Article
Richard Jones’ Tamburlaine the Great, or How to Print an Early Modern Play and Sequel
Sixteenth Century Journal
(2020)
Abstract
The Lord Admiral’s Men performed 1 Tamburlaine sometime before 1588 and shortly thereafter put on its sequel. However, when the printer Richard Jones published the two plays together, a few years later, in 1590, he resorted to a collected edition and labeled the two plays a “discourse” “divided” into “two parts.” In other words, Jones ignored the plays’ performance history and published 1 and 2 Tamburlaine as though they formed a single dramatic entity. He moreover changed the play's genre, made a number of cuts, added paratextual material, and chose an unusual book format: the octavo. This article argues that Jones published the plays in a collected, two-part edition hoping that the format would increase the prestige of his publication and appeal to an educated, upwardly mobile readership. By publishing Marlowe’s work as though Marlowe were an established author, Jones hoped that he could make him one. The piece suggests that it is important to understand Jones’ editorial and marketing choices because it is Jones’ Tamburlaine, rather than Marlowe's, that we read and perform today.
Disciplines
Publication Date
2020
Citation Information
Carla Baricz. "Richard Jones’ Tamburlaine the Great, or How to Print an Early Modern Play and Sequel" Sixteenth Century Journal Vol. 51 Iss. 2 (2020) p. 27 - 52 ISSN: 0361-0160 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/carla-baricz/2/
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