Marlowe’s War Horses: Cyborgs, Soldiers, and Queer Companions

Abstract

Tamburlaine, Marlowe’s excessively gory two-part war play, has drawn exhaustive attention from critics for its dramatization of the protagonist’s project of global violence and subjugation as Tamburlaine marshals hordes of soldiers to the battlefield, and the conqueror penetrates, cleaves, and slaughters his way to worldwide domination. Yet as much as the play “brings a world of people to the field” (Tamb. 2 1.1.67),1 it also harnesses a multitude of horses, and the latter often glean more attention than the former. While men certainly outnumber horses, which would be verisimilitude, given that by the 1590s gunpowder greatly reduced the practicality of heavy cavalry in warfare, it is to the bodies of equines that both exemplary and wannabe soldiers hitch their most lavish violent and erotic longings. Few of the play’s many male soldiers are described in detail, yet its horses “sweat with martial spoil” (Tamb.1 1. 2.190), foam with “rage and high disdain” (Tamb. 1 1.1.63), and prance “disdainfully / With wanton paces” on the battlefield (Tamb. 1 4.1.23–4).

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