Christopher Marlowe, (1564 –1593)

Dido, Queen of Carthage, II.1.213-5 
Hamlet:
Now is he total gules, horridly trick’d 
With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, 
Bak’d and impasted with the parching streets, ... 
Hamlet, II.2.454-5 
Aeneas:
Which he disdaining whisk’d his sword about, 
And with the wound thereof the King fell down. 
Dido, Queen of Carthage, II.1.253-4 
Hamlet:
Pyrrhus at Priam drives, in rage strikes wide; 
But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword, 
Th’unnerved father falls.
Hamlet, II.2.468-470 

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8 
Tamburlaine the Great
. Part I (1587), Part II (1588)
Loosely based on the life of the Central Asian emperor, Timur 'the lame'. The play is a milestone in 
Elizabethan public drama, marking a turning away from the clumsy language and loose plots of the 
earlier Tudor dramatists and a new interest in fresh and vivid language, memorable action, and intellectual 
complexity. Along with Thomas Kyd's 
The Spanish Tragedy
, it is considered the first popular success 
of London's public stage. 
Marlowe influenced playwrights well into the Jacobean period, and echoes of Tamburlaine's bombast and 
ambition can be found in English plays all the way to the Puritan closing of the theatres in 1642.