Images of the Muslim Woman in Early Modern English Drama: Queens, Eves, and Furies 1793625220, 9781793625229

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Images of the Muslim Woman in Early Modern English Drama

Images of the Muslim Woman in Early Modern English Drama Queens, Eves, and Furies Öz Öktem

LEXINGTON BOOKS Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom Copyright © 2021 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Control Number: 2020949554 ISBN: 978-1-7936-2522-9 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN: 978-1-7936-2523-6 (electronic) TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

Acknowledgments 1 2 3 4 5 6

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Introduction: Re-Orienting Gender and Islamic Alterity in Early Modern English Drama Erasing the Cultural and Religious Difference: Marlowe’s Tamburlaine and Greene’s Alphonsus The Muslim Woman and A Christian Turned Turk: Islamic Apostasy and the Gender Paradigm on the Jacobean Stage Redeeming the Islamic Eve Inside the Ottoman Palace: Massinger’s The Renegado “Hell’s Perfect Character”: Dark Female Sexuality and the Fear of Ottoman Colonialism in The Knight of Malta The Island Princess: Colonialism, Religion, (Inter)Sexuality, and Intertextuality

1 25 59 87 115 143

Conclusion

165

Appendix A: Further Reading

169

Bibliography

171

Index

179

About the Author

183

v

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank several people for the material and moral support they offered me while I worked on this book, which is based on my PhD thesis submitted to Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH) in Greece. I express my deepest gratitude to Tina Krontiris, my supervisor, who put considerable time and effort in guiding me, both academically and intellectually, throughout the production of this work. I appreciate her sincere attention to my project and her insightful recommendations. She also patiently helped me edit my work and provided me with constant encouragement. Professor Krontiris is an outstanding scholar and teacher and will always remain a role model for me. I am grateful to both of my parents for their continuous love and support. My mother’s financial gift enabled me to settle in a new country with ease, and my father has always been my best advocate and advisor in all matters. Also, I wish to thank my cousin Aslı Ay, in New York, and her husband Evren Ay, who provided me with accommodation while I conducted research on my topic in various libraries in the United States. Thanks to their hospitality, I accessed many original historical resources, which otherwise would be near impossible to obtain. Many friends in Greece supported me in various ways. Jeni, Popi, and Aristotelis in Thessaloniki and Thodoris in Amorgos graciously offered me their friendship and ensured that I always felt at home. Nadia and Theodora read several of my draft chapters and shared their ideas and suggestions with me. Dimitra helped me a great deal with the final editing. I kindly thank them all. Finally, I wish to express my gratitude for both the academic and the administrative staff of the Department of English Studies of AUTH. They have always been very helpful to me and treated me with kindness, and the scholarship that the faculty granted me for four years was a great support.

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Chapter One

Introduction Re-Orienting Gender and Islamic Alterity in Early Modern English Drama

The relationship between gender and cultural difference has been theorized by a number of scholars of early modern literary studies. In general, these critics tend to regard sexual, racial, and religious difference as overlapping categories, intensifying a variety of cultural and social effects in Renaissance England. In Literary Fat Ladies, for example, Patricia Parker has shown how various economic, sexual and rhetorical links come together so as to provide a mode of description for patriarchal discursive strategy in which “a particular mode of control over a woman’s body” expresses mercantile ambitions and imperial desire “through conquest of a territory traditionally figured as female.” 1 Similarly, in his insightful essay “The Work of Gender in the Discourse of Discovery,” Louis Montrose has demonstrated the use of the female body in the English proto-colonial discourse as a metaphor for the colonized land, and identified gender difference as the language in which colonial relations were first articulated. This critical approach observing a particular pattern employed in early modern English representations in which gender hierarchies naturalize colonial domination has been adopted by a number of scholars who extended the discussion to English cross-cultural relations also with the peoples of the Old World as well as to racial prejudices intensified with the increasing black presence in England as a consequence of the slave trade. In Things of Darkness, Kim Hall has emphasized the value of women as a means for appropriate transfer of property and forming of blood lines in the early modern age and argued that black women were coded as “the ultimate in undesirability” and thus were not “suitable objects of social exchange.” 2 And this coding, as Linda Boose has noted, 1

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pointed to a crucial juncture in the historical development of racial fiction and its deep association with the negative primacy of skin color. 3 Most prominently, Ania Loomba’s extensive research has shown how the notion of skin color and religion, as markers of difference, informed understandings of gender, the state, political life, and private existences, as well as the early modern connections between the formation of the modern family, the consolidation of the imperial state and Europe’s global domination. 4 The work of these critics covered an important gap in early modern studies by pointing to the dynamic and intricate intersections of categories of cultural and sexual difference in the creation of the Renaissance culture. Yet, the great majority of this work concentrates on English interactions with nonEuropean peoples mainly in the New World, the East Indies, and Africa, where England could claim or, at least, had projections to claim colonial control. In other words, these critics do not divorce their ideas from concerns of a materialistically and culturally overpowering Europe. Thus, they offer mostly a unidirectional mode of analysis for understanding English perceptions with respect to foreign people. However, the cross-cultural interaction of England was not restricted to these geographies in the early modern age. In terms of volume and profitability, the Mediterranean trade was much more advantageous than the trade in the Atlantic and the Indian oceans, and any colonial pretensions against the Other that the English had to deal with in this part of the world, namely the Ottoman Empire, was only “laughable.” 5 In addition, while the connection of religious difference is not absent from the works of these scholars, it is largely seen within the context of Spain’s interaction with the Moorish population of the Iberian Peninsula, which took the form of subordination and cultural assimilation of these Islamic people in the name of redeeming the occupied Christian territories. Thus, in these analyses there is still uneasiness with respect to European imperial hegemony in Christian-Islamic relations. In this study, I want to turn attention to a part of the world where the European interactions with the Islamic people were completely free of colonial assumptions. Taking on the recent critical work in cultural studies which has argued for an entire reconstruction of early modern perceptions with respect to the Ottoman Empire, seeing it central, rather than peripheral to the evolving political, social, and economic dynamics of the European world, I suggest an alternative reading for the representative patterns that draw an analogy between gender and cultural difference. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Ottoman Empire remained as a dominant superpower, which was militarily and economically more advanced than any of the European states. Its territories expanded throughout North Africa, Mediterranean, and Eastern Europe, controlling many of the trade routes in the East, as well as the Christians’ holy lands. Europe could not establish a sustained and coherent response against this Islamic enemy, rather, individu-

Introduction

3

al Christian nations often found themselves entering into commercial and military alliances with the Ottomans, and in these interactions, European potentates never entertained or articulated projects for colonizing these people. 6 For this reason, the gendered pattern of representing the cross-cultural interaction with non-European peoples, which we frequently see in early modern literature, does not involve colonial implications within Ottoman settings and should be interpreted in line with historical realities of the age, which indicate Ottoman superiority over Europe. In one of her essays, Loomba argues that because “the Eastern enterprises were conceived of as ‘trade,’ as opposed to colonization and settlement,” unlike the representations of the New World natives, who “were placed within a discourse of primitivism” the representation of the peoples of the Eastern countries “were embedded within a discourse of cultural excess.” 7 She suggests this distinction brought about alternative discursive strategies to signify the availability of non-European women of the Old World and the sanctions for Europeans to possess them. As the English traders in Asia could not encode themselves as the “male deflowerers of a feminized land” like in the New World narratives, they came up with a fantasy of an Eastern queen, who is rescued and converted to Christianity by a virile but courteous European hero. 8 Despite this distinction, however, Loomba argues that the “universal tropes of colonial domination seem to function without too much regard to regional difference.” 9 The underlining motive in both narratives is “a shared dream of empire” and both represent the non-European woman as an interchangeable terrain on which colonial power could be deployed. 10 While there is no doubt that, as Loomba suggests, the exchangeability of women formed an important discursive strategy in articulation of England’s cross-cultural interaction, making it a “delicious traffick,” I argue that this gendered pattern of representation does not necessarily imply a shared imperial dream in England’s relations with foreign peoples everywhere throughout the world. In fact, even the Eastern queen narrative that Loomba observes to be employed in the representations of the Old World can be interpreted differently depending on with whom the Christians interact and where. Let us consider for a moment two early modern plays that use the story of an Eastern queen in articulating Europe’s interaction with the Old World. This first one, Fletcher’s The Island Princess (1621) is set in Tidore, one of the Moluccan islands which remained as the heart of the spice trade throughout this period. The play is centered around the manly competition between the two Portuguese suitors of the princess of Tidore, Quisara. The princess’s favored suitor Ruy Dias, the captain of the Portuguese garrison in Tidore, fails to display the courage and heroic action that the princess demands of the man she would marry. However, Armusia, the newcomer merchant, proves himself to be worthy of becoming Quisara’s husband when he saves her brother, the king, from the enemy. Despite the temporary conversion threat

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Chapter 1

posed on him, Armusia resists and succeeds in winning Quisara not only to himself but also to Christianity. A similar pattern is repeated in Phillip Massinger’s play The Renegado (1621), which takes place in the Ottoman province of Tunis. Donusa, a niece of the Turkish sultan, falls in love with Vitelli, a Venetian, and tries to convert him to Islam. Vitelli becomes sexually and emotionally involved with Donusa, yet like Armusia, he also resists to “turning Turk” and convinces Donusa to convert to Christianity and escape with him to Europe. While both plays employ the same gendered pattern that involves the voluntary conversion of a Muslim woman because of her love for a Christian man, I argue that simply because of the fact that the events of their plots take place in different settings, where Christian-Muslim relations were informed with different sets of political and economic forces, these two plays can be read in distinction to one another, rather than being placed within a single monolithic picture of a non-European world overpowered and subordinated by Europe. Fletcher’s play is based on a history of the Spanish conquest of the islands of Moluccas, which were the seat of long-standing colonial competition between the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Dutch, and the English. The Portuguese garrison on the island of Tidore indicates the established military authority of the Europeans over the native people. The fact that Princess Quisara’s most favored suitor is the captain of this garrison Ruy Dias, also underlines the colonial motive of the plot. Yet, in Massinger’s Ottoman setting of Tunis, such a colonial motive is altogether absent. Rather, the Christians are constantly under the Turkish threat. Vitelli, a disguised Venetian gentleman, in fact has come to Tunis to save his abducted sister, Paulina, whose chastity is threatened by lustful and villainous Turkish ruler Asambeg. Vitelli’s own life is endangered when he is caught by the Turks in Donusa’s private chamber and heroically resists to the attempts of the Turks who threaten him with death if he rejects to become a Muslim. While the conversion motif is also present in The Island Princess, the real action in Fletcher’s play revolves around the competition between two types of European colonialists embodied in Ruy Dias and Armusia for the winning of Quisara, who stands for her land and people. Religious difference is not an issue of conflict until the governor of the neighboring Ternata orchestrates an evil conspiracy to destroy everyone. In fact, earlier in the play Quisara promises Ruy Dias to convert to Christianity, if he saves her brother and asks for her hand. In addition, at the end of the play, the king of Tidore not only gives Ternata’s main castle to the Portuguese but also declares that he is “halfpersuaded” 11 to become a Christian, indicating colonial infiltration, if not an ultimate conquest, on the part of the Portuguese. In The Renegado, however, Vitelli’s conquest of Donusa does not entail any territorial possession or military authority. At a time when thousands of Englishmen converting to Islam to pursue better material advantages in the Islamic Mediterranean and

Introduction

5

North Africa, Donusa’s wealth, power, and dangerous sexuality speak of the enticements and hazards associated with the Muslim world, rather than expressing the availability of these lands. Quisara’s conversion to Christianity is an essential part of the imperial scope of Fletcher’s play, as spreading the word of Christ was the godly purpose of the colonial enterprise. Yet, in The Renegado, the lengthy discussions of religious nature between the two lovers and the onstage baptism of the Turkish princess indicate an anxious effort and urgency to prove Christianity’s supremacy over the false religion Islam. In other words, Donusa’s imaginary conversion does not involve any “dream of empire,” it is rather a “wishful thinking,” speaking of European resentment against the imperial power of the Ottomans, who with their aggressively expanding rival form of monotheism seemed to be able to overrule Christianity. 12 According to Edward Said’s renowned theory of Orientalism, the East has always had a special place in the Western discourse as Europe’s cultural contestant, its contrasting image, idea, and personality. 13 In order to come to terms with this special opposite, the Europeans produced a whole repertoire of literature and scholarly writing, creating a style of thought based on an ontological and epistemological distinction between an inferior Orient and a superior Occident, as the result of Western political hegemony over the East. 14 In other words, Orientalism was a discourse created from the relation of Western power over the Orient to Western knowledge about the Orient. As Said says: Orientalism depends for its strategy on this flexible positional superiority, which puts the Westerner in a whole series of possible relationships with the Orient without ever losing him the relative upper hand. And why should it have been otherwise, especially during the period of extraordinary European ascendancy from the late Renaissance to the present? The scientist, the scholar, the missionary, the trader, or the soldier was in, or thought about the Orient, because he could be there, or could think about it, with very little resistance on the Orient’s part. 15

However, applying this power relation between the dominant West and the subordinate East to the ages earlier than the eighteenth century would be misleading. Said himself dates the emergence of Orientalism as a discipline only after Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798. 16 In fact, the power equilibrium between the Christian West and the Islamic East was much the otherwise throughout the medieval and the early modern periods. During the Islamic conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries, and later during the Ottoman expansion, the Muslims dominated the Europeans and awed them with their culture. 17 Rather than claiming any kind of superiority against the Orient, Christian nations constantly felt the threat of being militarily and politically overpowered by the Islamic states. While European scholars, traders, and soldiers still “thought about the Orient,” they definitely did not have

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Chapter 1

any pretensions to dominate it. Many of the distorted images of Islam produced in this period should be understood as reflections of European amazement and anxiety about this rapidly growing cultural and religious rival. 18 By the sixteenth century, hostility against Islam was already established in European discourse and consciousness, because of a long history of holy wars and crusades that began with the rise of Islam in the middle ages. Within a decade after the Islamic conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, which started in 711, the Moors captured almost all of the peninsula, as well as the Pyrenees, and a part of today’s southern France. The Christian Reconquista, which aimed to recapture the lands under Islamic domination was contained within the wider context of the Crusades from the eleventh century onward and continued as a series of intermittent wars until the end of the fifteenth century. 19 While the rhetoric and symbolism produced by both the Reconquista and the Crusades were crucial in the development of the European discourse about the world of Islam, neither of these movements exactly qualifies as imperialism. 20 The Crusades ended in 1272 as an economical and military failure and never involved projections for cultural domination or assimilation. The Reconquista, on the other hand, gradually became successful, leaving the Moors as a powerless minority exposed to the discrimination and repression by the church and the absolutist state of Spain. However, the Christian-Muslim opposition in the Iberian Peninsula was too slow and too politically fragmented to be termed as imperialism. While Spain was still trying to cleanse the remnants of Islam from its territories, European fears were renewed and reinforced by the emergence of a new Islamic power, the Ottoman Turks, who captured Constantinople in 1453 and immediately started to expand their territories toward North Africa, the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe. The Turkish Empire invaded many European cities and islands of strategic significance in this period, including Athens in 1459, Otranto in 1480, Rhodes in 1522, Budapest in 1526, Cyprus in 1571, and Crete in 1669. In addition, the Turks besieged Vienna twice, in 1529 and 1683, and in the first attempt, they almost took the city. European potentates were often amazed with the extraordinary military aggression of the Turks. Despite continuous efforts for a united action against this Islamic peril, religious and nationalistic prejudices and rivalries disallowed the formation of another Crusade. On the contrary, profitability of the Eastern trade often forced Christians to enter into commercial and diplomatic relations with the Ottoman Empire, and, in these relations, there was no question who had the upper hand. The inversion of the world’s power balances implied in Said’s theory in favor of Islam when the Ottoman Empire rose to political and commercial preeminence in the Eastern Mediterranean constitutes one of the fundamental arguments of my analysis of the representations of the Muslim woman in the early modern period. Said’s argument on the organic relationship between

Introduction

7

the hegemonic power and the discursive knowledge does not exactly fit to the material realities of the early modern global dynamics. Rather it should be reformulated in a way to explain the needs and anxieties of politically divided and vulnerable Christian Europe against their militarily, economically, and politically superior Islamic rival. 21 In the early modern representations, like in the later Western colonial discourse, Islam and Islamic people are demonized; however, the motive of demonization in these texts is not to justify Western superiority but as Vitkus puts it, to “produce imaginary resolutions of real anxieties about Islamic wealth and might.” 22 In this study, I argue that this shift in the European perspective on Islam disallows us to see the representations of the Muslim woman in this period simply within the patterns of interpretation offered by postcolonial readings where the Muslim/non-European woman represents the colonized subject, and with her attributions, attests to the backwardness and incivility of her culture. I do not say that this image is absent from the early modern texts, yet clearly the representations of the Muslim woman throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were much more nuanced than that. In some instances, we see them figured as powerful and articulate Eastern empresses who have a say on the construction of power balances in the contemporary empire-making. Dramatic figures that echo this image of the Muslim woman are free of attributions of Islamic alterity. In addition, these plays do not employ the conventional gendered pattern of desire between a Christian man and a non-Christian woman. The Muslim female body is not available for Christian possession. When this gendered pattern is actually put to use, it does not always articulate an imperial dream, as the short comparison of The Island Princess and The Renegado has shown earlier. In the contexts where the Christian identity is threatened by the Islamic power, Muslim woman appears as a striking picture of the enemy superpower of Islam in female form. In many plays, she is portrayed as a wicked seductress who with her intimidating sexuality pursues Christian souls. Combining the overwhelming allures, wealth, and danger of Islam in her tempting beauties, she presents a subtle challenge to Christian patriarchy in overcoming the threat of Islam. In the following chapters I analyze a series of early modern English plays that depict Islamic female characters against the prevalent notions of identity, religion, gender, race, and class in the English society, in light of the renewed scholarly perspective on the power of Islam in this period. I argue that while the representations of the era also contain the seeds of the prototype of the Muslim woman in later colonial literature, more often than not, they depict Islamic female figures in noncolonial contexts where these women embody not the inferiority but the superiority of Islam and its threat on Christian identity. Despite such distinctions however, we should not ignore the fact that there are certain common elements of the representation of Islamic feminin-

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ity, which originated very early in history, even before there was any Muslim woman. 23 This was because the vision of difference between the familiar (Europe, the West, “us”) and the strange (the Orient, the East, “them”) instigated the European imagination since antiquity, and the Eastern woman had a special place in the Western discourse. Greek and Roman writers drew a line between Europe and Asia and they attributed to the two continents specific characteristics, which were both contrasting and complementing each other. They imagined Europe as the masculine, rational, active, and articulate, while identifying the East as the feminine, excessive, savage, and mysterious, and using the language of passion, they expressed “the desired relationship of power sought over the Orient as woman.” 24 The famous love story of the Roman conqueror Antony and the Egyptian queen Cleopatra, which relates the events that took place in the first century BC, is a good example from the classical tradition that demonstrates how a certain European vocabulary in representing the Orient and the Oriental woman was initially formed. A well-known version of this story is found in Plutarch’s The Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans. This legendary love was inspiration also for Shakespeare who revived and immortalized the story in his 1607 play Antony and Cleopatra. The story draws a dichotomy between the masculine West and the feminine East and conflates the dynamics of the passionate love between Antony and Cleopatra with the dynamics of imperial domination. The male political virtue of the imperial Rome, which is rendered rational and moral, is set against its subjugated and feminized dominion Egypt, which represents extreme sensuality, luxury, and degeneration; and the sexual possession of Cleopatra by Antony stands for the political domination of Egypt by Rome. Cleopatra’s exotic beauty is her strongest attribution that enables her to conquer the hearts of powerful Western men. She is beautiful, ageless, and magical, and she uses these qualities to construct herself as a spectacle that awakens men’s appetite. Cleopatra’s arrival in Tarsus in a barge, which is elaborately described in both Plutarch’s and Shakespeare’s works, is one such spectacle that attests to the Egyptian queen’s overwhelming charms. First we learn that Cleopatra had already been summoned to Tarsus by Antony and his Roman friends several times: but she took no account of these orders; and at last, as if in mockery of them, she came sailing up the river Cydnus, in a barge with gilded stern and outspread sails of purple, while oars of silver beat time to the music of flutes and fifes and harps. She herself lay all along under a canopy of cloth of gold, dressed as Venus in a picture, and beautiful young boys, like painted Cupids, stood on each side to fan her. Her maids were dressed like sea nymphs and graces, some steering at the rudder, some working at the ropes. The perfumes diffused themselves from the vessel to the shore, which was covered with multitudes, part following the galley up the river on either bank, part running

Introduction

9

out of the city to see the sight. The market-place was quite emptied, and Antony at last was left alone sitting upon the tribunal; while the word went through all the multitude, that Venus was come to feast with Bacchus, for the common good of Asia. 25

The description of Cleopatra’s entrance to Tarsus with all her extravagance before the amazed eyes of Antony and the locals offers a dream of wealth and an erotic fantasy which renders the Egyptian queen an image rather than a real person, and the symbols and figurative elements that form this image inaugurate the archetypal codes and patterns that were regularly put to use in later ages by European writers to represent the Orient. Dressed like the goddess of love, surrounded by Cupid-like servants and beautiful maids on a golden vessel which diffuses melodies and perfumes to the shore, the spectacle of the Egyptian queen’s arrival is clearly symbolic of the sensual pleasures and extreme luxuries frequently associated with the Eastern lands in the Western discourse. The passage also acknowledges an analogy between the sexual possession of the Egyptian queen and the political possession of Egypt, as it describes the meeting of Cleopatra and Antony as the feasting of Venus with Bacchus “for the common good of Asia.” The seductive arrival of Cleopatra in Tarsus has political implications, because the Egyptian queen’s offering herself to Antony is intended to assure him of her country’s allegiance to Rome. In this scenario, Cleopatra’s available female body stands for both the territory and the people of her country and Rome’s imperial domination over Egypt is normalized through possession of her body by Antony. This pattern of intertwining the patriarchal prerogatives of heterosexual desire with the dynamics of control and domination over foreign peoples became a regular feature of Western representations in later ages. The fantasy about the worldly goods of the East embodied in the image of an alluring Oriental female conquered and possessed by virile Western masculinity saturates the European literature and art. The biblical tale of Sheba, the Queen of Ethiopia and the King Solomon also plays upon this theme. According to this story, after Solomon demonstrates his “wisdom” to Sheba, the queen gives all her wealth to the king. The product of their unification is a child called David who later became the Christian king of Ethiopia. Within the context of Spanish Reconquista and the Crusades, the story of the enamored Muslim princess who falls in love with a Christian man, converts to Christianity, and escapes with her jewels is a widespread motif found in medieval romances. In the early modern age, with the discovery of the New World, analogies between sexual and territorial possession are expanded so as to articulate also the colonial penetration to newfound fertile lands of the Americas, which are repeatedly identified as virgin female bodies ready to be embraced by their colonial husbands. In this period, we observe similar gendered patterns em-

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Chapter 1

ployed in representations of Christian-Muslim relations in the Mediterranean context too. However, here, the stories are informed with different ideological and political forces resulting from the inversion of power balances which positions the East, not the West as the colonizer. In these representations, the riches of the East are still desirable for Europeans; yet, most often what stands in their way is the Ottoman Empire. In reading the story of Antony and Cleopatra one should not overlook the challenge that Cleopatra’s independent will poses to the Roman patriarchal domination project. Cleopatra is not only a desirable, but also a cunning and manipulative woman who seduces men for political ends. In Plutarch’s text Cleopatra’s disobedient nature is implied where the writer considers the Egyptian queen’s late arrival in Tarsus as a “mockery.” Also when they meet, Cleopatra rejects Antony’s invitation to supper and substitutes her own, signaling the command that she would exercise over the Roman ruler. 26 Indeed, Antony’s extreme passion for Cleopatra captivates him to such an extent that he gets distracted from his primary role as the colonizer. He gives in too much to the indulgences and sensualities of the Egyptian court and as Caesar claims in Plutarch’s narrative, he “let[s] a woman exercise in his place.” 27 Antony not only allows Cleopatra to become his coruler, but donates almost all of his share in the Roman Empire to her, horrifying the Egyptian queen’s enemies in Rome with the idea that she is “planning a war of revenge” that would “array all the East against Rome, establish herself as empress of the world at Rome, cast justice from Capitolium, and inaugurate a new universal kingdom.” 28 When seen within the political and military context of the early modern age, it would not be wrong to say that the “new universal rule” that Cleopatra’s Roman commentators had feared arrived in this period in the form of the Ottoman Empire. After all, Egypt was not a province of ancient Rome anymore, but a Turkish domain since 1517, and the Ottoman sultan who colonized it was ruling one-third of the world maybe not from Capitolium, but from Constantinople. On the one hand, Shakespeare’s repetition of the symbols and patterns of representation found in Plutarch’s narrative shows how Europeans inherited a certain shared vocabulary in representing the Orient. On the other hand, in the early modern context, where the world’s power balances were in favor of the Orient, Antony’s loss of masculine identity to Cleopatra’s Oriental lure and cunningness clearly speaks of a more urgent and direct peril than that the Egyptian queen’s enemies thought she posed to Rome. Despite the fact that England was not an immediate target for the Ottoman expansion, the threat that the Turkish Empire posed by virtue of its incredible size, wealth, and military capacity was acutely felt also by the English in this period. Many saw the Turkish menace as the “scourge of God” 29 upon sinful Christians who had become divided in themselves. They called for unification among Christian potentates to crusade against the Otto-

Introduction

11

mans. In 1575, Thomas Newton in his translation of Augustino Curione’s Notable Historie of the Saracens warned that Turks: were indeed at the first very far off from our clime and region, and therefore the less to be feared, but now they are even at our doors and ready to come into our houses, if our penitent hearts do not sooner procure the mercifull hands of God, an unity, peace and concord among the princes, potentates of that little portion of Christendom yet left, which through division and civil dissention hath from time to time enticed and brought this Babylonian Nabuganazar and Turkish Pharao so near under our noses. 30

However, the complex political, economic, and religious structures that characterized early modern Europe made it uneasy to form an alliance among Christians against the Islamic enemy. A common Christian culture to some extent still bound Europeans together, however, nationalism, mercantilist ambitions, and the effects of the Reformation drew them apart, and the individual interests of Christian states proved to be stronger than a shared European pride or religious convictions. 31 In fact, instead of medieval projects like the Crusades, many European monarchs dealt with the reality of the Ottoman Empire more pragmatically. They recognized that in terms of both military and economy, Christian Europe was inferior to this Islamic power, which was in possession of vast resources and extensive territories. For that reason they saw more benefit in establishing amicable relations with the Ottomans. 32 The majority of the Mediterranean seaways and the most lucrative overland trade routes between Asia and mainland Europe were under Turkish control and good relations with the Ottomans would enable these potentates to do business throughout this geography and access to Eastern luxury goods. 33 In addition, the Ottomans were eager to continue the commercial heritage of the Byzantine Empire and maintain the cultural and political connections that Europe had cultivated with the Greco-Roman world in the earlier periods. 34 Eventually, the Mediterranean became a place where the commercial and cultural contact between Christians and Muslims was intense, with the result that alliances shifted rapidly and the binary oppositions between Christianity and Islam were often blurred. 35 Elizabeth I was also among the Christian monarchs that saw the advantages of forging an alliance with Islam. England was a latecomer in the European mercantile economy, and with its military weakness and insecure national and religious identity, it could hardly be claimed to be an imperial power in this period. 36 The country had become increasingly dependent on the Mediterranean trade and the long-standing religious and political rivalry with Catholic Spain was forcing Elizabeth to seek a powerful ally in this part of the world. The Islamic empire of the Ottomans, which dominated the entire Eastern Mediterranean and expressed hostility to Catholic powers seems to have provided the solution. Throughout the 1580s and 1590s, Eliza-

