No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Tamburlaine's Malady
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
The considerable amount of commentary published on Marlowe's Tamburlaine in recent years makes highly significant the fact that Tamburlaine's catastrophe remains one of the unsatisfactorily explained enigmas of the play. The unwary reader doubtless assumes that at the end of Tamburlaine II the Scythian conqueror simply—though somewhat vitriolically—dies, and that Marlowe should be called to account for marring his play with a badly-motivated catastrophe. The careful reader of Marlowe's text doubtless perceives (or at least suspects) that Tamburlaine's “distemper” at the end of the play is linked definitely with Renaissance medical, physiological, psychological, and astrological concepts. Yet no satisfactory analysis of how these concepts are involved in Tamburlaine's death has been made. Carroll Camden hazards the suggestion that Tamburlaine's death is immediately resultant upon his choleric humour. Miss Una Ellis-Fermor, the most recent editor of Tamburlaine, attempts to supply adequate annotation regarding the physician's diagnosis of Tamburlaine's “distemper,” but her footnotes are woefully inadequate as well as inaccurate. Don Cameron Allen, believing that “Marlowe conceived of his hero as a typical representative of the fortunati,” a Renaissance type of fortunate man upon whom Fortune never failed to smile, contends that Tamburlaine comes to no catastrophe at all but triumphantly “dies of old age.” Roy W. Battenhouse has recently considered Tamburlaine an instrument by means of which God, in His providential justice, scourges the world, and then, when the mundane chastisement is completed, strikes down His tyrannical instrument. Although in this article Professor Battenhouse does not explain, or even consider, the express bodily workings of Tamburlaine's malady, in his recent book he assumes (following Camden) that Tamburlaine is—among other things—a typical choleric man, and affirms that the physician's diagnosis indicates that Tamburlaine dies in a mad frenzy brought on by that disastrous affliction of the “humours” which Elizabethans termed choler adjust.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1944
References
1 Carroll Camden's articles, “Marlowe and Elizabethan Psychology,” PQ, viii (1929); 69–78, and “Tamburlaine: The Choleric Man,” MLN, xliv (1929), 430–435, do not (I hope to show) satisfactorily explain Tamburlaine's malady.
2 PQ, p. 77.
3 Tamburlaine the Great (Methuen & Co., London, 1930), pp. 273–274.
4 “Renaissance Remedies for Fortune: Marlowe and the Fortunati,” Studies in Philology, xxxviii (1941), 195.
5 Ibid., p. 197.
6 “Tamburlaine, The ‘Scourge of God,‘” PMLA, lvi (1941), 337–348.
7 Marlowe's Tamburlaine, A Study in Renaissance Moral Philosophy (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1941), pp. 174 ff., 217 ff.
8 Throughout both parts of Tamburinine not only Tamburlaine but also his friends and some of his enemies exclaim knowingly that the great Scythian is fated by the stars to succeed in his conquests. (See Tamburlaine I, i. ii. 91–92; ii. i. 33–34; iii. iii. 41–43; iv. ii. 33–34; v. ii. 167–171, 296–297; Tamburlaine II, iii. v. 79–89. All references and citations herein are from Miss Ellis-Fermor's edition, op. cit.) Professor Allen (op. cit.), as well as almost all other commentators, has noticed particularly this aspect of Tamburlaine's career.
9 See the discussion of Marlowe's sources in Ellis-Fermor, op. cit., pp. 17 ff. Cf. also H. C. Hart, “Tamburlaine and Primaudaye,” Notes and Queries, 10th Series, v (January-June 1906), 484–487, 504–506; Ethel Seaton, “Fresh Sources for Marlowe,” RES, v 1929), 385–401; Leslie Spence, “The Influence of Marlowe's Sources on Tamburlaine I,” MP, xxiv (1926), 181–199, and “Tamburlaine and Marlowe,” PMLA, xlii (1927), 604–622.
10 Miss Seaton (op. cit., p. 398) points out that in Andre Thevet's Cosmographie Universelle (1575) three portents—a man with a spear, a comet, and the ghost of Bajazet—manifest themselves at Tamburlaine's death. The last portent in Thevet's account supposedly terrified Tamburlaine to death.
11 Leslie Spence (PMLA, xlii, 621) suggests this premise but not the conclusion.
12 Cf. Francis Adams, The Seven Books of Paulus Aegineta, trans. from the Greek, 3 vols. (London, 1844), i, 229 ff. Among the causes of ephemeral fevers Galen listed “sorrow, fear, anxiety, and depressing passions,” and Paulus Aegineta included “cares, grief, watchfulness, and anger.” Ibid., pp. 229–231. One of the four classes of ephemeral fevers designated by the Arabian Haly Abbas included those caused by “violent passions, such as anger, fear, and the like.” Ibid., pp. 233–234. Averrhoes, Avenzoar, Avicenna, Phases, and Rogerius make similar statements, servilely adopting the views of the more ancient physicians (Ibid., pp. 229–235); and in turn the majority of the Renaissance physicians inherited and adopted the same precepts. Indeed, so little had the Vesalian theories superseded the traditional Galenic physiology that we find Jeremy Collier in the seventeenth century often observing that emotional states “boil up the Blood to a Fever.” Cf. Kathleen Ressler, Jeremy Collier's Essays, in Seventeenth Century Studies, Second Series (Princeton University Press, 1937), p. 219.
