Tamburlaine, “Mexía,” and More Intertextual Source Study

Abstract:Despite Christopher Marlowe’s reputation as one of England’s more cosmopolitan renaissance playwrights, source study has given short shrift to his use of non-English vernacular texts. Focusing on Tamburlaine, this essay challenges biases in that discipline which helped shape a presumption that Marlowe encountered Pedro Mexía’s Silva de varia lección only in English translation. Afterwards, tracing one passage in Mexía’s Spanish-language text through its intervening adaptations into Italian, French, and English, the essay turns to the Messenger’s speech about Tamburlaine’s war tents to dissect how Marlowe channels an entire intertextual, multilingual system in one of his play’s most enduring stretches of poetry.