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Chapter 1

beth entered into extensive commercial and diplomatic relations with the Turks. The common anti-idolatrous doctrine of Protestantism and Islam became a useful strategy for England to construct an ideologically justified rapprochement with Turkey. 37 In 1580, England obtained the first capitulations, and one year later, the Levant Company was founded, ensuring the safety of the English merchants in the Turkish lands. In the following decades, the ports of Asia Minor and North Africa became increasingly common destinations for English vessels. Despite his open dislike for the affiliation with the Turks even James I could not risk to intervene with the profitable Mediterranean trade. In 1605, he renewed the charter of the Levant Company with greatly extended privileges, ensuring a long period of orderly administration and prosperity. 38 The cultural and commercial exchange with Islam in the early modern age did not allow the English to perceive the Ottomans “as mysterious, demonic others, anterior to the culture of confidently self-defined European polity.” 39 Rather, the Ottoman Empire was seen as a powerful ally with whom it was possible to do both diplomatic and commercial business, and whose political concerns often coincided with those of the English. In recent years, there has been an emerging body of critical work in the field of literary and cultural studies, which urge for an entire reconstruction of conventional ideas regarding the place of the Ottoman Empire in the early modern world politics and English perceptions with respect to this Islamic power. 40 In fact, the scholarly interest on this subject can be dated back to Samuel C. Chew’s 1937 study The Crescent and the Rose. However, this topic attracted serious critical attention only after the publication of Orientalism in 1978, which prompted reactions from critics undermining Said’s EastWest division along lines of Western dominance as anachronistic and reductive when applied to the early modern period. The most comprehensive argument for this retrospective imposition has been offered by Nabil Matar, who suggested that “because trade with Islamic countries was essential” and England was a weaker commercial and military force, Orientalism was delayed until the eighteenth century, when the material conditions indeed gave way for Orientalist construction. 41 In Islam and Britain 1558–1685 (1998) and Turks, Moors and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (1999) Matar has documented the extensive English contact with Muslim peoples in the African and Levantine soil attesting to the interaction and familiarity along with communication and cohabitation among the English and Muslims. Despite this familiarity, however, Matar has argued “in their discourse about Muslims, Britons produced a representation that did not belong to the actual encounter with the Muslims” and “simplification and stereotyping” remained as the rules by which the English represented Islam. 42 However, sustained close readings of the English early modern texts, both literary and historical, demonstrated that the images of Muslims presented

Introduction

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were more fluid and ambivalent than previously reported. Scholars like Daniel Vitkus, Jonathan Burton, Lisa Jardine, and Jerry Brotton among others emphasized that the contemporary game of colonial and commercial expansion and the dynamic East-West exchange of commodities played a key role in production of more elastic ideologies of religious difference in perceiving and representing Islam. 43 In Turning Turk Vitkus has argued that “in the context of diplomatic and commercial relations where pressures of trade, war, and religious difference came together, it is apparent that binary oppositions of Christian to non-Christian or Protestant to Roman Catholic quickly gave way to more complex configurations,” the most obvious one being the triangular structure between the Roman Catholic, Protestant, and the Turk. 44 In Traffic and Turning Jonathan Burton has similarly suggested that English reactions to Islam in the early modern period did not fit into a simplistic pattern; instead changing political dynamics of the globe disrupted old stereotypes and forged new and sundry models to make sense of Islam and Muslim people, ranging “from censorious to the laudatory, from others to brothers.” 45 One result of this intensified commercial and cultural contact with the Ottomans was the significant increase in the number of printed materials and stage productions that focused on the Turks and Turkish history. The idea of Turk articulated in these texts indeed “achieved an articulacy and variety” that “would not be superseded” in later periods. 46 In fact the Great Turk in Constantinople was one of the most debated issues among the Englishmen of the early modern age. From 1550 to 1640 more than 1,600 books about the Ottomans were available to English readers. 47 Most of these books were of historical context or travelogues written by merchants or state ambassadors in the Levant. 48 They were mainly concerned with the origins and the rise of the Ottoman Empire, relating in detail the past exploits of the sultans, also describing minutely the customs and religion of these powerful people. The image of the Turk produced by these texts was mostly a moral barbarian, an inhuman scourge, whose sole purpose is to eradicate the Christian religion. “The Turkish sultan was often figured as a ranting autocrat who slaughtered his siblings upon taking the throne only to luxuriate, in the decadent splendour of the seraglio.” 49 Yet, at the same time, English writers also praised the Turks as paragons of order, piety, and strength and frequently contrasted the Ottoman unity, discipline, and endurance with their own cultural fragmentation and military inadequacy. 50 One of the earliest and probably the most comprehensive of the English books written about the Ottomans in the early modern age is Richard Knolles’s The Generall Historie of the Turkes, which was first printed in 1603. Compiled from Byzantine chronicles, Latin sources and other continental authors, the book is over a thousand folio pages in length and embellished with numerous anecdotes illustrating the ruthlessness and exotic splen-

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dor of this Eastern people. For Knolles the Turks are “the present terror of the world,” the main cause of the ruins and miseries in the Christian commonwealth. Yet, he is also fascinated with the achievements of this dangerous and formidable empire: So that at this present if you consider the beginning, progress, and perpetual felicity of this the Othoman Empire, there is in this world nothing more admirable and strange; if the greatness and lustre thereof, nothing more magnificent and glorious; if the Power and Strength thereof, nothing more Dreadful and Dangerous: Which wondering at nothing but at the Beauty of it self, and drunk with the pleasant Wine and perpetual felicity, holdeth all the rest of the World in Scorn, thundering out nothing still but Blood and War, with a full persuasion in time to Rule over all, prefixing unto it self no other limits than the uttermost bounds of the Earth, from the rising of the Sun unto going down of the same. 51

However, the English attitude toward Islam was not always derogatory or negative. Many Englishmen of the age saw the Catholic Spain more dangerous than the Turks. Some historians called the Turks “allies of Reformation” because the Ottoman campaigns in central Europe helped to divert the military energies and economic resources of the Papal-Habsburg powers who wished to root out the Lutherans and other heretics. 52 English texts on Turks also contained narratives concerning beneficial trade and even friendship with the Turks. As evidenced by the observations of Sir Henry Blount the experience of traveling in Ottoman territories could challenge and modify the traditional ideas expressing hostility and prejudice against the Turks. In his account of travels to the Levant, Blount writes “He who behold these times in their greatest glory could not find a better Scene than Turkey. . . . [The Turks] are the only moderne people, great in action . . . whose Empire hath so suddenly invaded the world, and fixt itself such firme foundations as no other ever did.” In course, he discovers that “the Turkish disposition is generous, loving, and honest . . . far from the rudeness, whereof they are accused.” 53 The Turks were a popular theme also for the English stage productions throughout the early modern age. Major or minor many English dramatists showed fascination with the Ottomans. Louis Wann lists forty-seven plays that present Islamic themes or characters written in the period between 1579 and 1642 and thirty-one of them deal only with Turks or the Turkish history. 54 In fact, for Renaissance playwrights the Turk was an intriguing theme to ensure the attention of the audience. 55 The use of exotic props, costuming, make-up, and set design made the English stage perfect medium for fantasizing about the appearance and customs of Turks and mapping the foreign territories of the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean for London theatergoers who would never see these places in their lifetimes other than through representation on the stage. Popular settings included Tunis, Algiers, and Fez

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on the Barbary Coast of North Africa, or the small islands of Malta, Rhodes, and Cyprus, where Christians and Ottomans historically battled for colonial control. Characters from various religions were set against one another in scenes of war, in the seas, in prison cells, in the public marketplace, and in intimate eroticized places. English stage representations of the Turks were often repetitions of conventional stereotypes found in the historical and traveler texts. In the theater, Islamic world mostly functioned as a negative mirror to European Christian virtue and was frequently associated with corruption, violence, and devilish treachery. 56 Yet again, it is difficult to argue that the English drama presented the Turk as a certain type, or a stock character. While plays like Othello, Soliman and Perseda, A Christian Turned Turk, and The Renegado feature Turkish characters that are conventionally represented as valiant, proud-spirited, and cruel, many other characters like Orcanes in Marlowe’s Tamburlaine and Selim Calymath in The Jew of Malta, Mustapha and Camena in Greville’s Mustapha, or Joffer in Heywood’s The Fair Maid of the West appear as exceedingly noble and generous characters represented in favorable light. When seen against this historical and cultural background the distinctions that I have drawn earlier with respect to the dramatic representations of the Muslim woman in Ottoman settings become more meaningful. Nowhere in early modern English drama does the Ottoman woman appear as a colonial subject, on the contrary, she infallibly denotes the Ottoman superiority over Christian Europe. As a matter of fact, the plays written in the years that Elizabeth I was seeking a strategic alliance with the Ottomans can be said to generate a short circuit in the conventional representation of the Muslim woman. Completely free of the negative associations linked with Islam, the Muslim women in these plays appear as honorable female counterparts of powerful Eastern players of the contemporary empire-making. The discursive strategy of intertwining Christian-Muslim relations with interreligious heterosexual love is altogether absent. The Muslim woman is not depicted as an object of desire for European men to overcome or to possess. They are rather presented as powerful Eastern empresses who with prideful attitude and boasting language complement their male counterparts. Though they are articulate and exercise imperial authority to a greater or lesser degree, these attributions do not render them a feminine threat for the patriarchal world order. In fact, at the early stage of Anglo-Ottoman interaction it is not possible to see clear distinctions between the picture of the Christian womanhood and the image of the Muslim woman. They share similar attributions and functions in the contemporary game of empire-making which is governed by universal patriarchal rules. As England’s Mediterranean commerce expanded over the years, the allure of the Muslim world and the challenge it posed to English identity grew

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more powerful. At the turn of the seventeenth century, we observe that the conventional gendered pattern of representing Christian-Muslim encounters through love relations were revived, but also realigned so as to reflect the English concerns and anxieties with respect to the intensified cross-cultural contact with Islam. Englishmen who went or were taken to the dominions of Islam numbered in thousands in the early modern age. Many of these men converted to Islam either to seek better treatment and eventual freedom as slaves or to pursue the opportunities offered by the Ottoman Empire to Christian renegades. 57 The threat of conversion confronted by English merchants and seamen became a complexly imagined theme for Jacobean dramatist in this period. Converted Christians were seen as traitors who preferred the worldly advantages of Islam to spiritual truth. In the English drama the renegade figure became an important cultural vehicle through which the playwrights expressed both the excitement about expanding cross-cultural commerce and anxieties about the unstable English identity which proved to be vulnerable to the undesired effects of this encounter. 58 In the early modern plays that focus on the Mediterranean interaction between Christians and Muslims, the Islamic woman functions as an intimidating and powerful feminine factor of the intimidating and powerful enemy. 59 With her assertive lechery and overt sexuality she is set against the Christian hero as a true test for his religious resolution and virtuous masculinity. In these plays, the sexual desire between a Christian man and a Muslim woman is enacted to express the threat of conversion. The alluring Islamic temptress who embodies the wealth and power of Islam causes the Christian hero to go astray and face eternal damnation by “turning Turk.” The 1604 peace treaty which ended the fifteen-year Anglo-Spanish War was directly responsible for making the North Africa and Barbary the nest of English pirates and renegades. 60 Many English seamen who had been plundering Spanish shipping legitimately in the name of national interests were all left unemployed after this date, and many of them took their chance in the Mediterranean to pursue the lucrative employment opportunities offered in Muslim provinces. However, despite the apparent economic and social factors, the most frequent explanation offered by Christian moralists for apostasy from Christianity was that Islam was a licentious religion. They criticized Islam for offering sensual pleasures as a reward to the virtuous in the next life and denounced the sexual freedom allowed in this life under Muslim law. Conventional associations made between Islam and promiscuity loaded Islamic conversion with erotic connotations 61 and the fact that the condemned sexual codes of Islam were all connected with Islamic femininity charged the image of the Muslim woman with additional significance in Christianity’s imaginative coming to terms with the Ottomans. The accounts of the medieval anti-Islamic tradition which defined the religion of Muhammad as a system based upon fraud, lust, and violence were

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taken on and reinforced with new ideas by early modern theologians as part of the intensified polemical project to defend and promote Christianity against Islam. 62 The orgiastic paradise that Muhammad offered to his followers was seen as the major reason that Islam tempted so many men, and it was the proof of the contention that Islam was not a spiritual religion. With its beautiful and humble maidens, luxurious gardens, and rivers of wine, “Mahomet’s Paradise” was described as a false vision of sexual and sensual delights. The account found in The Travels of Sir John Mandeville was the popular and the standard version of Islamic paradise: if a man asked them what paradise they mean, they say to paradise that is a place of delights where men shall find all manner of fruits in all seasons, and rivers running of milk and honey, and of wine and of sweet water; and that they shall have fair houses and noble, every man after his desert, made of precious stones and of gold and of silver; and that every man shall have four score wives all maidens, and he shall have ado every day with them, and yet he shall find them always maidens. 63

The sensuality of the paradise that Islam preached was seen in relation to the sensuality of this-worldly Islamic practices. Regulations governing concubinage, marriage, and divorce were misunderstood and reviled by Western Europeans. It was believed that polygamy was unlimited and unregulated, a man could have as many wives and concubines he could maintain. 64 One writer claimed that Muslims were “absorbed in the delights of lust on account of the multiplicity of wives.” 65 Undoubtedly, the most prevalent symbol that summed up the Christian notions with respect to Islamic decadence was the Sultan’s harem, a notion which entered into English representations of the Muslim world in the sixteenth century. Many Christian writers and travelers who described the Ottoman culture were particularly preoccupied with the harem and dwelt voyeuristically in this exotic space of eroticism in their writings. With its connotations for orgiastic sexuality and excessive luxury, in the early modern texts this hidden place at the hub of the world’s greatest empire was the proof of the corrupted power of the Ottomans. 66 The source of Islam’s attraction and ability to convert Christians was thought to be the wealth of the Ottoman Empire and the sexual freedom it offered to its subjects. The representative elements that characterized the Ottomans as a powerful but degenerate empire could be embodied in the Muslim woman, as the requirements of Islamic sexual ethics and “Mahomet’s Paradise” as perceived by the Christians were linked together and centered on Islamic femininity. Thus, it might be said that Christian polemicist discourse against Islam in the early modern age caused a sharp change in the image of the Muslim woman. The notion of a veiled, hidden lust that masquerades as virtue and chastity became a typical characteristic of the Islamic woman in Western European texts. 67 For travelers like William Lithgow the

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fact that Turkish women were “modestly masked” merely indicated that they were “fearful and shame-fast abroad, but lascivious within doors, and pleasing in matters of incontinency,” 68 and in the dramatic productions of the age this self-contradictory image was presented as the principal danger awaiting the Christian adventurers in the Muslim lands. The representation of the Muslim woman in early modern plays can also be seen from the perspective of England’s own colonial aspirations in parts of the world which were not under the Ottoman control. Though England clearly was not an imperial power in this period, colonialism was taken seriously as a national enterprise by both Elizabeth I and James I. While the profits that the merchant ships in the Mediterranean constantly increased, many English seamen traveled to the New World and the East Indies in search of new markets and colonies, and the notions of alterity generated during these voyages with respect to both the non-European peoples and England’s colonial predecessors, namely, Spain, Portugal, and Holland, had a profound effect on the definitions of English identity in this period. In the context of English proto-colonialism we are presented with two types of Muslim woman. On the one side there is the “white” Muslim woman whose conversion and assimilation is desirable as a mark of European superiority. On the other side, there is the “black” Muslim woman who embodies the threat of moral and bodily contamination and should be either expelled or destroyed. In plays which combine allusions to colonial metaphors and tropes of conversion the image of the “fair” Muslim woman functions as a discursive ground to model an ideal European colonialist who is not only resolute in his faith, but also powerful and attractive enough to convert and redeem the colonized subject. Black Muslim women, on the other hand, generally appear in minor roles as lascivious servants whose depiction combines patriarchal fears about dark female sexuality with religious and racial prejudices. Since blackness was traditionally associated with godlessness and sin, religious and bodily difference often come as overlapping categories and black femininity couples the anxieties in regard to both categories with crude misogyny. In this study I also want to see these various representations of Islamic femininity in comparison to the notions of Christian womanhood in the early modern English society. With respect to the traditional role of women the early modern age witnessed notable developments. Humanism, the Reformation, and new industrial forms of production generated a new set of attitudes toward gender. 69 While, the notion of the new Protestant family as a key and politicized institution elevated the wife’s position from a merely subordinate role, the expanding capitalistic economy demanded women to contribute more to household economies and labor force. 70 This period witnessed the reigns of two female monarchs, one of whom ruled the country successfully for almost half a century. In addition, women were preaching in congregations, running businesses, producing literature; in other words, they were becoming active in many areas which were traditionally reserved for men.

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The limited autonomy and independence that the Englishwomen gained in the early modern period was a source of resentment and resistance for men, who felt dislodged from their dominant position in the public and private life. 71 In this period many English men and women were engaged in what has been called the querelles des femmes, a pamphlet war debating the nature of womanhood. Many male writers aggressively condemned and satirized women who transgressed their culturally prescribed roles as “monstrous regiment,” “furies of hell,” or the shrew, or through depictions of caricaturized domineering wives who emasculate their husbands. In addition, the substantial effort observed in the period’s conduct literature to legitimize women’s subordination presents evidence of deep patriarchal anxiety. 72 Traditionally, patterns of representing non-European/Muslim women had always foregrounded features of negative femininity. As the story of Antony and Cleopatra has shown with her assertive qualities, articulate will, and overt sexuality, even in ancient times disorderly foreign women unsettled dominant notions about female identity and gender relations. Yet, within the context of the ongoing gender debate in the early modern English society, the portraits of Islamic “furies” on the early modern English stage require a special emphasis with their symbolic potential as dramatic figures on which playwrights could reflect patriarchal concerns with respect to the rising voices of Englishwomen. In this study I argue that the image of the Muslim woman on the early modern English stage, as a transgressive female who resists domestication and subordination is strategically aligned by playwrights to reflect the contemporary patriarchal anxieties with respect to their own unruly women. As the female member of a culture which was presumably the anti-image of the normative Christian identity, the Muslim woman was a very appropriate figure to attribute what was found threatening and unnatural by men in the opposite sex. In the drama of the age, this negative image of the Muslim woman is frequently set in opposition to Christian female characters who present an immaculate and virtuous disposition that complies with the authorized notion of femininity. While Muslim women with their degenerate morality are set to create a proselytizing effect on Christian heroes, chaste Christian women exemplify resistance to Islam as they remain constant to Christian patriarchal power and show defiance against the raging libido of Islamic men. In addition, despite the emphasis on her overt and dangerous sexuality, Islamic symbols of absolute female subordination like the veil and the harem are also present in the dramatic portrayals of the Muslim woman in this period. In the early modern plays the restraint of freedom that the Turkish women are subjected to is contrasted with the assumed privileges of the Englishwomen. The image of the Muslim woman enslaved to her husband not only served to define the incivility of the Islamic culture, but also re-

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minded the Christian women, “the liberty and freedom themselves enjoy[ed]” and taught them “to love their husbands.” 73 In consideration of all these historical and theoretical aspects, in this study I analyze the representation of the Muslim woman in early modern English drama under three categories. In the following chapter I want to focus on the indiscriminate attitude toward Islamic femininity, which I see in relation to the positive political climate that resulted from the establishment of Anglo-Ottoman trade relations and the subsequent interval of neutrality toward Islam and the Turkish Empire. Through analysis of characters like Zabina and Zenocrate in Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine and Fausta and Iphigena in Robert Greene’s The Comicall Historie of Alphonsus, King of Aragon, I will argue that in these early plays, which do not necessarily focus on constructing a binary opposition between Islam and Christianity, the Muslim woman does not act as a function of Islamic difference, but remain within a universally agreed upon patriarchal understanding and fulfill legitimate roles in the contemporary game of empire as powerful empresses acting in defense of their empire and family honor. In the third and fourth chapters I will turn my attention to two “turning Turk” plays written in the first decades of the seventeenth century. In this period the Christian-Muslim interaction in the Mediterranean intensified and the image of the Muslim woman became an essential vehicle for articulation of the English desire for profit and the anxieties with respect to the rising numbers of Christian apostates in the Ottoman lands. Both Voada in Robert Daborne’s A Christian Turned Turk and Donusa in Philip Massinger’s The Renegado are represented as Turkish enchantresses who with their allures and sexuality cause the Christian men to go astray and face religious conversion. Voada’s unmanageable degenerate femininity causes both her own destruction and the Christian hero Ward’s damnation. Donusa, the innately good but misguided Ottoman princess, however, is saved by her love for the Venetian gentleman Vitelli, who not only resists successfully to Islamic temptation but also redeems the Muslim woman. Finally, in the last two chapters of this study I want to place the noncolonial image of the Muslim woman against her representations within contexts where the English imperial projections outweigh the anxieties with regard to Islam, and the skin color is added as an essential denominator of difference next to religion. The Moorish servant Zanthia in Massinger’s The Knight of Malta is a typical example of the black Muslim woman on the early modern English stage, whose representation is largely informed by prejudices against the increasing number of African slaves in England as well as by the Spanish discourse on the Moors. Marginalized with the stigma of her color which degrades her as the already colonized subject, the black Muslim woman presents the elements of colonial encryption mixed with fears of racial and religious contamination. On the other hand, John Fletcher’s story of the fair

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and beautiful Quisara in The Island Princess, which takes place in the East Indies, employs the analogies of the possession of land and conquest of women frequently found in proto-colonial narratives and combines them with the motif of religious conversion. By using images, paradigms, and metaphors related to separate contexts interchangeably, the play reveals how various categories of difference can be used generative of each other in mediating and negotiating concerns associated with the Other. NOTES 1. Patricia Parker, Literary Fat Ladies: Rhetoric, Gender, Property (New York: Methuen & Co., 1987), 132. 2. Kim F. Hall, Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England (New York: Cornell University Press, 1996), 22. 3. Linda Boose, “‘The Getting of a Lawful Race’: Racial Discourse in Early Modern England and the Unrepresentable Black Woman,” in Women, “Race,” and Writing in the Early Modern Period, eds. Margo Hendricks and Patricia Parker (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 41. 4. See for example: Ania Loomba, Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism (London and New York: Routledge, 1998; Second Edition, 2005); and Loomba, Gender, Race, Renaissance Drama (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1989). Other scholarly studies that focus on gender and cultural difference include Joan Pong Linton, The Romance of the New World: Gender and Literary Formations of English Colonialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Michael Neill, Putting History to the Question: Power, Politics, and Society in English Renaissance Drama (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000); Shankar Raman, Framing India: The Colonial Imagery in Early Modern Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002); Claire Jowitt, Voyage Drama and Gender Politics 1589–1642: Real and Imagined Worlds (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2003). 5. Daniel J. Vitkus, Turning Turk: English Theatre and the Multicultural Mediterranean, 1570–1630 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 30. 6. Nabil Matar, Turks, Moors and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 9. 7. Ania Loomba, “Shakespeare and Cultural Difference,” in Alternative Shakespeares Volume 2, ed. Terence Hawkes (New York: Routledge, 1996), 183, 176. 8. Loomba, “Shakespeare and Cultural Difference,” 179. 9. Loomba, “Shakespeare and Cultural Difference,” 170. 10. Loomba, “Shakespeare and Cultural Difference,” 180. 11. John Fletcher, The Island Princess, The edition prepared for the Royal Shakespeare Company (London: Nick Hern Books, 2002), 5, 5, 89. References are to act, scene, and line. 12. Nabil Matar, “The Renegade in English Seventeenth Century Imagination,” in Studies in Literature 33, no. 3 (Summer 1993), 495, https://doi.org/10.2307/451010. 13. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979), 2. 14. Said, Orientalism, 2. 15. Said, Orientalism, 7. 16. Said, Orientalism, 42. 17. Daniel J. Vitkus, “Early Modern Orientalism Representations of Islam in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Europe,” in Western Views of Islam in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, eds. David R. Blanks and Michael Frasetto (New York, 1999), 210. 18. Vitkus, “Early Modern Orientalism Representations of Islam in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Europe,” 210. 19. Though the term Reconquista is typically used to refer to the time period that started in the eighth century, when Islamic forces moved out of North Africa, crossed the Strait of Gibraltar, and entered into southern Iberia, the actual reconquest of the peninsula began toward the end of the

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eleventh century, when Christians recaptured cities with large Muslim population, such as Toledo (1085) and Huesca (1096). The earlier three centuries were relatively a peaceful period when Christian, Muslim, and Jewish communities coexisted within a complex culture of tolerance, which was intellectually and artistically enriching and productive. The fighting that took place during early years of the Reconquista was not originally driven by an overarching religious ideology. Instead, the majority of the battles were unconnected clashes that involved fluid coalitions between ambitious Muslim and Christian leaders who sought territorial expansion. In fact, the Reconquista did not gain its unique religious flavor until the thirteenth century, when the Christian leaders in the territories that later became Castile and Aragon solicited religious fervor to gain popularity and papal support. For revisionist interpretations of the Reconquista that defy the term as a historical construct which assumes a narrative of a unified Christian Spain see for example, Peter Linehan, History and the Historians of Medieval Spain (Oxford: Clanderon Press, 1993); Maria Rosa Menocal, The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain (New York: Back Bay Books, 2002); and Simon Barton and Robert Portass, eds., Beyond the Reconquista: New Directions in the History of Medieval Iberia (711–1085) (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2020). 20. Mohja Kahf, Western Representations of the Muslim Woman: From Termagant to Odalisque (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002), 17. 21. Kahf, Western Representations of the Muslim Woman, 18 22. Vitkus, “Early Modern Orientalism Representations of Islam in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Europe,” 210. 23. Kahf, Western Representations of the Muslim Woman, 4. 24. Said, Orientalism, 5. 25. Plutarch, Plutarch’s Lives: Vol. I, ed. A. H. Clough, trans. John Dryden (New York: Cosmo Publications, 2008), 76. 26. Catherine Belsey, “Cleopatra’s Seduction,” in Alternative Shakespeares Volume 2, ed. Terence Hawkes (New York: Routledge, 1996), 41. 27. Plutarch, Lives, 108. 28. Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 274. 29. Some European authors regarded the Ottoman Turks not as an ordinary political force but as the aggressive representatives of the hostile Islamic world, the traditional antagonist of Christendom. Driven by anti-Islamic prejudices they depicted the Turks as the “present terror of the world” determined to root out the Christian religion and believed that it was the will of God that sent them as “scourge” on Christian princes who failed to realize the ideal of Christian commonwealth (Richard Knolles, Generall Historie of the Turkes [London: Islip, 1603], Introduction, iv). 30. Celio Augustino Curione, A Notable Historie of the Saracens, trans. Thomas Newton (London: William How, 1575), (sig. A3V), http//:name.umdl.umich.edu/A19712.0001.001. Ogier Ghiselin De Busbecq, the Archduke Ferdinand’s ambassador at Süleyman’s court (1554–1562), observes in one of his letters translated by Edward Seymour Forster: “I tremble when I think of what the future must bring when I compare the Turkish system with our own. . . . On their side are the resources of a mighty empire, strength unimpaired, experience and practice in fighting, a veteran soldiery, habituation to victory, endurance of toil, unity, order, discipline, frugality, and watchfullness. On our side is public poverty, private luxury, impaired strength, broken spirit, lack of endurance and training. . . . Can we doubt what the result will be?” (112–13). 31. Jane E. Howard, “Gender on the Periphery,” in Shakespeare and the Mediterranean: The Selected Proceedings of the International Shakespeare Association World Congress, Valencia, 2001, eds. Tom Clayton, Susan Brock, and Vicente Forés (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2004), 348. 32. Vikus, Turning Turk, 31. 33. Ibid. Since the early fifteenth century there had been treatises between the Ottomans and the two Italian republics of Genoa and Venice to ensure safe passage of vessels bringing grain from Russia and Anatolia. In 1453 Genoa and afterward Venice obtained concessions for direct trade with the Porte. These two Italian cities controlled this trade almost as a monopoly for a long time. However, in 1535 formal capitulations were granted to France and with this arrange-

