The Complete Plays (32 page)

JERUSALEM

Thy victories are grown so violent

140   That shortly heaven, filled with the meteors

Of blood and fire thy tyrannies have made,

Will pour down blood and fire on thy head,

Whose scalding drops will pierce thy seething brains

And with our bloods revenge our bloods on thee.

TAMBURLAINE

Villains, these terrors and these tyrannies,

(If tyrannies war's justice ye repute)

I execute, enjoined me from above,

To scourge the pride of such as heaven abhors;

150   Nor am I made arch-monarch of the world,

Crowned and invested by the hand of Jove,

For deeds of bounty or nobility.

But since I exercise a greater name,

The scourge of God and terror of the world,

I must apply myself to fit those terms,

In war, in blood, in death, in cruelty,

And plague such peasants as
resist in
me

The power of heaven's eternal majesty.

Theridamas, Techelles, and Casane

160   Ransack the tents and the pavilions

Of these proud Turks, and take their concubines.

Make them bury this effeminate brat,

For not a common soldier shall defile

His manly fingers with so faint a boy.

Then bring those Turkish harlots to my tent,

And I'll dispose them as it likes me best.

Meanwhile, take him in.

SOLDIERS
We will, my lord.

[
Exeunt
SOLDIERS
with the body of
CALYPHAS
.]

JERUSALEM

O damnèd monster, nay, a fiend of hell,

170   Whose cruelties are not so harsh as thine,

Nor yet imposed with such a bitter hate!

ORCANES

Revenge it, Rhadamanth and Aeacus,

And let your hates, extended in his pains,

Expel the hate wherewith he pains our souls!

TREBIZOND

May never day give virtue to his eyes,

Whose sight, composed of fury and of fire,

Doth send such stern affections to his heart!

SORIA

May never spirit, vein, or artier feed

The cursèd substance of that cruel heart,

But, wanting moisture and remorseful blood,

180   Dry up with anger and consume with heat!

TAMBURLAINE

Well, bark, ye dogs. I'll bridle all your tongues

And bind them close with bits of burnished steel

Down to the channels of your hateful throats,

And with the pains my rigour shall inflict,

I'll make ye roar, that earth may echo forth

The far-resounding torments ye sustain,

As when an herd of lusty
Cimbrian
bulls

Run mourning round about
the females' miss
,

And, stung with fury of
their following
,

190   Fill all the air with troublous bellowing.

I will, with engines never exercised,

Conquer, sack, and utterly consume

Your cities and your golden palaces,

And with the flames that beat against the clouds,

Incense the heavens and make the stars to melt,

As if they were the tears of Mahomet

For hot
consumption of his country's pride.

And, till by vision or by speech I hear

Immortal Jove say ‘Cease, my Tamburlaine',

200   I will persist a terror to the world,

Making the meteors that, like armàd men,

Are seen to march upon the towers of heaven,

Run tilting round about the firmament,

And break their burning lances in the air

For honour of my wondrous victories.

Come, bring them in to our pavilion.

Exeunt
.

[
Enter
]
OLYMPIA
alone
.

OLYMPIA

Distressed Olympia, whose weeping eyes

Since thy arrival here beheld no sun,

But, closed within the compass of a tent,

Hath stained thy cheeks and made thee look like death,

Devise some means to rid thee of thy life

Rather than yievld to his detested suit

Whose drift is only to dishonour thee.

And since this earth, dewed with thy brinish tears,

Affords no herbs whose taste may poison thee,

10   Nor yet this air, beat often with thy sighs,

Contagious smells
and vapours to infect thee,

Nor thy close cave a sword to murder thee,

Let this
invention
be the instrument.

Enter
THERIDAMAS
.

THERIDAMAS

Well met, Olympia. I sought thee in my tent,

But, when I saw the place obscure and dark

Which with thy beauty thou wast wont to light,

Enraged, I ran about the fields for thee,

Supposing amorous Jove had sent his son,

The wingàd Hermes, to convey thee hence.

20   But now I find thee, and that fear is past.

Tell me, Olympia, wilt thou grant my suit?

OLYMPIA

My lord and husband's death, with my sweet son's,

With whom I buried all affections

Save grief and sorrow, which torment my heart,

Forbids my mind to entertain a thought

That tends to love, but meditate on death –

A fitter subject for a pensive soul.

THERIDAMAS

Olympia, pity him in whom thy looks

Have greater operation and more force

Than
Cynthia's
in the watery wilderness,

30   For with thy view my joys are at the full,

And ebb again as thou depart'st from me.

OLYMPIA

Ah, pity me, my lord, and draw your sword,

Making a passage for my troubled soul,

Which beats against this prison to get out

And meet my husband and my loving son.

THERIDAMAS

Nothing but still thy husband and thy son?

Leave this, my love, and listen more to me.

Thou shalt be stately queen of fair Argier,

And, clothed in costly cloth of massy gold,

40   Upon the marble turrets of my court

Sit like to Venus in her chair of state,

Commanding all thy princely eye desires;

And I will cast off arms and sit with thee,

Spending my life in sweet discourse of love.

OLYMPIA

No such discourse is pleasant in mine ears

But that where every period ends with death

And every line begins with death again.

I cannot love to be an emperess.

THERIDAMAS

Nay, lady, then if nothing will prevail,

50   I'll use some other means to make you yield.

Such is the sudden fury of my love,

I must and will be pleased, and you shall yield.