13 Henry Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, Three Books of Occult Philosophy or Magic, trans. by J. F. (London, 1651), Bk. i, Ch. lxv. I cite from Willis F. Whitehead's reproduction of J.F.'s translation (New York, 1897), pp. 200–201.
14 Ibid., Bk. i, Ch. lxiii, pp. 195–197.
15 Of Wisdom, Three Books, Written Originally in French by the Sieur de Charron, Made English by George Stanhope, D.D. (London, 1697), pp. 205–208. The original, De la Sagesse, was published at Bordeaux in 1601; there existed a contemporary English translation by Samson Lennard. For further references in Charron, see pp. 213, 217–18, 230–231, 238.
16 (London, 1604), p. 4. See also the, 1601 edition, p. 86.
17 The Castel of Health (London, 1547), 64 v.
18 The French Academie (London, 1594), p. 471.
19 For further information on the actions of the passions, see particularly Ruth Leila Anderson's Elizabethan Psychology and Shakespeare's Plays, University of Iowa Studies (Iowa City, 1927), and Lily B. Campbell's Shakespeare's Tragic Heroes, Slaves of Passion (Cambridge University Press, 1930), and the array of bibliographical items which they cite.
20 iv. i. 140–145.
21 iv. i. 178–181.
22 ii. iv. 137–138; iii. ii. 1–14.
23 iii. v. 119.
24 iv. i. 176.
25 iv. i. 120.
26 v. i. 169.
27 v. i. 202–208.
28 v. i. 92.
29 v. i. 217–219.
30 v. iii. 1–16.
31 Techelles and Usumcasane also pray that the heavenly powers shall continue to pour out their good influences on the life and health of Tamburlaine. See v., iii. 17–41.
32 v. iii. 48–53.
33 v. iii. 54–55.
34 v. iii. 57.
35 v. iii. 67.
36 v. iii. 74–77.
37 v. iii. 78–99
38 v. iii. 105–114.
39 v. iii. 120–121.
40 v. iii. 209.
41 Cf. Francis Adams, op. cit., i, 225 ff. Adams has annexed to each section of his translation of Paulus Aegineta voluminous commentary which reports on similar medical judgments by all the authorities from Hippocrates to the late mediaeval physicians.
42 Ibid., pp. 225–226.
43 Ibid., p. 226. Paulus Aegineta records specifically: “Of these characters, the sediment is of the most importance.”
44 The Genuine Works of Hippocrates, trans. from the Greek by Francis Adams (New York, n.d.), i, 202–203. I have used Aegineta and Hippocrates to explain this passage because they are handy; sixteenth-century works on the subject are not (because of the war) now available. For a discussion of such medical works as Marlowe might have drawn upon, see Don Cameron Allen's The Star-Crossed Renaissance (Chapel Hill, 1941), Appendix, pp. 247–255.
45 Cf. Anderson, op. cit., chs. iii and vii; Campbell, op. cit., chs. vi and viii; and the authorities which these two cite.
46 Robert Steele, Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomaeus Anglicus (London, 1924), pp. 28–31 Steele has produced selections from the Berthelet edition of Barthólomaeus' De Proprietatibus Rerum (London, 1535). For similar remarks on the spirits, cf. Pierre Charron, op. cit., pp. 26 ff.; Timothy Bright, A Treatise of Melancholy (London, 1586), pp. 54 ff.; John Jones, Bathes of Bathes Ayde (London, 1572); Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (London, 1621), Part i, Section 1, Memb. ii.)
47 The Touchstone of Complexions (London, 1565, 1576, 1581), ch. iii, p. 7; quoted by Campbell, op. cit., p. 55.
48 Op. cit., Part i, Sect. 1, Memb. ii, Subj. 5.
49 Robley Dunglison, A Dictionary of Medical Science (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 4th ed., 1844), p. 123. Cf. also Bartholomew Parr, The London Medical Dictionary (Philadelphia, 1819), i, 314: “Calidum innatum is an expression borrowed from the Stoical philosophy to express the natural heat of animals, which, as connected with life, has also been called the lamp of life.”
50 Dunglison, op. cit., pp. 47–48.
51 Ibid., p. 366.
52 See under Humidity in A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (ed. James A. H. Murray; Oxford, 1901), vol. v, Part I, p. 499.
53 Op. cit., p. 26. Cf. Newton, op. cit., ch. ii for a full discussion of the relation of the spirits to health.
54 “The Generation of Animals,” in The Works of William Harvey, M.D., trans. Robert Willis (London, 1847), pp. 501–502.
55 “A Second Disquisition to John Riolan, Jun.,” The Works of William Harvey (note 47), pp. 119–120; see also pp. 10–12, 114 ff.
