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Notes and Comments*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2009

Christopher Murray
Affiliation:
University College, Dublin

Extract

A few points are suggested by James Maloon's interesting article, “From Beast to Mad Beast: A Further look at Tyrone Guthrie's Tamburlaine” (TS, XVIII, No. 1). First, there seems to be no warrant for and no future in considering the two parts of Tamburlaine as a unifiable production. As John D. Jump reminds us:

The two parts were apparently designed for production in theaters of very different sorts. In Part II, the Captain commanding Balsera and the Governor of Babylon stand upon their respective city walls to parley with enemies below; in the scene of her death, Zenocrate is discovered on her bed, and an arras is drawn before her when Tamburlaine and the rest retire. In planning these scenes, Marlowe must have counted on a theater with an upper stage and a discovery-space. But he counted on nothing of the sort when writing Part I. Even the siege of Damascus is managed without the use of an upper stage. Part I could have been successfully performed on a simple platform stage, but the full resources of a well-equipped London theater would have been needed for Part II.

Type
Notes and Comments
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1978

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References

1 Jump, John D., ed., Tamburlaine the Great Parts I and II, Regents Drama Series (University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. xxiGoogle Scholar.

2 Ibid., p. xiii.

3 Levin, Bernard, “A Houyhnhnm to the Resue of Marlowe's Mighty Line,” Sunday Times, 10 October 1976Google Scholar.

4 Tamburlain the Great, Part I, V, i 174177Google Scholar. The text used is that described in Footnote 1.