Dark Images In Tamburlaine's 'The Kinging Of The Darkness'

According to Moody E. Prior, “[I]t is a feature of the diction of the play that characteristic images are used in more than one way and that by this means relations are more closely established and important resolutions in the action are prepared for and accented.” But no similar explanation on the same basis offers itself concerning the dark images. The excessive cruelty of Tamburlaine, especially toward Bajazeth and Zabina, is useless and it is not related to aspects of character and thought which affect the main development. In a similar way the infernal images are never interspersed very closely in the figurative texture of the play, but maintain a more distinct and independent line. The concentration of most of these images during the central part of the play when Tamburlaine’s acts are cruellest, and Zenocrate’s repulsion on seeing the dead bodies of the emperor and his wife, might be regarded as an indication that Tamburlaine’s intended and studied cruelty is only an incidental expression of his lust for self-fulfilment and not essential to his nature, which is ruthless but not sadistic. But the return of these images just before the crowning of Zenocrate makes such an interpretation questionable. It may well be that a consistent explanation of this play is out of the question, and that the conflicting interpretations of it result from Marlowe’s failure to accomplish a final integration of all its elements. In this relative isolation of the dark and infernal images