One of the smash hits of the late 1580s and 90s, Tamburlaine
established blank verse as the poetic line of English Renaissance
drama, Edward Alleyn as the first English star actor and Marlowe as one
of the foremost playwrights of his time. The rise and fall of a
Scythian peasant-warrior who conquers the Middle East and is struck
down by illness after burning the books of the Koran is presented in
two parts crammed with theatrical splendour and equally spectacular
cruelty. Marlowe's original audiences were delighted with the
blasphemous and ruthlessly ambitious hero; the introduction to this
edition discusses the problems that such a character poses for modern
audiences and highlights the undercurrents of the play that lead
towards a more ironic interpretation.