Summary
5.1. The Governor of Damascus, accompanied by several citizens and the Virgins, bemoans the ferocity of Tamburlaine’s siege. He notes that the Scythian’s tents are now black, indicating that when Tamburlaine takes the city no one will survive. Nevertheless, he’s decided to send the Virgins out to beg Tamburlaine for mercy.
The Virgins rebuke him his stubbornness in not listening earlier to their pleas that he surrender while he had the chance. Now, they say, it may be too late. The Governor begs them, on behalf of all of the inhabitants of Damascus, to at least try to convince Tamburlaine. They agree, and the Governor exits.
5.2. Tamburlaine and his followers arrive and encounter the Virgins. Tamburlaine sees the Virgins and guesses immediately that they’ve come to beg him to spare Damascus. But, he tells them, they’ve missed their chance: they could have surrendered while the flags were still white, but now his honor binds him to stick to his custom. One of the Virgins gives a long speech entreating him to think of the women and children who had no say in the decision to hold out against him. But Tamburlaine refuses to reconsider. He commands his followers to take the Virgins away, kill them, and hang their bodies up on the walls of Damascus. They exit, and return having done as he asked; Tamburlaine orders them off to resume the siege.
Alone, Tamburlaine launches immediately into a soliloquy in which he apostrophizes Zenocrate. He laments the pain her concern for her father and her country is causing her. To him, she represents a Beauty that stems directly from the Muses, the source of poetry. Nothing else—not the sieges, nor the battles against all odds—has caused him so much internal turmoil. He considers the nature of the beauty of poetry, and concludes that Zenocrate’s beauty surpasses that of any possible poem. Yet he fears that the sway her beauty holds over him threatens his ability to honorably adhere to his word.
Several attendants interrupt his thoughts; he asks them to bring in Bajazeth and to find out whether his army has taken Damascus. His followers enter and tell him that they have indeed taken the city, but now the Soldan and the Arabian king are advancing on them with their armies. Meanwhile, Bajazeth is brought in, still in his cage, along with Zabina. Theridamas asks Tamburlaine once more to spare the Soldan and, surprisingly, he agrees. They exit, leaving Bajazeth and Zabina alone.
Both Bajazeth and Zabina curse Tamburlaine and wish defeat on him, but Bajazeth confesses that he feels his curses are worthless: Tamburlaine seems to be blessed with divine fortune. Both appear to despair of ever escaping their awful imprisonment. Zabina suggests that there’s no point in continuing to live. Though he seems to agree, Bajazeth asks her to fetch him some water. As soon as he exits, he declares in a soliloquy his decision to end his own life, and brains himself against the bars of his cage. Zabina returns to find him dead. Despairing, she quickly follows his example, killing herself in the same fashion.
Zenocrate enters, lamenting the fate of her countrymen and father to Anippe. How can Tamburlaine, who claims to love her, be so cruel to those she loves, she wonders. They then discover Bajazeth and Zabina, which prompts Zenocrate to discourse on the foolishness of “Those that are proud of fickle empery / And place their chiefest good in earthly pomp” (5.2.290-291). She seems the example of Bajazeth as a kind of warning to Tamburlaine of the fate meted out to those who live a life of conquest and war.
Philemus, a messenger, enters to bring the news that the Soldan and the King of Arabia have begun to battle with Tamburlaine. Again Zenocrate laments her situation, that she must choose whether to hope for victory for her father or her love. The battle sounds, with Tamburlaine victorious. The King of Arabia—to whom Zenocrate was originally betrothed—enters wounded, and praises Zenocrate before he dies.
Tamburlaine arrives leading the Soldan, defeated but alive. Zenocrate rejoices, and the Soldan expresses his admiration for Tamburlaine. Seeing that the Scythian has treated her honorably, the Soldan hardly regrets his loss of rule, and gives the couple his blessing. Tamburlaine decides that he’s finally won a crown worthy of Zenocrate, and crowns her as his empress. And as he prepares to finally marry Zenocrate, Tamburlaine seems finally satisfied with his conquests. Now, he says, “Tamburlaine takes truce with all the world” (5.2.466).
Analysis
This final act of the play (at least, of its first part) extends the shift from external to internal conflict established in Act 4. Here there’s little focus on the battles themselves, no exchanges of threats or speeches glorifying one army or another. The dramatic tension emerges from the tension Tamburlaine’s cruelty, relentless pursuit of worldly power, and commitment to what he calls his honor creates between both Tamburlaine and Zenocrate and within Tamburlaine himself.
Tamburlaine’s capacity to recognize and create beauty is a theme that runs throughout the play and is central to his unique character. But this trait, which sets him apart from your typical conquering warlord, doesn’t come into conflict with the bloodthirsty part of his nature until Act 5. Up to this point, Tamburlaine has consistently cited Zenocrate as a further inspiration for his will to rule—her beauty urges him to courageous acts, and he feels compelled to win a kingdom worthy of her.
Yet as his cruelty reaches its zenith with the heartless murder of the Virgins and the suicides of Bajazeth and Zabina, Tamburlaine begins to doubt himself for the first time. In fact, these two scenes form a pair of miniature allegories that inform our understanding of Tamburlaine’s psychological conflict and eventual transformation. Just after ordering the Virgins killed, Tamburlaine remarks, “I will not spare these proud Egyptians, / Nor change my martial observations / For all the wealth of Gihon’s golden waves, / Or for the love of Venus, would she leave / The angry god of arms and lie with me” (5.2.58-61). Mars and Venus can be seen as representing the conflicting claims that Zenocrate and Tamburlaine’s warlike nature have on Tamburlaine. Similarly, Zenocrate sees in the debasement and ultimate suicides of Bajazeth and Zabina a parable of the consequences of valuing earthly glory and pride above all else. Bajazeth’s decision to die alone, without Zabina, suggests that confronted with the choice outlined by Tamburlaine, he too chose Mars over Venus.
Yet Tamburlaine ultimately rebukes this choice, and the key to understanding why lies in the soliloquy that immediately follows the murder of the Virgins. He frames his dilemma explicitly in terms of a conflict between Beauty—associated with poetry—and Honor. One could see this soliloquy as both a reconsideration of the relationship between love or beauty and honor and of the nature of beauty itself. Even the greatest poem imaginable, Tamburlaine argues, “Wherein, as in a mirror, we perceive / the highest reaches of a human wit...Yet should hover in their [the poet’s] restless heads / One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least” (5.2.104-111).
Earlier we saw Tamburlaine confidently declare that “A god is not so glorious as a king,” recognizing no greater values than those within the reach of humankind here on earth (2.5.57). But now in Zenocrate’s beauty Tamburlaine seems to see a figure of an object of desire that exceeds his—and all people’s—capacity to obtain or even conceive of it. The “mirror” of poetry, because it only reflects nature as ordered by “the highest reaches of a human wit,” will always fail to capture the quality of otherworldliness of which Zenocrate’s beauty is a sign. He decides that “every warrior that is rapt with love / Of fame, of valor, and of victory, / Must needs have beauty beat on his conceits” (5.2.117-119). His warlike nature must be tempered by the influence of beauty; to avoid the fate of men like Bajazeth, the desire for earthly rule must not eclipse the existence of value beyond the material.
Tamburlaine, “Thus conceiving and subduing both” (honor and beauty), reaches a psychological compromise that allows him to be both merciful and honorable. With the help of Zenocrate he conquers his own will to conquer, a victory that allows him to finally “take truce with all the world.”
