complains, and in China beyond the Great Wall, as Milton remembered,

across the barren plains

Of Sericana, the Chineses drive

With sails and wind, their cany waggons light.

All this, though geographically reprehensible, must have been of untold value in stimulating the fancy and imagination of the student.

It is difficult to compute how many copies of the Theatrum found their way into England; that Englishmen did buy it, we know from the letters of Ortelius himself.1 Some college libraries would acquire it, and the collections of diplomatists and antiquarians could hardly afford to be without it. The close relations existing between noblemen, adventurers, scholars, and poets of the period make it probable that the latter had little difficulty in consulting such a book. Lord Lumley's library, to which Hakluyt had access, and of which Humfrey Lluyd was librarian, would almost certainly have a copy. Sir Walter Raleigh, who, according to Aubrey, always took a box full of books on his voyages, was not the man to be deterred from possessing one by its high cost.

6

There is then every possibility that Marlowe could see and even consult the Theatrum, although the library of Corpus Christi College has now no copy; 2 the query, can it be proved that he did so, is more searching. The proof seems to lie in one of his very mistakes'. In the map of Africa, Zanzibar the island is duly marked on the east coast as Zenzibar, but a far more imposing Zanzibar, a province, appears in large type as the 'Westerne part of Affrike', precisely where Marlowe places it. A closer survey of the map shows that Techelles, in the account of his triumphal march (II Tamburlaine, i. 6), is merely transcribing into verse some of the salient names of the map. His first march passes

1 One copy was bought by a certain Mr. Garth, surely that Mr. Richard Garthe, 'one of the Clearkes of the Pettie Bags', in whose cabinets Hakluyt delightedly beheld 'strange curiosities'.

2 For this information I am indebted to the courtesy of the Librarian of the College.

along the riuer Nile,

To Machda, where the mighty Christian Priest,
Cal'd Iohn the great, sits in a milk-white robe.

The eye is drawn to Machda, an Abyssinian town on a tributary of the Nile, by the neighbouring note: Hic longe lateq; imperitat magnus princeps Presbiter Tões totius Africę potentiss: Rex. Techelles continues:

From thence vnto Cazates did I martch,

Wher Amazonians met me in the field.

Where the Nile rises in a great unnamed lake, the district Cafates has for its chief town Cazates, and is called Amazonum regio. Then comes the crux:

And with my power did march to Zansibar
The Westerne part of Affrike, where I view'd
The Ethiopian sea, riuers and lakes:

But neither man nor child in al the land.

Beside Cape Negro appears in large print the province-name ZANZIBAR, with the note: hec pars Africe meridionalis que veteribus incognita fuit, a Persis Arabibusq; scriptoribus vocatur. Between this western part and South America the sea is named Oceanus Ethiopicus in flourished letters; in the province small rivers abound, and to north and south of the name Zanzibar is that word so useful to the cartographer in difficulties, Deserta. Marlowe, it must be observed, is therefore vindicated when he speaks of Zanzibar as not on the western coast, but as itself the western part. He is equally explicit later, when Tamburlaine examines his map and accepts his general's conquests as his own; reversing the actual order of march, he passes

along the Ethiopian sea,

Cutting the Tropicke line of Capricorne,

I conquered all as far as Zansibar. (Part II, v. iii.)

Actually the name Zanzibar is to the north of the Tropic, but the coloured maps make it clear that the province includes the whole southern portion of the continent, from Cape Negro to the Cape of Good Hope and so round to Mozambique. In this location of the province Zanzibar, or more commonly Zanguebar,

on the western coast, Ortelius is at variance with many contemporary authorities, and the map of Africa by Gastaldo (1564), which otherwise he followed very closely, does not include it at all. Later cosmographers, such as Livio Sanuto, make its eastern position quite clear. The transference is possibly due to a confused understanding of Marmol, who, with Barros, is referred to in the introductory notes to the map. In any case, the responsibility for that oft-emended western rests with Ortelius, not with our Marlowe.

Techelles has reached his southernmost point; turning northwards, he passes successively through Manico, by the coast of Byather, and so 'to Cubar, where the Negros dwell'. On the map, Manico, curtailed by Marlowe for his metre, appears in full style as the province Manicongo, Byather the province in its more correct and modern form of Biafar, while above the province and town of Guber is printed in bold type Nigritarum Regio. Then comes the last stage of the journey:

[I] made haste to Nubia,

There hauing sackt Borno the Kingly seat,

I took the king, and lead him bound in chaines
Vnto Damasco.

