 First edition | |
| Author | Louise Welsh |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Canongate Books |
Publication date | 2004 |
| Pages | 160 pages |
| ISBN | 1-84195-625-2 |
| OCLC | 57785232 |
Tamburlaine Must Die is a novella written by Louise Welsh, which imagines the last days of Christopher Marlowe's life in 1593. The novella was published in 2004 by Canongate Books.
This novella is set in a plague-ridden London in 1593. Someone calling himself "Tamburlaine", the name of the hero in one of Marlowe's most famous plays, has written a libelous and heretical pamphlet in a style of writing similar to Marlowe's. Marlowe is called before the Privy Council which accuses him of writing the pamphlet; however, he protests his innocence. Marlowe is sentenced to death for this blasphemous writing and only has three days to figure out who really wrote the pamphlet and track that individual down. Marlowe becomes entangled in a web of intrigue, plots and counterplots before his eventual murder.
The novella is based on the last days of Marlowe's life. An individual writing under the name Tamburlaine published a bill about London threatening Protestant refugees who had settled in the city. The author wrote in the same style and alluded to Marlowe several times. A few short days later, Marlowe was murdered by an acquaintance after arguing over a bill. To this day, there is still controversy regarding the reasons for and circumstances of Marlowe's death.
The title of the novella was taken from the last words spoken by Tamburlaine in Marlowe's play Tamburlaine the Great : "Tamburlaine, the scourge of God, must die."
The novella has received both praise and criticism, called a "gothic thriller" [1] and "existential puzzle piece". [2] On the negative side, one reviewer felt the "narrative fails to convey adequately the sense of trepidation and urgency that one would expect from such a desperate man" [3] and Alan Wall in The Guardian called it "buccaneering tosh". [4]
Fittingly for a novella based on a famous playwright, the book was adapted for the stage by Kenny Miller in 2007. Miller also transformed and directed Welsh's first novel, The Cutting Room , into a stage production. The play was produced by Glasgay! and Tron Theatre in Glasgow. [5]
Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe, was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe is among the most famous of the Elizabethan playwrights. Based upon the "many imitations" of his play Tamburlaine, modern scholars consider him to have been the foremost dramatist in London in the years just before his mysterious early death. Some scholars also believe that he greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was baptised in the same year as Marlowe and later succeeded him as the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright. Marlowe was the first to achieve critical reputation for his use of blank verse, which became the standard for the era. His plays are distinguished by their overreaching protagonists. Themes found within Marlowe's literary works have been noted as humanistic with realistic emotions, which some scholars find difficult to reconcile with Marlowe's "anti-intellectualism" and his catering to the prurient tastes of his Elizabethan audiences for generous displays of extreme physical violence, cruelty, and bloodshed.
Thomas Kyd was an English playwright, the author of The Spanish Tragedy, and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama.
Alan Bennett is an English playwright, author, actor and screenwriter. Over his entertainment career he has received numerous awards and honours including two BAFTA Awards, four Laurence Olivier Awards, and two Tony Awards. He also earned an Academy Award nomination for his film The Madness of King George (1994). In 2005 he received the Society of London Theatre Special Award.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1598.
This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1593.
The Rose was an Elizabethan theatre. It was the fourth of the public theatres to be built, after The Theatre (1576), the Curtain (1577), and the theatre at Newington Butts – and the first of several playhouses to be situated in Bankside, Southwark, in a liberty outside the jurisdiction of the City of London's civic authorities. Its remains were excavated by archaeologists in 1989 and are listed by Historic England as a Scheduled Monument.
In the First Folio, the plays of William Shakespeare were grouped into three categories: comedies, histories, and tragedies. The histories—along with those of contemporary Renaissance playwrights—help define the genre of history plays. The Shakespearean histories are biographies of English kings of the previous four centuries and include the standalones King John, Edward III and Henry VIII as well as a continuous sequence of eight plays. These last are considered to have been composed in two cycles. The so-called first tetralogy, apparently written in the early 1590s, covers the Wars of the Roses saga and includes Henry VI, Parts I, II & III and Richard III. The second tetralogy, finished in 1599 and including Richard II, Henry IV, Parts I & II and Henry V, is frequently called the Henriad after its protagonist Prince Hal, the future Henry V.
