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Marlowe, Spenser, Donne, Shakespeare and Joseph Wybarne

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

R. W. Dent
R. W. Dent*
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Extract

As John D. Jump confirms in his recent edition of Tamburlaine, L. Francis Kirkman's 1671 play list has long been regarded as the earliest unambiguous attribution of Tamburlaine to Marlowe. Admittedly, the internal evidence supporting Marlowe's authorship is so strong that virtually no one has felt much need for external confirmation. It may be worthwhile, nevertheless, to move such confirmation back by sixty-two years, to a 1609 work by Joseph Wybarne (M.A., 1606; ordained deacon [Lincoln], May 31, 1607): ‘The New Age of Old Names. By Ios. Wib. Master of Artes of Trinitie Colledge in Cambridge.' On sig. D4V, with ‘Marloe.’ in the margin, Wybarne echoes verbatim I Tamburlaine I.ii.205 ('As far as Boreas claps his brazen wings’).

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , Winter 1969 , pp. 360 - 362
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1969

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References

1 Regents Renaissance Drama series (Lincoln, Neb., 1967), p. xii.

2 True, four pages earlier Wybarne had referred to some account of Tamburlaine scarcely compatible with Marlowe's. There, perhaps only by coincidence, what he says of the Scythian conqueror is less interesting than what (following a popular tradition) he says of Scanderbeg (i/j u / v modernized):

… Scanderbcgge King of Albania, when hee felt the pangs of death to approch, commaunded the armie should martch, and withall that it should be proclaimed, that himselfe was advancing forward; which Proclamation did so amate the Turkes his enemies, that presently they brake their rankes, without breaking a Lance. Tamberlane the Emperour of Tartary would not cut his haire after the manner of his owne Country, but ware it long, saying, that hce came (by the mothers side) from Sampson, whose strength was supposed to consist in his haire, by which fable he obtained this honor, that he was thought invincible.

Perhaps Marlowe adapted some account of Scanderbeg for the final victory of II Tamburlaine v.iii.i02ff., where the dying hero accurately predicts ‘My looks shall make them fly.'

3 De natura caeli triplicis libelli tres quorum (Sigenae Nassoviorum, 1597), by Cunradus Aslacus (i.e., Cort Aslaksson, Kort Axelson). Given such a reference by someone who somehow had access to at least one of Donne's earlier poems, and given Aslacus’ own religious purposes, this work might well prove worth a look. I have not seen it, and Frank Manley does not mention it in his edition of The Anniversaries.