The Rhetoric of Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine Essays -- Christophe

The Rhetoric of Christopher Marlowes Tamburlaine The hero of Christopher Marlowes Tamburlaine the Great did not lead the life of any ordinary Scythian shepherd. passim the course of the drama, the once lowly Tamburlaine is bent on a path of unstoppable conquest, upheld as much by intense personal charisma and precedent of speech as by the strength of his sword. He exemplifies this eloquence through kayoed his many speeches in the play, not least of which is his Thirst of Reign address to the overcome usurper of the Persian crget. Tamburlaines speech is delivered with the intention of justifying, to Cosroe and all others present, the righteousness of his own ambitions, and inviting them to share in the aforementioned(prenominal). He achieves this end by skillfully employing in his speech Aristotles three canonized methods of persuasion logos, pathos, and ethos. Tamburlaine begins his address with a subtle use of ethos, an appeal to his own credib ility as a loss leader worthy of respect. He does this by comparing his own desire for the sweetness of a crown to that of mighty Jove, who threw his father Ops down from the heavenly chair for this same reason. By this line of persuasion, Tamburlaine is following in the very footsteps of the mighty god, and fulfilling a goal established as worthy by a most noble precedent. This comparison serves to glorify his bloody path, and subtly clarifies him as a mighty persona in majestic uprising, not simply a violent, sheep-herding rebel. Tamburlaines bolstering of his own person is followed by a justification of the very act of ambitious conquest by means of logos, a logical appeal to reason. He argues that temperamentDoth teach us all to have aspiring... ...nd morally questionable to audience and readers alike. The depiction of ruthless conquest as an admirable and heroic endeavor could plainly be done successfully if it were shielded by language as beautiful as it is capable of persuasion. Despite this quality of speech, there is a authoritative weakness in the address that the modern reader is privy to the idea of four warring elements composing our frames is quaintly erroneous. Aristotle himself would be quick to point out that a logical argument based on faulty assumptions is a faulty argument, so Tamburlaines use of logos in this speech ring somewhat hollow on ears which can pick out the flaw in his persuasions. Not that this flaw would come as a surprise to an enlightened modern reader, as they would likely already distrust any justification of violent domination that history has repeatedly shown to be far from admirable.