Tamburlaine the Great | Essays and Criticism

  • Critical Essay on Tamburlaine the Great

    Trudell is an independent scholar with a bachelor’s degree in English literature. In the following essay, Trudell argues that Marlowe’s play is a psychological drama in which Tamburlaine represents the awesome potential of basic psychological desires.

  • Divine Zenocrate

    In the following essay, Whitfield examines Tamburlaine’s ‘‘systematic reduction and silencing of Zenocrate’’ as consistent with the theme of masculine domination and oppression present in Marlowe’s works and Renaissance society.

  • Fissured Families: A Motif in Marlowe’s Plays

    In the following excerpt, Hopkins argues that, in his plays, Marlowe ‘‘provides a sharply focused and detailed critique of the problematics of familial interaction . . . an aberration caused by particular aspects of social injustice and malaise.’’

  • Irony and Objectivity in the Plot of Tamburlaine, Part I

    In the following essay, Box analyzes the five stages of dramatic development of Tamburlaine, the degree to which irony permeates Marlowe’s plots’’ and show that ‘‘through irony Marlowe maintains a detachment from what he has created.’’