I Hold The Fates Bound Fast

Spoken by Tamburlaine in Act 1, Scene 2 of Tamburlaine the Great (c. 1587), when Tamburlaine, outnumbered five hundred foot-soldiers to a thousand cavalry, attempts to persuade the Persian general Theridamas to defect. Rather than offer conventional terms, he launches a speech of pure rhetorical will, binding the mythological Fates themselves in chains. The audacity works: Theridamas is "won with thy words and conquered with thy looks." Marlowe's image inverts the Prometheus myth — here it is fate, not man, that is chained.