TAMBURLAINE THE GREAT
A monologue from the
play by Christopher
Marlowe
|
NOTE: This monologue is reprinted
from Masterpieces of the English Drama. Ed. William Lyon
Phelps. New York: American Book Company, 1912. |
|
|
- TAMBURLAINE: Ah, fair Zenocrate!--divine Zenocrate!
- Fair is too foul an epithet for thee,--
- That in thy passion for thy country's love,
- And fear to see thy kingly father's harm,
- With hair dishevell'd wip'st thy watery cheeks;
- And, like to Flora in her morning's pride,
- Shaking her silver tresses in the air,
- Rain'st on the earth resolved pearl in showers,
- And sprinklest sapphires on thy shining face,
- Where Beauty, mother to the Muses, sits,
- And comments volumes with her ivory pen,
- Taking instructions from thy flowing eyes;
- Eyes, when that Ebena steps to heaven,
- In silence of thy solemn evening's walk,
- Making the mantle of the richest night,
- The moon, the planets, and the meteors, light;
- There angels in their crystal armours fight
- A doubtful battle with my tempted thoughts
- For Egypt's freedom and the Soldan's life,
- His life that so consumes Zenocrate;
- Whose sorrows lay more siege unto my soul
- Than all my army to Damascus' walls;
- And neither Persia's sovereign nor the Turk
- Troubled my senses with conceit of foil
- So much by much as doth Zenocrate.
- What is beauty, saith my sufferings, then?
- If all the pens that ever poets held
- Had fed the feeling of their masters' thoughts,
- And every sweetness that inspir'd their hearts,
- Their minds, and muses on admired themes;
- If all the heavenly quintessence they still
- From their immortal flowers of poesy,
- Wherein, as in a mirror, we perceive
- The highest reaches of a human wit;
- If these had made one poem's period,
- And all combin'd in beauty's worthiness,
- Yet should their hover in their restless heads
- One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least,
- Which into words no virtue can digest.
- But how unseemly is it for my sex,
- My discipline of arms and chivalry,
- My nature, and the terror of my name,
- To harbour thoughts effeminate and faint!
- Save only that in beauty's just applause,
- With whose instinct the soul of man is touched;
- And every warrior that is rapt with love
- Of fame, of valour, and of victory,
- Must needs have beauty beat on his conceits:
- I thus conceiving, and subduing both,
- That which hath stoop'd the chiefest of the gods,
- Even from the fiery-spangled veil of heaven,
- To feel the lovely warmth of shepherds' flames,
- And mask in cottages of strowed reeds,
- Shall give the world to note, for all my birth,
- That virtue solely is the sum of glory,
- And fashions men with true nobility.
MORE MONOLOGUES BY CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE |
|
|
