TAMBURLAINE THE GREAT
A monologue from the
play by Christopher
Marlowe
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NOTE: This monologue is reprinted
from Masterpieces of the English Drama. Ed. William Lyon
Phelps. New York: American Book Company, 1912. |
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- TAMBURLAINE: Now clear the triple region of the air,
- And let the Majesty of Heaven behold
- Their scourge and terror tread on emperors.
- Smile, stars that reign'd at my nativity,
- And dim the brightness of your neighbour lamps,
- Disdain to borrow light of Cynthia!
- For I, chiefest lamp of all the earth,
- First rising in the east with mild aspect,
- But fixed now in the meridian line,
- Will send up fire to your turning spheres,
- And cause the sun to borrow light of you.
- My sword struck fire from his coat of steel,
- Even in Bithynia, when I took his Turk;
- As when a fiery exhalation,
- Wrapt in the bowels, of a freezing cloud,
- Fighting for passage, make[s] the welkin crack,
- And casts a flash of lightning to the earth:
- But, ere I march to wealthy Persia,
- Or leave Damascus and th' Egyptian fields,
- As was the fame of Cylmene's brain-sick son
- That almost brent the axle-tree of heaven,
- So shall our swords, our lances, and our shot
- Fill all the air with fiery meteors;
- Then, when the sky shall wax as red as blood,
- It shall be said I made it red myself,
- To make me think of naught but blood and war.
MORE MONOLOGUES BY CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE |
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