Marlowe's Tamburlaine
Eng 399 Honors Seminar
Renaissance Drama (other than Shakespeare)
Note: Because of the limited space of the Honors Exam, the likelihood that questions concerning this period in the history of drama excluding Shakespeare will be many is extremely slim. Though Shakespeare existed in a bustling world of commercial theater and was surrounded by, and worked with, many talented contemporary dramatists, drama produced by any other source than Marlowe, the only figure to rival Shakespeare in importance from that period, and possibly a few other writers is extremely unlikely to show up on our test. I will therefore dispense with enumerating all of the important plays of such contemporaries as Thomas Watson, Thomas Lodge, George Peele, George Gascione, Francis Beaumont, John Marston, Thomas Nash, Thomas Heywood, Thomas Middleton, James Shirley, and even Robert Greene; though all of these were indeed writers of much renown during the time they lived. For further information on these authors however, as well as the ones I include in this overview, check out this link here. Because most Renaissance drama has been so thoroughly eclipsed by Shakespeare in our modern appreciation, only the most likely, for our purposes, to be on the test will be listed here. In this brief overview of Renaissance drama in general, the plays are divided into periods, representing the Tudor, Elizabethan, and Jacobean, respectively. Also, for a great overview of the overall period of Renaissance drama, check out this link.
During the time of the English Renaissance, the notion of the relativity of perception, an appearance-versus-reality motif, became a major part of Renaissance drama.The Renaissance dramatist's work marks a transition between absolute natural law bestowed by God, and relativistic natural law, recognized by man.The Tudor period in England, however, is an interesting one because it comes at the point of intersection between the medieval and the humanist traditions. However, drama in this period had not yet taken off as a respectable art form, and the first theaters did not come into being till the end of the era, so that dramatists of importance enough to merit them a slot on the Honors Exam are just about nill. However, for the sake of completeness, and to familiarize yourself with the linguistic idiosyncracies of the era, one may want to look at at least the renowned Tudor poet John Skelton's attempt at a dramatic work, the spiritual play "Magnyfycence," and perhaps John Heywood's morality play "The Four P's" or Nicholas Udall's "Ralph Roister Doister."
In studying the Elizabethan period of Renaissance drama, readers should begin with the two most popular plays of the Elizabethan era, Christopher Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus" and Thomas Kyd's "The Spanish Tragedy." Kyd's play of murder and revenge was the most popular work of the Elizabethan era, drawing crowds that no other play, not even those of Shakespeare, could equal. This remarkably violent, bloody play became, the most popular of Shakespeare's contemporary's works during his dramatic career, and Marlowe's most powerful story of the rags-to-emperor-of-the-world rise of the tyrant Tamburlaine, depicted in his plays Tamburlaine Part I and Tamburlaine Part II, came in a close second. Next in importance I think is almost certainly Marlowe’s Jew of Malta, another perennial classic still being put into modern production, and Marlow's great English history play "Edward the Second." Marlowe's "Dido, Queen of Carthage," as it was extremely popular in its day, also has an outside shot of making an appearance on the exam. John Lyly's "Campaspe," a story about a prisoner to Alexander the Great, also has a remote chance of appearing, and Anthony Munday's collaboration with Shakespeare on the biographical play "Sir Thomas More" has an outside shot of making an appearance on the exam as well.
Turning our focus now to the plays of the Jacobean stage after 1603, this a period characterized by a new mood that took hold of the dramatists and audiences of London, in which stage offerings were dark, brooding renderings of the macabre that provided psychological profiles of evil, coupled with horrific events. There are a handful of plays worth mentioning. John Webster's "The White Devil" is a tragedy of remarkable psychological insight into a female protagonist who confronts the villainy of her own desires as well as that of a corrupt society, and his even darker play "The Dutchess of Malfi," is a tale of two corrupt and obsessive brother aristocrats who conspire to destroy their younger sister over her marriage to a plebian. The latter, especially, is likely to show up on the exam as a non-Shakespearean work representing the Jacobean period. Cyril Tourneur's "The Revenger's Tragedy" also remains one of the most disturbing plays of the era and has a shot for candidacy, and John Ford's "'Tis Pity She's A Whore," which puts a new spin on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, may have an outside chance. Ben Jonson's dark comedy "The Alchemist," one of the finest-constructed plays of the period, which engages the audience with dramatic narratives of charlatans, thieves, and mountebanks who meet with bad ends, depicting an assortment of "honest citizens" and Puritans whose only interest is greed, has quite a good chance of appearing as well, and Johnson's "Volpone" is another decent candidate. William Rowley's "The Spanish Gypsy" and his apocryphal collaboration with Shakespeare on "The Birth of Merlin" are two other plays of this period that have a remote chance of inclusion, as does John Fletcher's "The Maid's Tragedy," Phillip Massinger's "The Duke of Milan," William Congreve's "The Way of the World" or Elizabeth Carey's "Tragedy of Mariam."
