'A World of Ground': Terrestrial Space in Marlowe's Tamburlaine plays

Marlowe's geographical awareness will strike any reader of the Tamburlaine plays. At first critics were content to note the mere frequency of exotic place names, and a comparison with Milton's practice in Paradise Lost became a commonplace. There were, after all, over forty different place names mentioned in Part One of Tamburlaine and over eighty in Part Two, and some of these names were intro duced not only once but several times and then given even greater salience in studiedly pointed repetition 'And ride in triumph through Persepolis' is an obvious instance. But it was left to Ethel Seaton to take the subject a decisive step forward in her classic essay 'Marlowe's Map' (I924).1 She advanced the study of Tamburlaine by moving from a vaguely sensed geography to a more precisely focused cartography. She demonstrated conclusively that one notable passage in Part Two was not a mere fantasy of outlandish names but an account of a journey (by Techelles) through Africa, which Marlowe had based on a close study of Ortelius's Theatrum orbis terrarum. This great world atlas was first published in Antwerp in I570. Some of Marlowe's details, which had been taken by editors to be errors or blunders on his part, could now be justified by refer ence to Ortelius, notably the placing of 'Zanzibar' on the west coast of Africa rather than on the east. But the chief effect of Seaton's work was to make Marlowe's procedure in the Tamburlaine plays seem incomparably more rational than before. It showed him to be aware of some of the most recent technological innovations by putting him in touch with the enormously influential map culture of his time. But it also gave more point to Marlowe's conception of his hero, who, before succumbing to death at the end of Part Two, actually calls for a map to be brought before him. In Tyrone Guthrie's great production of both Tamburlaine plays at the Old Vic in 1951 (which I was fortunate enough to see), a map was brought on as big as a large Persian carpet and was unrolled to fill the whole central area of the stage. Tamburlaine, now visibly dying, stepped on to the map, while his followers respectfully stood around it and watched. And so, in recalling his life's achievements endless conquests and journeys he makes gesturally visible both what he has done and what he would still long to