"Tamburlaine wasn't censored
David Farr
Friday November 25, 2005
The Guardian
It was reported yesterday that David Farr's production of Tamburlaine the Great had been censored to avoid upsetting Muslims. Here the director and adaptor of the play responds.
.......When the play proved a smash hit, like all good Hollywood writers, Marlowe wrote a sequel (part two), with another Turkish antagonist, more beatings and more cruelty. Marlowe's were not the only Turk-bashing plays of the time (others included A Christian Turned Turk by Robert Daborne and Selimus by Robert Greene), but his were the best. In both parts he gave his audience lashings of anti-Turk delights - brainings, whippings and burnings. Tamburlaine is partly a gleefully racist comedy. And they loved it all the more for that........"
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