Tamburlaine, the 'Scourge of God'

The title-page of Marlowe's Tamburlaine (1590) presents “two Tragicall Discourses” concerning a mighty monarch who “(for his tyranny, and terrour in Warre) was rearmed, The Scourge of God.” A dozen times in the play Tamburlaine calls our attention to his title; and the last syllables of his dying breath are devoted to announcing it. “Scourge of God,” however, is no mere phrase that happened to catch the playwright's fancy; it is a definitive concept which signifies a pattern of human behavior and of divine destiny.