Tamburlaine the Great and Renaissance

Human Potential Christopher Marlowe was one of the most remarkable dramatists of Elizabethan era. From Doctor Faustus to Tamburlaine, The Great, Marlowe explored the unexplored effects of the renaissance. In Doctor Faustus he explored it through a delirious scientist. In Tamburlaine,The Great he used a character who is both charismatic and ambitious.When the character of Tamburlaine is considered , it is obvious that Marlowe was greatly troubled by the potential and ambition that being a renaissance man gave to the people. The term “Renaissance man” is used to express the people with more than one ability and also with a great potential to succeed. Renaissance man were first pointed out in Italian Renaissance. One of the great thinkers of the Italian Renaissance, Leon Battista Alberti said that “A man can do all things if he will." Even though Italian Renaissance defined the Renaissance man, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the dignity of man was the work that has set the perception of the Renaissance man on the people’s eyes. On defining the Renaissance man, Pico della said; "At last, it seems to me that I have understood why man is the most fortunate living thing worthy of all admiration and precisely what rank is his lot in the universal chain of being, a rank to be envied not only by the brutes but even by the stars and by minds beyond this world." One other important work that introduced a new way of thinking about the subject was, Niccolò di Bernado dei Machiavelli’s The Prince. In The Prince, he said that “A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interests.” This Macchiavellian thinking introduced a new perception to the ambitions of people. For a Renaissance man to be successful there were no physical and moral boundaries to abide to anymore. All this factors had some visible effects on Marlowe for him to create Tamburlaine. Limits of human potential has always been an interesting subject for thinkers.