Printed and published in Great Britain by This facsimile first published 1973 ISBN o 85967 026 0 ISBN o 85967 027 9 Although not one of the early editions of Tamburlaine names the author, there is little doubt that the work is Marlowe's. Apart from the 'proud full sail' of its verse and the exhilaration of cruelty which announce themselves as Marlowe's, there are two contemporary references that settle the matter. In 1588 Robert Greene, bitter about the success of 'that Atheist Tamburlan' and his 'daring God out of heaven' (as Tamburlaine does in Part II, Act V Scene i), scorned its writer and other 'mad and scoffing poets, that have propheticall spirits as bred of Merlins race'. Even more unmistakable is the description of Marlowe in Thomas Heywood's Prologue to the Cockpit performance of The Jew of Malta as one of the ‘best of Poets in that age' who owed his fame to Hero and Leander and to Tamburlaine; just in case this was not clear the 1633 edition of The Jew of Malta printed a marginal gloss: 'Marlo'. Greene's reference helps to date the play more securely, adding to the evidence of a letter from Philip Gawdy to his father, dated 16 November 1587, which describes an actual (and exciting) performance: My L. Admyrall his men and players having a devyse in ther playe to tye one of their fellowes to a poste and so to shoote him to deathe, having borrowed their callyvers one of the players handes swerved his peece being charged with bullett missed the fellowe he aymed at and killed a chyld, and a woman great with chyld forthwith, and hurt an other man in the head very soore. This would seem to fit the episode in Part II (again in Act V Scene i) in which the Governor of Babylon is hung in chains on the city walls and shot to death. The title page of the first edition claims the play for the Admiral's Men, and among their property and costume lists for 1598 are items used in the staging and dressing of Tamburlaine: 'Tamberlyne brydell', 'Tamberlynes cotte with coper lace', 'Tamberlanes breches of crymson vellvet'. The Admiral's leading actor, Edward Alleyn, played the protagonist, just as he played Barabas in The Jew of Malta: in Tamberlaine, This Jew, with others many; th'other [Alleyn] wan Henslowe's Diary notes a revival of the play after Marlowe's death. Between 28 August 1594 and 13 November 1595 there were fifteen performances of the First Part and seven of Part II. The profits for nearly every performance were handsome. The immense popularity of Tamburlaine is testified not only by the frequent performances recorded in the Diary but equally by the numerous references to it in other works of the period. Some writers took it seriously, as Sir Walter Raleigh did when, stressing the uncertainty of human fortune, he pointed to Bajazeth, appointed by God 'to play the Grand Seignior of the Turks in the morning, and in the same day, the Footstool of Tamerlane'. Others were scathing of the 'high astounding tearmes' in which Marlowe presented his hero: Ben Jonson could see in the play 'nothing ... but the scenicall strutting and furious vociferation to warrant [it] to the ignorant gapers'. The two parts of Tamburlaine were registered together (and a single fee was paid) on 14 August 1590. The Stationers' Register reads: 'Richard Jones/Entred unto him for his Copye/The twooe commicall discourses of TOMBERLEIN the Cithian shepparde under the handes of Master Abraham Hartewell, and the Wardens... Vjd'. Jones' name appears as printer on the first three editions, but it seems that he did not himself own a press; the work must have been done for him, perhaps (such is the difference in appearance of the three editions) by three separate printing houses. The play first appeared as a black letter octavo in 1590. Two copies of this survive, in the Bodleian and Huntington Libraries, collating A-K,,L2. The Bodleian copy is badly mutilated: margins have been cut down so that ends of lines are occasionally missing, and sometimes the pages are cropped so that the last lines on each side of a leaf are omitted. K3 has been torn out. This copy has a corrected outer forme of B, and the Huntington copy a corrected outer forme of A; in both cases the corrections affect only minor details of spelling and punctuation. A second edition, also octavo, appeared in 1593, based on Q1 and correcting a few of its obvious errors while adding several more of its own. The only surviving copy of this, British Museum C.34.a.4, is here reproduced (original size) by permission of the Trustees. There has been some tampering with the date on the titlepage, the last figure being blotted and partly erased. If it is a '2' it lacks the serif common to other 2s in this fount; if a '3' it lacks the lower lobe. Langbaine and bibliographers until the nineteenth century speak of a 1593 edition and make no mention of one in 1592, so it would seem that the later date is to be preferred. A third edition, also based on O1, was printed in 1597, and the two parts were issued separately in a fourth edition of 1605 (Part II) and 1606 (Part I). O4 was printed from O3 by Allde for Edward White. Both O3 and O4, like O2, correct some of the mistakes of their copy texts, but again neither contains any new matter for which special authority can be claimed. After 04 the play was not published again until the nineteenth century. Stage directions suggest that the copy for O1 is unlikely to have been a theatrical MS: they lack the precision and explicitness that a prompter would require. Most probably the text was printed from Marlowe's foul papers and, if this is the case, it could be Marlowe himself who is responsible for the flourishes at the end of some acts: Finis Actus 2'. The MS has been 'edited', however; in his Address the publisher claims that he has '(purposely) omitted and left out some fond and frivolous Iestures, digressing (and in my poore opinion) far unmeet for the matter'. What these might have been, especially when they occurred in a play whose Prologue disdains the 'conceits [that] clownage keepes in pay', it is impossible to guess. University of Sheffield ROMA GILL |