Marlovian Models of Voyage Drama

Abstract

Marlowe’s Tamburlaine plays (1587, 1588), if not the first exotic voyage dramas, were certainly the most influential and successful of the early exponents of the form. Of these fabulous texts, it is mostly the bombastic rants of the protagonist, and the potential (more generally) of blank verse and Marlowe’s ‘mighty line’ that critics are quick to acknowledge as having influenced subsequent playwrights — along with a healthy dose of what James Shapiro calls ‘the kind of geographic sweep of which Tamburlaine is so fond’ (36). Marlowe’s imitators also appropriated the visual images of these exotic plays (commonly referred to as Tamburlaine’s ‘sights of power’); the most notable being the image of Tamburlaine’s chariot drawn by emperors, and Tamburlaine’s use of the conquered Bajazeth as an imperial footstool (Thurn 3–21; Sales 54). But what I wish to consider in this chapter is another aspect that characterises Marlowe’s aesthetics; one that, although hardly new to Marlowe studies, does possess a certain novelty when considered in the context of Tamburlaine and travel plays. I refer to the Marlovian emphasis on desire.