56 “The Generation of Animals,” pp. 505–506.
57 These concepts which Harvey decries were in Marlowe's day authoritative ones, for Harvey continues: “Scaliger, Fornilius, and others, giving less regard to the admirable qualities of the blood, … have feigned or imagined a spirit of celestial origin and nature; a body most subtile, attenuated, mobile, rapid, lucid, ethereal, participant in the qualities of the quintessence.” Ibid., pp. 502–503. Nor, of course, were Harvey's strictures against the prevailing theories concerning the spirits, calidum innatum, etc., immediately accepted, even by the physicians of the seventeenth century.
58 Cf. La Primaudaye, The French Academie (London, 1594), p. 358, et passim.
59 Tamurlaine I, iii. ii. 69–71:
I stand aghast; but most astonied
To see his choler shut in secret thoughts,
And wrapt in silence of his angry soul.
60 Yet Professor Camden, PQ, viii (1929), 77, suggests, and Professor Battenhouse, Marlowe's Tamburlaine, p. 218, maintains, that calor is choler; and Miss Ellis-Fermor, op. cit., pp. 273–274, states: “humidum and color: moisture and warmth, presumably here in combination and therefore the sanguine humour.”
61 See footnote 8.
62 Francis Adams, op. cit., p. 198. Cf. Galen's De crisïbus.
63 Cf. W. C. Curry, Chaucer and the Mediaeval Sciences (New York, 1926), ch. i.
64 Cf. John Fage, Speculum Aegrotorum: The Sicke-mens Glasse (London, 1606); A Treatise of Mathematical Physick, Written by G. C. (appended to Claudius Dariot's A Briefe Introduction to the Astrologicall Judgment of the Starres London, 1598); Nicholas Culpeper, Semeiotica Uranica: An Astrological Judgement of Diseases from the Decumbiture of the Sick (London, 1674); Hermes Trismegistus, Iatromathematica, trans. by John Harvey (London, 1583); L. Lemnius, The Secret Miracles of Nature, in Four Books (London, 1628), Bk. ii, ch. 32, pp. 143 ff. Cf. also Lynn Thorndike. A History of Magic and Experimental Sciene (New York, 1941), vols. v and vi, passim; and D. C. Allen, The Star-Crossed Renaissance (Chapel Hill, 1941), Appendix, pp. 247–255.
65 For the following discussion of astrological critical days, I have drawn indiscriminately upon all of the primary sources cited in note 64.
66 Utriusque Cosmi Maioris scilicet et Minons Metaphysica, Physica atque Technica Historia in duo Volumina secundum Cosmi differentiam divisa (Opphemi, 1617–1618), vol. ii.
67 Ibid., pp. 653–654: “Solem, contra quam aliqui siccitatem ei ascribentes statuunt, evidenter calidum, & magis occulte humidum esse manifeste apparebit, si integram & exactam ejus compositionem diligentibus consideraverimus; namque demonstratione propemodum infallibili probavimus, … massam illam solarem ex aequalibus materiae spiritualis & lucis portionibus esse constatam; … Sed quia lux formalis … nempe caliditas dominium in corpore illius habere dicitur, quae in rerum genitarum compositionem Ingrediens cum sua substantia lucida appellato calidum viventis innatum: At quia haec res … absque vehículo movere in corpore non possit, ideo inest quoque hie radius solis, gutta spiritualis massae solaris substantiae, quae quidem est humidum illud valde familiare, ac amicissimum vitae animalium vegetabiliumque, ac vocatur humidum vitae radicale. Hinc ignito Solis vis generative, hinc ejus virtus multiplicativa & vita, consistens … ex húmido temperato tali caliditate, quae ultra materiae solaris appetitum ipsam beatificavit pulchritudine, & efficaciter agit in haec inferiora, suisque actionibus calores accidentales … escitare solet.”
68 Ibid., p. 657: “Sol habet liquorem ex calido innato, & húmido radicali constantem.”
69 Ibid., p. 646: “Jupiter, Orientalis, in sua natura facit Calidum & humidum, ita tarnen, ut humiditas in eo praevaleat.”
70 Ibid., p. 648: “Mars est Planeta compositus ex natura Solis ignea, & calore minus naturali…. Unde Mars habet duo testimonia caliditatis per accidens, & totidem a natura Solis propter ejus vicinitatem acceptae. Ratione caloris sui accidentalis est ita malitiosus & destructivus in natura sua; … Hinc bilis & biliosorum ortus.”
71 Ibid., p. 637: “Saturnus Orientem habet, quoniam, cum pars illa diei sit natura calida, Saturni frigiditate caliditas illa quodam modo ad temperiem ducitur.”
72 Ibid., p. 699: “Saturnus in square aspectu cum Sole diminuit aliquantulum caliditatem.”
73 In John W. Draper's “Old Age in King Lear,” JEGP, xxxix (1940), one may find an informing discussion of the astrology involved in the several ages of fife.