90 But traitor to my name and majesty?
He goes in [the tent] and brings him [CALYPHAS] out.
Image of sloth and picture of a slave,
The obloquy and scorn of my renown,
How may my heart, thus firàd with mine eyes,
Wounded with shame and killed with discontent,
Shroud any thought may hold my striving hands
From martial justice on thy wretched soul?
THERIDAMAS
Yet pardon him, I pray your majesty.
TECHELLES AND USUMCASANE
Let all of us entreat your highness’ pardon.
[They kneel.]
TAMBURLAINE
Stand up, ye base, unworthy soldiers!
100 Know ye not yet the argument of arms?
AMYRAS
Good my lord, let him be forgiven for once,
And we will force him to the field hereafter.
TAMBURLAINE
Stand up, my boys, and I will teach ye arms
And what the jealousy of wars must do.
O Samarcanda, where I breathàd first
And joyed the fire of this martial flesh,
Blush, blush, fair city, at thine honour’s foil
And shame of nature, which Jaertis’ stream,
Embracing thee with deepest of his love,
Can never wash from thy distainàd brows!
110 Here, Jove, receive his fainting soul again –
[He stabs CALYPHAS.]
A form not meet to give that subject essence
Whose matter is the flesh of Tamburlaine,
Wherein an incorporeal spirit moves,
Made of the mould whereof thyself consists,
Which makes me valiant, proud, ambitious,
Ready to levy power against thy throne,
That I might move the turning spheres of heaven;
For earth and all this airy region
Cannot contain the state of Tamburlaine.
120 By Mahomet, thy mighty friend, I swear,
In sending to my issue such a soul,
Created of the massy dregs of earth,
The scum and tartar of the elements,
Wherein was neither courage, strength, or wit,
But folly, sloth, and damnèd idleness,
Thou hast procured a greater enemy
Than he that darted mountains at thy head,
Shaking the burden mighty Atlas bears,
Whereat thou, trembling, hidd’st thee in the air,
130 Clothed with a pitchy cloud for being seen.
And now, ye cankered curs of Asia,
That will not see the strength of Tamburlaine
Although it shine as brightly as the sun,
Now you shall feel the strength of Tamburlaine,
And by the state of his supremacy
Approve the difference ’twixt himself and you.
ORCANES
Thou showest the difference ’twixt ourselves and thee,
In this thy barbarous damnèd tyranny.
JERUSALEM
Thy victories are grown so violent
140 That shortly heaven, filled with the meteors
Of blood and fire thy tyrannies have made,
Will pour down blood and fire on thy head,
Whose scalding drops will pierce thy seething brains
And with our bloods revenge our bloods on thee.
TAMBURLAINE
Villains, these terrors and these tyrannies,
(If tyrannies war’s justice ye repute)
I execute, enjoined me from above,
To scourge the pride of such as heaven abhors;
150 Nor am I made arch-monarch of the world,
Crowned and invested by the hand of Jove,
For deeds of bounty or nobility.
But since I exercise a greater name,
The scourge of God and terror of the world,
I must apply myself to fit those terms,
In war, in blood, in death, in cruelty,
And plague such peasants as resist in me
The power of heaven’s eternal majesty.
Theridamas, Techelles, and Casane
160 Ransack the tents and the pavilions
Of these proud Turks, and take their concubines.
Make them bury this effeminate brat,
For not a common soldier shall defile
His manly fingers with so faint a boy.
Then bring those Turkish harlots to my tent,
And I’ll dispose them as it likes me best.
Meanwhile, take him in.
SOLDIERS We will, my lord.
[Exeunt SOLDIERS with the body of CALYPHAS.]
JERUSALEM
O damnèd monster, nay, a fiend of hell,
170 Whose cruelties are not so harsh as thine,
Nor yet imposed with such a bitter hate!
Revenge it, Rhadamanth and Aeacus,
And let your hates, extended in his pains,
Expel the hate wherewith he pains our souls!
TREBIZOND
May never day give virtue to his eyes,
Whose sight, composed of fury and of fire,
Doth send such stern affections to his heart!
SORIA
May never spirit, vein, or artier feed
The cursèd substance of that cruel heart,
But, wanting moisture and remorseful blood,
180 Dry up with anger and consume with heat!
TAMBURLAINE
Well, bark, ye dogs. I’ll bridle all your tongues
And bind them close with bits of burnished steel
Down to the channels of your hateful throats,
And with the pains my rigour shall inflict,
I’ll make ye roar, that earth may echo forth
The far-resounding torments ye sustain,
As when an herd of lusty Cimbrian bulls
Run mourning round about the females’ miss,
And, stung with fury of their following,
190 Fill all the air with troublous bellowing.
I will, with engines never exercised,
Conquer, sack, and utterly consume
Your cities and your golden palaces,
And with the flames that beat against the clouds,
Incense the heavens and make the stars to melt,
As if they were the tears of Mahomet
For hot consumption of his country’s pride.
