“Or Else Were this a Savage Spectacle”: the Narrative Possibilities of Spectacle in I Tamburlaine

Abstract

This essay examines representations of violence in I Tamburlaine. In the play, Marlowe weds Tamburlaine’s desire for recognition to brutal spectacular violence and attunes audiences to the normative violence that recognition entails for the vulgar or common classes to which Tamburlaine, a poor Scythian shepherd, belongs. In a world that marks certain bodies, social classes and even names as unworthy of certain kinds of recognition, the creation of bloody spectacles, such as the slaughtering of the virgins of Damascus, becomes Tamburlaine’s only means to gain political visibility. By yoking Tamburlaine’s ascendance and eventual triumph to his increasingly effective use of spectacle, Marlowe’s I Tamburlaine makes a case for the narrative possibilities of spectacle to make a life like Tamburlaine’s both visible and compelling.