Asadova chexrangiz salim qizi saydullayev nuriddin zayniddin o‘G‘li 35 – O‘zbek theme: idealism in tamburlane the great- the work of christopher marlowe contents

Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593)
Unlike Robert Greene, Marlowe was a member of the school of Alkeism and the school of Night. Sir Walter Raleigh assumes that the influence of these schools is noticeable in the religious, philosophical, and scientific ideas of the dramatist (Raleigh 1957:80). Robert Greene, Marlowe’s friend, reports in his Groatsworth of Wit (1592) that Marlowe’s irreligious perception is atheistic (Kocher 1962: 112). In Robert Greene’s epistle in the prose romance Perimedes the Blacksmith (1588) describes Marlowe’s atheism: “I could not make my verse upon the stage in tragic buskins ... or take God out of heaven with that Atheist Tamburlaine, or blaspheming with the mad priest of the scourge” (Kocher 1962:23). Gaskell declares that the focal point of Part II of Tamburlaine is Marlowe’s ‘rhetorical assault’ on religious convictions (Kocher1962:xxiii). Richard Baines has the similar opinion of Paul Kocher that Marlowe wanted to produce a new religion in Tamburlaine (Kocher 1962:99).
The first and the second parts of Tamburlaine were written and performed in 1587–1588 and were the only published works in Marlowe’s lifetime in 1590. The theme of Tamburlaine is the achievements and bloodiness of his acts written on the title page of the play: ‘Tamburlaine the great, who, from a Scythian shepherd, by his rare and wonderful conquests became the most puissant and mighty monarch, and for his tyranny and terror in war was termed the scourge of God’. It held the stage right into the middle of the seventeenth century till the Puritans closed the theatres. Since then Tamburlaine has been revived in two shortened parts in 1951 at the Old Vic Theatre in London (Henderson 1972:11–12). Philip Henderson concludes that ‘Marlowe achieves a height of idealism he never reached again, for in Tamburlaine, he embodied the free poetic imagination of the Renaissance’ (1972:28). The poet wishes to astonish his audience with a drama full of power, novelty, interest, and variety. The play was greatly appreciated by the common Elizabethan people. Mr. Rogers reports the popularity of ‘Tamburlaine the Great as well as an epoch-making play’ (Maclure1886:171).
Marlowe choose as the subject the career of the Tatar conqueror Timur the Lame, son of Muhammad Taraghay (1336–1405) as he found it reported by the Renaissance historians. The two available, well-known Renaissance accounts of Timur are the Spanish scholar Pedro Mexia’s book Siva de Varia Leccion (1543) and the Italian historian Petrus Perondinus’s Magni Tamerlanis Scytharum Imperatoris (1553), and Lamb Harold’s Tamerlane the Earth Shaker (1929).³ Western analysis of the Qur’ān has focused less on the theological meaning and impact of the text. In 1541, Theodor Biblander was almost imprisoned for his translation of the Muslim Holy Book. Despite all such religious and secular avenues from which the Qur’ān is approached, Muslim and Western analysts agree that the Qur’ān is a beautiful, lyrical, and powerful work (Lewis 1962:223). Marlowe has established the text of Tamburlaine with the help of Qur’ānic vocabulary.
Such a fictional character could hardly exist in the Islamic world but is instead an invention of corruption and destruction as rampant in the Middle Ages. Thus, the Islamic colouring of Tamburlaine is merely decorative and used to amuse the Elizabethan audience rather than to boost an idea about Islam. Marlowe just identified the threat that Turks posed to Western Europe, and had no reason to interpret the characters and events of Tamburlaine, Part II in anything but a literal way. Tamburlaine is a realistic episode. Marlowe is aware of the Turkish map from Anatolia in Europe to Batumion the Black Sea in Minor Asia. Orcanes, the selected king of Natolia, accurately describes this boundary when he says: ‘My realm, the centre of our Empery,\Once lost, All Turkey would be overthrown’
(Part II, I,I,34–5).
The distress of Europeans under the Turkish Empire is undertaken in the context of the role of Tamburlaine to reprimand the Turks. Wolff notes that in creating Tamburlaine, Marlowe was striving to come up with a textual figure who, instead of coming across as a character built around the prevailing mood of European distress viz-a-viz the Turkish threat, would strike the audience as a paragon of a robust Western force of resistance against the Turks. G. H. Hunter describes the Turkish threat to Europe in The Oxford History of English Literature 1586–1642: The Age of Shakespeare:
The first play of Marlowe is a greater unease about how Tamburlaine’s destructive power allowed him to govern the world in a spark reference to a Christian God who organizes things to allow heathens [Muslims] to destroy one another in order to prevent their terror from reaching the West (1997:50).
Accordingly, the play indicates the ongoing threat of Turkey to Christendom which finally succeeded in capturing Constantinople in 1453. The thorny and superior Tamburlaine gains the admiration of his audience when he spoils the Turks. Oueijan comments: “Marlowe presented to his Elizabethan audience a picture of the East they desired to see, an Orient filled with treachery, cruelty and false doctrine, an Orient that was being destroyed by its rulers”(1996:17).
The Elizabethan playwrights show Muhammad as the only divinity of Muslims. Marlowe, for instance, show in Tamburlaine the Great that Eastern people adore Muhammad’s tomb. Marlowe primarily introduces the Prophet Muhammad in the first part of Tamburlaine as ‘holy’, ‘heavenly’ and ‘sacred’.⁴ Dena Goldberg observes that it is a Christian tradition to describe the Prophet Muhammad so. She says: ‘the paralleled structure emphasizes the echo between ‘the Son of God’ and ‘The Friend of God’ (Ibrahim 1996:40). The character of Tamburlaine concludes that ‘In vain, I see men worship Mahomet’ (Part II, V.i.177). In spite of this account, idolatry or paganism was not [and is not] in the Qur’ān or in Muslims’ practice. Nor is it a ceremony in the Islamic world. However, some educated medieval and Elizabethan writers did not pre-empt the perception of paganism in Islam. Byron Porter Smith remarks that it ‘did not exist among the learned English’ (1977:2). Nevertheless Elizabethan dramatists, like Greene and Marlowe, launched this polemic issue in their depiction of Muhammad.
Tamburlaine becomes visible as a terrorist belonging to a demonic dogma and a sect of violence. E. M. Waith describes Tamburlaine’s fury; “anger is the passion most frequently displayed in his looks, his words, and the red, scarlet and black colours of his tent” (1964:78). Usumcasane, Techelles and Theridamas are Tamburlaine’s aides. They are bully warriors, perpetrating barbaric and heinous deeds of terrorism. Tamburlaine has killed ‘millions of Turks’ in Syria and in Babylon (Part II, V.iii.24): ‘Men, women and children had been thrown’ in Asphaltis Lake (Part II, V.i.202). Yet at the end of the play Tamburlaine died.
Right through both parts of the play, he is stood as a scourge of God. He is employed to punish the sins of his enemies, the Muslims.