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ment the French ambassador was constituted the official diplomatic representative of Europeans in Constantinople (Samuel C. Chew, The Crescent and the Rose: Islam and England during the Renaissance [New York: Octagon Books, 1974], 150). 34. Jerry Brotton, Trading Territories: Mapping the Early Modern World (London: Reaktion Books, 1997), 92. 35. Vitkus, Turning Turk, 36. 36. Despite the scholarly habit of reading all English Renaissance texts as products of an imperialist culture that perceived peoples around the world as its potential colonies, scholars like Matar, Vitkus, and Burton persuasively argued against the tendency to describe England as an imperial power before English imperialism actually began. While they acknowledged the fact that the roots of the empire can be traced back to the sixteenth and the early seventeenth centuries, they argued that calling England an empire in this age does not mean that the country was a colonizing and conquering power in the sense that Spain or the ancient Rome was. In the first place, until the Act of Union (1707), England was not officially an empire, and except for its partially successful domination in Ireland, the country did not have a history of colonization. Also many of the early English voyages to the New World were failures. Even as late as the 1630s the English had been in possession of only a handful of miserable outposts in Virginia and Massachusetts. In this period the Mediterranean offered England a better opportunity to develop a successful commercial enterprise. 37. Jonathan Burton, Traffic and Turning: Islam and English Drama 1579–1624 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005), 59. 38. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 13. 39. Brotton, Trading Territories, 103. 40. This retrospective perspective regarding the place of the Ottoman Empire in early modern European politics was analyzed by a number of critics in the recent scholarship, including Brotton in Trading Territories; Lisa Jardine in Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998); Nabil Matar in Islam and Britain 1558–1685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) and Turks, Moors and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery; Vitkus in Turning Turk; Burton in Traffic and Turning; and Matthew Dimmock in New Turkes: Dramatizing Islam and the Ottomans in Early Modern England (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing 2005). 41. Matar, Islam and Britain: 1558–1685, 11, 191. 42. Matar, Turks, Moors, and Englishmen, 116. 43. In Worldly Goods (1998), Jardine argues that the exchange of goods played a key role in the relations between the Occident and the Orient. Despite the inseparable differences in ideological and religious outlooks between the East and the West, she claims that the traffic in goods—intellectual and material—could bridge these boundaries (55). 44. Vitkus, Turning Turk, 48. 45. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 12. 46. Dimmock, New Turkes, 6. 47. Nabil Matar, “Muslims in Seventeenth Century England,” Journal of Islamic Studies 8, no. 1 (1997), 65. 48. Apart from Richard Knolles’s General Historie of the Turks (1603), which is mentioned here, examples for historical works may include translated texts such as Paulo Giovo’s Short Treatise on the Turkes Chronicles (1547), The Ottoman of Lazaro Soranzo (1603), as well as English texts like John Foxe’s The Actes and Monuments (1570) and the anonymous Policie of the Turkish Empire (1597). Also travelogues like Henry Blount’s A Voyage into the Levant (1636), William Lithgow’s A most detectable and trve discovrse of an admired and painefull Peregrination from Scotland, to the most Famous Kingdomes in Europe, Asia and Affrica (1623), and the translation of Nicolas de Nicolay’s The naugations, peregrinations and voyages, made into Turkie (1585) were widely circulated in early modern London. 49. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 23. 50. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 23. 51. Richard Knolles, Generall Historie of the Turkes (London: Islip, 1603), The Author to the Reader.

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52. Dorothy M. Vaughan, Europe and the Turk: A Pattern of Alliances (1350–1700) (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1954), 134. 53. Sir Henry Blount, A Voyage into the Levant: A Briefe Relation of a Journey, Lately Performed by Master H. B. Gentleman, from England by the Way of Venice, into Dalmatia, Sclavonia, Bosnia, Hungary, Macedonia, Thessaly, Thrace, Rhodes, and Egypt unto Gran Cairo: With Particular Observations Concerning the Moderne Condition of the Turkes and Other People under That Empire (London: R.C., 1636), 103, 107. 54. Louis Wann, “The Oriental in Elizabethan Drama,” Modern Philology 12, no. 7 (1915), 168, 179, https://www.jstor.org/stable/432867. 55. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 32. 56. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 56. 57. Matar, Turks, Moors, and Englishmen, 15. 58. Matar, “The Renegade in English Seventeenth Century Imagination,” 490. 59. Kahf, Western Representations of the Muslim Woman, 71. 60. Chew, The Crescent and the Rose, 343. 61. Vitkus, Turning Turk, 88. 62. Vitkus, Turning Turk, 86. 63. John Mandeville, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (New York: Dover Publications, 1964), chapter XV. 64. Norman Daniel, Islam and the West (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1960), 159. 65. Roger Bacon quoted in Daniel, Islam and the West, 169. 66. Leslie Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 5. 67. Vitkus, “Early Modern Orientalism Representations of Islam in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Europe,” 223. 68. Lithgow quoted in Loomba, “Shakespeare and Cultural Difference,” 179. 69. Kate Aughterson, Renaissance Woman: A Sourcebook: Constructions of Femininity in England (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 9. 70. Mark Breitenberg, Anxious Masculinity in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 25. 71. Tina Krontiris, Oppositional Voices Women as Writers and Translators of Literature in the English Renaissance (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 8. 72. The status of women in the period of the Renaissance is a widely researched topic in feminist studies and the answer to the central question whether women indeed had a Renaissance or not varied among the scholars. Some of these feminists, including Joan Kelly-Gadol who posed this question, spoke not of a “rebirth” but of powerlessness and objectification for the Englishwomen of the period. In Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century (1919), Alice Clark argued that the transition from a feudal system to urban capitalism entailed a decline in women’s status as the family industry disappeared and women were constrained with strict patriarchal codes that disallowed them to participate effectively in the new system. In Women and the English Renaissance (1984) Linda Woodbridge suggested that while the new notion of women in the Renaissance was much debated among the English men and women, the purpose of both the attackers and defenders of women was undergirded by an orthodox understanding of the nature of women, thus did “little to advance the argument for the equality of women” (38). Yet these arguments were also challenged by a number of scholars, including Margaret Ferguson, Judith Brown Elaine Beilin, and Tina Krontiris, who drew attention to the real-life evidence for women’s achievements in the English economic and cultural life and argued at least for “a partial Renaissance for women” (Krontiris, Women and/in the Renaissance 14). Also scholars like Retha Warnicke and Patricia Crawford examined the inadvertent role of Protestantism in enabling women to attain greater esteem and power, notwithstanding the fact that, as Constance Jordan argued, this power could not be translated into authority to give it “a public and constitutional character” (Renaissance Feminism: Literary Texts and Political Models [Ithaca, NewYork: Cornell University Press, 1990], 4). 73. William Biddulph, The Travels of Certaine Englishmen, (London: Th. Haueland, 1609), A2.

Chapter Two

Erasing the Cultural and Religious Difference Marlowe’s Tamburlaine and Greene’s Alphonsus

While Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great (1587–1590) was not the first play that featured Muslim characters on the English stage, since it achieved an enormous success and was frequently imitated in the years that followed its staging, it can be credited for setting the standards for the Turk as a popular and clearly marked figure in English drama. 1 Written in the context of both the Renaissance humanist straining against the traditional limits of man and the escalating imperialism both in the eastern and in the western parts of the world, the play, in which almost all characters are Muslim, can be understood as an exaltation of human prowess, which in its glorious enterprise defies all boundaries, including those of conventional religion, be it Christian or Islamic. With its notoriously self-fashioning Muslim hero, who transforms himself from a base-born shepherd into a mighty emperor through a transgressive interpretation of political virtu, Marlowe’s drama posits a substantial challenge to conventional Renaissance ethics, interrogating its very roots; and in this sense it clearly fits into Dollimore’s definition of “radical tragedy.” 2 Tamburlaine has always enjoyed great critical attention within early modern studies, and a recurrent argument in the play’s criticism is that Marlowe produces a fantasy of imperial ambition by using Tamburlaine’s achievements as a mirror, a “tragic glass,” 3 for English mercantile affairs and expansionism. For Stephen Greenblatt, Tamburlaine embodies the “acquisitive energies of English merchants, entrepreneurs, and adventurers” at a time when European men had embarked on an “extraordinary career of consumption” of “the world’s resources.” 4 Emily Bartels, on the other hand, maintains that the 25

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play reveals an “imperial self-construction” at work, which is continuously read against the East. 5 By locating the play within England’s economic interest in the Ottomans, she assigns to Turkish imperialism a crucial role for England’s own and argues that the play’s hero, who is constructed “neither as an insatiable barbarian nor an awe-inspiring hero,” brings together “conflicting voices” about the Orient, while providing a model to teach supremacy to English. 6 With a similar tendency to understand the play’s use of the Turks as a means to create a distancing medium to discuss issues closer to home, Simon Shepherd offers a topical reading that contextualizes the play squarely within the Anglo-Spanish conflict over the Netherlands. Drawing a parallel between Leicester, the leader of the anti-Catholic campaign against The Netherlands, and Tamburlaine, who was historically famous for delivering the Christians from the Turks, he identifies the Scythian emperor’s interests as English and that of the Turkish emperor Bajazeth as Spanish. 7 The contemporary “game” of planning for commercial and imperial expansion undoubtedly informs Marlowe’s drama. The exotic realms and characters that awe and horrify the spectator with their extraordinary wealth and power; the portrait of a mere brigand who aspires to attain transcendental autonomy and leave “an enduring mark” 8 through conquest, violence, and death; and the envisioning of the world purely in terms of mercantile economies, reducing it to a map to be renamed and redefined, all support the imperialistic design that Tamburlaine’s critics have argued for. In addition, the actual crowns which are switched back and forth among characters throughout both parts of the play can be understood as parodying the shifts of domination within this game of empire. However, I believe, understanding Tamburlaine only with respect to English proto-colonialism, taking the image of the Turk merely as a mirror that reflects on imperial desire, understates the pivotal role played by the Turkish characters in the play and ignores the pervasive awareness of the Ottoman expansionist power in Marlowe’s England. While it is true that Tamburlaine’s aim is to conquer the whole world, his main conflict in both parts of the play is against the Turks. Historical Timur had become legendary in Europe for distracting the Turkish Sultan Bayezid I (1347–1403) away from the siege of Constantinople by defeating him in the Battle of Ankara (1402). By many Christians this was regarded as an instance of divine retribution against the Ottoman emperor for his persecution of Christians. Several European monarchs even wrote letters of congratulation to Timur. 9 Marlowe too places the action in the first play firmly on this legend and in the second part the Hungarian conflict against the Turks in Varna (1444) is given a central place. Actually, it would not be wrong to argue that the success of Tamburlaine plays depended to an extent on the English familiarity with the subject matter. 10 Comparing the play to its historical sources, several critics who focused on Marlowe’s portrayal of the Turks have seen the events in the plot as a

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reconstruction of history in a way to reinforce European anti-Islamic prejudices through employment of a providentialist discourse. In the play’s recent criticism however, scholars who analyze the play within the context of the emerging Anglo-Ottoman diplomatic and trade relations during the reign of Elizabeth I and the consequent production of elastic ideologies with respect to the religious difference have argued that Marlowe uses European prejudices against Islam only as a guise. For example, for Burton the stereotype of the bombastic warlike Turk is only one of the versions of the Turk that Marlowe represents. He argues that by activating and deactivating this image, Tamburlaine interrogates English responses to the Ottoman power to create “a perspective on early modern England’s need to produce a rhetoric that would justify its controversial commercial alliance with the Turks.” 11 Vitkus, on the other hand, suggests that by constructing an increasingly sympathetic audience position with Tamburlaine’s Turkish victims, the play transforms the English fears of being conquered by the Ottomans into an identification with them; thus, it “insinuates that the discourses of providentialism, prophecy, and holy war are merely empty rhetoric.” 12 Finally, Linda McJannet analyzes the dominant Turkish characters in both parts of the play almost entirely in positive terms, arguing that a reading of the play that relies on the assumption that early modern England sustained a static stereotype of barbarous Turk “oversimplifies and distorts” the depiction of the Ottomans. 13 In my reading of Tamburlaine, I want to join this last group of scholars who argue that Marlowe’s representation of the Ottomans does not mirror English imperial aspirations, but is “representative of actual Turkish strength” 14 and that the conventional demonized image of the Turk invoked in the play is merely superficial. In my analysis, I want to extend this argument so as to include also the depiction of the Muslim female characters in the play and discuss how the short circuit that Marlowe’s drama generates in the conventional discourse on Islam is projected on the representation of the Muslim woman. None of the scholars above analyzes the play’s Muslim female characters from this perspective. The feminist critics of Tamburlaine scarcely identify Zenocrate and Zabina specifically as Muslim. Without observing any Christian-Muslim divide, they generally tend to understand these women as exemplifications of the conventional gender discourse of the period, performing their preordained roles as objects of exchange in the play’s imperial design. For example, Charles Brooks argues that “to the men in Tamburlaine beautiful women are treasures to be won” and through honorable and virtuous action women exact “the highest prize possible” in the bidding. 15 Simon Shepherd, similarly, sees the women in Tamburlaine not as characters, but as devices to characterize the male virtue and says that in the play “women are treated as a treasure in a world where men fight and negotiate.” 16 The fact that the Muslim identity of the women in Tamburlaine is found irrelevant by these scholars supports my argument that Marlowe displays

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indifference toward the conventional Islamic attributions of these women. In my analysis, I want to read this impartiality as a consequence of the new rhetoric produced with respect to the Turks in general. Stereotypically in European literature the representation of the Muslim woman is sexually connoted. It underlines feminine weaknesses such as passion, assertiveness, lust, and wickedness as the essential characteristics of Islamic women, reflecting the moral degeneration of her false religion. Marlowe’s depiction of Muslim female characters in Tamburlaine presents a certain disruption in this respect, because the distinctions that foreground the Muslim woman as embodiment of wrong femininity and discriminate her from the idealized Christian woman are completely lacking in the play. On the contrary, both Zenocrate and Zabina are portrayed entirely in a positive light: they are virtuous and honorable Eastern empresses who complement the aggrandized imperial image of their husbands and deserve admiration through their actions. In addition, with respect to their function in the game of empire-making, I want to suggest a more active role for these women than the one argued for by feminist critics. While the women in Tamburlaine fulfill their conventional feminine roles, that they are not altogether passive or voiceless figures who are merely treated as treasures or commodities, but vital players, who, within the imperial context, strive to defend the rules of the game and exercise feminine authority in shaping the world balances. A positive political climate between the Ottoman Empire and England followed the initiation of Anglo-Ottoman diplomatic and commercial relations in the last years of Elizabeth’s reign. A series of letters exchanged between the queen and the Ottoman sultan point to the English ability to produce a new rhetoric of Islam, which emphasizes similarities rather than differences within the context of the newly established strategic alliance between the two countries. Reading the depiction of the Turks in Marlowe’s play, in light of this historical context shows that rather than debasing the Turks, Marlowe regularly encourages sympathetic reaction for his Turkish characters. He forces the audience to question their culturally inscribed beliefs; and by so doing, he exemplifies the shift in the conventional rhetoric of Islam that also the Queen’s letters reflect. In my analysis of the image of the Muslim women in Tamburlaine in relation to both this rhetorical shift and the role cast for them in the empire-building, I shall refer, in the latter part of my discussion, to another series of letters exchanged between the Turkish and English courts. A decade after the formal establishment of Anglo-Ottoman relations, between 1593 and 1599, Murad III’s wife Safiye Sultan corresponded and exchanged gifts with Elizabeth. The powerful sultana image that Safiye reflects in her letters exemplifies how women exercised authority in the Ottoman dynasty. In addition, her clear emphasis on the feminine values that she shared with the Queen of England points to an understanding that underlines the similarities rather than the differences between the two

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cultures. Safiye’s self-representation in these letters provides a valuable historical model against which to read Marlowe’s Muslim empresses. In some ways, Tamburlaine’s women and the role attributed to them in the imperial design correspond with the characteristics of the Ottoman woman model embodied in Safiye. THE OTTOMANS: THE INFIDEL OR A POWERFUL ALLY? Elizabeth I was not the first Christian monarch that openly cooperated with the Islamic empire of the Ottomans. Following the example of the Venetians who had maintained commercial and military affiliation with the Turks since the fourteenth century, the French established good relations with the Ottoman court at the start of the sixteenth century, and after the grant of commercial capitulations in 1536, they started to dominate the vibrant mercantile economy in the Mediterranean together with the Venetians. Breaking up this Franco-Venetian commercial monopoly was one of the motives that encouraged Elizabeth to establish diplomatic and trade relations with the Ottomans. 17 However, the Queen’s primary purpose in approaching the Ottoman Empire was England’s need for a powerful political and military ally in its long-standing struggle against Catholic Spain. In the early modern period, England was still a small player on the world map and it “was painfully conscious of its own imperial belatedness with respect to Spain.” 18 Contrary to the aggressive Spanish colonization in the New World, when Elizabeth I died in 1604 “England did not yet possess a single colonial inch in the Americas.” 19 The most significant military threat of Elizabeth’s reign was the attempted invasion of England by the Spanish Armada in 1588. Thanks to the maneuver capability of the English ships and the destructive storms, the Spanish fleet was defeated, but if they had actually attacked, England did not have a standing army to repulse them effectively. 20 An alliance with a strong power such as the Ottomans against the common enemy Spain suited well the Queen’s purposes not only economically, but also politically and militarily. The Anglo-Ottoman relations were officially opened in 1579; however, before this date, the English had sent a series of diplomatic missions to the Ottoman court in an attempt to establish a preliminary dialogue. Initially, two English merchants, Edward Osborne and Richard Staper, sent representatives to Constantinople in 1575 to obtain permission from the Ottoman sultan to maintain an English envoy to oversee the operations of English traders in Turkey. 21 The Sultan granted permission a year and a half later, and in 1578, the Queen appointed William Harborne as the first English ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Harborne’s efforts to establish good relations with the officials of the Ottoman court were effective. In September 1579, the first Turkish envoy arrived in England with a letter to Queen Elizabeth in which the

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Sultan offered “unrestricted commerce” in his country to Englishmen. 22 Later, in May 1580, the first commercial capitulations were promulgated between the English monarchy and the Ottoman sultanate. The Turkish market was now open to English merchants. In 1581 the Levant Company was founded with the Queen’s official approval. In the year that Marlowe wrote the first part of his play (1587), the vessel Hercules made the first of its immensely profitable voyages to Constantinople. 23 The diplomatic and commercial relations initiated between England and the Ottoman Empire were supported by a series of letters exchanged between Elizabeth I and Murad III from 1579 to 1581. Richard Hakluyt included these letters in both versions of his Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation (1598–1600), and so they were known to a large portion of the English public. The most striking characteristic of the correspondence between the queen and the sultan is the rhetorical strategy that is employed by both monarchs in an attempt to downplay the religious differences, while putting emphasis on similarities in their political and ideological doctrines. 24 For example, Murad avoids the lengthy Islamic invocations and boastful epithets that he commonly used in his correspondence with other Christian monarchs in his letters to the English queen and simply calls himself “Murad Shah, son of Selim Shah Khan, he who is granted victory always.” 25 Elizabeth, on the other hand, in addition to her official title, presents herself as “the most invincible and most mightie defender of the Christian faith against all kinde of idolatries, of all that live among the Christians, and falselie professe the name of Christ,” 26 thus distinguishes herself from Murad’s Catholic foes on the basis of the doctrine of antiidolatry which is common to both Protestantism and Islam. In their correspondence, both monarchs express eagerness to admit English and Turkish traders into each other’s kingdoms. In a letter of 1579 the Sultan assures Elizabeth that “our Country be always open to such of your subjects, as by way of merchandize shall trade hither: and we will never faile to aide and succor any of them that are or shall be willing to esteem of our friendship, favour, and assistance: but will reckon it some part of our dutie to gratifie them by all good means.” 27 In turn Elizabeth assures him: “we will grant as equall and as free libertie to the subject of your highnesse with us for the use of traffique when they will to come and go and from us and our kingdoms.” 28 She affirms to the benefit of good relations between the two countries, when she says “by mutuall traffique the East may be joined and knit to the West.” 29 In another letter the Queen entreats the Sultan to free her subjects who have been “deteined as slaves and captives in [his] Gallies,” and promises that if he helps she will ask: God (who only above all things, and all men, and is a most severe revenger of all idolatrie, and is iealous of his honor against the false gods of all nations) to

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adorne your most invincible imperiall highnesse with all the blessings of those gifts, which onely & deservedly are accounted most worthie of asking. 30

Such promises of spiritual gifts, combined with the Queen’s repeated emphasis on the shared doctrine of anti-idolatry, clearly subvert the Crusader’s rhetoric by pointing to the Catholics, not the traditional enemy Islam, as blasphemers. Elizabeth’s rhetorical strategy appropriates Reformation ideas for political interests and removes the obstacle of Christian militancy against Islam to provide a suitable ideological ground for political interaction. Over the next two decades that followed this particular correspondence between the queen and the Ottoman sultan, the English engaged the Turks in extensive diplomatic and trade relations and regularly spoke of military alliance. The French and the Venetians were disturbed by the English presence in the Levant market, because their profitable trade at the Ottoman ports was threatened by English goods. 31 Yet, a more prevalent concern was that England’s arms trade would aid the Turks’ military efforts against Christendom. 32 The close diplomatic coordination between England and the Ottoman Empire was found scandalous by many Christian monarchs. While similar concerns were also voiced within the English society, pragmatic politicians like Francis Walsingham saw the Turks as tactical allies who would help to “divert the dangerous attempts and designs of [the Spanish] King from these parts of Christendom.” 33 Hakluyt viewed the trade with the Ottomans as an opportunity that would lead “to the inlarging of her Majesties customes, the furthering of navigation, the venting of diverse generall commodities of this Realme, and the inriching of the citie of London.” 34 In 1591, Thomas Nelson was proud that although “Her Maiestie is a stranger and altogether unknowne vnto the Great Turke,” he offered her “all necessarie things ordered and prepared in his porte” to “aide, assist, and pleasure her maiestie” and “to defend her agaynst anie enemy whatsoever.” 35 Contrary to the traditional Christian prejudices against Muslim people as barbarous and corrupt infidels, proto-nationalism and mercantile interests enabled the English to produce a favorable image of an anti-idolatrous Turk with whom they could legitimately enjoy trade relations and join in alliance against the hegemony of Catholic Spain. Marlowe wrote his Tamburlaine, Parts 1 and 2, in such a political atmosphere, and I argue that the portrayal of the Turkish characters in the play reflects this shift in the conventional rhetoric. 36 The playwright initially invokes religious difference by presenting a stereotypical image of the Turk through the depiction of Bajazeth. He creates in his audience the anticipation that the play will enact the fantasy of the Ottoman sultan’s total defeat and humiliation; yet he fulfills this fantasy at the cost of creating “a desiring machine that produces violence and death.” 37 Though Tamburlaine defends the Christian cause, his cruelty, pride and blasphemous defiance of divinity

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eventually push the audience into an uncomfortable position with respect to the implications of his actions, while simultaneously encouraging sympathy for his Turkish victims. 38 The audience is asked to put aside its religious antagonism and respond emotionally to the sufferings of the Turkish characters, and even identify with these politically and socially incorrect figures. 39 Though like the historical Timur, Marlowe’s Tamburlaine is nominally a Muslim, his religious identity remains ambiguous throughout the play. He initially appears as a pagan polytheist, who speaks of Jove as the god that keeps him “safe from harm.” 40 Later, he converts to a Muslim who swears by “Mahomet,” but only to turn into a blasphemer of this religion by burning its holy book. Marlowe keeps Tamburlaine’s religious orientation in the background and foregrounds the protagonist’s human ambition and Machiavellian pragmatism. Tamburlaine desires to conquer the entire world; yet he aspires to do so not in the name of some Christian or Muslim god, but only for himself. He asserts his personal power as a transcendent force and believes “[t]hat perfect bliss and sole felicity” is “[t]he sweet fruition of an earthly crown.” 41 From one point of view, the emphasis on Tamburlaine’s human prowess rather than his Muslim identity renders him an example of the selfknowing and self-actualizing individual that emerged in the Renaissance. Yet, when seen in relation to his opposition against the Turks, which is central to both parts of the play, the silencing of Tamburlaine’s religion aligns him strategically with the Christian interests and enables the English audience to position themselves with Tamburlaine against the Turk. 42 Marlowe’s hero announces that as the “Wrath of God, / The only fear and terror of the world” he “[w]ill first subdue the Turk, and then enlarge / Those Christian captives which [they] keep as slaves.” 43 He declares support for European mercantile interests, when he imagines “Christian merchants that with Russian stems / Plow up huge furrows in the Caspian Sea, / Shall vail to us, as lords of all the lake.” 44 If Marlowe mutes Tamburlaine’s religious difference in order to reinforce his position as the protector of the Christians, his initial representation the Ottoman sultan Bajazeth confirms the stereotypical image of the Turk. Contrary to the unstable religious identity of Tamburlaine, Bajazeth is firmly established as a Muslim emperor who embodies Islam’s threat to Europe. He invokes and swears by the name of “Mahomet.” In his introductory speech he boastfully reminds his contributory kings and “bassoes” (pashas) of his great power. He conceives of himself as the “Dread Lord of Afric, Europe and Asia, / Great king and conqueror of Greacia, / The ocean Terrene, and the coal-black sea, / The high and highest monarch of the world.” 45 He speaks of his awareness of Tamburlaine’s plans to “‘rouse us from our dreadful siege of the famous Grecian Constantinople,” but holds the Scythian’s challenge a mere “bickering.” 46 Before the battle he confidently challenges Tamburlaine:

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By Mahomet my kinsman’s sepulchre, And by the holy Alcoran, I swear He shall be made a chaste and lustless eunuch And in my sarell tend my concubines. 47

Tamburlaine, in turn, answers him: By this my sword that conquered Persia, Thy fall shall make me famous through the world. 48

The parallelism between the vaunting rhetoric of Bajazeth and Tamburlaine underlines the contrast between the two warriors with respect to their religious identity. While it figures Bajazeth as a Muslim emperor who swears by his prophet and holy book, it distances Tamburlaine from Islam, figuring him as a pagan conqueror who swears by nothing, attributing his coming victory only to the might of his sword. Several critics of Tamburlaine have argued that Marlowe’s portrayal of the Ottoman emperor as a pompous and tyrannical man is a negative departure from the play’s acknowledged sources, in an attempt to enhance the figure of Tamburlaine at the expense of Bajazeth. 49 For example, Ellis Fermor feels that Marlowe’s treatment of Bajazeth is governed by his wish to preserve an “undivided sympathy” for Tamburlaine. 50 Similarly, Leslie Spence suggests that by changing the historical courageous Bajazeth into a “vain booster, and an impudent snob,” Marlowe justifies the Sultan’s later debasement at the hands of Tamburlaine as a deserved chastisement by the divinely appointed scourge. 51 However, at a closer examination, Marlowe’s alleged demeaning of Bajazeth does not completely accord with the reading of the entire play. First, mastery in self-aggrandizing rhetoric—speaking in “high astounding terms” 52—is essential to Marlowe’s heroic drama. Rhetoric of power is in fact a method of measuring power, with which the kings onstage can “prove their infinite forces in words.” 53 Bajazeth’s confident speeches indicate that he is a far worthier emperor than the coward and weak-minded Persian king, Mycetes, who admits his lack of “great and thundering speech.” 54 With his boastful rhetoric, Bajazeth shows that he is a fitting opponent for Tamburlaine, both as a warrior and as a leader. In addition, the Turkish emperor’s assertions of his power are not mere blusters, but accurate and true descriptions of his past military deeds. He is indeed in possession of the territories he talks of, and being the world’s most powerful emperor, the flattery shown to him by his contributory kings should be deemed due and appropriate. 55 Yet, Bajazeth’s rhetoric prior to the battle is not matched with his success in the field. After a bitter and unexpected defeat, he is dragged to the stage in an iron cage and dishonored by being fed like a dog and used as a footstool by Tamburlaine to mount his throne. Brown argues that Marlowe’s debase-

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ment of Bajazeth appears to be “more radical and all-encompassing” than the accounts found in the period’s historical texts. 56 Indeed, by elaborating on the abuse of the Turkish emperor at the hands of Tamburlaine, who acts as the protector of Christendom, Marlowe’s appears to want to please his audience by eliminating Christianity’s arch-enemy on the stage. This authorial attitude is shown also by Bajazeth’s acknowledgment that Tamburlaine’s victory is in fact a Christian victory, which will be celebrated by “the Christian miscreants” by “[r]inging with joy their superstitious bells / And making bonfires over my overthrow.” 57 Yet, Marlowe’s elaboration on Bajazeth’s defeat is calculated so as to call into question Tamburlaine’s perverse savagery rather than merely to provide a sadistic spectacle for the audience. As McJannet has shown Marlowe omits certain details which may justify Tamburlaine’s ill-treatment of Bajazeth. 58 That Bajazeth’s raging speeches in captivity prove to be mere wrath does not diminish the Turkish emperor’s stature. His relentless defiance of Tamburlaine and his determination to free himself through suicide can be perceived of as acts of dignity, rather than childish frustration of a caricaturized sultan figure. 59 Even if the fantasy of a Turkish defeat might have appeared attractive to the audience initially, it would be wrong to assume that the spectators would remain unmoved by the spectacle of the Sultan, expressing in despair his final wish to his wife Zabina: O poor Zabina, O my queen, my queen, Fetch me some water for my burning breast, To cool and comfort me with longer date, That in the shortened sequel of my life, I may pour forth my soul into thine arms With words of love, whose moaning intercourse Hath hitherto been stayed with wrath and hate Of our expressless, banned inflictions. 60

Clearly, this pitiful lamentation does not bespeak a cruel and lustful tyrant, but a broken noble man who has suffered at the hands of his ruthless rival. As Burton suggests, Marlowe’s humanization of Bajazeth in this scene “disallows an understanding of Turks as necessarily barbaric.” 61 Zabina’s expressed sorrow upon finding her husband’s corpse, which drives her into madness and to her own suicide, as well as the pity that Tamburlaine’s consort Zenocrate articulates upon the spectacle of the deaths of the noble couple, both suggest that Bajazeth emerges from Marlowe’s play not as a barbarian who has been justly punished for his sins against the Christians, but as a sympathetic figure whose sufferings invoke pity in the audience, while inviting criticism for his tormentor, the supposed defender of Christianity. In Part 2, it becomes even more difficult for the audience to identify with one of the two sides. Like at the beginning of Part 1, Europe is threatened

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with conquest and the prospect of “Turkey blades . . . glid[ing] through all their throats, 62 yet upon learning Tamburlaine’s plans to assault “Natolia,” the Turkish king Orcanes signs a peace treaty with the Christians. Interestingly enough, it is the Christians, not the Muslims who are shown to act contemptibly. Though both Orcanes and the Hungarian king Sigismund swear by their respective gods to keep peace, the Christians betray the alliance on the grounds that an oath made in Christ’s name may be dispensed when it is offered to “such infidels / in whom no faith nor true religion rests.” 63 Orcanes, shocked by the Christians’ failure to honor their vow, invokes the Christian deity to prove “a perfect god” and avenge the dishonor to his name. He even encourages his army of Muslim men to call on Christ, reasoning that “[i]f there be Christ, we shall have victory.” 64 The Muslim army gains a quick triumph over Sigismund’s troops. By implication, this victory is an answer to Orcanes’s vows and an instance of divine intervention. Orcanes cannot decide whether “Christ or Mahomet was on his side” and reinforces an association between the Christian and Muslim deities: “in my thought shall Christ be honored / Not doing Mahomet an injury whose power had share in this victory.” 65 By presenting the Christians as “traitors” and “villains” who “care so little for their prophet Christ,” 66 he makes it impossible for his audience to identify with them. Instead, he renders Orcanes as a pious and admirable figure who sharply contrasts with the image of the Turk as a murderous conspirator. Thus, the play complicates the conventional binary oppositions set up between Islam and Christianity and denies the validity of the dominant trope of the faithless Turk. 67 The final provocative trick that Marlowe sets for the audience comes in the scene that Tamburlaine orders the burning of the Koran. Throwing the Islamic holy book into the bonfire lit on the stage, Tamburlaine taunts the Muslim deity to “[c]ome down thyself and work a miracle” 68 to prove his power. He declares: In vain I see, men worship Mahomet. My sword hath sent millions of Turks to hell, Slew all his priests, his kinsmen, and his friends, And yet I live untouched by Mahomet. 69

The critics of the play cannot agree whether the onset of Tamburlaine’s mortal illness fifteen lines later should be attributed to “Mahomet” or natural causes. According to Greenblatt, the effect of this scene “is not to celebrate the transcendent power of Muhammad but to challenge the habit of mind that looks to heaven for rewards and punishments that imagines human evil ‘the scourge of God.’” 70 Yet, as Burton observes Tamburlaine’s burning of the Koran, which is his most anti-Islamic act, comes “when he is at the height of his repellent viciousness.” 71 The audience does not have the luxury to reject

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Muhammad’s intercession at this point, because otherwise it would be like blasphemy. They would have to accept that neither Christ, nor Muhammad, nor any other deity has intervened while thousands of people died. 72 By making the audience accept the divine providence in the person of the Muslim prophet, the play gives way to religious relativism and cultural openness. Asking his spectators to suspend their biases and expectations, it shows the possibility of producing a new kind of rhetoric in which God is conceived as universal, with no attention paid to whether he is Christian or Muslim, and all people as subject to the same moral laws. 73 This is precisely the same logic that rationalized Elizabeth’s attempts to initiate commercial relations with the Ottoman Empire. By affirming the unitary and universal nature of God against the “false gods of the nations,” she provided a framework for justifying her controversial alliance with the Turks, which refused to see the Muslim as the infidel and offered profitable and peaceful international relations as an alternative to holy war. Though it would be wrong to argue that Marlowe’s purpose was to justify a Turkish alliance, by playing on the audience’s conventional responses, the playwright reflects on this alternative created by the Queen’s policy. FEMALE SOVEREIGNTY AND THE GAME OF EMPIRE Having reached this conclusion with respect to the image of the Turk in Tamburlaine, in the following section I want to discuss the implications of this new rhetoric on the play’s representation of the Muslim women. If fears and prejudices against Islam are first evoked and then undermined in the portrait of Bajazeth and other Turkish male characters, the play contains virtually no trace of the literary conventions that underline a cultural difference that discriminates the Islamic women from their idealized Christian sisters. Except for the exotic costumes they wear and their scattered invocations to “sacred Mahommed,” there is indeed very little evidence to identify Zabina or Zenocrate as Muslim. Neither the figure of the wanton princess of the medieval ages, nor the erotic and secluded image of the Muslim woman that prevailed in the Orientalist discourse is discernible in Marlowe’s play. The Muslim female characters in Tamburlaine are depicted instead as virtuous and powerful noblewomen, who abide by and exalt the same patriarchal ideals constructed for women in the Christian world. Apparently, when the barrier of religion is removed, the presumed differences between Christian and Muslim women also evaporate, and what remains is the simple difference of being a female subject in the game of empire. I want to analyze the representation of the Muslim female characters in Tamburlaine with respect to both the departure from their conventional attributions and the position assigned to them in the scenario of empire-making

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presented in the play. While the role given to women in such a scenario, which casts them merely as objects of exchange, is usually a passive one, I argue that the Muslim women in Tamburlaine are not portrayed as altogether voiceless heroines. They are prideful and articulate subjects who actively strive to attain and protect the feminine virtues expected of them in an effort to complement the aggrandized image that their male counterparts project in asserting imperial will. By doing this, they also legitimize their own powerful position as wives and mothers of great emperors, which allows them to exercise a kind of “feminine authority” in appropriating the world balances without violating patriarchal prerogatives. A historical counterpart to this image of the Muslim woman lies in a series of letters exchanged between the English and Ottoman courts during the reign of Elizabeth. In the course of the development of Anglo-Ottoman diplomatic relations through correspondence with Murad III, the English queen also exchanged letters with Murad’s wife, Safiye, who was one of the most powerful women in Ottoman history. Safiye’s self-representation in these letters provides a model comparable to the Muslim empresses depicted in Tamburlaine. Like Zabina and Zenocrate, Safiye assumes a complementary position next to the Ottoman Sultan in the imperial image-making, and with a power that emanates from her wifely and motherly role in the Ottoman dynasty, she becomes involved in the politics of the empire in a womanly fashion similar to Marlowe’s Muslim empresses. Undoubtedly, any argument that suggests a place for women’s agency in empire politics would be a difficult one to sustain. After all, man had been associated with martial prowess, assertiveness, and conquest—which are essential to any imperial endeavor—and women with passion, lack of reason, and changeability, attributes which cast them into a passive role and made them vulnerable to conquest. In fact, Queen Elizabeth herself had to legitimize her sovereignty as a female monarch in the English proto-colonial period. As a woman, she was considered by many as unfit for kingly rule and thus not qualified to ignite and lead England’s energy for imperial expansion. 74 Her status as the “Virgin Queen,” which she manipulated successfully throughout her reign, to an extent, helped her achieve self-empowerment. Identification of her inviolate female body with the unbreached body of her land, as well as her distinctive role as the motherly protectress of her people, served to moderate her anomalous position by rendering her an “extraordinary woman” who represented the will of a greater patriarchal power. In addition, the articulation of the Queen’s political relationship to her masculine subjects through the discourse of courtship enabled her to be identified with the idealized heroines of Renaissance love tradition, in whose name conquests were performed and authorized. In more practical situations, such as actual martial spectacles, the Queen resorted to political androgyny that presented her body natural and her body politic as separate entities. 75 At Tilbury, where she visited the English troops assembled on the eve of the

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battle against the Spanish Armada in 1588, Elizabeth is famously quoted as saying: Let Tyrants fear, I have always so behaved my self, that under God I have placed my chiefest strength, and safeguard in the royal hearts and good will of my subjects. . . . I know I have the bodie, but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and Stomach of a King, and of a King of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any Prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my Realm, to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I my self will take up arms, I my self will be your General, Judge, and Rewarder of everie one of your virtues in the field. 76

Despite the fact that her position as a female monarch subverted the prerogatives of the Christian patriarchal system, Elizabeth was able to assert a unique power and act independently by appropriating the symbols of that same system. Using her rhetorical skills, she subtly played with patriarchal codes that constrained her. She made them the source of her sovereign autonomy, thus providing herself sufficient elbowroom to rule and defend her country in the global masculine competition for imperial domination. As we shall see, a unique moment in which Elizabeth did not use male guise and enjoyed an overlap of her body natural and body politic as a female sovereign was her correspondence with Safiye, the wife of the Ottoman Sultan Murad III. A decade after the Sultan granted trading concessions to English merchants, Safiye and Elizabeth exchanged a series of letters and gifts in support of the emerging Anglo-Ottoman political, economic, and cultural ties. Though, as in England, in the Ottoman world women traditionally did not exercise political power, in the early modern age the Ottoman Empire was under the sway of a series of dynastic women who, as members of the imperial harem, actively engaged in imperial politics and manipulated both the domestic and the international affairs of the state. These women possessed this capacity by virtue of their feminine roles as mothers of the empire’s reigning or future sultans. Within the Ottoman dynastic structure, when a concubine in the sultan’s harem gave birth to a male child, she could claim share in the exercise of sovereign authority, as her son was seen as the sultan’s heir. 77 If her son actually ascended to the throne, the concubine mother was recognized as the valide sultan (i.e., queen mother), an official position which had significant influence over the administration of the empire. A harem woman in this capacity acted as the political and personal advisor of the Ottoman sultan and represented him as the regent of the empire in negotiations with foreign powers. She supervised the harem and exercised authority not only over other women but also over younger males of the Ottoman family. In addition, with vast sources in her access, she engaged in charitable works and royal patronage, thus contributed to social and economic development and maintained the public image of the dynasty. As Peirce puts it,

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“while supreme authority in the Ottoman sultanate was exercised by a male, that authority in the late sixteenth century emanated from a household that was presided over by the female elder of the dynasty.” 78 Despite the fact that harem women were precluded from exercising public power and given familial roles within the private sphere, in practice, they could make use of these familial roles and attain the power that they were deprived of by the patriarchal society. In other words, similar to the case of Elizabeth, the sovereign power of these harem women emanated from the very patriarchal codes that they were restricted with, yet unlike Elizabeth, they did not need to resort to rhetorical strategies to exercise this power, because they were given the political office to do so. Safiye was one of most effective of these imperial women. As haseki (i.e., the mother of the sultan’s son) she had a great influence during the reign of Murad III, and after her son Mehmed III (1595–1603) ascended the throne, she enjoyed the all-powerful position of valide sultan. The three letters written by Safiye Sultan to Elizabeth I were published by S. A. Skilliter in Documents from Islamic Chanceries (1965) and sufficiently show how these two powerful women exercised womanliness as a means of establishing political alliance. In this respect, their correspondence refers to an unprecedented moment in history in which two royal women actively engage in empire-building in a way to reappropriate the world’s power balances. These letters are also significant as an instance that brought together an elite Christian woman and an elite Muslim woman in close cultural contact. Though they slightly postdate Marlowe’s drama, I find these letters relevant to my discussion of the representation of Muslim women in Tamburlaine. Contrary to traditional assumptions of difference between Christian and Muslim women, these letters emphasize the similarities between Elizabeth and Safiye, as well as the feminine virtues attributed to them by their respective patriarchal societies. In addition, Safiye’s letters exhibit the significant role played by early modern Ottoman women in imperial politics, and, in my discussion, I argue that Marlowe assigns a similar role to the two Muslim noblewomen within the imperial framework of Tamburlaine. Though Safiye became famous in England only after her first letter (dated 1593) was printed in Hakluyt’s 1598–1600 edition of Principal Navigations, her predecessor Hürrem Sultan, or Roxelana (1506–1558), was well-known throughout Europe, and her influence over Süleyman I (1495–1566) both in private and state matters was legendary. 79 With her letters exclusively intended for an English readership, Safiye can be considered as the contemporary and articulate version of Hürrem, and with her self-representation as the sultana of the world’s greatest empire she is comparable to the Muslim empresses in Marlowe’s play. In her letters to Queen Elizabeth, Safiye gives the picture of a powerful sovereign woman who clearly has a say over the affairs of the state; yet in

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asserting her power she assumes a complementary position in the imperial hierarchy and identifies herself strictly according to the prerogatives of the Ottoman patriarchy. For example in her first letter, she starts with an invocation to God “the Absolute and the Veilor and the Creator,” and “the Lord Muhammad . . . the seal of the prophets.” 80 Then she includes an elaborate praise of Sultan Murad III, in which she aggrandizes him as a “Marslike sovereign,” who reigns over “the seven climes” and “the four corners (of the earth).” 81 Her intention to impress her addressee is clear when she describes the extent of the Sultan’s realms which reached from “the regions of the Rum and Ajam and Hungary” to “the lands of the Tartars and Wallachians [and Russians of the Turks and Arabs and Moldavia, of the dominions of] Karamanies and Abyssinia and the Qipchaq steppes, of the Eastern climes and of Jawazir and Shirwan, of the western Climes and of Algeria and Qairawan” to “the lands of Hind and Sind and Baghdad, of the Franks and Croatians and Belgrade.” 82 As I noted earlier, Murad avoided using long Islamic invocations and pompous epithets in his letters to Elizabeth. With her boastful rhetoric, Safiye apparently fills this gap. By asserting the Sultan’s power over his realms and exalting him as the man “who has Alexander’s place,” 83 she promotes his image as the Great Turk. It is also through this image that Safiye achieves self-empowerment. By listing the territories that are under the control of the Ottoman sultan, she in fact claims her own sovereignty over those territories, yet not in the capacity of the wife of the sultan, but as “the mother of Sultan Murad Khan’s son, his Highness Mehemmed Khan,” as it was this title that granted her the political authority. After asserting the greatness of the Ottoman Empire and establishing her own role in its power structure, Safiye greets the English Queen by using epithets that stress their shared qualities of womanliness and sovereignty. She addresses Elizabeth as “the support of Christian womanhood . . . who follow the Messiah, bearer of marks of pomp and majesty, trailing the skirts of glory and power.” 84 Instead of allowing gender confusion by referring to Elizabeth’s role as “prince,” she describes her as the one “who is obeyed of the princes” and invokes her feminine qualities by calling her “cradle of chastity and continence, ruler of the realm of England, crowned lady and woman of Mary’s way.” 85 Clearly, in Safiye’s letter, femininity is not understood as a hindrance for women to act in the political sphere; on the contrary, it is consciously foregrounded in line with patriarchal prerogatives as a means to attain political power and to provide for both monarchs a common ground to exercise this power. It must also be noted that Safiye, a former Christian, praises Christianity in her address to Elizabeth. Her genuine attitude in exalting Christ and Virgin Mary is linked to the fact that Christianity is acknowledged as a legitimate religion in Islam. Yet, this attitude can also be seen as a continuation of the strategy observed in the earlier correspondence between Murad and Elizabeth, underlining sameness between Islam

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and Protestantism. However, here, the emphasis is put not on shared religious doctrines, but on the shared feminine virtues like chastity, virginity, and the sacredness of motherhood. By accentuating the patriarchal notions that are common to both Islam and Christianity, Safiye renders herself and Elizabeth not as women of two distinct and supposedly clashing civilizations, but as women who belong to a single collective patriarchal system. One can easily infer from this correspondence that Safiye actually acted as Elizabeth’s advocate in furthering the English cause to establish good commercial relations with the Ottoman Empire. We understand that in her letter the Queen has requested Safiye’s support in the matter of English capitulations, and in response to this request Safiye promises to “endeavour for [Elizabeth’s] aims” and “to repeatedly mention Her Highness’s gentility and praise at the footdust of His Majesty.” 86 In another letter dated 1599 the influence of Safiye’s authority in the Ottoman Empire is perceived more clearly. Because she now has become the valide sultan, she does not need to assume a humble disposition before the sultan but rather can instruct him directly like any mother. She prays the Queen “not suffer grief in this respect!” and assures her: “We do not cease from admonishing our son, His Majesty the Padishah, and from telling him: ‘Do act according to the treaty!’” 87 In the course of their correspondence, the two female monarchs also exchanged many gifts that brought them in closer mutual recognition. The gifts included jewelry, richly worked costumes, and pieces of fine fabrics. In addition, Elizabeth sent a portrait of herself and an English coach. In both courts these royal presents were welcomed with excitement. It is well-known that Elizabeth fancied wearing Oriental costumes in the court, 88 and Safiye liked traveling with her English coach, though it was found scandalous by the Ottoman public. 89 Evidence of this female solidarity and strong amity between them is the fact that Safiye also requested from Elizabeth some rare English cosmetics, and alluded directly to the sex of the English Queen. The letter which Safiye sent through her kira (Jewish agent) starts with the assurance that “on account of Your Majesty’s being a woman I can, without any embarrassment, employ you with this notice.” 90 In short, despite the fact that the political sphere in which they negotiated was reserved for men, these two royal women managed perfectly to establish political and economic bonds between their countries through purely feminine modes of interaction. Contrary to the civilizational gap that presumably existed between them, the two women seemed to have encountered virtually no religious or cultural obstacles in their negotiation. As elite women of Christian and Muslim patriarchal societies they empowered themselves upon the same feminine values and ideals. In addition, we should not let go unnoticed the effect of this correspondence on the history of imperialism. The powerful valide sultan’s support for Elizabeth ensured that the English merchants and diplomats were favored by the Sultan, and it was through the good relations established in

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this period that the English were able to open up to the East, where they invested most of their imperial energy in the coming centuries to become the world’s greatest colonial power. 91 TAMBURLAINE’S WOMEN The exercise of womanliness as a source of authority in reshaping the world’s power balances, as well as the Ottoman empress image that Safiye reflects in her letters are both traceable in Marlowe’s depiction of the Muslim female characters in Tamburlaine. Particularly the characterization of Bajazeth’s wife Zabina (who probably was the first Ottoman woman depicted on the English stage) presents significant similarities with Safiye’s self-representation as a powerful female monarch who complements a great emperor with her actions and attitudes. Like Safiye, Zabina is a self-confident woman who takes pride in being the companion of a man whose sovereignty is unchallenged throughout the world. Though, unlike Safiye, Zabina cannot achieve any political gain for her country (as she is on the losing side of the imperial competition), her outspokenness in support of Bajazeth and her vigorous opposition to Tamburlaine during the captivity of her husband imparts power to her as Bajazeth’s life partner, protector, and royal agent. Zabina’s counterpart in the imperial design of the play is of course Tamburlaine’s consort Zenocrate. In asserting a power similar to Bajazeth, Tamburlaine is aware that having a supportive companion like the Ottoman empress is essential in constructing his imperial image. When Zenocrate falls into his hands as a part of the loot of an ambush, he believes Jove has sent him this “Sultan’s daughter” 92 as a sign that he is destined for fame. Convinced that she may be fittingly contrasted with Zabina, Tamburlaine gives Zenocrate no choice, but to accept his “lordly love” 93 and live with him, either “willingly” 94 or by force. Being young and inexperienced, Zenocrate shows a weaker empress profile than Zabina. In any case, Tamburlaine’s masculine dominance would not allow her to attain much autonomy. Yet, both women are essentially given similar roles. They come second only to their husbands in the imperial hierarchy. Aware of their royal power they actively defend the rules of the political game and get involved in building the new global balances by virtue of their complementary position as wives to great emperors. The political roles of Zabina and Zenocrate are most visible in the scene where the two women engage in a battle of words while their male counterparts confront each other in actual combat offstage. Before exiting the stage, both Bajazeth and Tamburlaine leave their crowns with their wives as a token of the representative power they confer on them. As they put the symbols of sovereignty on their wives’ heads, they refer to their respective

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female roles. Bajazeth praises Zabina as the “mother of three braver boys / Than Hercules” “[w]ho, when they come unto their father’s age, / Will batter turrets with manly fists.” 95 Like Safiye, Zabina’s status as the mother of the prospective sultans appears to be more essential than her wifely status in attaining the official capacity to sit on the “royal chair of state” and wear the “imperial crown.” 96 On the other hand, Tamburlaine praises Zenocrate for her beauty, and his language suggests the courtly nature of the young love that flourished between them. He addresses Zenocrate as “the loveliest maid alive / Fairer than rocks of pearl and precious stone, / The only paragon of Tamburlaine” 97 and asks her to “stir not” “as if thou wert the empress of the world.” 98 Just as Tamburlaine presents a challenge for Bajazeth, threatening to deprive him of his title as the greatest emperor, Zenocrate is a challenge for Zabina, for if Tamburlaine becomes victorious, then Zenocrate, not Zabina will be the greatest empress in the world. As the sounds of the offstage battle of men are heard, the two women start a catfight, slandering one another, oddly enough, to prove their worthiness. Identifying herself as “the empress of the mighty Turk,” 99 Zabina chides Zenocrate first, calling her a “base concubine” 100 and laughs at the idea that she would be replaced by Zenocrate. To this, the latter retorts that she is not a concubine but the betrothed wife of the “great and mighty Tamburlaine” 101 and assures Zabina that she will “repent these lavish words,” 102 when Tamburlaine becomes victorious and she and Bajazeth “plead for mercy at his kingly feet / And sue to me to be your advocates.” 103 Drawing also their maids into the argument, the two women exercise the bitterness of the shrew to the letter by blustering and uttering threats at each other. Zabina promises that she will make this “shameless girl” “laundress to her waiting maid.” 104 In turn, Zenocrate swears that she will punish Zabina’s “sauciness” by employing her “to dress common soldiers’ meat and drink.” 105 While this behavior clearly contrasts with the virtuous and self-composed disposition that both women exhibit throughout the play, it does not necessarily contradict their representative roles in sustaining the violent imperial competition between their husbands. Wearing crowns on their heads as symbols of their sovereign authority, Zenocrate and Zabina assert superiority against one another by playing the shrew, acting in a stereotypically feminine way to assert oppositional power. 106 Thus, in a sense, Marlowe’s Eastern empresses, like Safiye and Elizabeth, use womanliness as a means of negotiation in dealing with imperial politics. Yet here, the parties are not allies who try to establish good relations between their countries, but enemies who try to debase each other in a bitter struggle for imperial domination. Even under the most challenging conditions, both Zabina and Zenocrate actively support the honor of their husbands and show motherly protection toward them. Particularly Zabina’s fervent opposition to Tamburlaine when Bajazeth falls captive in his hands, as well as her unfailing effort to prolong