And, till by vision or by speech I hear
Immortal Jove say ‘Cease, my Tamburlaine’,
200 I will persist a terror to the world,
Making the meteors that, like armàd men,
Are seen to march upon the towers of heaven,
Run tilting round about the firmament,
And break their burning lances in the air
For honour of my wondrous victories.
Come, bring them in to our pavilion.
Exeunt.
Scene 2
[Enter] OLYMPIA alone.
OLYMPIA
Distressed Olympia, whose weeping eyes
Since thy arrival here beheld no sun,
But, closed within the compass of a tent,
Hath stained thy cheeks and made thee look like death,
Devise some means to rid thee of thy life
Rather than yievld to his detested suit
Whose drift is only to dishonour thee.
And since this earth, dewed with thy brinish tears,
Affords no herbs whose taste may poison thee,
10 Nor yet this air, beat often with thy sighs,
Contagious smells and vapours to infect thee,
Nor thy close cave a sword to murder thee,
Let this invention be the instrument.
Enter THERIDAMAS.
THERIDAMAS
Well met, Olympia. I sought thee in my tent,
But, when I saw the place obscure and dark
Which with thy beauty thou wast wont to light,
Enraged, I ran about the fields for thee,
Supposing amorous Jove had sent his son,
The wingàd Hermes, to convey thee hence.
20 But now I find thee, and that fear is past.
Tell me, Olympia, wilt thou grant my suit?
OLYMPIA
My lord and husband’s death, with my sweet son’s,
With whom I buried all affections
Save grief and sorrow, which torment my heart,
Forbids my mind to entertain a thought
That tends to love, but meditate on death –
A fitter subject for a pensive soul.
THERIDAMAS
Olympia, pity him in whom thy looks
Have greater operation and more force
Than Cynthia’s in the watery wilderness,
30 For with thy view my joys are at the full,
And ebb again as thou depart’st from me.
OLYMPIA
Ah, pity me, my lord, and draw your sword,
Making a passage for my troubled soul,
Which beats against this prison to get out
And meet my husband and my loving son.
THERIDAMAS
Nothing but still thy husband and thy son?
Leave this, my love, and listen more to me.
Thou shalt be stately queen of fair Argier,
And, clothed in costly cloth of massy gold,
40 Upon the marble turrets of my court
Sit like to Venus in her chair of state,
Commanding all thy princely eye desires;
And I will cast off arms and sit with thee,
OLYMPIA
No such discourse is pleasant in mine ears
But that where every period ends with death
And every line begins with death again.
I cannot love to be an emperess.
THERIDAMAS
Nay, lady, then if nothing will prevail,
50 I’ll use some other means to make you yield.
Such is the sudden fury of my love,
I must and will be pleased, and you shall yield.
Come to the tent again.
OLYMPIA
Stay, good my lord! And, will you save my honour,
I’ll give your grace a present of such price
As all the world cannot afford the like.
THERIDAMAS What is it?
OLYMPIA
An ointment which a cunning alchemist
Distillèd from the purest balsamum
60 And simplest extracts of all minerals,
In which the essential form of marble stone,
Tempered by science metaphysical
And spells of magic from the mouths of spirits,
With which if you but ’noint your tender skin,
Nor pistol, sword, nor lance can pierce your flesh.
THERIDAMAS
Why, madam, think ye to mock me thus palpably?
OLYMPIA
To prove it, I will ’noint my naked throat,
Which when you stab, look on your weapon’s point,
70 And you shall see’t rebated with the blow.
THERIDAMAS
Why gave you not your husband some of it,
If you loved him, and it so precious?
OLYMPIA
My purpose was, my lord, to spend it so,
But was prevented by his sudden end.
And for a present easy proof hereof,
That I dissemble not, try it on me.
THERIDAMAS
I will, Olympia, and will keep it for
The richest present of this eastern world.
She anoints her throat.
OLYMPIA
Now stab, my lord, and mark your weapon’s point,
80 That will be blunted if the blow be great.
THERIDAMAS [stabs her throat]
Here then, Olympia.
What, have I slain her? Villain, stab thyself!
Cut off this arm that murderèd my love,
In whom the learned rabbis of this age
Might find as many wondrous miracles
As in the theoria of the world!
Now hell is fairer than Elysium;
A greater lamp than that bright eye of heaven
From whence the stars do borrow all their light
90 Wanders about the black circumference,
And now the damned souls are free from pain,
For every Fury gazeth on her looks.
Infernal Dis is courting of my love,
Inventing masques and stately shows for her,
Opening the doors of his rich treasury
To entertain this queen of chastity,
Whose body shall be tombed with all the pomp
The treasure of my kingdom may afford.
Exit, taking her away.