In the map, Borno, the chief town of Nubia, lies near the shore of Borno lacus, that Borno Lake' which Tamburlaine himself mentions later. So ends a passage in which one can almost follow Marlowe's finger travelling down the page as he plans the campaign; it is difficult to know whether his memory or the printer is responsible for the slight differences of spelling.

Almost beyond doubt, then, Marlowe knew Ortelius's map of Africa, for he could not have obtained all this detail from the representation of Africa in the much-reproduced map of the world, from which many of his chosen names are omitted, notably Zanzibar itself. It does not, however, follow that he knew the whole atlas, for separate maps were commonly reproduced in cosmographies. Tamburlaine is sown almost as thick with place-names as the sky with stars; can it be shown that any of these, outside Africa, are derived from Ortelius? A close examination of the geographical names in Tambur

laine leads to an interesting conclusion. In Part I, Marlowe works on a large scale, without much detail; his armies move through continents and countries, and the provinces mentioned are such as were familiar to men of any education : : Media, Armenia, Syria, Tartary. Not more than ten towns are named, and most of these were commonplaces to an Elizabethan : Constantinople, Argier, Damascus, Venice, Morocco. Many of the names and epithets, such as Græcia, Parthia, the Euxine, the ever-raging Caspian Lake, would be familiar to any student of the classics, and Persepolis plays the part later taken by Samarkand, Tamburlaine's own town, which is not so much as named here. The setting is almost completely bounded by medieval geography; only twice does the Elizabethan, with his knowledge of a new hemisphere, break away beyond 'Alcides' posts', as when, with a side-glance at Drake's exploit, and a lordly disregard of chronology, he makes Tamburlaine's ambition reach

and again

'to th' Anta[r]tique Pole',

Euen from Persepolis to Mexico,

And thence vnto the straightes of Tubalter.'

In Part II, however, provinces of more recent interest are called by their contemporary names, such as Natolia, Amasia, Caramania. The Euxine becomes also the Mare Magiore, the Red Sea is also named Mare Roso. Some thirty towns are mentioned, many of which are written off a modern map, and some are so little known that commentators have either passed them over in silence, or else have arbitrarily identified them by mere resemblance of sound, with slight regard for the importance of their site in the action. Did Ortelius furnish Marlowe with any of these? A glance at the titles of his maps shows that many could well be useful: Tartaria, Persia Regnum, Terra Sancta, Egyptia, Natolia, Turcicum Imperium.1 Within

1 The early date, and the frequency of editions and translations of the Theatrum with its Pareryon, make it difficult to draw conclusions for the date of either Part of Tamburlaine. I have cited here a coloured copy of 1584 (British Museum, Maps, C. 2. d. 1) as being near in time to the assumed date of the play.

these bounds the characters of Part II have their being, as a brief survey of the action will recall.

Two lines of movement can be followed, that of the Turkish army and that of Tamburlaine's forces. The play opens with the Turks at their outposts on the Danube. Under fear of Tamburlaine's pressure on their eastern frontiers, they make a truce with the Christians, withdraw their troops into Asia Minor, are checked by news of treacherous pursuit, and, halting, give battle at a place not precisely named, but apparently in the neighbourhood of Mount Orminius. Meanwhile Tamburlaine, who at the close of Part I was in Egypt,' at truce with all the world', is after many years again on the march, and we hear of him at Alexandria, Larissa, and Aleppo. The gradual approach of the two armies draws to a meeting, and a battle is fought, again unnamed, but seemingly near the confines of Natolia, not far from Aleppo. Then Tamburlaine, with his train of captive kings, turns to subdue Babylon, to conquer the rallying Turks, his last victory, and to oppose the wrath and tyranny of death', his only defeat.

Such is the main outline of the action; whether Marlowe shows reasonable exactitude in his plan and in the details, is a question that Ortelius may help to resolve. It would be well first to recall the rather different nomenclature of the sixteenth century. Natolia is much more than the modern Anatolia ; it is the whole promontory of Asia Minor, with a boundary running approximately from the modern Bay of Iskenderûn eastward towards Aleppo, and then north to Batum on the Black Sea. Of this region Marlowe only twice uses the names Asia Minor or Asia the Less, while Asia and Asia Major denote either the whole continent, or the part of Asia beyond this boundary. Orcanes, king of Natolia, exactly describes its importance when he says:

My realme, the Center of our Empery,
Once lost, All Turkie would be ouerthrowne.
(Part II, I. i.)

In Part I, however, there are signs that Marlowe follows medieval authority in using Africa to denote the Turkish empire,