Tamburlaine Quotes

Brother Cosroe, I find myself aggrieved
Yet insufficient to express the same,
For it requires a great and thund’ring speech.
Good brother, tell the cause unto my lords,
I know you have a better wit than I.

Zenocrate, lovelier than the love of Jove,
Brighter than is the silver Rhodope,
Fairer than whitest snow on Scythian hills,
Thy person is worth more to Tamburlaine
Than the possession of the Persian crown,
Which gracious stars have promised at my birth.
A hundred Tartars shall attend on thee
Mounted on steeds swifter than Pegasus […]

Art thou but captain of a thousand horse,
That by characters graven in thy brows
And by thy martial face and stout aspect
Deservest to have the leading of an host?
Forsake thy king and do but join with me
And we will triumph over all the world.
I hold the Fates bound fast in iron chains
And with my hand turn Fortune’s wheel about,
And sooner shall the sun fall from his sphere
Than Tamburlaine be slain or overcome.

A god is not so glorious as a king.
I think the pleasure they enjoy in heaven
Cannot compare with kingly joys in earth.

The thirst of reign and sweetness of a crown,
That caused the eldest son of heavenly Ops
To thrust his doting father from his chair
And place himself in the empyreal heaven,
Moved me to manage arms against thy state.
What better precedent than mighty Jove?
Nature […]
Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds:
Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend
The wondrous architecture of the world
And measure every wand’ring planet’s course,
still climbing after knowledge infinite
And always moving as the restless spheres,
Wills us to wear ourselves and never rest
Until we reach the ripest fruit of all,
That perfect bliss and sole felicity,
The sweet fruition of an earthly crown.

For ‘will’ and ‘shall’ best fitteth Tamburlaine,
Whose smiling stars gives him assurèd hope
Of martial triumph, ere he meet his foes.
I, that am termed the scourge and wrath of God,
The only fear and terror of the world,
Will first subdue the Turk, and then […]

For he that gives him other food than this
Shall sit by him and starve to death himself.
This is my mind, and I will have it so.
Not all the kings and emperors of the earth,
If they would lay their crowns before my feet,
Shall ransom him or take him from his cage.

Zenocrate: Yet would you have some pity for my sake,
Because it is my country’s, and my father’s.

Tamburlaine: Not for the world, Zenocrate, if I have sworn.

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 inspired 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 there hover in their restless heads
One thought, one grace, one wonder at the least,
Which into words no virtue can digest.

Now shame and duty, love and fear, presents
A thousand sorrows to my martyred soul.
Whom should I wish the fatal victory
When my poor pleasures are divided thus,
And racked by duty from my cursèd heart?

AMYRAS: Why may not I, my lord, as well as he,
Be termed a scourge and terror of the world?

TAMBURLAINE: Be all a scourge and terror to the world,
Or else you are not sons of Tamburlaine.

Can there be such deceit in Christians,
Or treason in the fleshly heart of man,
Whose shape is figure of the highest God?
Then if there be a Christ, as Christians say,
But in their deeds deny him for their Christ,
[…] Take here these papers as our sacrifice
And witness of thy servant’s perjury.

Black is the beauty of the brightest day—
The golden ball of heaven's eternal fire
That danced with glory on the silver waves
Now wants the fuel that inflamed his beams,
And all with faintness, and for foul disgrace
He binds his temples with a frowning cloud,
Ready to darken earth with endless night.
Zenocrate that gave him light and life,
Whose eyes shot fire from their ivory bowers
And tempered every soul with lively heat,
Now by the malice of the angry skies,
Whose jealousy admits no second mate,
Draws in the comfort of her latest breath
All dazzled with the hellish mists of death […etc.]

Ah, good my lord, be patient, she is dead,
And all this raging cannot make her live.
If words might serve, our voice hath rent the air,
If tears, our eyes have watered all the earth,
If grief, our murdered hearts have strained forth blood.
Nothing prevails, for she is dead, my lord.

We shall not need to nourish any doubt
But that proud Fortune who hath followed long
The martial sword of mighty Tamburlaine,
Will now retain her old inconstancy,
And raise our honours to as a high a pitch
In this our strong and fortunate encounter.

But now, my boys, leave off, and list to me,
That mean to teach you rudiments of war.
I'll have you learn to sleep upon the ground,
March in your armour thorough watery fens,
Sustain the scorching heat and freezing cold,
Hunger and thirst, right adjuncts of the war.
And after this, to scale a castle wall,
Besiege a fort, […]

I know, sir, what it is to kill a man—
It works remorse of conscience in me;
I take no pleasure to be murderous
Nor care for blood when wine will quench my thirst.

ORCANES: Thou showest the difference ‘twixt ourselves and thee
In this thy barbarous damnèd tyranny.

KING OF JERUSALEM: Thy victories are grown so violent
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.

Now, Mahomet, if thou have any power,
Come down thyself and work a miracle,
Thou art not worthy to be worshipped
That suffers flames of fire to burn the writ
Wherein the sum of thy religion rests.
Why send'st thou not a furious whirlwind down
To blow thy Alcoran up to thy throne,
Where men report thou sitt'st by God himself,
Or vengeance on the head of Tamburlaine
That shakes his sword against thy majesty
And spurns the abstracts of thy foolish laws?
Well, soldiers, Mahomet remains in hell—
He cannot hear the voice of Tamburlaine.

Inestimable drugs and precious stones,
More worth than Asia and the world beside;
And from th' Antarctic Pole eastward behold
As much more land, which never was descried,
Wherein are rocks of pearl that shine as bright
As all the lamps that beautify the sky:
And shall I die, and this unconquerèd?
Here, lovely boys, what death forbids my life,
That let your lives command in spite of death.