Extract from Tamburlaine by Christopher Marlowe.
TAMBURLAINE.
.....Give me a map; then let me see how much
Is left for me to conquer all the world,
That these, my boys, may finish all my wants.
[One brings a map.]
Here I began to march towards Persia,
Along Armenia and the Caspian Sea,
And thence unto 307 Bithynia, where I took
The Turk and his great empress prisoners.
Then march'd I into Egypt and Arabia;
And here, not far from Alexandria,
Whereas 308 the Terrene 309 and the Red Sea meet,
Being distant less than full a hundred leagues,
I meant to cut a channel to them both,
That men might quickly sail to India.
]From thence to Nubia near Borno-lake,
And so along the Aethiopian sea,
Cutting the tropic line of Capricorn,
I conquer'd all as far as Zanzibar.
Then, by the northern part of Africa,
I came at last to Graecia, and from thence
To Asia, where I stay against my will;
Which is from Scythia, where I first began, 310
Backward[s] and forwards near five thousand leagues.
Look here, my boys; see, what a world of ground
Lies westward from the midst of Cancer's line
Unto the rising of this 311 earthly globe,
Whereas the sun, declining from our sight,
Begins the day with our Antipodes!
And shall I die, and this unconquered?
Lo, here, my sons, are all the golden mines,
Inestimable drugs and precious stones,
More worth than Asia and the world beside;
And from th' Antarctic Pole eastward behold
As much more land, which never was descried,
Wherein are rocks of pearl that shine as bright
As all the lamps that beautify the sky!
And shall I die, and this unconquered?
Here, lovely boys; what death forbids my life,
That let your lives command in spite of death.......
