English Alexanders and Empire from the Periphery

This chapter focuses on Alexander the Great as the monarchical archetype for the medieval heroes of Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine Parts I and II (1587–8) and William Shakespeare’s Henry V (1599). In both plays, Alexander is used to negotiate a place for England on a global stage dominated by the twin poles of the Hapsburg and the Ottoman Empires. Marlowe imagines another northern tribe, Tamburlaine and his Scythians, invading the Ottoman center to build an empire from the periphery. Shakespeare relies on complex pattern of Alexandrian allusions to counterbalance classical history with an English medieval genealogy accompanied by a native heroism imagined capable of defeating the Ottomans. The chapter also shows how Marlowe and Shakespeare utilize Alexander to explore the complexities, ambitions, and limits of England’s imperial identity, and how their protagonists’ campaigns of imperial expansion foregrounded questions of cultural identity and intercultural encounter.