Infernal Images In Tamburlaine

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

Prior argues that the fact that “this harmony is not always apparent is the result, in part, of a still somewhat incomplete solution of the problem, of a failure to distinguish between dramatic and lyrical methods. For one thing, the sequence of episodes that might be called the plot of Tamburlaine consists so largely of a series of increasingly great military triumphs, each one involving more kings and more troops, that it conceals the line of development on which the imaginative treatment of the diction appears to be centred and hence throws into prominence the boasting and the rant. And it makes not for a schematic unfolding of an action, but for a repetitious sequence of analogous episodes in which the central figure is seen in a familiar role.” The repetitions in situations lead to repetitions in the feelings and therefore in the images. A related difficulty arises from the fact that as Tamburlaine rises in stature and dignity he also becomes generalized into a symbol and an abstraction. The Tamburlaine who speaks the lines about aspiration and beauty is not so much a character representing a man aspiring to virtue, as, rather, the expression of the philosophical ideal of virtue. Thus, the union of Zenocrate and Tamburlaine is not simply the marriage of a warrior and a beautiful princess, but the dramatic counterpart of Tamburlaine’s conception that an instinct for beauty is inherent in the man who aspires to virtue. Howard Baker seems to reverse this