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her husband’s life in spite of her own suffering, are quite remarkable. When Bajazeth outrageously curses Tamburlaine from his cage, Zabina actively and passionately joins him, shocking the others present in the scene with her vehement protests and insults. When Bajazeth falls into despair, she persuades him that he must eat to survive and encourages him to “live in spite of them, looking some happy power will pity and enlarge us.” 107 Finally, when she finds the dead body of Bajazeth with his “skull all riven in twain, his brains dashed out” 108 she is driven to madness with grief. Distracted and agonized, Zabina mourns her condition thus: O Bajazeth, my husband and my lord, O Bajazeth, O Turk, O emperor—give him his liquor? Not I. Bring milk and fire, and my blood I bring him again; tear me in pieces, give me the sword with a ball of wildfire upon it. Down with him, down with him! Go to my child. Away, away, away! Ah, save the infant, save him, save him! I, even, I, speak to her. The sun was down. Streamers white, red, black, here, here, here. Fling the meat in his face. Tamburlaine, Tamburlaine! Let the soldiers be buried. Hell, death, Tamburlaine, hell! Make ready my coach, my chair, my jewels. I come, I come, I come! 109

Zabina’s confused language and disordered images of desperation indicate the gravity of the horrors and atrocities that she suffered at the hands of Tamburlaine. She suggests that she has witnessed bloody sieges, feared for the life of her child, and had to humble herself by appealing to her rival Zenocrate. 110 The effect created by these traumatic flashbacks highlights the perverse cruelty of Tamburlaine, while intensifying the pity aroused for Bajazeth and Zabina. Finally, with her subsequent suicide proving her loyalty to the Turkish sultan, Zabina really puts the spectators, who have been on Tamburlaine’s side so far, into an uncomfortable position. The deaths of Zabina and Bajazeth also bring the moment in which Zenocrate’s loyalty to Tamburlaine is threatened most. Following hard upon the ravage of her hometown Damascus and the ruthless slaughter of the city’s virgin emissaries, the “bloody spectacle” 111 of Bajazeth and Zabina leads to Zenocrate’s major outburst against the actions of her “conquering love.” 112 She accuses Tamburlaine as “the cause of this” 113 Regretting the vanity and cruelty she displayed toward Zabina, Zenocrate expresses genuine sorrow as she movingly laments the noble couple: Blush, heaven, that gave them honour at their birth And let them die a death so barbarous! Those that are proud of fickle empery And place their chiefest good in earthly pomp, Behold the Turk and his great empress! 114

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Yet, neither Zenocrate’s repentance nor her awareness of the vanity of the earthly glory shakes her devotion to Tamburlaine. Even if she doubts her lover’s wisdom, she remains on his side, turning to heavens to seek a pardon for his ruthlessness. In addition, by articulating her own anxieties, Zenocrate creates a buffer between the audience and Tamburlaine. 115 Though she acknowledges the cruelty of Tamburlaine’s atrocities, with her unshakable loyalty to him she allows for a kind of toleration for his acts. Tamburlaine’s unexpected show of mercy, which comes exactly at this point, also helps to mitigate the audience’s estrangement. Though Tamburlaine overcomes Zenocrate’s father, the Sultan of Egypt who organized an attack to save his daughter, he violates the military rules and allows Zenocrate to set her father free, praising her as the one “that hath calmed the fury of my sword.” 116 He restores the honor of Bajazeth and Zabina by promising to bury them in proper stately procession. While it is not possible to argue that Zenocrate has any direct authority over Tamburlaine’s masculine virtu, the Scythian’s ardent love for her can be said to have a transforming effect on him. In fact, Zenocrate is the only character in the entire play that makes Tamburlaine see his wrongful actions and feel the urge to correct them. Though Tamburlaine is a man who takes pride in his military vigor, the power of Zenocrate’s love leads him to face inner struggle. After ordering the destruction of Damascus together with all of its citizens, he cannot hide the “doubtful battle” in his thoughts and admit that the sorrows of Zenocrate: lay more siege unto my soul Than all my army to Damascus’ walls; And neither Persian’s sovereign nor the Turk Troubles my senses wit conceit of foil So much by much as doth Zenocrate. 117

Except for a brief note of the subsidiary mother of Timur’s two sons, historical sources do not mention a woman who was the object of the great Turco-Mongolian ruler’s affections. In Marlowe’s play however, we are presented with Zenocrate, whose love has a force on Tamburlaine “almost equal to his great histrionic passion for military power.” 118 Zenocrate is a character that inspires gentler emotions in Tamburlaine whose original qualities are wrath, cruelty, and military ambition, and her image is essential in constructing Tamburlaine as a more complex and admirable figure than the savage conqueror that he otherwise would be. 119 Thus, Tamburlaine’s Muslim empresses are given a significant role in the masculine game of empire in a similar fashion to the Ottoman Sultana Safiye. They act as complementary figures to their husbands and participate in the actual empire-making by virtue of their status as mothers and wives. Rather than remaining passive and voiceless, they actively support the imperial hon-

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or of their husbands and represent the crown when their men are absent. Oblivious of their gender constraints, as loyal companions to great warriors, they defend and enforce the rules of the game. They are vigorous in offering defiance to the enemies of the empire, and when their men fall victim, they are able to solicit pathos from the audience. Like their historical counterparts Safiye and Elizabeth, women in Tamburlaine plays identify and position themselves strictly according to the patriarchal codes and exercise political authority through womanliness with a power that emanates from these codes. In addition, similar to Safiye’s self-representation in her letters, the patriarchal codes exalted and abided by these women present no particular variation from the codes of Christian patriarchy. Contrary to the assumptions of difference between Islam and Christianity, which are superficially enacted through the opposition between Tamburlaine and the Turks, Marlowe does not depict any prejudice with respect to Islamic women. Familiar Renaissance conventions of the noble maiden in distress, the loyal wife, the good mother, the decorous queen all find expression in Tamburlaine, but there is no trace of the transgressive Islamic femininity that needs to be transformed in line with Christian patriarchal prerogatives that prevailed in the European discourse. Most significantly the erotic element that is often highlighted in Western representations of the Islamic culture and is central to the other plays included in this study is completely absent in Tamburlaine. On the contrary, chastity and feminine honor are continuously emphasized, even fetishized in the play. Though Zenocrate seems to violate the traditional standards of virtuous femininity, as she easily yields to Tamburlaine proving herself inconstant to her betrothed husband, the Prince of Arabia, her romantic appeal would have appeared appropriate to Marlowe’s audience. While Zenocrate initially refuses Tamburlaine’s approaches, with his “working words” which sound to Zenocrate “much sweeter than the muses’ song” 120 and with his “princely” treatment of her which “is far from villainy or servitude,” 121 Tamburlaine is able to win the young maiden’s heart, and soon we see Zenocrate is ready to “live and die with Tamburlaine.” 122 Though Zenocrate does not doubt that her love for Tamburlaine is virtuous, she regrets that her deeds have made her “infamous through the world” 123 as she changed her love from Arabia to Tamburlaine. What she regrets is not the change, but the reputation it has gained her. 124 In addition, the fact that her chastity has been guarded works to Tamburlaine’s profit, as it allows Zenocrate’s father to embrace him as an honorable man, who is worthy of taking his daughter’s hand in marriage. Thus, like in Christianity, feminine chastity is emphasized as an important patriarchal code within the play’s Islamic setting and is given material specificity, finding its proper place in the imperial project. 125 The tragedy of the Turkish captain’s wife Olympia is another instance that demonstrates the constancy and familial loyalty of the play’s Islamic women. When her husband dies of war wounds in the failed resistance

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against the Scythian army led by Theridamas and Techelles, Olympia first kills her son out of desperation in order to spare him from the enemy’s cruelties. While she prepares to commit suicide, she is captured by Theridamas, who falls in love with her and appeals to her with the promise to make her his queen. Though his suit seems to be honorable, grieving Olympia cannot admit any discourse of love, because she is so faithful to her dead husband that she fears a second marriage will disgrace her. Olympia becomes a victim, when Theridamas threatens her with rape. However, with her strong will she refuses to yield and precludes him to achieve his end. She tricks Theridamas to stab her on the throat where she put some ointment, which supposedly would not allow any weapon to cut the flesh. This heroic act of self-annihilation in the face of conquest by the enemy renders Olympia a praiseworthy figure of sympathy and a symbol of wifely and maternal devotion. In later plays, where the plot is strictly structured on Christian-Muslim oppositions such behavior is attributed only to Christian female characters who bravely resist against the lustful appeals of Muslim rulers. The representation of the Muslim woman in Marlowe’s play goes contrary to the traditional European assumptions about wanton and wicked Islamic femininity. In this respect Tamburlaine can be denoted as an interesting interruption in the history of the representation of Islamic women, where older myths went latent for a while until they were modified in accordance with the new dynamics of the actual Turkish-English contact in the Mediterranean and were reintroduced to the English discourse on Islam. LIKES OF TAMBURLAINE’S WOMEN: THE AMAZON DIMENSION In the years that followed the great success achieved by Marlowe’s drama in London theaters, a number of plays were written, featuring exotic Eastern settings and conquering, boastful heroes in the mold of Tamburlaine. Probably one of the most sensational of these plays is The Comicall Historie of Alphonsus, King of Aragon, which was written by Robert Greene in early 1588, only a few months after the first part of Tamburlaine was performed by the Admiral’s Men. In this crude imitation of Marlowe’s play, Greene presents with us another mighty conqueror like Tamburlaine, who rises from lowly circumstances to become the monarch of the world. Alphonsus’s ranting rhetoric, his character, his conquests, and his marriage to beautiful Iphigena at the climax of his success, all recall Marlowe’s hero. The main conflict of the plot is the military encounter between Alphonsus and the Turkish king Amurack, who provides aid to Belinus in his opposition to Alphonsus. Like Bajazeth, Amurack falls captive in his enemy’s hands, but his daughter’s marriage to Alphonsus brings the peace between the Turks and the Aragonese.

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Despite these resemblances, scholars generally agree that in its intellectual content Alphonsus is at the same time a “deliberate answer” to the humanistic philosophy of the Marlovian drama. 126 Greene reverses or omits many of the potentially unsettling features of the play he imitates, such as the ambiguous attitude presented toward the notion of monarchy and Islam. In the play, there is not an apparent religious conflict between the Turks and the Aragonese, as all characters operate within the same religious framework, which is a free play of mythological personages and heterogeneous elements from various belief systems. 127 Yet from the very beginning, we know whose side we are supposed to choose. Alphonsus, the favorite of deities, is representative of a Christian king who executes the will of gods. 128 Unlike Tamburlaine, who is a “base-shepherd” before rising to power, Alphonsus is the son of a real king who has been unjustly deprived of his title. By defeating the usurping king, Alphonsus puts right to a long-standing wrong. Amurack, on the other hand, is the model of a tyrant, who, despite his orthodox stance in the beginning, defies the gods, and, like Tamburlaine, is destroyed because of his blasphemy. 129 In the play, which presents fictitious events involving the Ottomans within an atmosphere of romance and mythology, Greene depicts the Turkish women as Amazon warriors. Fausta, the wife of Sultan Amurack, is pictured as the Queen of the Amazons who leads an army of women—“all her maydens in array” 130—to help her husband in his battle against Alphonsus. Similarly, her daughter Iphigena is portrayed as a woman warrior who, in defense of her captive father, challenges Alphonsus to a duel. Greene’s choice of identifying the Turkish women with the Amazons is indeed an interesting one. These female warriors have a very distinctive place in early modern English literature, representing an imaginative matriarchal “anti-culture” which radically subverts the social norms and prerogatives of European patriarchy. 131 When seen within the context of the play’s effort to set the EastWest binaries more clearly than Marlowe’s drama, the depiction of the Turkish women as Amazons might be considered as an attempt to render them more exotic and alien figures than Marlowe’s Eastern empresses, thus to emphasize the pagan and uncivilized attributions of the Ottoman society. While it is undeniable that within the mythical setting of the play the Amazonian characteristics of the Turkish women add exoticism to their image, in my argument I suggest that with their virtuous disposition and honorable deeds, Greene’s Turkish Amazons are distinguished from the aggressive and unbridled Amazon queens peculiar to early modern English literature. Though their display of manly valor and bravery cannot be fully contained within patriarchal parameters, these women act in defense of their country with female magnanimity and heroic virtue. I understand Greene’s positive attitude toward the Turkish women as another similarity between Alphonsus and Tamburlaine. I argue that like Zabina and Zenocrate, Fausta and Iphige-

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na are presented as powerful female agents of the empire, who are actively involved in the play’s scheme for empire-building; yet this time their sovereign authority emanates not only from their feminine virtues, but also from their warlike qualities. Early modern English literature abounds with references to the mythical Amazons. From Shakespeare and Spenser to Sidney, Heywood and Beaumont and Fletcher, many English writers of the period either invoke the Amazon heroines of the classical literature or feature their own fictional Amazon figures. Understandably, in a period when England was ruled by a female monarch and women’s liberties were hotly debated among the English people, images of these vigorous female warriors who scorn domesticity and survive without male governance had a more significant function than being picturesque ornaments in a play or a romance. With their intolerance to men and “inversionary claims” with respect to political authority, marriage practices and inheritance rules, the subversive implications of the gynocratic kingdom of the Amazons on the European patriarchy did not go unnoticed by the Elizabethans. 132 Radigund in Spenser’s Faerie Queene is probably the most infamous Amazon figure in early modern literature that reflects the connection between the myth of the Amazons and the collective patriarchal anxiety with respect to female power. This beautiful warrior queen, who is renowned for her military prowess, rules a city which is solely governed by women. Here, men serve merely as slaves and they are humiliated by being forced to wear women’s clothes and do women’s work. Moreover, by exploiting her political power, Radigund takes sexual advantage of them. Conceivably this Amazonian tyranny, which Shepherd calls “the nightmarish turning of the tables,” 133 is not allowed to exist in Spenser’s patriarchal universe, and interestingly, is defeated by another warlike woman, Britomart, who comes to rescue her lover, Artegall, from his demeaning imprisonment. The fierce battle between the two women for the male hero in women’s garments creates a horrific “gender chaos” 134 for a moment, but the patriarchal norm is restored, when Britomart marries Artegal after saving him by beheading the Amazon. While both women are depicted free of traditional feminine weaknesses, contrary to Radigund’s licentious liberty, Britomart represents chastity in the poem and serves as a model of female courage. Apparently, women who exhibit male qualities are approved and appreciated when they serve the patriarchal cause. 135 However, behind this warrior woman ideal, there is again the Amazon. Britomart’s depiction owes much to another Amazon queen, Penthesilea of the classical mythology, who sacrificed herself for the defense of Troy. 136 Penthesilea’s heroic virtue is celebrated by many English writers of the age, and her image often provides these writers with a frame of reference to praise Queen Elizabeth, whose position as female sovereign and

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commander of the armed forces approximated her in numerous ways to an Amazonian type. 137 Thus, in the early modern English writings two meanings for the word Amazon exist simultaneously. The defamatory meaning, which is exemplified in figures like Radigund, refers to disobedience in women and indicates aggressive lust and unbridled will. With figures such as Penthesilea or Britomart, on the other hand, we encounter the virtuous meaning of the word. These chaste but military-minded females are applauded for their display of patriotic valor. Though, they too exhibit a manly spirit, their actions do not form a horrid inversion of conventional gender hierarchies but indicate that these women have excelled their sex by attaining desirable qualities of men. 138 While it is tempting to interpret Greene’s Turkish Amazons as examples of Radigund-like women and conjoin the feminine threat they pose on patriarchal norms with the cultural threat posed by the Ottoman Empire, I argue that both Fausta and her daughter Iphigena are depicted in the mold of the virtuous Amazon heroines of the classical age. While their identification with the Amazons, combined with Medea’s magic, clearly helps illustrate the pagan character of the Ottoman society, these warrior women lack the negative qualities exemplified by Radigund’s anti-culture. Earlier in the play we witness an estrangement between Fausta and the Turkish sultan, in which the queen reacts by threatening to fight her husband at the head of her army. When she is banished because of her rebellious act, the furious queen retreats to the forest to prepare to take her revenge on Amurack and “with help of all Amazones” to “make him soon repent his foolishness.” 139 While by disputing with her husband Fausta gives the impression that she is an unruly, disobedient wife, we should note that by so doing her intention is to “maintain the right” 140 against the possibility of “a heinous deed” 141 like her daughter marrying to Turks’ enemy Alphonsus as Amurack prophesied in his magical sleep. Later, when told by Medea that Alphonsus is fated to be “the ruler of a mighty monarchy” 142 and marry Iphigena, Fausta agrees to execute the will of the Destinies, and by giving her consent for her daughter’s marriage, she not only saves Amurack from captivity but also clears away the threat that Alphonsus poses on her country. In the absence of her imprisoned husband, Fausta acts as the commander of the army and encourages the fleeing Turkish kings to return to the battlefield. She comforts Iphigena who laments her captive father with high-flown rhetoric: It is not words can cure and ease this wound, But warlike swords; not tears, but sturdy spears. High Amurack is prisoner to our foes: What then? Think you that our Amazones, Join’d with the forces of the Turkish troop,

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Are not sufficient for to set him free? Yes, daughter, yes, I mean not for sleep, Until he is free, or we him company keep. March on, my mates. 143

Fighting on the horseback at the head of her Amazon fighters and the Ottoman soldiers, the wife of the Great Turk, clearly, is not an unbridled wife, but a “mighty empress” who exhibits competence in both war and politics. In addition, lechery, the most negative Amazonian quality, is missing in Greene’s depiction of the Turkish Amazons. Iphigena, who is also a warrior like her mother, is a beautiful and virtuous maiden, and she strongly refuses to marry the man who imprisoned her father, thinking that this would stain the family honor. To revenge Amurack’s defeat she challenges Alphonsus on the battlefield with a drawn sword, like the glorious Amazon queens of ancient literature. Yet, Alphonsus declines to fight her, not out of cowardice or because he is too proud to fight a woman: But love, sweet mouse, hath so benum’d my wit That though I would, I must refrain from it. 144

Echoing Tamburlaine’s wooing of Zenocrate, Alphonsus promises Iphigena that she will become the “monarch of the world” 145 if she marries him. When she does not succumb to his blandishments, he takes Iphigena as his prisoner and threatens to make her his “concubine,” 146 which horrifies the Turkish princess. Iphigena’s chastity is also emphasized by Carinus, Alphonsus’s father, who returns from exile at this point and intervenes to correct his son’s wrong doing. He explains that Iphigena’s earlier opposition to Alphonsus is in fact the proof of her virtue, which he compares to a “castle” that cannot be won in the first assault. “As for my part” he continues: I should account that maid, A wanton whench, unconstant, lewd and light, That yields the field before she venture fight. 147

Clearly Iphigena is not one of these “lewd” women but a virtuous maiden who does not hesitate to fight to protect the honor of her family and country, and her warlike qualities, in fact, make her a “fitter” spouse for a conqueror like Alphonsus than all the “court fair ladies in God Cupid’s tent.” 148 Greene presents the Turkish Amazons as powerful and brave women whose virtuous actions are worthy of admiration. Their warrior qualities allow them to suit better to the masculine imperial framework of the play and to complement it rather than presenting a challenge to it.

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Fausta and Iphigena in many respects are similar to Zabina and Zenocrate in Tamburlaine plays. While Iphigena can be considered as a warlike interpretation of the beautiful and virtuous Zenocrate, Fausta is portrayed as a powerful Ottoman empress like Zabina. As the representative of the crown, Fausta vigorously defends and supports the interests of the empire and she does this not by using merely words like Zabina and Zenocrate but by fighting with actual swords and bows. It can even be argued that because of her extraordinary attributions as an Amazon, Fausta shares almost an equal footing with Amurack in exercising political authority. The fact that Fausta has already given her consent appears to be the most significant reason that Amurack gives up his relentless opposition to his daughter’s marriage to Alphonsus: “Fausta is content / Then Amurack will not be discontent.” 149 While it is difficult to suggest historical counterparts to Greene’s Turkish Amazons in the sense that I offered the Ottoman Sultana Safiye as a model for Marlowe’s Zabina and Zenocrate, references to Eastern female warriors in the medieval and early modern travel narratives indicate that the connection established between the Turkish women and the Amazons might not be altogether an invention. In his travels to Persia, for example, Bertrandon de la Brocquiere (1438) records that he met an armed woman on horseback, accompanying “six or eight Turcomans” in the plains near Hama in Syria. The woman was wearing a “tarquais” like men, and when he inquired about her, he was told that: the women of this nation are brave, and in time of war fight like men. It was added, and this seemed to me very extraordinary that there are about thirty thousand women who thus bear the tarquals, and under the domination of a lord, named Turcadiroly, who resides among the mountains of Armenia, on the frontiers of Persia. 150

Greene’s inspiration might also come from more recent sources like Antony Jenkinson’s account of Süleyman I’s entry to Aleppo in 1553, which includes a description of the women in his train, who, though not fully armed like the Turcomans, still wore “men’s garments,” “had upon their hads caps of Goldsmith’s worke,” and “bore little bowes in their hands” as part of the official pageantry. 151 Süheyla Artemel interestingly suggests that Greene could also be familiar with the folklore of the pre-Islamic Turkish society and the value attached to martial skills in women in the Turkish nomadic tradition through mythic narratives like The Book of Dede Korkut, which was put to writing in the early fifteenth century. 152 While it may seem a little bit speculative to assume that Greene might have had access to such authentic sources, the stories of this ancient epic which feature noble Turkish women commanding their group of female fighters and reflect customs which require men to fight with

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their prospective wives indeed bear resemblances to the depictions of Fausta and Iphigena in the play. In Alphonsus, Greene continues Marlowe’s positive attitude toward Muslim women by presenting them as powerful and active female agents of the empire like Zabina and Zenocrate in Tamburlaine. Another common characteristic of the Muslim women in the two plays is the emphasis put on their chastity and the material significance attached to it within the imperial project. Like Tamburlaine’s noble passion for Zenocrate, Alphonsus’s feelings for Iphigena are “good and honest.” 153 What renders Iphigena a suitable wife for Alphonsus, and, in return, secures the peace between the Turks and the Aragonese is her castle-like virtue. In addition, the mythological framework that Greene applies enables him to avoid any religious conflict in this love relationship. Alphonsus and the Turks are not enemies in terms of religion, and obviously, no one needs to convert. Yet, only a decade later, both the element of lust and the theme of religious conversion would become the typical features of the ChristianMuslim relationships depicted in dramatic representations. In the following chapters, I relate this shift in representations to the intensified human and cultural contact, which accompanied the rapidly increasing Mediterranean trade in the early seventeenth century. In the Jacobean plays that feature Ottoman settings and characters sexual lust is almost synonymous with lust for profit, and this analogy entails a radical degeneration in the image of the Muslim woman who now embodies the most significant danger posed on the Christian men venturing in Eastern territories. NOTES 1. Linda McJannet, The Sultan Speaks: Dialogue in English Plays and Histories about the Ottoman Turks (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 63. 2. Jonathan Dollimore, Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), xxi. In the introduction of his book Radical Tragedy Jonathan Dollimore states that he has found “a substantial challenge” in the Elizabethan theater; “not a vision of political freedom so much as a subversive knowledge of political domination, a knowledge which interrogated prevailing beliefs, submitted them to a kind of intellectual vandalism; radical in the sense of going to their roots and even pulling them up” (Ibid.). 3. Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine, Part 1, ed. Irving Ribner (Indianapolis: Odyssey Press, 1974), prologue. 4. Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 199. 5. Emily Caroll Bartels, Spectacles of Strangeness: Imperialism, Alienation, and Marlowe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 54. 6. Bartels, Spectacles of Strangeness, 81. 7. Simon Shepherd, Marlowe and the Politics of Elizabethan Theatre (Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1986), 150. 8. Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 197. 9. McJannet, The Sultan Speaks, 65.

