Displays of Love in Endymion and Tamburlaine

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Comparing and contrasting the kinds of love represented by Tellus and Endymion in Lyly’s comedy of errors, Edymion, and the love between Tamburlaine and Zenocrate in Marlowe’s Tamburlaine show similarities where passions drive lovers to capture suitors, but differ in one couple desiring the unattainable, and another taking action to attain. Love is presented in different ways, specifically in Lyly’s play the love is unattainable and unreal, as opposite in Marlowe’s play the love is attainable. Both, couples also have similarities when lovers are driven by their passions.

We can judge Tellus by her actions and their consequences. If she loves Endymion, she has a strange way of showing it. Tellus in the end is responsible for arranging a sorceress to put him into a deep sleep that lasts decades and robs him of his youth. When confronted by Cynthia in 5.4, Tellus confesses her wicked actions and professes her love for Endymion. Tellus’ love for Endymion is so intense that it made her dangerously possessive of him. She tells Cynthia of a “not-to-be-expressed yet always-to-be-felt love.” (5.4.71) Tellus’ love sickens her, and when she realizes her lover loves another, her love turns into hate. Perhaps hate and love are similar in this play. They are similar in the way that they are intensely the extreme. Extreme love makes Tellus sick, and extreme hate makes her act on revenge to hurt her love. Her excuse for wicked ways is that her body was becoming sick from this kind of love. Her feelings are psychologically real, but incredible unhealthy. She rationalizes her actions by pleading a kind of self-defense. Tellus is a dangerous, possessive woman, who probably never really experienced love that is kind, gentle a...

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...n unattainable love, but Tamburlaine wins it through battle. Though Tamburlaine captures Zenocrate, he does not rape her. Instead, he professes to win her love and her heart with the only means he knows how – through battle.

In conclusion, the lovers in Marlowe’s Tamburlaine and Edymion and Tellus in Lyly’s Endymion are all consumed and controlled by their passions. Both couple are relatively young in the psychologically stages of their love and both couples initially victims and capture love. Perhaps the greatest difference is that Marlowe has written a love story that ends in victory. Just as Tamburlaine is a great conquer in the battlefield, he, too is a great conquer in love. His prize is Zenocrate and her heart opens to him. Whereas Tamburlaine is victorious, our lovers, Endymion and Tellus, reach for the unattainable, and lose in the end.

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