Tamburlaine the Great is a play in two parts by Christopher Marlowe. It is loosely based on the life of the Central Asian emperor Timur. Written in 1587 or 1588, the play is a milestone in Elizabethan public drama; it marks a turning away from the clumsy language and loose plotting of the earlier Tudor dramatists, and a new interest in fresh and vivid language, memorable action, and intellectual complexity. Along with Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, it may be considered the first popular success of London's public stage.
Jeffery Kissoon is an actor with credits in British theatre, television, film and radio. He has performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company at venues such as the Royal National Theatre, under directors including Peter Brook, Peter Hall, Robert Lepage, Janet Suzman, Calixto Bieito and Nicholas Hytner. He has acted in genres from Shakespeare and modern theatre to television drama and science fiction, playing a range of both leading and supporting roles, from Mark Antony in Antony and Cleopatra and Prospero and Caliban in The Tempest, to Malcolm X in The Meeting and Mr Kennedy in the children's TV series Grange Hill.
The Marlovian theory of Shakespeare authorship holds that the Elizabethan poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe was the main author of the poems and plays attributed to William Shakespeare. Further, the theory says Marlowe did not die in Deptford on 30 May 1593, as the historical records state, but that his death was faked.
Terence David Hands was a multi-award English theatre director. He founded the Liverpool Everyman Theatre and ran the Royal Shakespeare Company for thirteen years during one of the company's most successful periods; he spent 25 years in all with the RSC. He also saved Clwyd Theatr Cymru from closure and turned it into the most successful theatre in Wales in his seventeen years as Artistic Director. He received several Olivier, Tony and Molière awards and nominations for directing and lighting.
Louise Welsh is an English-born author of short stories and psychological thrillers, resident in Glasgow, Scotland. She has also written three plays, an opera, edited volumes of prose and poetry, and contributed to journals and anthologies. In 2004, she received the Corine Literature Prize.
Thomas Drury was a British government informer, messenger and swindler, who is noted for having been one of the main people responsible for accusations of heresy, blasphemy, and seditious atheism on the part of the Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe given to the Privy Council in May 1593. Within a couple of weeks, Marlowe, just 29 and the same age as William Shakespeare, but one of the single greatest influences upon his work, was dead.
Derek William Mario Marlowe was an English playwright, novelist, screenwriter and painter.
Events from the 1590s in England.
The University Wits is a phrase used to name a group of late 16th-century English playwrights and pamphleteers who were educated at the universities and who became popular secular writers. Prominent members of this group were Christopher Marlowe, Robert Greene, and Thomas Nashe from Cambridge, and John Lyly, Thomas Lodge, and George Peele from Oxford. Thomas Kyd is also sometimes included in the group, though he was not from any of the aforementioned universities.
Theatre of United Kingdom plays an important part in British culture, and the countries that constitute the UK have had a vibrant tradition of theatre since the Renaissance with roots going back to the Roman occupation.
Nicholas Skeres was an Elizabethan con-man and government informer—i.e. a "professional deceiver"—and one of the three "gentlemen" who were with the poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe when he was killed in Deptford in May 1593. Together with another of the men there, Robert Poley, he had played a part in the discovery of the Babington plot against the life of the Queen in 1586, and at the time of Marlowe's death was engaged in a money-lending swindle with the third of them, Marlowe's reported killer Ingram Frizer.
David Farr is a British writer, theatrical director and Associate Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593), English playwright and poet, has appeared in works of fiction since the nineteenth century. He was a contemporary of William Shakespeare, and has been suggested as an alternative author of Shakespeare's works, an idea not accepted in mainstream scholarship. Marlowe, alleged to have been a government spy and frequently claimed to have been homosexual, was killed in 1593.