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10. Matthew Dimmock, New Turkes: Dramatizing Islam and the Ottomans in Early Modern England (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2005), 136. 11. Jonathan Burton, Traffic and Turning: Islam and English Drama 1579–1624 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005), 56. 12. Daniel J. Vitkus, Turning Turk: English Theatre and the Multicultural Mediterranean, 1570–1630 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 64. 13. McJannet, The Sultan Speaks, 81. 14. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 54. 15. Charles Brooks, “Tamburlaine and Attitudes Toward Women.” ELH 24, no. 1 (March 1957): 3, https://doi:10.2307/2871983. 16. Shepherd, Marlowe and the Politics of Elizabethan Theatre, 179. 17. Samuel C. Chew, The Crescent and the Rose: Islam and England during the Renaissance (New York: Octagon Books, 1974), 150. 18. Barbara Fuchs, Mimesis and Empire: The New World, Islam, and European Identities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 7. 19. Nabil Matar, Turks, Moors and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 10. 20. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 57. 21. Chew, The Crescent and the Rose, 153. Before the establishment of official AngloOttoman diplomatic and commercial relations, the English efforts to open to the markets in the Levant were sporadic and infrequent. Only a few English voyages were made to Turkey for trading purposes and in these voyages merchants had to face the hostility of Venice and had to pay high taxes imposed at various ports. Turkish goods could reach England, but the trade was not under the English control. A considerable number of Venetian ships went between Turkey and English Channel Ports in the first half of the sixteenth century. Also, between 1566 and 1581, the profitable trade through Russia into Persia delayed the need to start commercial relations with Constantinople (Chew, The Crescent and the Rose, 150–51). 22. Matar, Turks, Moors and Englishmen, 33. 23. The Ottomans were also pleased with the English alliance as a strategic move against Spain while they were occupied with the Persian conflict in the East (Burton, Traffic and Turning, 60). Also, the excommunication of Elizabeth in 1570 by Pope Pius V encouraged Turks to view England as their ally against the Catholic powers and it was particularly instrumental in the development of Anglo-Ottoman relations, as it made it easier to ignore the papal embargo against the Islamic “infidel” for ammunition materials, such as steel, iron, and bell metal, while these materials had become abundant in England after the dismantling of Catholic monasteries and churches (61). 24. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 62. 25. Susan A. Skilliter, William Harborne and the Trade with Turkey: 1578–1582: A Documentary Study of the First Anglo-Ottoman Relations (London: Oxford University Press, 1977), 123. 26. Skilliter, William Harborne and the Trade with Turkey, 69. 27. Richard Hakluyt, ed. The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation, vol. 5 (Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, 1904), 170. 28. Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation, 177. 29. Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation, 2: 192. 30. Skilliter, William Harborne and the Trade with Turkey, 71. 31. Chew, The Crescent and the Rose, 155. 32. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 61. 33. Francis Walshingham quoted in Vitkus, Turning Turk, 102. 34. Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation, 5: 168. 35. Thomas Nelson, The Blessed State of England: Declaring the Sundry Dangers Which by Gods Assistance, the Queenes Most Excellent Maiestie Hath Escaped in the Whole Course of

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Her Life . . . Together with the Rare Titles of Commendation the Great Emperor of the Turkes Hath Lately Sent in Letters to Her Hignesse (London, 1591), Sig. B. 3r. 36. Marlowe wrote Tamburlaine, Part 1, in his last year at the university (1587). The play was such a success that later in the same year he produced a sequel, Tamburlaine, Part 2. Though Zabina and Zenocrate are depicted in Part 1, in my discussion of the Turks I will focus on both parts of the play. 37. Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 195. 38. Vitkus, Turning Turk, 69. 39. Bartels, Spectacles of Strangeness, 13. 40. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 1, 1, 181. References are to act, scene, and line. 41. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 2, 7, 28–29. 42. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 72. 43. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 3, 3, 44–47. 44. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 1, 2, 194–96. 45. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 3, 1, 23–26. 46. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 3, 1, 4, 8. 47. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 3, 3, 75–78. 48. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 3, 3, 82–83. 49. The sources that Marlowe possibly referred to for his depiction of the conflict between Timur and Bayazid are extensively investigated by Vivien Thomas and William Tydeman in Christopher Marlowe: The Plays and Their Sources (London: Routledge, 1994). Pedro Mexia’s Silva de varia lecion (1542) (translated into English in 1571), is viewed as one of Marlowe’s chief sources. The version of the story in Mexia’s work does not involve humiliation of the Ottoman emperor in a specific way. Bayazid’s story also appears in George Whetstone’s The English Myrror (1586). McJannet observes that in his version, Whetstone “is more critical of Timur and more sympathetic to Bayazid” (The Sultan Speaks, 67). Perondinus’s Magni Tamerlanis Scytharum Imperatoris Vita (1553), which is also considered as a major source, describes the sultan’s sufferings in captivity in detail and might have inspired the scenes in Marlowe’s drama. Yet, like the historians specified above, Perondinus does not mock or express pleasure for Bayazid’s sufferings. William J. Brown argues that Marlowe’s debasement of Bajazeth is specifically based on John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments (1570), for “[a]s Marlowe does later, Foxe portrays Tamburlaine’s harsh treatment of Bajazeth with complete sympathy and approval” (“Marlowe’s Debasement of Bajazet: Foxe’s Acts of Monuments and Tamburlaine, Part 1,” Renaissance Quarterly 24, no. 1 [Spring 1971], 41). However, as we shall see, Foxe’s Christian militancy is not very much in line with the politics of Marlowe’s play. 50. U. M. Ellis Fermor, ed., Tamburlaine the Great (London: Methuen, 1930), 40. 51. Leslie Spence, “Tamburlaine and Marlowe,” PMLA 42, no. 3 (1927): 614. https:// doi.org/10.2307/457392. 52. Tamburlaine, Part 1, prologue. 53. Bartels, Spectacles of Strangeness, 76. 54. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 1, 1, 3. 55. McJannet, The Sultan Speaks, 74. 56. McJannet, The Sultan Speaks, 38. 57. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 3, 3, 236, 237–38. 58. McJannet, The Sultan Speaks, 77. For example, he never mentions the claim that Bajazeth achieved the throne by murdering his brother. In the play such cruel act of killing a family member is attributed to Tamburlaine, when, in Part 2, he murders his own son whom he deems a “coward” and “traitor,” for he prefers peaceful “womanish” pursuits to war. 59. McJannet, The Sultan Speaks, 79. 60. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 5, 1, 275–82. 61. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 78. 62. Tamburlaine, Part 2, 1, 1, 33. 63. Tamburlaine, Part 2, 2, 1, 33–34. 64. Tamburlaine, Part 2, 2, 2, 63–64. 65. Tamburlaine, Part 2, 2, 3, 33–35.

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66. Tamburlaine, Part 2, 2, 2, 29–35. 67. Dimmock, New Turkes, 151. 68. Tamburlaine, Part 2, 5, 1, 185. 69. Tamburlaine, Part 2, 5, 1, 177–80. 70. Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 202. 71. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 88. 72. Dena Goldberg, “Whose God’s on First? Special Providence in the Plays of Christopher Marlowe,” ELH 60, no. 3 (1993): 584. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2873405. 73. Goldberg, “Whose God’s on First?” 586. 74. The successive ascensions of the two daughters of Henry VIII to the English throne created a serious controversy in England about women’s right to exercise sovereign power. Because of their “supposedly innate inferiority” women were “thought to be unfit to take on public roles” and the Reformists’ emphasis on strict preservation of hierarchical order between the sexes was clear (Tina Krontiris, Women and/in the Renaissance: An Essay on Englishwomen of the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries [Thessaloniki: University Studio Press, 2000], 31). Both Mary and Elizabeth were attacked by their opponents. In his ill-timed The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, which initially targeted Mary but was published in the year Elizabeth was crowned (1558), John Knox characterized a commonwealth ruled by a woman “sitting in judgment or riding from parliament in the midst of men” as a “monstrous regiment” which violated the divine and the natural law (“The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women,” in The Political Writings of John Knox, ed. Martin Breslow [New York: Associated University Presses, 1985], 43. The establishment of the Anglican Church under Elizabeth I was further complicating the issue, because as Archbishop Heath explained to the Parliament in 1559, “her highness, beyinge a woman by birth and nature, is not qualyfied by God’s worde to feed the flock of Chryst” (quoted in Patricia Crawford, Women and Religion in England: 1500–1750 [London: Routledge, 1996], 36). Also, several defenses of women’s rule were written in this period by authors like Elyot, Aylmer, and Howard, but none of these defenses attempted a revision of the traditional notion of woman’s social role (Pamela Benson, The Invention of the Renaissance Woman: The Challenge of Female Indpendence in the Literature and Thought of Italy and England [Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992], 240). Instead, they saw Queen Elizabeth’s case simply as an exception that did not prove the norm” (Krontiris, Women and/in the Renaissance, 33). 75. For a discussion of constructions of gender and power in Elizabethan England, a patriarchal society ruled by a female monarch, see Louis A. Montrose, “‘Shaping Fantasies’: Figurations of Gender and Power in Elizabethan Culture,” Representations 2 (Spring 1983): 61–94, https://doi: 10.2307/2928384. 76. Reprinted in Richard Wilson, “Visible Bullets: Tamburlaine the Great and Ivan the Terrible,” in Christopher Marlowe and English Renaissance Culture, eds. Darryll Grantley and Peter Roberts (Brookfield: Ashgate, 1996), 542. 77. Leslie P. Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1993), 17. 78. Peirce, The Imperial Harem, 24. 79. Hürrem was the first harem woman that attained direct political influence in the history of Ottoman dynasty and she enjoyed that power as haseki (1521 first child born) and never became a valide sultan as she died before Süleyman. Abandoning many of the Ottoman dynastic customs, Süleyman contracted legal marriage with Hürrem and raised her to an extraordinarily privileged status. Peirce writes that the sixteenth century, termed an age of kings, was also an “age of queens—among them Anne Boleyn, Margaret of Navarre, Elizabeth I, Catherine de Medicis, and Mary Queen of Scots. The Ottomans too produced a ‘queen’ in Hürrem Sultan,” who rose to the position of great privilege and influence and whose unprecedented alliance with the Sultan was a “symptom of a more profound change within the dynasty” involving the issues of monarchy, family, and power (58). In his Generall Historie, Knolles describes Hürrem as “the greatest empresse of the East” (759).

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80. S. A. Skilliter, “Three Letters from the Ottoman ‘Sultana’ Safiye to Queen Elizabeth I,” Documents from Islamic Chanceries, First Series (Oriental Studies) 3, ed. S. M. Stern (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), 130. 81. Skilliter, “Three Letters from the Ottoman ‘Sultana’ Safiye to Queen Elizabeth I,” 131. 82. Skilliter, “Three Letters from the Ottoman ‘Sultana’ Safiye to Queen Elizabeth I,” 131. 83. Skilliter, “Three Letters from the Ottoman ‘Sultana’ Safiye to Queen Elizabeth I,” 133. 84. Skilliter, “Three Letters from the Ottoman ‘Sultana’ Safiye to Queen Elizabeth I,” 131–32. 85. Skilliter, “Three Letters from the Ottoman ‘Sultana’ Safiye to Queen Elizabeth I,” 132. 86. Skilliter, “Three Letters from the Ottoman ‘Sultana’ Safiye to Queen Elizabeth I,” 132. 87. Skilliter, “Three Letters from the Ottoman ‘Sultana’ Safiye to Queen Elizabeth I,” 139. 88. Matar, Turks, Moors, and Englishmen, 34. 89. Skilliter, “Three Letters from the Ottoman ‘Sultana’ Safiye to Queen Elizabeth I,” 151. 90. Skilliter, “Three Letters from the Ottoman ‘Sultana’ Safiye to Queen Elizabeth I,” 143. 91. Drawing on John Parker, in Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery, Nabil Matar says that the Levant interaction served as the artery through which “Englishmen ultimately went to the East Indies” (4). Also, in the dedication to Sir Robert Cecil in the second volume of Principall Navigations Hakluyt describes how the English have traveled “into the Levant within the Streight of Gibraltar, & from thense over land to the South and Southeast parts of the world.” 92. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 1, 2, 186. 93. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 3, 2, 49. 94. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 1, 2, 254. 95. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 3, 3, 103–4, 110–11. 96. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 3, 3, 112–13. 97. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 3, 3, 117–19. 98. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 3, 3, 125–26. 99. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 3, 3, 167. 100. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 3, 3, 166. 101. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 3, 3, 170. 102. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 3, 3, 172. 103. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 3, 3, 174–75. 104. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 3, 3, 176–77. 105. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 3, 3, 184–85. 106. The image of women bickering at each other was a conventional one, constructed by men (sometimes by women writers too), who thought that petty quarreling was an innately feminine way of settling differences (Krontiris, Women and/in the Renaissance, 8) 107. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 4, 4, 102–3. 108. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 5, 1, 306. 109. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 5, 1, 308–17. 110. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 79. 111. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 5, 1, 338. 112. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 5, 1, 441. 113. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 5, 1, 334. 114. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 5, 1, 249–53. 115. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 79. 116. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 5, 1, 436. 117. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 5, 1, 155–59. 118. Spence, “Tamburlaine and Marlowe,” 618. 119. Spence, “Tamburlaine and Marlowe,” 618. 120. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 3, 2, 49–50. 121. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 3, 2, 38–39. 122. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 3, 2, 23. 123. Tamburlaine, Part 1, 5, 1, 390. 124. Brooks, “Tamburlaine and Attitudes Toward Women,” 4. 125. Shepherd, Marlowe and the Politics of Elizabethan Theatre, 183.

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126. Irving Ribner, ed. Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, Part One and Part Two; Text and Major Criticism (Indianapolis: Odyssey Press, 1974), 166. 127. The Turkish king Amurack swears by Mohammed, but the Muslim prophet is presented here as a god who talks through a brazen head. The prologue and the connecting choruses are spoken by Venus, who both in the beginning and at the end of the play holds conversations with the Muses. Also Medea, who counsels Amurack’s wife throughout the play, is characterized as a “wise” prophetess who speaks the truth. 128. Ribner, Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, 167. 129. Ribner, Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, 167. 130. Robert Greene, The Comicall Historie of Alphonsus, The King of Aragon, ed. J. Chorton Collins (Freeport, New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1970), 3, 3, 54. References are to act, scene, and line. 131. Louis A. Montrose, “‘Shaping Fantasies’: Figurations of Gender and Power in Elizabethan Culture.” Representations 2 (Spring 1983): 66. https://doi: 10.2307/2928384. 132. Montrose, “‘Shaping Fantasies,’” 66–68. 133. Simon Shepherd, Amazons and Warrior Women: Varieties of Feminism in Seventeenth Century Drama (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981), 25. 134. Shepherd, Amazons and Warrior Women, 5. 135. Louis A. Montrose, “The Work of Gender in the Discourse of Discovery,” Representations 33, Special Issue: The New World (Winter 1991): 18. https://doi.org/10.2307/2928756. 136. According to the tradition, Penthesilea defended Troy, almost vanquished the Greeks in a number of fierce battles, but in the end was struck down by Achilles, who fell in love with her beautiful corpse and mourned for her. 137. Celeste Turner Wright, “The Amazons in English Literature,” Studies in Philology 37, no. 3 (1940): 433. Examples that compare Elizabeth to an Amazon queen are restricted to her depictions in relation to the Armada conflict. Apparently, the associations of the image of the Amazon did not suit to the strategies of praising the queen whose body natural was already a topic of controversy among her subjects, as it presumably disabled her to exhibit manly capacities and threatened her reign to become what Knox called a “monstrous regiment.” Yet the defeat of the Spanish Armada remained as the most significant military conflict of the Elizabeth’s reign and her image as an Amazon queen at the head of the English soldiers at Tilbury in expectation of a Spanish attack stuck to her. 138. Shepherd, Amazons and Warrior Women, 14. 139. Alphonsus, 3, 3, 50, 51. 140. Alphonsus, 3, 2, 173. 141. Alphonsus, 3, 3, 67. 142. Alphonsus, 3, 3, 61. 143. Alphonsus, 5, 1, 35–43. 144. Alphonsus, 5, 2, 19–20. 145. Alphonsus, 5, 2, 32. 146. Alphonsus, 5, 2, 52. 147. Alphonsus, 5, 3, 180–82. 148. Alphonsus, 5, 3, 187. 149. Alphonsus, 5, 3, 270. 150. Bertrandon de la Brocquierre, “The Travels of Bertrandon de La Brocquiere, A.D. 1432 and 1433,” in Early Travels in Palestine, ed. Thomas Wright (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1848), 312. 151. Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation, 5: 106. 152. Süheyla Artemel “Turkish Women and the Amazons in Renaissance English Drama,” Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Dergisi 7 (1979): 136. 153. Alphonsus, 5, 3, 204.

Chapter Three

The Muslim Woman and A Christian Turned Turk Islamic Apostasy and the Gender Paradigm on the Jacobean Stage

The ascendancy of James I to the English throne in 1603 indicates a significant shift in the English politics toward the Ottoman Empire. Contrary to Elizabeth who forged an economic and military alliance with Sultan Murad III, James’s reign suggests an apparent resistance to Anglo-Ottoman relations. The Queen’s affiliation with the Ottomans had emphasized a doctrinal similarity between Protestantism and Islam, which identified the Catholic Spain as the mutual enemy. However, as soon as James became King of England, he expressed open hostility against the Ottoman Empire, and reversing the most underlying foreign strategy of his predecessor, he entered into a peace agreement with Spain, ending the war between the two countries that had continued for almost twenty years. James adopted a lenient policy toward the Catholic countries and attempted to minimize the political and diplomatic ties with the Ottomans. As he told his ambassador Thomas Roe in 1621, he wanted the Levant trade to be “the first and only foundation of that correspondency which our crown hath hitherto with that state.” 1 During the reign of Elizabeth, England and the Ottomans had never been at war; however in 1620 James attacked Algiers together with Spain in order to rescue the Christians captured by Barbary corsairs. When bad weather hindered the Anglo-Spanish attack, James organized another attack in the following year, which was this time suppressed by the Ottoman forces. In fact, James had begun to promote religious reconciliation among Christian nations as early as 1589, when he was King of Scotland. By initiat59

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ing a secret alliance between the moderates of the Roman Catholic and Protestant camps, he had set out on a course to achieve the ideal of what Thomas More had called “the common corps of Christendom.” 2 One of the supposed benefits of such unification was to enable a crusade against the Islamic empire of the Turks that was pushing back the borders of Europe. In an epic poem he wrote in 1585 to celebrate the Christian victory in Lepanto, James described the conflict as the one “Betwixt the baptiz’d race, / And the circumcised Turband Turks,” giving the poem, as Matar argues, “a religious polarization between the Christian commonwealth and Islam by suggesting an essential distinction between circumcision and baptism.” 3 In The Peacemaker (1618), which is often characterized as James’s political manifesto, the English king openly made a call to Christian countries to support and help one another in order to unite under “one mutual Christendom” 4 that would win an ultimate victory over Islam. Even if one may claim that it is an oversimplifying tendency to trace a collinear relationship between the image of the Turk and the course of Anglo-Ottoman relations over the short historical period covered by this study, James’s personal animosity against the Turks, which in effect was England’s official ideology, combined with the intensified contact with Muslims in the Mediterranean, certainly influenced the English attitude and the tropes through which they represented Islam. Within the two decades that follow the ascendancy of James I to the throne, a sharp deterioration occurs in the image of the Turk in English dramatic works. Like Tamburlaine and Alphonsus, the plays written toward the end of the sixteenth century treat the Turks as cruel, but admirable warlike figures, whose conflicts generally arise from issues of territorial conquest or questions of royal succession. These early plays, which are mostly examples of heroic romance, rarely recognize the ambiguities and complexities of Anglo-Islamic relations. 5 An ideological opposition in terms of religion is not clearly emphasized, and differences merely mark the Turks as exotic figures. However, around the turn of the century, as English political and commercial concerns in relation to the Muslim world increase, Islam and Turkishness come to function as a negative mirror to European Christian virtue. Both in popular culture as well as in the public theater, new stereotypes for Muslim people emerge, and these representations frequently associate Islamic world with violence and devilish treachery and imagine Islamic people as embodiments of evil. The English outlook on Islamic people was also affected by the rapprochement between England and Spain in this period. As I explain further in chapter 5, the Spanish experience of Reconquista, as well as mechanisms of Othering and discrimination implemented against the country’s assimilated Moorish population provided readily available attitudes for England in perceiving Islam. English dramatic representations of Muslims in the first decades of the seventeenth century are mostly tragedies and tragicomedies

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that were adapted from their Spanish precedents; thus they were derived from a culture which not only was closer to but also was shaped by an obsessive prejudice against Islamic people. 6 The dramatic tension in these plays arises from ideological conflicts between Muslim and Christian characters, and their central concern is always the moral threat posed by Islam to the Christian identity. Combined with greater circulation of books and travelers’ narratives about the Islamic world, these representations remodeled the image of the Muslim people in the English view. In the imagination of the seventeenth-century Englishmen, Muslims were no more trade partners or powerful political allies, but the faithless enemy. Whether represented as a darkskinned Moor, or a robed and turbaned Turk, their external appearance always indicated their spiritual darkness or barbaric ignorance. 7 They were rendered as the eternal adversary of Christian Europe, and only through a united Christianity could they be defeated. A fascinating shift in paradigm can be observed also in the period’s representations of the Muslim woman. Instead of the genuine indiscriminate attitude that prevailed in the preceding decades, the Muslim woman on the Jacobean stage is clearly distinguished with her religious and civilizational differences. Love relationships between characters of opposing religions play a large part in the dramatic representations of the period, and the Muslim woman’s role in such dramatizations is that of a wicked seductress, who inflicts Christian men with her immorality and ensnares them into false religion. From the seventeenth century onward, the presence of the Muslim woman in English dramatic texts is almost always sexually connoted. Both excessiveness and repression are featured in her portrayals. Though she is hidden behind the veil, this Islamic symbol merely conceals her lust and innate falsehood. In addition, the harem, as a locus of extreme sensuality and enclosure that characterizes the representation of the Muslim woman even today, enters into the English imagination in this period. Despite these external indicators of oppression, inside, the Islamic female is always imagined as a transgressive woman who requires masculine control. Yet, she resists domestication; in fact, she submits to no man’s authority. She is subversive of all the norms and prerogatives that govern the patriarchal society. In the remaining part of this study, I will focus on this new image of the Muslim woman on the seventeenth-century English stage. Tracing the emergence of this representation to the expansion of English contact with Muslim people in various parts of the world, I offer close readings of several Jacobean plays that feature Islamic characters, themes, and settings, alongside with nondramatic sources like travelers’ narratives. I want to analyze these plays both within the context of England’s sociopolitical and ideological stance vis-à-vis the Ottoman world, and against the contemporary developments in the discourse on women in the English society; because I believe when seen in relation to the period’s gender crisis, the transgressive Islamic femininity

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depicted in these plays becomes more meaningful. In the entailing chapters, my main argument is that in the first decades of the seventeenth century the Muslim woman conveys a double Othering in English dramatic representations. She is not only condemned as a member of the enemy religion, but also distanced as a representative of the dangerous female sex. Focusing on the attributions and strategic functions of various Muslim female figures in opposition to Islam in the stage’s imaginative world, I want to point to the significance of the image of the Muslim woman in constructing the religious, gender, and commercial identities of the nascent English nation at a time when the imperial struggle around the globe was escalating. “A NATION OF PIRATES”: ENGLAND AND THE MEDITERRANEAN DURING THE REIGN OF JAMES I Despite James’s peace-seeking policies toward the Catholic nations, the conditions in and around the Mediterranean in the early seventeenth century proved that the King’s ideal of a pan-Christian alliance against the common enemy Islam was a difficult one to realize. The competition among the European nations for eastern trade had intensified in this period. In pursuit of profit, Christian monarchs were frequently shifting sides, and in order to ensure safe passage of their vessels through the Mediterranean, they were compelled to sign trade agreements and mutual defense pacts with Muslim leaders. Moreover, in this early age of mercantilism piracy was a common practice among all European nations. 8 In defiance of their shared religion, crews of Christian corsairs from ports of England, Spain, Italy, and Holland were indiscriminately preying on one another in the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic for their rich cargoes. 9 Piracy, of course, had existed during the reign of Elizabeth I too. It is well-known that the Queen issued letters of marque to authorize the attacks of her naval captains against Spanish shipping and rewarded them with honors for their services to the state. Moreover, the line between royally legitimized privateering and illegal piracy was often a slim one. Though Elizabeth implicitly sanctioned piratical activities of her subjects, as long as the English crown profited from the acquired booties, piracy did not constitute a serious concern for her. 10 However, as soon as James ascended to the English throne, the state’s toleration of piracy ended. Even before entering into peace with Spain, the King made illegal all forms of privateering by a proclamation in 1603; and later in 1605, all British subjects found serving aboard foreign privateers were unhesitatingly treated as pirates. 11 While one of the expected outcomes of the Treaty of London was to end the attacks on Spanish shipping and, in turn, to cause a reduction in English piratical operations, ironically enough, the conditions that followed from this

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peace treaty resulted in the spectacular rise of English piracy in the seventeenth century. After nearly two decades of continual war with Spain, great numbers of English seamen were left unemployed. According to Senior, the total number of English maritime population by 1603 was around fifty thousand. 12 These men, who had previously prospered on Spanish plunder, had few skills to sustain a living on land, and the legitimate jobs they could find on royal ships were badly paid, or the working conditions were toilsome. 13 Episodes of famine, plague, and economic depression that marked the period added to this, the unlawful pirate life in the seas was a very attractive and profitable alternative for many English seamen. 14 In the first years of James’s reign, the number of English pirates in the Mediterranean and North Atlantic increased dramatically. The King’s own estimate of pirate strength, made in 1608, was that there were no fewer than five hundred sails of pirate ships in the ocean. 15 In fact, English piracy had become such a problem that the Venetian governor of Zante, Maffio Michiel, said of the English “there is not a sailor of that nation, but is a pirate.” 16 Worse still, many of these English pirates were formally converting to Islam and joining the Muslim corsair community in order to enjoy the freedom and protection of the Barbary principalities of the North African coast. 17 After the royal sanctions brought against piracy, English pirates needed new bases outside England to dock and safely sell their loot. North African rulers, whose navies were in need of learning maritime technology, were willing to harbor English as well as other Christian pirates, on the condition that they shared in the profit. 18 This cooperation between the North African Muslims and European pirates in the seventeenth century produced one of the unique periods in the history of Mediterranean piracy. Thousands of Christian pirates flourished under Muslim support, and many of them turned Turk in order to assure the local rulers of their alliance or to pursue the social and financial opportunities provided to Christian renegades in Muslim dominions. The Ottoman social system treated these renegades favorably and allowed them to important administrative and military ranks. 19 In addition, Islam proved to be very successful in showing the flexibility and dynamism needed to accommodate convert communities from various backgrounds. 20 In cities such as Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers, piracy and conversion introduced multiculturalism in an unprecedented scale. Muslim rulers’ policy of religious toleration allowed Christians, Muslims, and Jews to live peacefully as members of a single society, and this policy radically differed from that of England where people were oppressed and persecuted for their religious beliefs. 21 In fact, the conversion of Englishmen to Islam can also be seen in relation to this more domestic and prevalent destabilization of religious identity within the English society. The early modern period in England was an era of ideological discomfort between various religious factions, and the notion of

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apostasy was already well-established in the English consciousness. When Elizabeth I was crowned Queen in 1558 and England officially switched back to Protestantism, the country had gone through a national conversion for the third time in less than thirty years. The state’s insistence on religious uniformity and outer compliance resulted in the oppression of Catholics. The counter-Reformation missionary efforts, such as the Society of Jesus, that focused on regaining Protestant believers, as well as the conflicts among various sects within Protestantism created a religious climate, which was marked by intrusion, surveillance, and controversy. 22 All this stood in sharp contrast with the relative ease and openness of the life in Muslim communities. Islamic Mediterranean provided the English pirates with the opportunity to run away from the religious discontent that afflicted their homeland. In religious polemics the renegadism of Englishmen in Muslim territories and conversions within the domain of Christianity were perceived and condemned in similar ways. Changing religion was often likened to spiritual whoredom, and like converts within Christianity, those who turned Turk were accused of embracing the enemy’s religion for desire for profit and the appeal of worldly rewards. 23 Conversions to Islam were of course seen more scandalous and horrendous than conversions to Catholicism. After all, by becoming renegades and fighting under the Ottoman flag, these Englishmen were lending their weight to the adversary in the religious struggle that dated back to the Crusades. 24 Christian church fathers at home continuously vilified Islamic faith and denounced renegades as villains whose betrayal would cause Christendom to collapse from within. 25 On the other hand, travelers to the Muslim territories observed that the renegades, though they willfully had renounced their God and monarch, did not suffer any divine retribution, but were content with their new lives as Muslims. In London, the accounts of the wealth and luxurious lives of these fascinating traitors raised condemnation as well as curiosity in public. 26 In fact, the renegade figure had become so well-developed in the popular imagination of Jacobean England that many playwrights recognized the dramatic potential of this character and featured him in their plays. At the turn of the century a new dramatic genre emerged, which thematized Islam and dealt with the dangerous exploits of Christian pirates, renegades, and adventurous merchants in the Islamic territories in various parts of the world. A Christian Turned Turk, analyzed in this chapter, and the three plays covered in the remaining of this study belong to this type of theatrical representation which Howard calls “adventure plays.” 27 Since they are almost always set in the Mediterranean and feature the threat of Islamic conversion as the principal source of dramatic tension, they are also identified as “turning Turk” plays, “Turkish” or “Mediterranean” plays by various scholars. Typically, protagonists in these dramatic works are attractive, but dangerously unstable male overreachers, who generally come from a lower so-

