That cannot make a step to gain a crown; / No word shall pass the office of
my tongue, / That sounds not of affection to a crown”—and so on, and
doggedly on ( 2. 2. 69 – 74 ). Here is Tamburlaine’s signal fetishization of “the
sweet fruition of an earthly crown,” his “perfect bliss and sole felicity,” writ
in bold redundancy (Tamb. I 2. 6. 68 – 69 ).^62 But, as Peele’s parodic invoca-
tion of Marlowe’s imperializing superconqueror emphasizes, Stukeley is not
Tamburlaine, who also “love[s] to live at liberty” (Tamb. I 1. 2. 26 ) but who,
by absorbing or annihilating every party in his path, means to be “monarch”
not of any single kingdom but of all kingdoms. Before Stukeley is rerouted
to Africa, his defining ambition is—simply, provincially, in contrast to Tam-
burlaine’s—to be the “King of Ireland” ( 2. 2. 80 – 81 ). His explanation for his
choice—“king of a mole-hill had I rather be, / Than the richest subject of a
monarchy” ( 2. 2. 81 – 82 )—is telling. For while he makes a distinction here be-
tween a mole-hill and a monarchy, the major boundary he imagines cross-
ing is of class. There is little difference between one state, one crown, one
monarchy, and another; the difference that signifies lies between subject and
king.
It is perhaps not so surprising then that, after Alcazar, Stukeley’s reputa-
tion as a worldly renegade is tempered notably by representations that mold
him into an English national hero. In If You Know Not Me, Heywood praises
him in passing as “that renowned Englishman, / That had a spirit equal with
a king” and “in warlike strife, / Honord his country, and concluded life” ( 293 ).
AlthoughThe Famous Historybegins with Stukeley’s troubled start as a “lewd
misordred villaine” ( 279 ), it ends with his redemption as one of England’s
finest. There, in what is largely domestic comedy, Stukeley competes for a
wife against his English rival Vernon in order to gain access, everyone rightly
fears, to her father’s wealth. Though both he and Vernon leave the country
and tour the world, the humor and the hitch revolve around the constant co-
incidence of their paths. The play climaxes on the fields of Alcazar, where the
two join in a ritual of forgiveness, with Stukeley declaring them of “one selfe
heart” and “one country” ( 2938 – 39 ), and their “English bloud,” the last of its
kind spent in Barbary ( 29 – 45 ). At the end, Stukeley’s followers kill him, but
not before Vernon sacrifices himself in an attempt to save his countryman—
their deaths together demonstrating an English solidarity, which melodramat-
ically redeems all. In addition, decades later, Fuller’s History of the Worthies of
England( 1662 ) will write Stukeley’s monarchical ambitions into an apoc-
ryphal English anecdote. Clearly echoing Peele, Fuller explains that Stukeley
was “so confident” in “his ambition”
Enter Barbary 39