The Rhetoric of Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine

The Rhetoric of Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine

The hero of Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great did not lead the life of any ordinary Scythian shepherd. Throughout the course of the drama, the once lowly Tamburlaine is bent on a path of unstoppable conquest, upheld as much by intense personal charisma and power of speech as by the strength of his sword. He exemplifies this eloquence throughout his many speeches in the play, not least of which is his “Thirst of Reign” address to the defeated usurper of the Persian crown. Tamburlaine’s speech is delivered with the intention of justifying, to Cosroe and all others present, the righteousness of his own ambitions, and inviting them to share in the same. He achieves this end by skillfully employing in his speech Aristotle’s three canonized methods of persuasion: logos, pathos, and ethos.

Tamburlaine begins his address with a subtle use of ethos, an appeal to his own credibility as a leader worthy of respect. He does this by comparing his own desire for the “sweetness of a crown” to that of “mighty Jove,” who threw his father Ops down from the heavenly chair for this same reason. By this line of persuasion, Tamburlaine is following in the very footsteps of the mighty god, and fulfilling a goal established as worthy by a most divine precedent. This comparison serves to glorify his bloody path, and subtly clarifies him as a mighty persona in majestic uprising, not simply a violent, sheep-herding rebel.

Tamburlaine’s bolstering of his own person is followed by a justification of the very act of ambitious conquest by means of logos, a logical appeal to reason. He argues that “Nature…Doth teach us all to have aspiring...

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...nd morally questionable to audience and readers alike. The depiction of ruthless conquest as an admirable and heroic endeavor could only be done successfully if it were shielded by language as beautiful as it is capable of persuasion. Despite this quality of speech, there is a certain weakness in the address that the modern reader is privy to: the idea of four warring elements composing our frames is quaintly erroneous. Aristotle himself would be quick to point out that a logical argument based on faulty assumptions is a faulty argument, so Tamburlaine’s use of logos in this speech rings somewhat hollow on ears which can pick out the flaw in his persuasions. Not that this flaw would come as a surprise to an educated modern reader, as they would likely already distrust any justification of violent domination that history has repeatedly shown to be far from admirable.