and episodes and lacks some of the cohesion of the preceding part. Publication The play (in both parts) was entered into the Stationers' Register on 14 August 1590. Both parts were published together in a single black letter octavo that same year by the printer Richard Jones; its text is usually referred to as O1. A second edition was issued by Jones in 1592, and a third reprint appeared in 1597, essentially reprinting the text of the first edition. The plays were next published separately in quarto by the bookseller Edward White, Part 1 in 1605 and Part 2 in 1606, which reprinted the text of the 1597 printing. Although Christopher Marlowe was not actually cited as the author in the first printings of the play – no author is named – and the first clear attributions to Marlowe are much later than 1590, scholars attribute the play to Marlowe based on similarities to his other works. Many passages in Tamburlaine foreshadow and echo passages from others of his works, and there is a clear parallel between the character development in Tamburlaine and that of the majority of Marlowe's other characters. This evidence alone leads scholars to believe with virtual unanimity that Marlowe wrote Tamburlaine. Critical reception The influence of Tamburlaine on the drama of the 1590s cannot be overstated. The play exemplified, and in some cases created, many of the typical features of high Elizabethan drama: grandiloquent and often beautiful imagery, hyperbolic expression, and strong characters consumed by overwhelming passions. The first recorded comments on the play are negative. A letter written in 1587 relates the story of a child being killed by the accidental discharge of a firearm during a performance, and the next year Robert Greene, in the course of an attack on Marlowe, condemned the "atheistic Tamburlaine" in the epistle to Perimedes the Blacksmith. That most playgoers (and playwrights) responded with enthusiasm is amply demonstrated by the proliferation of Asian tyrants and "aspiring minds" in the drama of the 1590s. Marlowe's influence on many characters in Shakespeare's history plays has been noted by, among others, Algernon Swinburne. Stephen Greenblatt considers it likely that Tamburlaine was among the first London plays that Shakespeare saw, an experience that directly inspired his early work such as the three Henry VI plays. By the early years of the 17th century, this hyberbolic language had gone out of style. Shakespeare himself