23 Thursday Jan 2020
Posted in Poetry, Scribbling, Theatre
Robert Stewart Sherrif
I love Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great – and by that I mean the first of the two parts. It may be rougher around the edges than his later work, but it’s breathlessly fiery. With his blank iambic pentameter, with the historical subject-matter, and his unpunished bloodthirsty hero, the boy (all of twenty-three at the time) was breaking ground in many ways – and knew it well. Continue reading
01 Thursday Jun 2017
So, Tamburlaine the Great, part II. Part I had been such a smashing success, and suddenly conquerors were all the rage in London playhouses, and one can easily imagine the Admiral’s Men pestering Kit Marlowe about a sequel… Continue reading
30 Saturday Jul 2016
Tags
Albert Decaris, christopher marlowe, Heritage Press, illustration, Limited Edition Club, Saint Lucia, Tamburlaine the Great
Dear Saint Lucia,
I’m not sure I’ve been good enough so far for this – but, were you by any chance wondering about what I might wish for December, here is an idea: I’ve discovered the existence of this lovely edition of four plays of Christopher Marlowe, published in the mid Sixties by Limited Edition Club and then Heritage Press, and illustrated by French artist Albert Decaris.
As you can see from the Tamburlaine here left, the illustrations are a wonder, and the whole book seems to have been conceived with much flair, design-wise… Continue reading
28 Saturday May 2016
Tags
christopher marlowe, Edward Alleyn, Infinite riches in a little room, Tamburlaine the Great, The Jew of Malta
F. Murray Abraham as Barabas
It has always seemed to me that, while the first part of Tamburlaine the Great is all
black and white and red and gold, Marlowe’s later play, The Jew of Malta, bursts with colours.
It struck me from the very first time I met on the page Barabas, the eponymous Jew, first seen in his counting-house, lamenting the nuisance of counting silver… Continue reading
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