Marlowe's "Studious Artisans" : learning the language of power

Christopher Marlowe freed the theatre of his day from its "jigging veins of rhyming mother-wits"; he replaced that with a language all his own—the language of aspiration. His most memorable characters, Tamburlaine, Barabas, Faustus, and Edward, speak that language in an effort to fashion themselves and their worlds into what they desire. Tamburlaine, through his "working words," would get for himself "perfect bliss" by conquering one "earthly crown" after another; Barabas would try to "enclose infinite riches in a little room"; Faustus, despite his vast learning, would attempt through magic to attain "worlds of profit and delight"; Edward would simply desire some "nook or corner" in which to escape the intrigues of his court and "frolic" with his Gaveston. Each aspires to attain the power that would remove all boundaries or limitations which defeat ordinary men. Yet each is unable to fulfill his desire through words alone. He must master the language of spectacle as well as the spoken language of aspiration in attempting to attain unlimited power.

Only Tamburlaine, perhaps not Marlowe's most studious artisan but certainly his most successful, is able to appreciate fully that he must be a lord in deed as well as word—that he must translate his spoken word into visual spectacle. But each successive protagonist is prevented from grasping the object of his desire through his increasing inability to manipulate either the language of aspiration or the language of spectacle. Each fails utterly in his attempt to procure and to exercise unlimited power.

We realize, however, that each character's failure is the playwright's triumph. Marlowe demonstrates in his most famous plays—Tamburlaine the Great, The Jew of Malta, Doctor Faustus, and Edward II--the power of spoken word and spectacle, working counter to each other and in purposeful conjunction, which leads his audience toward its own recognition of each hero's ultimate impotence.