Prayer is a distinctive speech act that appears everywhere and in many forms in early modern plays, including Shakespeare's. (1) This is not because playwrights were particularly pious but because they wrote in the speech of their time, in which prayer had long since become a familiar habit--not only in church but also in the privacy of ones home, in everyday speech, in theological controversy, and in the theatre. (2) Prayer included everything from simple petitions for personal favors to formation of the self before God in richly poetic language, as numerous English translations of the Hebrew psalms make clear, to say nothing of the poetry of John Donne and George Herbert. (3) In writing prayers, playwrights for the early commercial stage in London followed long-standing precedent from the beginning of playwriting in English. In the fifteenth-century Towneley Plays from the north of England, a gifted anonymous playwright imagined the distinctive sacrifices by Cain and Abel, with each of the brothers praying as he makes his offering. The same playwright had Herod pray anachronistically to "Mahowne" (Mohammed). In the earliest extant commercial play in English, called simply Mankind, a talented anonymous author in fifteenth-century East Anglia made prayer the focus of his generic story of Christian formation. In the Digby Mary Magdalen, also from East Anglia, near the turn of the sixteenth century, Mary the sister of Lazarus recognizes the divinity of Jesus and prays to him on behalf of her brother. More than a century after the Towneley Herod first prayed to Mohammed, Marlowe's Tamburlaine followed his example--albeit with unprecedented defiance and ambiguity. Each playwright's way of imagining prayer is distinctive, and this essay will consider Marlowe's and Jonson's, which contrast illuminatingly not only with each other but also with the diverse and inventive prayers written by Shakespeare. (4) Marlowe's contribution was a mordant way of treating prayer that nearly always undermined it. Caustic skepticism is fully formed in the blockbuster called Tamburlaine that introduced Marlowe stunningly to the London theatre scene earlier than Shakespeare, though both playwrights were born in the same year and in the same social stratum. Many people pray in Tamburlaine, Part 1, but Tamburlaine himself is not one of them. He speaks and acts with an audacity that had been traditionally associated with overweening villains, implicitly denying the supplicatory gestures of those who pray, yet he pays no price for his actions and attitude; on the contrary, his boasts are unanswered, and his conquests are inexorable. His lover Zenocrate fears for him, voicing moral trepidation as she intercedes on his behalf with "mighty Jove and holy Mahomet" because Tamburlaine is so violent and merciless: Pardon my love, O, pardon his contempt Of earthly fortune and respect of pity, And let not conquest ruthlessly pursued Be equally against his life incensed In this great Turk and hapless emperess! (5) Her prayer assumes that overweening ambition will inevitably be punished, and she asks that the inevitable not happen to Tamburlaine. Her petition is granted in that he conquers unharmed, but given Tamburlaine's defiant rhetoric and unhindered triumph, the point is that her prayer exhibits effeminate weakness and a misunderstanding on her part of where the true power of the world (and of the play) lies--not with Jove or Mahomet but with Tamburlaine himself. That is why Tamburlaine does not pray. Prayer in 2 Tamburlaine is more complex than in the first play. On one hand, the ambiguities surrounding prayer continue. Sigismond, for example, who is the treacherous defender of Constantinople against the Turks, dies after his Muslim opponent, Orcanes, prays to the Christian God for his Christian enemy's destruction: Thou Christ, that art esteemed omnipotent, If thou wilt prove thyself a perfect God Worthy the worship of all faithful hearts, Be now revenged upon this traitors soul, And make the power I have left behind (Too little to defend our guiltless lives) Sufficient to discomfort and confound The trustless force of those false Christians. …

中文翻译：

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马洛和琼森的舞台祈祷

祈祷是一种独特的言语行为，在包括莎士比亚在内的早期现代戏剧中以多种形式出现在任何地方。(1) 这不是因为剧作家特别虔诚，而是因为他们在他们那个时代的演讲中写作，在这个时代，祈祷早已成为一种熟悉的习惯——不仅在教堂里，而且在家里的隐私中，在日常讲话中，在神学争论中，在戏剧中。(2) 祷告包括一切，从简单的个人恩惠祈求到在上帝面前以富有诗意的语言形成自我，正如许多希伯来诗篇的英文译本所清楚地表明的那样，更不用说约翰·多恩和乔治·赫伯特的诗歌了。(3) 在撰写祈祷文时，伦敦早期商业舞台的剧作家沿用了英语剧本创作之初的长期先例。在 15 世纪英格兰北部的汤尼利戏剧中，一位才华横溢的匿名剧作家想象了该隐和亚伯的独特牺牲，每个兄弟在献祭时都在祈祷。同一位剧作家让希律不合时宜地向“Mahowne”（穆罕默德）祈祷。在现存最早的英语商业戏剧中，简称为“人类”，十五世纪东英吉利一位才华横溢的匿名作家将祈祷作为他关于基督教形成的一般故事的重点。在 16 世纪初，同样来自东安格利亚的马利亚·马格达伦 (Digby Mary Magdalen) 中，拉撒路 (Lazarus) 的妹妹玛丽 (Mary) 承认耶稣的神性，并代表她的兄弟向他祈祷。在汤尼利希律第一次向穆罕默德祈祷后一个多世纪，马洛 s Tamburlaine 效仿了他的榜样——尽管他的态度是前所未有的蔑视和模棱两可。每位剧作家想象祈祷的方式都是独一无二的，本文将考虑马洛和琼森的，它们不仅相互鲜明，而且与莎士比亚所写的多样化和创造性的祈祷形成鲜明对比。(4) 马洛的贡献是一种对待祈祷的尖锐方式，几乎总是破坏它。刻薄的怀疑完全在名为《坦伯林》的大片中形成，这部大片比莎士比亚更早地将马洛惊人地引入了伦敦的戏剧界，尽管这两位剧作家出生于同一年，并处于同一社会阶层。许多人在坦伯林，第 1 部分祈祷，但坦伯林本人不是其中之一。他说话和行动的胆量历来与自负的恶棍有关，含蓄地否认祈祷者的恳求姿态，但他不为自己的行为和态度付出任何代价；相反，他的夸耀没有得到回应，他的征服是无情的。他的情人 Zenocrate 为他担心，当她代表他向“强大的 Jove 和神圣的穆罕默德”说情时表达了道德上的恐惧，因为 Tamburlaine 是如此暴力和无情：请原谅我的爱人，哦，原谅他对尘世财富的蔑视和对怜悯的尊重，让不要无情地追求征服 在这个伟大的土耳其人和不幸的女皇身上，同样反对他的生命！(5) 她的祈祷假设自负的野心将不可避免地受到惩罚，她要求坦布林不要发生这种不可避免的事情。她的请求得到批准，因为他没有受到伤害，但鉴于坦伯林的挑衅言论和不受阻碍的胜利，关键是她的祈祷表现出柔弱的软弱和她对世界（和戏剧）真正力量所在的部分的误解 - - 不是与 Jove 或 Mahomet，而是与 Tamburlaine 本人。这就是坦布林不祈祷的原因。2 Tamburlaine 中的祈祷比第一部中的更复杂。一方面，围绕祈祷的模糊性仍在继续。例如，西吉斯蒙德是君士坦丁堡对抗土耳其人的背信弃义的捍卫者，在他的穆斯林对手奥卡尼斯为他的基督教敌人的毁灭向基督教上帝祈祷后去世：你是基督，被认为是全能的，如果你愿意证明自己是一个完美的人神配得所有忠心的敬拜，现在报复这个叛徒的灵魂，让我留下的力量（太少，无法捍卫我们无罪的生活）足以使那些假基督徒的不信任力量感到不安和困惑。…