Scene 3
[Enter] TAMBURLAINE, drawn in his chariot by [the kings of] TREBIZOND and SORIA with bits in their mouths, reins in his left hand, in his right hand a whip, with which he scourgeth them. TECHELLES, THERIDAMASJ USUMCASANE, AMYRAS, CELEBINUS; [ORCANES, King of] Natolia and [the King of] JERUSALEM led by with five or six common SOLDIERS.
TAMBURLAINE
Holla, ye pampered jades of Asia!
What, can ye draw but twenty miles a day
And have so proud a chariot at your heels
And such a coachman as great Tamburlaine,
But from Asphaltis, where I conquered you,
To Byron here where thus I honour you?
The horse that guide the golden eye of heaven
And blow the morning from their nostrils,
Making their fiery gait above the clouds,
Are not so honoured in their governor
10 As you, ye slaves, in mighty Tamburlaine.
The headstrong jades of Thrace Alcides tamed,
That King Aegeus fed with human flesh
And made so wanton that they knew their strengths,
Were not subdued with valour more divine
Than you by this unconquered arm of mine.
To make you fierce, and fit my appetite,
You shall be fed with flesh as raw as blood
And drink in pails the strongest muscadel.
20 If you can live with it, then live, and draw
My chariot swifter than the racking clouds.
If not, then die like beasts and fit for nought
But perches for the black and fatal ravens.
Thus am I right the scourge of highest Jove,
And see the figure of my dignity
By which I hold my name and majesty.
AMYRAS
Let me have coach, my lord, that I may ride
And thus be drawn with these two idle kings.
TAMBURLAINE
Thy youth forbids such ease, my kingly boy.
30 They shall tomorrow draw my chariot
While these their fellow kings may be refreshed.
ORCANES
O thou that swayest the region under earth,
And art a king as absolute as Jove,
Come as thou didst in fruitful Sicily,
Surveying all the glories of the land!
And as thou took’st the fair Proserpina,
Joying the fruit of Ceres’ garden plot,
For love, for honour, and to make her queen,
So for just hate, for shame, and to subdue
40 This proud contemner of thy dreadful power,
Come once in fury and survey his pride,
Haling him headlong to the lowest hell!
THERIDAMAS [to TAMBURLAINE]
Your majesty must get some bits for these,
To bridle their contemptuous cursing tongues
That like unruly never-broken jades
Break through the hedges of their hateful mouths
And pass their fixéd bounds exceedingly.
TECHELLES
Nay, we will break the hedges of their mo
uths
And pull their kicking colts out of their pastures.
USUMCASANE
Your majesty already hath devised
A mean as fit as may be to restrain
50 These coltish coach-horse tongues from blasphemy.
[CELEBINUS bridles ORCANES.]
CELEBINUS
How like you that, sir king? Why speak you not?
JERUSALEM
Ah, cruel brat, sprung from a tyrant’s loins,
How like his curséd father he begins
To practise taunts and bitter tyrannies!
TAMBURLAINE
Ay, Turk, I tell thee, this same boy is he
That must, advanced in higher pomp than this,
Rifle the kingdoms I shall leave unsacked
If Jove, esteeming me too good for earth,
60 Raise me to match the fair Aldebaran
Above the threefold astracism of heaven
Before I conquer all the triple world.
Now fetch me out the Turkish concubines.
I will prefer them for the funeral
They have bestowed on my abortive son.
The CONCUBINES are brought in.
Where are my common soldiers now that fought
So lion-like upon Asphaltis’ plains?
SOLDIERS Here, my lord.
TAMBURLAINE
Hold ye, tall soldiers. Take ye queens apiece,
70 (I mean such queens as were kings’ concubines.)
Take them. Divide them and their jewels too,
And let them equally serve all your turns.
SOLDIERS We thank your majesty.
TAMBURLAINE
Brawl not, I warn you, for your lechery,
For every man that so offends shall die.
ORCANES
Injurious tyrant, wilt thou so defame
The hateful fortunes of thy victory
To exercise upon such guiltless dames
80 The violence of thy common soldiers’ lust?
TAMBURLAINE
Live content, then, ye slaves, and meet not me
With troops of harlots at your slothful heels.
CONCUBINES
O, pity us, my lord, and save our honours!
TAMBURLAINE
Are ye not gone, ye villains, with your spoils?
They [SOLDIERS] run away with the LADIES.
JERUSALEM
O, merciless, infernal cruelty!
TAMBURLAINE
‘Save your honours’! ’Twere but time indeed,
Lost long before you knew what honour meant.
THERIDAMAS
It seems they meant to conquer us, my lord,
And make us jesting pageants for their trulls.
TAMBURLAINE
90 And now themselves shall make our pageant,
And common soldiers jest with all their trulls.
Let them take pleasure soundly in their spoils
Till we prepare our march to Babylon,
Whither we next make expedition.