Leech, Clifford. “The Structure of ‘Tamburlaine.’” The Tulane Drama Review. 8.4.
(1964): 32-46.

[Mycetes engages in] a puerile imitation of regal language. 33

[Agydas’s death] It is the first time we have seen the death of one of Tamburlaine’s enemies away from the battlefield, the first hint that the price of Tamburlaine’s assertion may be high. 35

Professor G.I. Duthie has argued that dramatic shape is given to I Tamburlaine through the conflict that arises in the hero’s mind between his passion for conquest and his passion for Zenocrate, which leads him to feel an impulse to tenderness and finally to spare Zenocrate’s father. Certainly we have seen him changing his mind about the Soldan, and have noticed a new touch of pity in his words to the Virgins of Damascus. 37

the slaughter of the Virgins shows Tamburlaine in the trap of his own commitment; 38

In fact, the sparing of the Soldan, like the glimpse of pity when Tamburlaine see the Virgins, like the final truce-making with the world, appears a nugatory gesture which runs counter to the general direction which Tamburlaine must now follow. We have seen, moreover, that the adversaries of Tamburlaine are differently presented from one another: increasingly he is opposed to men with a better cause. 38

Moreover, there is one prominent feature of Part II which is characteristic of sequels—the free use of incidents which parallel incidents in the original play. 38

2. The silent rebuke of Agydas in Part I, followed by his receiving the dagger, has an affiliation with the killing of Calyphas, who is not allowed to speak when his father returns for the execution. There is inversion here, not merely in the matter of the silence (of Tamburlaine in Part I, of his victim in Part II) but in the fact that Calyphas has damaged Tamburlaine’s glory with a touch of absurd comment. The disposal of Agydas, though pathetic in relation to the victim, is triumphant for Tamburlaine. 39

This is Tamburlaine’s revenge for the funeral rites which the concubines have given to Calyphas. 40

The taking of Damascus was part of Tamburlaine’s campaign against the Soldan; the taking of Babylon is an isolated incident in what appears to be indiscriminate conquest. 40

7. The suicide of Olympia after her husband’s death corresponds to Zabena’s suicide following Bajazeth’s. But Tamburlaine is not involved in the incident in Part II, and Theridamas’ love for Olympia contrasts with the general indifference to Zabena when she lived. 40

It will be apparent that the parallels are in each case incomplete, and that the general effect of the difference is to make Tamburlaine’s stature shrink even as he tries to magnify it. This is reinforced in several other ways in Part II. 40

He can kill Calyphas, but cannont silence our memory of the boy’s ridicule. 41

Tamburlaine has made a pact with himself, in disregard of other human beings (even, ultimately, of Zenocrate) and of cosmic processes. 41

it is true that Bajazeth’s and Zabena’s escape through suicide suggests a limit to his power, but it is not a limit that exists within the frame of a lifetime; and, though at the end there is a conflict between the claims of conquest and beauty, it does not diminish Tamburlaine’s avowed self-confidence or his power to do what his resolved will chooses. 45