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cial class. They are characterized by an aggressive and insubordinate masculinity, and as they venture through Islamic territories of the Mediterranean, they engage in various encounters with the locals, which end up with their actual or threatened conversion. In the face of the danger directed to his Christian soul, the hero may stand resolute in his faith, resist, and escape, but if he yields and turns Turk, his destruction is sealed. “FURIES OF HELL”: THE MUSLIM WOMAN AND THE GENDER DISCOURSE IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND Where does the Muslim woman stand within this picture? In depicting the relationships as well as the oppositions between Christians and Muslims, rather than featuring actual military confrontations, these plays follow a clear gendered pattern in which the Muslim woman plays a central role. Despite the apparent demonization of Turkish male characters, the threat of conversion posed to the Christian hero does not come from these dangerous and powerful men, but from Muslim women who are depicted as unruly temptresses. 28 While the hero is able to exhibit resistance against the treacherous and sometimes forceful attempts of Turkish men, his encounters with Muslim women, which are infallibly sexual liaisons, often result in his moral and religious corruption that in turn leads to his potential conversion. In these plays, Muslim women are regularly set on by their male counterparts to entrap and convert the Christian heroes; however, more often than not, they are motivated by their own lustful and wicked designs. While they are mostly depicted as desirable women, this desirability is always coded as dangerous. 29 Despite the fact that sexual desire for a woman is generally thought to mark a man’s masculinity, in these plays, the Christian hero’s love for the Muslim woman is shown to entail the enslavement of his higher reason by his bodily appetites and thus brings the subjection of the superior sex to the inferior one. In other words, by representing the threat of Islamic apostasy through interfaith relationships between Christian men and Muslim women, these plays enlist tropes of Edenic temptation and portray the Muslim woman as a prototypical Eve figure, who is solely responsible for the hero’s abandonment of the Christian God and his subsequent damnation. 30 Nevertheless, descriptions of Muslim women by English travelers to Islamic domains in the early modern age give us quite a different impression than this. Contrary to Muslim temptresses that we frequently come across in dramatic works, Muslim women in travel writings are mostly depicted as decent and obedient figures who abide by the rules of a male-dominated authoritarian society. Enclosed within the domestic sphere of their houses, they are separated from both the political and religious affairs of the social life. With familial submission and respect toward their husbands, they merely

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fulfill their wifely duties; and interestingly they seem to be content in doing this. For example, George Sandys, the first English traveler to focus on the women in Ottoman lands, writes: “[a]ll that is required at their hands is to content their husbands, to nurse their owne children, and to live peaceably.” 31 While the onstage Muslim women are portrayed as bold seductresses who initiate sexual contact with Christian men, contemporary travel writers such as Edward Grimstone informs us that Turkish women “never come into place where men assembled together.” 32 As in dramatic representations, Muslim women in travel accounts are frequently noted as beautiful and elegant; however, because of religious piety, real-life Muslim women never expose “their beauties vnto any, but vnto their fathers and husbands.” 33 In addition, they are very “modest in their garments.” 34 In fact, their dresses “are commonly so well fitted and made, as a man cannot behold anything more modest and comely.” 35 While the accuracy of these travel accounts is also disputable, the clear discrepancy between the historical and dramatic representations of the Muslim woman indicates that English playwrights of the seventeenth century created a fantastical Muslim female figure in their works. Since they never had the chance to meet a real-life Turkish woman, they appropriated what they read in these accounts and restructured the Muslim women material in a way to put it to a functional use in line with their discursive strategies against Islam and Islamic apostasy. In this restructuring they necessarily articulated the ideas of womanhood that existed in their own society. In fact, next to the threat of Islam, in these plays, there is a conscious preoccupation with Christian patriarchal notions of gender roles and hierarchies, which corresponds with a hot contemporary debate on women that prevailed in the English society. Throughout the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, definitions of womanhood and the position of women underwent significant transformations, and I believe a closer look at these transformations and their implications on the established structures of the patriarchal society will provide us a more comprehensive and clearer context to assess the role of the Muslim woman in early modern English drama. According to D. E. Underdown, the sixty years before England’s Civil War can be characterized as manifesting a “crisis of order” at all levels of the country’s economic, political, and social fabric. 36 Despite the stability and the sense of national identity brought by the reign of Elizabeth I, this was also a period of deep depression in which the majority of the English population suffered. As old forms of domestic production were replaced by industrial premises, new attitudes with respect to the accumulation of capital and to work were introduced. 37 The population was rapidly growing in the urban areas, and because of the rising inflation and poor harvests, poverty, and crime had significantly increased. In response to generalized concerns about social unrest, the two crucial intellectual and religious movements of the

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period, humanism and the Reformation, advocated radical restructuring of moral and public life. 38 They placed a special focus on the family as a unit where individuals would be shaped according to certain codes, and the role of the English woman within this new concept of the family was an important one. First, humanists such as Thomas More thought that they might create an enlightened governing class which would be committed to social and religious reform by educating young men through classical instruction. As the perfect companion of this new type of learned man they argued for a new notion of woman who would also be given humanist education, and, next to her motherly and wifely service, could be the lifelong partner of her husband and the educator of the children. 39 In order to effectuate this theory, they implemented a program of study for young women at an experimental level, and the positive results they achieved led them to come up with some revolutionary ideas that saw men and women as equals and the contemporary women’s subordinate position merely as a product of custom. Though these theories failed to become inspirational in the coming years, the humanist ideal of nuclear family was later taken up by the Reformists who started a more substantial movement. In fact, the family had a highly politicized role in the Protestant social program, because for the Reformists submission to authority started in the family, and the obedience owed to the father served as an analogy for the obedience owed to God and to the monarch. 40 Yet, emergent industrialism forced more and more men to work outside the home, and despite the husband’s assumed absolute authority, the woman gained a more elevated position in the family. Though she was restricted within the household as before, her responsibilities increased, and she had a significant function as provider, educator, and moral counselor for the family members. 41 Moreover, Protestantism advocated equality between men and women in the eyes of God. While this common standing did not entail equality on political and social grounds, it surely enabled women to assert independence on spiritual grounds. 42 The dissident sects within Protestantism freed many women from religious obedience to their husbands and priests. The growing popularity of public preaching and lecturing created “a kind of a democratic atmosphere,” which allowed women to adopt new roles for themselves. 43 Women participated in such lectures in large numbers, and many of them aspired to pastoral and teaching positions, as well as organized congregations in defiance of male authority. 44 In fact, despite their clear-cut boundaries of domesticity, many other Englishwomen stepped out of their homes in this period to engage in visible social and economic functions. Particularly in the textile trade the demand for women to contribute to the labor force had increased. In various classes of business, women worked together with their husbands, sharing their daily responsibilities; and when they were widowed, they generally retained the

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direction of the venture. 45 Women also contributed to the male dominated world of intellectual and literary production. Many male authors had female literary patrons, and both the first work of fiction and the first tragedy written by an Englishwoman were produced in this period. 46 Most importantly, the forty-five-year regiment of Elizabeth I showed that women could rule, though they were not expected to exercise authority over men. Apparently, several Englishwomen of the early modern age had started to act as autonomous figures and to defend their rights for greater liberties, and this was not only contradicting with, but also threatening the established prerogatives of the patriarchal society. Mark Breitenberg argues that, like in any social system that is built upon unequal distribution of power and authority, anxiety is an inevitable product of the patriarchal society. 47 The masculine identity is infused with dictated male privileges, for that reason it simultaneously incorporates varying degrees of anxiety about the preservation of those privileges. 48 Indeed, Englishwomen’s transgression of their culturally prescribed roles and their intrusion into the social and economic domain caused serious reactions in this period. Men who felt that they were being dislodged from their dominant place responded to these assertive women by imposing on them legal restrictions, reducing their wages and guilds, and by undermining their prospects in commercial and cultural life. Furthermore, both in church services that the entire English population was obliged to attend on Sundays and through the many conduct books that were produced in this period women were continuously reminded of their inferior nature that required guidance and were commanded to submit to their male superiors. Medieval formulations that saw women as either wicked creatures in the image of Eve, or female saints descending from Virgin Mary were appropriated and reintroduced with a clearer emphasis. Idealized “good” women were represented in contexts of chastity, obedience, and silence. They were pictured as tenderhearted, homekeeping, and motherly matrons, who obeyed their husbands, cared for their children, and spent their time in private devotion. 49 On the other hand, women who did not confirm and subverted the established gender hierarchies were continuously scorned and condemned through misogynistic portrayals. These “bad” women were likened to “furies of hell,” whose “whole delight and pleasure is to scold, to brawl, to chide and to be out of quite with their husbands.” 50 Men were warned to maintain constant vigilance over such audacious and bold wives, because they might easily use their feminine viles and usurp the mastery within the family. 51 Clearly, early modern Englishmen were very reluctant to grant any freedom or independence to women. Rather than rethinking the social structures in line with the humanist theories that had flourished at the beginning of the period, their concerns about losing the control of women steered them to a much more conservative stance toward the autonomy of the female identity.

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Matar argues that the English writers’ anxious urge to legitimize female subordination also led them to look for supporting examples for their theories outside their Eurocentric Christian world, and the Islam of the Ottoman Empire, which was economically, militarily, and socially an advanced civilization, caught their attention. 52 As Englishmen traveled to the Islamic lands, they saw that the subjugation of women among the Muslims differed widely from the libertinism which they feared among Englishwomen. 53 The detailed and favorable descriptions invoked in the travelogues that I mentioned earlier, which characterized the Muslim women as restrained and obedient figures, were partly motivated by the fact that these writers wanted the women of the English society to be treated similarly. For example praising the clear hierarchical relationship between men and women in Turkish families, Grimstone writes that the Turkish husband “doth ever retaine the same severitie and gravitie towards his wife, who likewise failes not to beare her selfe veile respectively and humble on his behalf.” 54 Apparently, Muslim men had found a way to circumvent women’s wiles that threatened the husband’s authority, and as William Biddulph noted in 1609, if women in England were treated as if they were among the Turks, they would surely be “more dutifull and faithfull to their husbands.” 55 If the image of the Muslim woman in early modern English travelogues functions as a “hoped for model” for Christian women at home, then her onstage representations would definitely serve as an antimodel. Contrary to the chastity, reticence, and submissiveness that the English travelers saw in Muslim women and associated with “good” womanhood, Islamic female characters in seventeenth-century English drama clearly accord with the definition of the “bad woman,” the “fury,” who was continuously condemned and satirized in the gender discourse of early modern England. In fact, in this drama characteristics of the good woman are generally attributed to Christian female characters. Set in opposition to Muslim women, they present an immaculate and virtuous disposition that complies with the authorized notion of femininity, while their Islamic counterparts embody all that is unfeminine and unnatural. Even so, these assertive Muslim female figures of seventeenth-century English drama somehow always defend the Christian patriarchal privilege. If their subversive behavior cannot be managed and contained within patriarchal parameters, these women are simply destroyed on the stage, as a logical continuation of their wicked actions. More frequently, however, they are seen as potential converts to Christianity. After learning about the Christian religion from their lovers, they turn apostate themselves, putting aside their disruptive femininity to be reborn as chaste and obedient Christian women. Clearly, the Muslim woman figure was a very versatile dramatic material for English playwrights, because her image provided for them an appropriate ground to reflect on their anxieties in relation to both the Islamic empire abroad and the Christian women at home. By collecting these

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two seemingly divergent threats in the representation of the Muslim woman, they successfully effaced the disturbing aspects of each for Englishmen. 56 “I’LL FIT YOU WITH AN EVE, SIR, A TEMPTRESS” As in the case of the Muslim woman, the variations between the traveler accounts and the dramatic representations of the renegade in the seventeenth century give important clues with respect to the psychology that prevailed in Jacobean England against Islam and the Islamic culture. Robert Daborne’s 1612 play A Christian Turned Turk, which as the title suggests depicts the story of a pirate who abandoned Christianity, is a notable instance that illustrates this psychology. 57 John Ward, the protagonist of the play, was a reallife figure, and the additions and alterations that the playwright made on the biographical accounts of this English renegade impart a didactic purpose by rearranging the course of events in Ward’s life in a way as to comply with the prerogatives of Christian patriarchy. The adventures and accomplishments of Captain Ward were known to the English society, and hence to Daborne, through two pamphlets, both printed in 1609: Andrew Barker’s True and Certain Report of the Beginning, Proceedings, Overthrows, and Now Present Estate of Captain Ward and Danseker, the Two Late Famous Pirates and the anonymous News from the Sea, Of Two Notorious Pirates, Ward and Dansiker. In both of these texts, Ward is presented as an interesting figure, whose spectacular ascent from humble origins to power renders him a notable man despite his status as apostate. Ward was born around 1553 in Faversham, Kent and spent his early years working in the fisheries. 58 In 1603, he found employment as a common seaman in one of the King’s ships, and only within two years he became a wealthy freebooter in the Mediterranean, in command of a strong vessel with thirty two guns and a crew of one hundred. 59 In 1606, Ward reached an agreement with the Ottoman commander of the janissaries in Tunis, Cara Osman (Crosman of the play) to use Tunis as the base for his piratical operations. Then, in 1609, he converted to Islam, changed his name to Issouf Reis, and settled in Tunis. 60 Ward declined several offers by his countrymen to return to England. 61 Obviously he had become well-integrated into his new life in Tunis. Barker’s pamphlet reports that Ward “lives there in Tunis in a most princely and magnificent state. His apparel both curious and costly, his diet sumptuous, and his followers seriously observing his will.” 62 William Lithgow, a Scottish traveler who visited Ward in Tunis, describes the renegade’s house as “a fair palace beautified with rich marble and alabaster stones,” and he claims that Ward kept a personal guard of “some fifteen circumcised English renegades.” 63 Apparently, Ward and Cara Osman enjoyed a good working rela-

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tionship and the pirate was very much favored by the Turkish ruler, as the two called each other “brother.” 64 In both Barker’s text and News from the Sea, Ward is represented as a notorious renegade, a covetous thief, who is condemned for his monstrous crimes against God and the English king. For example, according to Barker, upon obtaining the right from Cara Osman to sell his booty in Tunis, Ward “vowed he would forever after become a foe to all Christians, be a persecutor to their trafficke, and an impoverisher of their wealth.” 65 News from the Sea denounces the renegade’s onshore behavior, claiming that Ward and his crew are “pampering and fatting themselves with the poison of their souls.” 66 However, the overall tone against Ward and his exploits in these accounts is not a totally negative one. In these pamphlets, like in several popular ballads of the age, Ward is also praised for his bravery, and his victories over foreign ships are celebrated. For example, Barker admits that Ward was “the most undauntedst man of fight,” and “if his actions were honest as his valour is honourable, his deeds might be dignified in the Chronicles with the worthiest.” 67 Such remarks convey a positive image for the renegade pirate, and as Vitkus observes, they turn him into an “admirable villain” who exemplifies the success and autonomy of a willing masculinity that “dared to move beyond the boundaries drawn by the religious and social system.” 68 In accordance with these accounts, in A Christian Turned Turk, Daborne introduces his protagonist as a greedy and sinful man, on the verge of damnation. In fact, in the early scenes of the play Ward’s main activity is to capture a French merchant ship together with its crew, who came aboard for gambling, and then to sell both the loot and the captives in Tunis, causing an old French man to die of grief when he saw his sons being sent to slavery. Yet, Daborne also endows Ward with a certain degree of introspectiveness. For example, when the merchant Ferdinand makes an attempt to persuade Ward to the immorality of his actions, the pirate responds to his counsels with a philosophy that we would not expect from this “blood-thirsty monster.” He says “the fate of man is fixed / Unmoveable as the pole” (3.32–33), and then he adds: We have no will to act— Or not to act—more than those orbs we see And planetary bodies, which in their offices Observe the will of fate. The difference is: They are confined; we are not. They are stars fixed, We wandering. 69

As Howard argues, such vaulting language that Ward uses several times in the play raises him to “larger-than-life status” 70 and renders the pirate the epitome of the legend, supporting his image as an “admirable villain” in the English public eye. Yet, Daborne’s version diverges from the biographical

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accounts of Ward at two important points. The most notable difference is the fact that although Daborne kills his protagonist on stage, the historical Ward was alive and well in Tunis at the time the play was written. The second divergence, which is no less interesting, comes at the centerpiece of the plot: the pirate’s decision to convert to Islam. In fact, before becoming a renegade, the historical Ward had applied twice for a formal pardon in 1607 (first to the English king, then to the grand duke of Florence). However, unable to obtain an amnesty in his desired terms, he resumed his piratical operations. 71 1609, the year that Ward converted to Islam coincides with a series of Christian corsair attacks on the Algerian fleet in Tunis. While the pamphlets do not specify any particular reason for Ward’s conversion, according to Burton, the most probable explanation for the pirate’s decision to become Muslim was to assure Cara Osman of his allegiance following these attacks. 72 Daborne includes in the script a Christian raid on the ships in the Tunisian port, yet he presents us with an altogether different reason for Ward’s apostasy. Daborne’s Ward turns Turk because of his temptation to the beautiful, but evil Muslim female character, Voada. In so doing, the play conjoins the Christian hero’s apostasy to his desire for an unruly Turkish woman, thus creates a gendered context to reflect on both the threat of Islamic conversion and the contemporary patriarchal anxieties with respect to subversive women. There are two Muslim women in the play, and they are both sisters to Crosman: Voada, Ward’s temptress, and Agar, wife to a former Jew called Benwash, who buys Christian pirates’ booties in Tunis. Both of these women are portrayed as dangerous sensualists, and, with their lustful motives they, are shown as the main source of all male problems depicted in the play. They enter the stage together with the Jewish servant Rabshake, caught in a comical conversation about the newly arrived pirates in Tunis, and their lewd language and attitude immediately expose them as indecent women. When Agar expresses her attraction to pirate Gallop, Voada despises him for his weird looks “as if his father and mother had got him in fear” and prefers the Dutch captain Dansiker. 73 Approving Voada’s choice as “a reasonable handsome man of Christian,” 74 Rabshake starts listing the differences between the appearances of men from various religions. He explains “gouty legs and fiery nose” that the Turk and the Jew have “express their heart-burning,” “[w]hereas the Puritan is a man of upright calf and clean nostril.” 75 Mocking Rabshake, Voada suggests that he should turn Christian to swell his calf “upward mightily,” 76 yet he refuses to join the Christian society because of the three qualities they have: First they suffer their wives to be their masters. Secondly, they make men thieves for want of maintenance and then hang them up for stealing. Lastly, they are mad four times a year, and those they call term-times, and then they

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are so purged by their physicians (which they name lawyers), some of ’em are never their own men after it. 77

While the scene is intended to point to the depravity of the Turkish women, with Rabshake’s joke, it simultaneously turns out to be a critique of the Christian society, in which women’s mastery over men is offered as the most significant drawback, outweighing economic and political disadvantages. Rabshake’s remarks are clearly in line with the misogynistic disposition of many writers who participated in the ongoing women’s debate in Daborne’s England. In fact, this misogyny is extended when the Jewish servant adds that the Christians are such uncharitable people that if “an innocent” man happens to live among them, first men “will feed upon no other meat” 78 and then their wives “will be sucking at the bones.” 79 While men are also criticized for their greediness, this bawdy satire shows their wives’ actions more heinous than theirs, because even if men think they are cunning when they feed on the innocent, women prove to be much craftier, as they cuckold their husbands with what they have preyed on. These misogynistic assumptions with respect to women’s sexuality find a more overt expression in the depiction of the Muslim female characters. Throughout the play, both Agar and Voada are exclusively associated with orgiastic morality; in fact, they are many times called “whores,” and their basic function in the Tunisian pirate community is to entertain the Christian pirates coming ashore. For example, referring to his wife, who walks around the room invitingly, gazing at Gallop during the closure of a deal, Benwash explains to the confused sailors: “You see gallants, we are not Italianates to lock our women up: we set them free, and give open entertainment.” 80 Gallop concludes that Benwash must be keeping a “bawdy house,” and says in his aside: “I like his wife well, I could find in my heart to cast away half a ducat on her.” 81 Actually, Benwash is a very jealous husband who has turned Muslim only to keep “his bed free from these Mahometan dogs,” 82 and as he explains to Rabshake he “man[s] his wife thus”: For commodity: thou seest rich shopkeepers set their wives at sale to draw in custom utter their ware, yet keep that gem untouched—all for profit, man. 83

Though Benwash seems to use his wife’s sexuality as a business trick to close better deals and foolishly thinks that she is a “constant” 84 woman who merely plays a role to help her husband, Agar proves to be a far more promiscuous woman than he assumes, because in fact she lasciviously pursues Gallop. By the time Benwash leaves the stage, she with Gallop and Voada with Dansiker already “have bartered wares.” 85 Even if Agar hesitates for a moment fearing her husband’s “watchful jealousy,” 86 Voada brings her back to her feminine senses when she encourages her saying:

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Chapter 3 Now by my sex I am ashamed of you. Were the Jew mine, I would have no other pander. Be ruled by me, It’s he shall hire the captain to thy love And his own horning. What cannot we persuade? Man was asleep when woman’s brain was made. 87

While this passage clearly renders Voada a more dangerous woman than Agar as the provoker of her sister’s wrongful actions, it at the same time summarizes the play’s plain misogyny in a quite striking way, articulating a dark pessimism on the part of men that perceives women as sinful creatures posing a constant threat to them. Indeed, after Voada’s advice Agar practically puts Benwash in the position of her own panderer. She convinces him to “make trial with the ladder of ropes” 88 that will allow Gallop to climb to her chamber at night when Benwash is missing and find out that she is not the “light” 89 woman that he took her for. She even makes Benwash tell this plan to Gallop himself, to which the amazed pirate responds in his aside: “thou black-eyed negro! Never did a woman make such a shift to dub her husband, though many thou dost know have made most bare ones.” 90 When seen in parallel to the Christian wives in Rabshake’s earlier joke, Muslim women obviously use similar double-crossing tactics in cuckolding their husbands, a use which, in the play’s terms, reveals their common wicked nature; yet being unprecedented, Agar’s example shows that because of her false religion and, in this case, her dark complexion, the Muslim woman embodies this wickedness all the more easily. In addition, Benwash’s giving “open entertainment” to his wife in front of the pirate captains with an aim to get better profit suggests that using the sexuality of women in the play is thought as a part of the Turkish men’s strategy to sway Christian men to their ends. This agrees with the travel accounts of the period, where sexual enticements are offered as one of the most common explanations for Englishmen’s Islamic apostasy after financial rewards and social advancement. Since polygamy and concubinage were allowed in Muslim cultures, Islam was thought to be a lecherous religion that “looseth the bridle to the flesh.” 91 European writers described Muslims as “extremely inclined to all sorts of lascivious luxury.” 92 The private lives of wealthy Muslims were claimed to be full of hidden sins and sensual indulgence, and much of the Christian renegadism was thought to have stemmed from this sexual libertinism associated with the Islamic society. 93 Islamic people were restrained by their religion from forced conversions. George Sandys attests to this when he says that Muslims draw renegades by offering them money, clothes, and freedom from tax and tributes, but they “compel no man.” 94 In fact, in some cases Christian men were also offered Muslim wives to convert. For example, Thomas Dallam, an English organ maker who traveled to Constantinople in 1599 to present an organ to Murad

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III from Elizabeth I, tells us in his journal that after a series of comical misunderstandings which expose the absurdity of his fears and prejudices against the Turks, he eventually established such good relations with the Turkish men in his company that they wanted him to stay among them, and in order to persuade him they offered “all the content that I could desire,” including the promise of two wives, either concubines from the Sultan’s harem, “or else two virgins of the best I could choose my self, in city or countrie.” 95 Another Englishman, Richard Hasleton, who fell into the hands of a Berber group, Abesse, while he was running away from the Spanish Inquisition in Algiers in 1587, tells us in his captivity story that he was also offered a rich reward to turn “Moor.” He says that the king promised him money and office, as well as a house, and: lastly he offered to give me a wife freely, which they esteemed the greatest matter, for all buy their wives at a great price. . . . But when he perceived all he said was in vain, he sent the queen and her gentlewomen to talk with me. When she came, she very courteously entreated me to turn and serve the king and to consider well what a large offer the king had made, saying that I was much unlike to come to any like preferment in my country. And many times she would show me her gentlewomen and ask me if none of them could please me, but I told her I had a wife in my own country, to whom I had vowed my faith before God and the world, which vow, I said, I would never break while we both lived. Then she said she could but marvel when she should be whom I esteemed so much as to refuse such offers of preferment for her sake, being now where I must remain in captivity and slavery all the days of my life. But when she could prevail no way with me, when she had uttered these foresaid speeches, and many others which were frivolous to rehearse, she left me. Yet by her means I had more liberty than before. 96

While these examples confirm that Muslim women were indeed used to create a proselytizing effect on intended apostates, we should also note that these accounts are clearly exaggerated in such a way as to romanticize the narrators’ heroic resistance against Islam; and because of their scarcity they fall short of explaining the large outflow of Christian converts, as they overlook the real motives for apostasy. R. W. Bulliet explains that, in cases of conversion, “the religion that is losing members must rationalize what is occurring in a manner that will strengthen the faith of the steadfast members of the community.” 97 Indeed, none of the English accounts of the period admits the possibility that the runaway Englishmen who converted to Islam may have yielded to arguments of religious nature, or to have considered conversion as an opportunity to break with class restrictions, or other social codes that they were confined with. Given the working conditions in seventeenth-century England, conversion was understandable; it appealed to many destitute seamen as a relief from their impoverished and brutalized status. Englishmen at home were quick to find corruption and lechery in the Islamic

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world, which made it easier to ignore the likelihood of existence of flaws or social inequalities in their own society. They chose to perceive and represent the incidents of voluntary apostasy as acts of rebellion committed by greedy and lustful Christian men who betrayed the true religion for the lure of Islam. In depicting the Muslim men’s attempts to persuade Ward to convert to Islam, Daborne applies a similar scheme seen in these European accounts. Before they meet Ward in his house in Tunis, Crosman and Benwash lay out their plot: Crosman: Benwash:

All that art can by ambition, lust or flattery do, Assure your selfe this brain shall work him to. Nay, if the flesh take hold of him, he’s past redemption He is a half Turk already, it’s as good as done. Woman is hell, out; in we never return. 98

While Crosman’s plan to approach Ward combines ambition, lust, and flattery, Benwash, whose conversion to Islam came for purely sexual reasons, knows that desire for women is a more powerful motive for apostasy. Nonetheless, Crosman, Benwash, and the governor of Tunis try to lure Ward to Islam first with promises of profit and advancement. Benwash implies that if Ward forsakes the Christian faith, he can even become the admiral of the Ottoman sultan. He suggests that he must be “more wise . . . / Than with religion to confine [his] hopes.” 99 Confirming Benwash, the governor, who is himself a Christian turned Turk, adds that the rewards of conversion are endless: He’s too well read in Poesie to be tied In the slaves fetters of religion. What difference in me as I am a Turk, And was a Christian? life, liberty, Wealth, honour, they are common unto all? If any odds be, ’tis on Mahomets side, His servitors thrive best I am sure. 100

The governor suggests that religion is only bondage for Ward, depriving him of the liberty, wealth, and honor that he can find in Islam, whose empire is stronger than Christendom. He further insists that men “have two ends, safety and profit,” which they “must make their actions turn to.” 101 The governor offers both to Ward, as long as the latter is willing to show his trust by “turning Turk.” 102 Like so many Christian sailors at the start of the seventeenth century, the historical Ward would have doubtlessly concurred with these arguments. Though portrayed as an ambitious man and an opportunist in pursuit of economic gains, Daborne’s Ward surprisingly remains cautious and resists