Come to the tent again.

OLYMPIA

Stay, good my lord!
And, will you
save my honour,

I'll give your grace a present of such price

As all the world cannot afford the like.

THERIDAMAS
What is it?

OLYMPIA

An ointment which a cunning alchemist

Distillèd from the purest balsamum

60   And
simplest extracts
of all minerals,

In which the essential form of marble stone,

Tempered by science metaphysical

And spells of magic from the mouths of spirits,

With which if you but 'noint your tender skin,

Nor pistol, sword, nor lance can pierce your flesh.

THERIDAMAS

Why, madam, think ye to mock me thus palpably?

OLYMPIA

To prove it, I will 'noint my naked throat,

Which when you stab, look on your weapon's point,

70   And you shall see't rebated with the blow.

THERIDAMAS

Why gave you not your husband some of it,

If you loved him, and it so precious?

OLYMPIA

My purpose was, my lord, to spend it so,

But was prevented by his sudden end.

And for a present easy proof hereof,

That I dissemble not, try it on me.

THERIDAMAS

I will, Olympia, and will keep it for

The richest present of this eastern world.

She anoints her throat
.

OLYMPIA

Now stab, my lord, and mark your weapon's point,

80   That will be blunted if the blow be great.

THERIDAMAS
[
stabs her throat
]

Here then, Olympia.

What, have I slain her? Villain, stab thyself!

Cut off this arm that murderèd my love,

In whom the learned rabbis of this age

Might find as many wondrous miracles

As in the
theoria of
the world!

Now hell is fairer than Elysium;

A greater lamp than that bright eye of heaven

From whence the stars do borrow all their light

90   Wanders about the black circumference,

And now the damned souls are free from pain,

For every Fury gazeth on her looks.

Infernal Dis is courting of my love,

Inventing masques and stately shows for her,

Opening the doors of his rich treasury

To entertain this queen of chastity,

Whose body shall be tombed with all the pomp

The treasure of my kingdom may afford.

Exit, taking her away
.

[
Enter
]
TAMBURLAINE
,
drawn in his chariot by [the kings of
]
TREBIZOND
and
SORIA
with bits in their mouths, reins in his left hand, in his right hand a whip, with which he scourgeth them
.
TECHELLES, THERIDAMASJ USUMCASANE, AMYRAS, CELEBINUS; [ORCANES
,
King of
]
Natolia and [the King of
]
JERUSALEM
led by with five or six common
SOLDIERS
.

TAMBURLAINE

Holla, ye pampered
jades
of Asia!

What, can ye draw but twenty miles a day

And have so proud a chariot at your heels

And such a coachman as great Tamburlaine,

But from
Asphaltis
, where I conquered you,

To Byron here where thus I honour you?

The horse that guide the golden eye of heaven

And blow the morning from their nostrils,

Making their fiery gait above the clouds,

Are not so honoured in their
governor

10   As you, ye slaves, in mighty Tamburlaine.

The
headstrong jades
of Thrace Alcides tamed,

That King Aegeus fed with human flesh

And made so wanton that they knew their strengths,

Were not subdued with valour more divine

Than you by this unconquered arm of mine.

To make you fierce, and fit my appetite,

You shall be fed with flesh as raw as blood

And drink in pails the strongest muscadel.

20   If you can live with it, then live, and draw

My chariot swifter than the
racking clouds
.

If not, then die like beasts and fit for nought

But perches for the black and fatal ravens.

Thus am I
right
the scourge of highest Jove,

And see the
figure
of my dignity

By which I hold my name and majesty.

AMYRAS

Let me have coach, my lord, that I may ride

And thus be drawn with these two idle kings.

TAMBURLAINE

Thy youth forbids such ease, my kingly boy.

30   They shall tomorrow draw my chariot

While these their fellow kings may be refreshed.

ORCANES

O thou
that swayest the region under earth,

And art a king as absolute as Jove,

Come as thou didst in fruitful Sicily,

Surveying all the glories of the land!

And as thou took'st the fair Proserpina,

Joying the fruit of Ceres' garden plot,

For love, for honour, and to make her queen,

So for just hate, for shame, and to subdue

40   This proud contemner of thy dreadful power,

Come
once
in fury and survey his pride,

Haling him headlong to the lowest hell!

THERIDAMAS
[
to
TAMBURLAINE
]

Your majesty must get some bits for these,

To bridle their contemptuous cursing tongues

That like unruly never-broken jades

Break through the
hedges
of their hateful mouths

And pass their fixéd bounds exceedingly.

TECHELLES

Nay, we will break the hedges of their mouths

And pull
their kicking colts
out of their pastures.

USUMCASANE

Your majesty already hath devised

A mean as fit as may be to restrain

50   These coltish coach-horse tongues from blasphemy.

[
CELEBINUS
bridles
ORCANES
.]

CELEBINUS

How like you that, sir king? Why speak you not?

JERUSALEM

Ah, cruel brat, sprung from a tyrant's loins,

How like his curséd father he begins

To practise taunts and bitter tyrannies!

TAMBURLAINE

Ay, Turk, I tell thee, this same boy is he

That must, advanced in higher pomp than this,

Rifle the kingdoms I shall leave unsacked

If Jove, esteeming me too good for earth,

60   
Raise me
to match the fair Aldebaran