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Tamburlaine’s Seductive Terror by Geoffrey O’Brien | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books http://ur1.ca/ivva8

Tamburlaine was in the first place a history lesson, whatever its reliability: a synopsis for London theatergoers of earthshaking events not all that distant in place or time. The historic Tamerlane died at the beginning of the fifteenth century, after carving out an immense empire stretching from Turkey to India and embracing large swaths of Mesopotamia, Persia, and central Asia. An inevitable eerie accompaniment to a modern production is the sense of a war begun long ago that continues to unfold. The geographic names with which the text is dotted—Syria, Egypt, Turkey, Gaza, Arabia, the Red Sea—provide their own form of commentary without any directorial intervention. The history of the present moment becomes a co-author, adding its own expressive footnotes. As death closes in, Tamburlaine studies a map of the world, tracing his victories and… http://ur1.ca/ivva9