit of all,
That perfect bliss and sole felicity,
The sweet fruition of an earthly crown.
For ‘will’ and ‘shall’ best fitteth Tamburlaine,
Whose smiling stars gives him assurèd hope
Of martial triumph, ere he meet his foes.
I, that am termed the scourge and wrath of God,
The only fear and terror of the world,
Will first subdue the Turk, and then […]
AMYRAS: Why may not I, my lord, as well as he,
Be termed a scourge and terror of the world?
TAMBURLAINE: Be all a scourge and terror to the world,
Or else you are not sons of Tamburlaine.
Can there be such deceit in Christians,
Or treason in the fleshly heart of man,
Whose shape is figure of the highest God?
Then if there be a Christ, as Christians say,
But in their deeds deny him for their Christ,
[…] Take here these papers as our sacrifice
And witness of thy servant’s perjury.
Black is the beauty of the brightest day—
The golden ball of heaven's eternal fire
That danced with glory on the silver waves
Now wants the fuel that inflamed his beams,
And all with faintness, and for foul disgrace
He binds his temples with a frowning cloud,
Ready to darken earth with endless night.
Zenocrate that gave him light and life,
Whose eyes shot fire from their ivory bowers
And tempered every soul with lively heat,
Now by the malice of the angry skies,
Whose jealousy admits no second mate,
Draws in the comfort of her latest breath
All dazzled with the hellish mists of death […etc.]
ORCANES: Thou showest the difference ‘twixt ourselves and thee
In this thy barbarous damnèd tyranny.
KING OF JERUSALEM: Thy victories are grown so violent
That shortly heaven, filled with the meteors
Of blood and fire thy tyrannies have made,
Will pour down blood and fire on thy head,
Whose scalding drops will pierce thy seething brains,
And with our bloods revenge our bloods on thee.
Now, Mahomet, if thou have any power,
Come down thyself and work a miracle,
Thou art not worthy to be worshipped
That suffers flames of fire to burn the writ
Wherein the sum of thy religion rests.
Why send'st thou not a furious whirlwind down
To blow thy Alcoran up to thy throne,
Where men report thou sitt'st by God himself,
Or vengeance on the head of Tamburlaine
That shakes his sword against thy majesty
And spurns the abstracts of thy foolish laws?
Well, soldiers, Mahomet remains in hell—
He cannot hear the voice of Tamburlaine.
Inestimable drugs and precious stones,
More worth than Asia and the world beside;
And from th' Antarctic Pole eastward behold
As much more land, which never was descried,
Wherein are rocks of pearl that shine as bright
As all the lamps that beautify the sky:
And shall I die, and this unconquerèd?
Here, lovely boys, what death forbids my life,
That let your lives command in spite of death.
