Tamerlane

About the show

Tamerlane is a 1701 history play by the English writer Nicholas Rowe. A tragedy, it portrays the life of the Timur, the fourteenth century conqueror and founder of the Timurid Empire. Rowe, a staunch Whig, used the historical story as an allegory for the life of William III who resembles his portrayal of Tamerlane while his opponent the Ottoman leader Bayezid I was equivalent to William's longstanding opponent Louis XIV of France. An earlier version of the story Tamburlaine was written by Christopher Marlowe during the Elizabethan era with a very different focus in the context of the English Renaissance. It was first performed in December 1701 at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre in London, one of the two patent theatres of the era, and was published the following year by Jacob Tonson. The original cast included Thomas Betterton as Tamerlane, John Verbruggen as Bajazet, Barton Booth as Axalla, William Powell as Moneses, George Pack as Stratocles, William Fieldhouse as Prince of Tanais, John Freeman as Omar, John Corey as Mirvan, Benjamin Husband as Zama, Elizabeth Barry as Arpasia and Anne Bracegirdle as Selima. Betterton spoke the prologue and the play was dedicated to the Whig politician Lord Hartington, the future Duke of Devonshire. Rowe's play was partly framed as a riposte to the Tory-supporting work about Timur The Generous Conqueror by Bevil Higgons, which endorsed direct hereditary monarchy. It was first performed following the death of the deposed James II and the succession of his French-backed young son James as the Jacobite claimant to the throne, and in this context Rowe arguably used it to suggest that the coming war with France was "an obligation, not a choice". In addition the character of the Italian Prince Axalla was modelled on Prince Eugene of Savoy, an Austrian commander who had come to fame in the Great Turkish War and would subsequently become a popular figure in Britain fighting alongside the Duke of Marlborough.