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these blandishments, recognizing them as “the hooke your golden baite doth cover.” 103 Contrary to what we would expect from his reputation as a notorious pirate, Ward does not allow us to think that his Christian soul has been threatened by apostasy. He cuts off further argument, saying: What’s mine of prowess, or art shall rest by you To be disposed of; but to abjure My name—and the belief my ancestors Left to my being! I do not love so well The earth that bore me, to lessen my contempt And hatred to her, by so much advantage, So oblique act as this should give to her. 104

Apparently, the influence of Muslim men is not powerful enough to draw Ward to conversion. Seeing that “[t]his gudgeon will not bite,” 105 the Turkish men change tactics and include Voada in their scheme. Crosman immediately orders Benwash to “[w]ork in my sister.” 106 After all, he knows “[w]hat devils dare not move / Men to accomplish, women work them to.” 107 Indeed, though Ward has been resolute in his faith and successful in evading the allurements of the Turks, the moment that he sees Voada who enters the stage upon Crosman’s cue, he suddenly changes and says: Here comes an argument that would persuade A God turn mortal, untill I saw her face, I never knew what men term beauty was: Besides whose fair, she hath a mind so chaste A man may sooner melt the Alps, then her. 108

This unexpected break in Ward’s resistance emphasizes the overwhelming influence of the Turkish woman’s charms on the Christian hero. While Ward considers Crosman’s arguments “spent” and “in vain,” 109 in Voada’s presence he accepts he is defeated: If ever beast did feel the power of love, Or beauty make a conquest of poor man, I am thy captive, by heaven, by my religion. 110

Voada performs her part to the letter. She tells him that she cannot give trust to the protests of a man “whose religion / Speaks [her] an infidel.” 111 If Ward wants to “enjoy” 112 her, he should be of her religion. Thus, although he recognizes that it means to “forever sell [his] liberty,” 113 when Voada offers “[t]urn Turk—I am yours,” 114 Ward agrees to “take the orders instantly.” 115 Despite the wealth and status offered to him, Ward’s desire for a Muslim woman is shown as the most crucial factor that induces the Christian hero to forsake his faith. Though Ward mistakenly conjuncts her fairness to her

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“chaste” mind, 116 as we have already seen, Voada is in fact a transgressive woman, whose rampant sexuality violates any definition that the Christian patriarchal discourse would have for chastity. Indeed, as she leaves the stage to order preparations for Ward’s conversion, she reveals her knavish intentions in her aside: “howe’er thou sink, thy wealth shall bear me high.” 117 Voada is obviously a part of the Turkish men’s strategy to convert Ward, yet her selfish motives prove that in reality she exceeds any man’s authority. While with her sexuality she represents the lures of Islam that threatens the Christian man’s soul, she simultaneously denotes a more generic danger that the womankind was thought to impose in patriarchal societies throughout history. Draped with prejudices against Islam, the character of Voada is the ultimate representation of the pervasive misogyny that is manifested at many points throughout the play. Being a woman, she is supposedly already the preferred instrument of Satan, and being Muslim, she has even more reason to perform his work against the Christian man. The only character that Voada is unable to influence with her feminine will is the beautiful slave boy that she pursues relentlessly throughout the play. In the end this slave boy turns out to be Alizia, the French gentleman Lemot’s sister, who has disguised as a page to protect herself from the lustful pirates. It would be difficult to argue that the playwright implies homoeroticism in this relationship. Rather Daborne seems to devise Alizia as a counterpart to the depraved morality of the Turkish woman. Contrary to Voada’s wicked and lustful image, Alizia constitutes an example of feminine virtue and chastity that conforms to the standards of the Christian patriarchy. Nevertheless, despite her sincere efforts to save her betrothed husband Raymond from captivity, even Alizia cannot escape the play’s misogyny. When mistakenly shot by Voada in the dark passageways of the Tunisian castle, Raymond thinks he is deceived by Alizia, finding the immediate reason in the “falsehood” 118 of this “cruel woman,” 119 who must have “turned prostitute.” 120 However, the Christian maiden proves her constancy even at the cost of her own life and stabs herself to die alongside her lover. Before ending up with this tragic death, Alizia fulfills her role in the play as the mouthpiece for Christian piety. Prior to the conversion rite, when Voada is momentarily absent, she appears on the stage to warn Ward about his impending and irrevocable fall: Upon my knees, I do conjure you sir: Sell not your soul for such a vanity As that which you term “beauty,” eye-pleasing idol! Should you with the renouncing of your God, Taking the abhorred name of Turk upon you, Purchase a little shameful being here, your case Might be compared to his, who adjudged to death By his head’s loss, should crave (stead of one stroke)

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To die a lingering torment on the rack. Even such would be your life, whose guilt each hour Would strike your conscious soul with terrors. 121

Matar points out that these words of Alizia are reminiscent of the scene in Doctor Faustus with the good and bad angels, where Marlowe’s protagonist is offered one final chance to save his soul before his ultimate doom. 122 Like Faustus, for a moment Ward is moved by Alizia’s urgings, recognizes his fault and turns back to Christianity. Yet, upon the Muslim woman’s return to the stage, the pirate once again becomes a fool and agrees to undergo conversion. While the scene confirms Voada’s power over the Christian man for a second time, it simultaneously shows that Ward is in fact given an opportunity to repent. However, just like Faustus who willfully rejects the help of the good angel and sells his soul to the devil, Ward rejects the Christian maiden’s pleas and sells his soul to the Turk for the lust of a Muslim woman. 123 Ward’s conversion is illustrated in an extended dumb show in the eighth scene. 124 Neither in Barker’s text, nor in the News from the Sea is there an account of this ceremony. Daborne probably wanted to intensify the horrifying effect of Ward’s deed by incorporating this scene and adopted it from writers like Richard Knolles and George Sandys who vividly described the conversion ritual in their writings. 125 As we learn from one of the captains, at the end of the ceremony Ward was “Turk[ed] to the circumcision.” 126 In fact, as the consummate mark of Christian apostasy, circumcision is frequently brought up in “turning Turk” plays as well as in numerous anti-Islamic treatises of the period. For these writers, circumcision underlines the sexual significance of the change of faith. They often associate it with emasculation and sometimes even conflate it with castration. Such emasculating effect of circumcision is emphasized also in Daborne’s play. The first time he sees Ward after the conversion ceremony Rabshake taunts the renegade saying: “Poor fellow, how he looks since Mahomet had the handling of him! He hath had a sore night at ‘Who’s that knocks at the backdoor?’ Cry you mercy, I thought you were an Italian captain.” 127 The Jewish servant’s joke implies that because of the pain inflicted by the circumcision, Ward was unable to perform sexually and consummate his marriage with Voada, and instead he became a passive participant in male homosexual practice (which Englishmen often called the “Italian” style). While Rabshake’s intention here is only to make light of Ward’s conversion, the implied loss of the pirate’s masculine capability creates a meaningful contrast with the repeated emphasis made on his unruly and fierce manliness. When seen within the misogynistic context of the play, the fact that this emasculation comes as a result of Ward’s subjugation to a woman’s will is particularly telling. Daborne punishes Ward with the most tragic end possible. After the conversion ritual he can never get the attention that he was promised. On the

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contrary, when Voada learns Ward’s ship has burnt in the fire and the pirate has lost all of his property, she scorns and despises him as “false runagate.” 128 Then, she continues to pursue her lust for the disguised Alizia, offering her money and escape if she sleeps with her for one night. Finally, when Ward is seized and imprisoned upon Voada’s false accusations, he becomes, as Burton notes, a “sympathetic figure of tragedy.” 129 Despite his sealed doom, the renegade has been transformed back into Christianity. He curses the “all seed” of the Ottomans and blemishes their name as “the only scorn” “to all nations.” 130 Right before stabbing himself on the stage, he calls the Christian princes to reunite in order to take their revenge and find a path back to Jerusalem. Making his case an example for the consequences of apostasy, he expresses his last wish: may I be the last of my country That trust unto your treacheries, seducing treacheries. All you that live by theft and piracies, That sell your lives and souls to purchase graves, That die to hell, and live far worse than slaves. Let dying Ward tell you that heaven is just, And that despair attends on blood and lust. 131

While Islam is contained by Ward’s final repentance and warnings to English pirates, which are clearly drawn from the contemporary assumptions against renegadism, as Matar points out, this is “a wishful thinking on the part of Daborne,” because the ending of the play is purely fictional. 132 According to the pamphlets, Ward lived in prosperity in Tunis until his seventies. He married a renegade woman, Jessimina from Palermo (despite his wife in England to whom he sent money from time to time) and continued taking hand in the capture of ships as late as 1622. 133 Ward seems to have spent his advanced years happily too. When Lithgow saw him again in 1616, he found the old pirate working on a method of incubating eggs in camel dung. 134 Apparently, in Daborne’s imagination there was not much room for accuracy. He needed to show Christianity victorious against Islam, and it did not matter whether he distorted the facts. However, probably because of this very reason, Daborne’s play could not achieve sensational success. Ward was a publicly known figure, and English theatergoers seem not to have much appreciated the way the playwright spoiled the pirate’s “admirable” image. Captain John Ward was the most famous of the English renegades whose extraordinary career found much echo in his home society; yet surely, he was not an exception. Many other English seamen like Sampson Denball or Peter Eston became renegade pirates and worked as powerful admirals in the Ottoman navy. Though not an English corsair, one of Ward’s contemporaries is featured also in Daborne’s play. Simon Dansiker, who was generally identified as a Dutchman, was one of the most effective pirates in the Mediterra-

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nean and the North Atlantic region, and his name was frequently associated with Ward. However, unlike the English pirate, Dansiker actually received a pardon from Henry IV of France in 1609, and went into French service as a privateer and continued to attack English and Spanish shipping. 135 In Daborne’s play, Dansiker is employed as a foil to the renegade hero. While Ward is drawn to apostasy after falling in love with Voada, Dansiker acts in the opposite direction, repents of piracy, and is pardoned by the French king. As Vitkus observes, the dumb shows that enact Ward’s conversion in Tunis are set in “symmetric contrast” with the dumb shows that portray Dansiker’s pardoning in Marseilles. 136 However, despite his hero’s repentance Daborne allows neither the Dutch pirate to enjoy a spiritual ease nor a happy ending. Before leaving Tunis, Dansiker attempts a final attack on the pirate ships in the Tunisian port as an endeavor to “redeem our honor.” 137 Yet upon being caught by the Muslims, he commits suicide like Ward, reminding “all pirates, robbers / To think how heavy [God’s] revenging hand / Will sit upon them.” 138 So, the text once again makes it clear that for treacherous Christians, there is a more powerful force, that of God, whose justice shall be served, notwithstanding the fact that God’s treatment in the play differs significantly from the experiences of these men in real life. Daborne portrays Ward capable of resisting the attempts of the Muslim men to make him apostate, and his only weakness comes as a result of his desire for an enticing Turkish woman. The play’s emphasis on Voada’s power over Ward is significant, as it attributes full responsibility for the pirate’s conversion to an unruly Muslim temptress, and in doing so, as Burton points out, the play rewrites apostasy in “the pattern of Adam’s loss of Paradise,” with Voada as “the principal Eve figure.” 139 In the following chapter, I analyze a more popular play than Daborne’s, which offers a happyending version of this tragic story. While the threat that Islam poses to the Christian hero is continued in a similar gendered pattern like in Daborne’s play, this time forgiveness is shown to be possible, and Christianity wins over Islam without the need for divine intervention, but with the power of virtuous Christians to redeem not only the renegade, but also the Muslim woman. NOTES 1. Reprinted in Franklin L. Baumer, “England, the Turk, and the Common Corpse of Christendom,” The American Historical Review 50, no. 1 (October 1944): 36. 2. In “The Church of England and the Common Corps of Christendom” Franklin L. Baumer argues that with this phrase Thomas More meant “the European Community—a community which possessed a common religion and culture cutting across national and local differences, a community which constituted a cultural unit as opposed to the heathen world beyond.” He notes that clearly More had in mind “the medieval Corpus Christianum or Republica Christia-

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na, a body whose unity was effected by visible as well as institutional as well as cultural ties” (2). 3. Nabil Matar, Islam in Britain: 1558–1685 (Cambridge University Press, 1998), 138. 4. James I, The Peace-Maker: or, Great Brittaines Blessing. Fram’d for the Continuance of That Mightie Happinesse Wherein This Kingdome Excels Manie Empires (London: Thomas Pvrfoot, 1619) (Bb). While this pamphlet was published anonymously, it was licensed for publication by James I himself and the address of the Epistle “To all Our true-loving and peaceembracing subjects” (1.ii) led to its attribution to James I. 5. Jonathan Burton, Traffic and Turning: Islam and English Drama 1579–1624 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005), 33. 6. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 34. 7. Daniel J. Vitkus, ed., Three Turk Plays from Early Modern Period (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 15. 8. Vitkus, Three Turk Plays from Early Modern Period, 4. 9. Vitkus, Three Turk Plays from Early Modern Period, 4. 10. Nabil Matar, Turks, Moors and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 56. 11. C. M. Senior, A Nation of Pirates: English Piracy in Its Heyday (New York: Crane Russack, 1976), 87–88. 12. Senior, A Nation of Pirates, 11. 13. Daniel J. Vitkus, Turning Turk: English Theatre and the Multicultural Mediterranean, 1570–1630 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 149. 14. Vitkus, Turning Turk, 109. 15. Senior, A Nation of Pirates, 11. 16. Maffio Michiel quoted in Senior, A Nation of Pirates, 83. 17. Vitkus, Three Turk Plays from Early Modern Period, 4. 18. Matar, Turks, Moors and Englishmen, 58. 19. As opposed to European monarchies the Ottomans did not have hereditary mobility. In fact, “to be born non-Muslim and non-Turkish was essential qualification for entrance into the dominant elite” (İnalcık Halil, “The Successors of Suleyman,” in A History of the Ottoman Empire to 1730: Chapters from the Cambridge History of Islam, ed. M. A. Cook, 103–21 [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976], 103). It was impossible for Arabs, Berbers, or Moors to enter this ruling elite, but Christians were not barred from doing so and many rose to positions of considerable power in the regencies of North Africa (Senior, 94). For example, Sampson Denball, an English renegade, took the name of Ali Reis and became admiral of Tunisia’s galleon fleet in 1610 (Burton, Traffic and Turning, 149). Though not an Englishman, probably the most notable of these renegades was Giovanni Dionigi Galen, a former Italian pirate who was known as Uluj Ali or Occhiali. Born as the son of a poor fisherman in Calabria, Southern Italy, Giovanni was captured by Turkish corsairs in 1536, when he was still an adolescent. After a few years of working as a galley slave, he converted to Islam, took the name of Ali, and joined the corsairs. As an able sailor and a bold corsair Ali swiftly rose in the ranks. In 1568 he was appointed as the Beylerbey of Algiers by Selim II. In the Battle of Lepanto (1571) where the Ottoman fleet was defeated by joint European forces, Ali was the only Ottoman captain who received a certain degree of success. He outmaneuvered the Ottomans’ infamous enemy Andrea Doria, captured the flagship of the Maltese Knights, and when the defeat became obvious, he managed to arrive in Constantinople with eighty-seven vessels which he gathered up along his way. For his achievements in the battle, he was given the honorary title of Kılıç (“Sword”) and appointed as the Grand Admiral of the Ottoman navy. In chapter XXXIX of Don Quixote de la Mancha Cervantes mentions his name as Uchali and briefly describes his ascension to the regency of Algiers. 20. R. W. Bulliet, “Conversion Stories in Early Islam,” in Conversion and Continuity: Indigenous Christian Communities in Islamic Lands Eight to Eighteenth Centuries, eds. Michael Gervers and Ramzi Jibran Bikhazi (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1990), 6. 21. Laurent d’Arrieux, a French traveler who visited Tunis in the late sixteenth century observed: “Tunis is a country of liberty. Religion bothers nobody there; one prays to God when

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one wants to, one fasts when one cannot do otherwise, one drinks wine when one has money, one gets drunk when one drinks too much” (quoted in Senior, A Nation of Pirates, 95). 22. Vitkus, Turning Turk, 110. 23. Nabil Matar, “The Renegade in English Seventeenth Century Imagination,” Studies in Literature 33, no. 3 (Summer 1993): 490. 24. Senior, A Nation of Pirates, 98. 25. Matar, “The Renegade in English Seventeenth Century Imagination,” 500. 26. Matar, “The Renegade in English Seventeenth Century Imagination,” 500. 27. Jean E. Howard, “Gender on the Periphery,” in Shakespeare and the Mediterranean: The Selected Proceedings of the International Shakepseare Association World Congress, Valencia, 2001, ed. Tom Clayton, Susan Brock, and Vicente Forés, 345–62 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2004), 349. 28. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 127. 29. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 109. 30. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 127. 31. George Sandys, A Relation of Journey begun an Dom 1610: Foure Bookes Containing a Description of the Turkish Empire, of Aegypt, of the Holy Land, of the Remote Parts of Italt and Islands Adjoyning (London: W. Barret, 1615), 67. 32. Edward Grimstone, The Estates, Empires & Principalities of the World (London: A. Islip, 1615), 949. 33. Sandys, A Relation of a Journey, 69. 34. Grimstone, The Estates, Empires & Principalities of the World, 948. 35. Grimstone, The Estates, Empires & Principalities of the World, 948. 36. D. E. Underdown, “The Taming of the Scold: The Enforcement of Patriarchal Authority in Early Modern England,” in Order and Disorder in Early Modern England, eds. Anthony Fletcher and John Stevenson, 116–36 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 116. 37. Alice Clark, Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century (Economic History) (London: Routledge, 2006), 6. 38. Kate Aughterson, Renaissance Women: A Sourcebook: Constructions of Femininity in England (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 9. 39. Tina Krontiris, Oppositional Voices: Women as Writers and Translators of Literature in the English Renaissance (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 12. 40. Retha M. Warnicke, Women of the English Renaissance and Reformation (London: Greenwood Press, 1983), 151. 41. Clark, Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century, 5. 42. Krontiris, Oppositional Voices, 10. 43. Aughterson, Renaissance Women, 9. 44. Krontiris, Oppositional Voices, 11. 45. Clark, Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century, 10. 46. On the literary accomplishments of women in this period see Redeeming Eve: Women Writers of the English Renaissance (1987) by Elaine Beilin and Oppositional Voices (1992) by Tina Krontiris. 47. Mark Breitenberg, Anxious Masculinity in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 1. 48. Breitenberg, Anxious Masculinity in Early Modern England, 1. 49. Patricia Crawford, Women and Religion in England: 1500–1750 (London: Routledge, 1996), 39. 50. Thomas Adams, quoted in Aughterson, Renaissance Women, 29. 51. Warnicke, Women of the English Renaissance and Reformation, 84. 52. Nabil Matar, “The Representation of Muslim Women in Renaissance England,” The Muslim World 86, no. 1 (January 1996), 50. 53. Matar, “The Representation of Muslim Women in Renaissance England,” 51. 54. Grimstone, The Estates, Empires & Principalities of the World, 949. 55. William Biddulph, The Travels of Certaine Englishmen (London: Th. Haueland, 1609), 86. 56. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 109.

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57. The phrase “turn Turk” literally refers to conversion to Islam and it appeared in the English language in the late sixteenth century concurrently with the increasing numbers of English renegades in the Mediterranean (Burton, Traffic and Turning, 16). Here the “Turk” represents any Muslim, not necessarily an Ottoman subject, who lived either within or outside the territories of the Ottoman Empire. Earlier, in medieval Europe, the “Saracen” was the generic term to refer to Muslims. During the Crusades this term represented the opponents of the Christian reconquest. With the ascendance of the Ottomans in the sixteenth century “Saracen” was slowly replaced by the term “Turk.” However, it is interesting to note that the Ottomans traditionally never called themselves Turks, as their empire was a multiethnic and multireligious entity which was not organized around any particular national identity. However, Christian authors apparently disregarded this heterogeneity and associated the word with negative and non-Christian characteristics, using it to describe any kind of betrayal against Christianity or subversion of the Christian virtue (Burton, Traffic and Turning, 16). 58. Vitkus, Turning Turk, 146. 59. Vitkus, Turning Turk, 146. 60. Senior, A Nation of Pirates, 90. 61. Senior, A Nation of Pirates, 90. 62. Andrew Barker, True and Certain Report of the Beginning, Proceedings, Overthrows, and Now Present Estate of Captain Ward and Danseker, the Two Late Famous Pirates (London, 1609), 16, http://name.umdl.umich.edu/A04099.0001.001. 63. William Lithgow quoted in Senior, A Nation of Pirates, 94. 64. Senior, A Nation of Pirates, 90. 65. Barker, True and Certain Report, B4v. 66. News from the Sea, B3r. 67. Barker, True and Certain Report, 14. 68. Vitkus, Turning Turk 147. 69. Robert Daborne, A Christian Turned Turk, ed. Daniel J. Vitkus (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 3, 40–45. References are to scene and line. 70. Howard, “Gender on the Periphery,” 355. 71. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 131. 72. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 131. 73. A Christian Turned Turk, 6, 2–4. 74. A Christian Turned Turk, 6, 7–8. 75. A Christian Turned Turk, 6, 11–13. 76. A Christian Turned Turk, 6, 15. 77. A Christian Turned Turk, 6, 20–24. 78. A Christian Turned Turk, 6, 29–30. 79. A Christian Turned Turk, 6, 34. 80. A Christian Turned Turk, 6, 61–62. 81. A Christian Turned Turk, 6, 63–64. 82. A Christian Turned Turk, 6, 76. 83. A Christian Turned Turk, 6, 83–85. 84. A Christian Turned Turk, 6, 435. 85. A Christian Turned Turk, 6, 162. 86. A Christian Turned Turk, 6, 191. 87. A Christian Turned Turk, 6, 192–96. 88. A Christian Turned Turk, 6, 370. 89. A Christian Turned Turk, 6, 160. 90. A Christian Turned Turk, 10, 18–20. 91. Leo Africanus, A Geographical Historie of Africa Written in Arabic and Italian, trans. John Pory (London, 1600), 381. 92. Lithgow quoted in Burton, Traffic and Turning, 105. 93. Daniel J. Vitkus, “Turning Turk in Othello: The Conversion and Damnation of the Moor,” Shakespeare Quarterly 48 (1997): 157. 94. Sandys, A Relation of a Journey, 14. A well-known Koranic phrase says: “Let there be no compulsion in the religion.”

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95. Thomas Dallam, “The Diary of Master Thomas Dallam 1599–1600” reprinted in Early Voyages and Travels in the Levant, ed. Theodore Bent (London: Hakluyt Society, 1893), 73. 96. Reprinted in Daniel J. Vitkus, Piracy, Slavery and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 90–91. 97. Bulliet, “Conversion Stories in Early Islam,” 6. 98. A Christian Turned Turk, 6, 440–44. 99. A Christian Turned Turk, 6, 25–26. 100. A Christian Turned Turk, 6, 27–33. 101. A Christian Turned Turk, 6, 47–50. 102. A Christian Turned Turk, 6, 55–57. 103. A Christian Turned Turk, 6, 34. 104. A Christian Turned Turk, 6, 73–79. 105. A Christian Turned Turk, 7, 62. 106. A Christian Turned Turk, 7, 80. 107. A Christian Turned Turk, 7, 85–88. 108. A Christian Turned Turk, 7, 90–94. 109. A Christian Turned Turk, 7, 162–63. 110. A Christian Turned Turk, 7, 108–11. 111. A Christian Turned Turk, 7, 122. 112. A Christian Turned Turk, 7, 125. 113. A Christian Turned Turk, 7, 135. 114. A Christian Turned Turk, 7, 127. 115. A Christian Turned Turk, 7, 170. 116. A Christian Turned Turk, 7, 93. 117. A Christian Turned Turk, 7, 176. 118. A Christian Turned Turk, 15, 26. 119. A Christian Turned Turk, 15, 29. 120. A Christian Turned Turk, 15, 29. 121. A Christian Turned Turk, 7, 205–15. 122. Matar, Islam in Britain, 54. 123. Matar, Islam in Britain, 55. 124. In Daborne’s play the dumb show is described as follows: Enter two bearing halfmoons, one with a Mahomet’s head following. After them, the Mufti, or chief priest, two meaner priests bearing his train. The Mufti seated, a confused noise of music, with a show. Enter two Turks, one bearing a turban with a half-moon in it, the other a robe, a sword: a third with a globe in one hand, an arrow in the other. Two knights follow. After them, Ward on an ass, in his Christian habit, bare-headed. The two knights, with low reverence, ascend, whisper the Mufti in the ear, draw their swords, and pull him off the ass. He [is] laid on his belly, the tables (by two inferior priests) offered him, he lifts his hand up, subscribes, is brought to his seat by the Mufti, who puts on his turban and robe, girds his sword, then swears him on the Mahomet’s head, ungirts his sword, offers him a cup of wine by the hands of a Christian. He spurns at him and throws away the cup, is mounted on the ass, who is richly clad, and with a shout they exit. 125. In 1610 George Sandys wrote a detailed account of the converts he saw in the Adha feast: “We saw a sort of Christians, some of them halle earth already, crooked with age, & trembling with palsies; who by the throwing away of their bonnets, and lifting vp of their forefingers, did proffer themselves to become Mahometans. A sight full of horror and trouble, to see those desperate wretches that had professed Christ al their life, and had suffered no doubt for his sake much contumely and oppression: now almost dying, to forsake their Redeemer” (A Relation of Journey, 56). According to Matar the reason that travelers graphically described the conversion rite, underlining its “spiritual heinousness and physical goriness” is the fact that these writers “realized that both the theater audiences in London as well as the general reading public derived perverse pleasure from the account” (“The Renegade in English Seventeenth Century Imagination,” 493). 126. A Christian Turned Turk, 9, 2. 127. A Christian Turned Turk, 13, 52–55. 128. A Christian Turned Turk, 13, 27.

86 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139.

Chapter 3 Burton, Traffic and Turning, 136. A Christian Turned Turk, 16, 304, 305, 306. A Christian Turned Turk, 16, 315–21. Matar, “The Renegade in English Seventeenth Century Imagination,” 499. Senior, A Nation of Pirates, 93. Senior, A Nation of Pirates, 94. Vitkus, Turning Turk, 152. Vitkus, Turning Turk, 143. A Christian Turned Turk, 5, 13. A Christian Turned Turk, 16, 233–35. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 136.

Chapter Four

Redeeming the Islamic Eve Inside the Ottoman Palace Massinger’s The Renegado

Against the rising numbers of renegade pirates in the Mediterranean Sea and North Africa, the strategy that the playwrights of sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury England adopt in their works is twofold. First, they present a real or a fictitious renegade that forsakes his faith for the allures and wealth of Islam. Then, they either describe the renegade’s horrid end that followed his apostasy or show the apostate undergoing a spiritual challenge and return to Christianity. Contrary to the travel accounts that attest to the prosperous lives that Christian converts enjoyed in the Ottoman lands, the renegade featured in the drama of the period is either punished or converted back. Both cases demonstrate Islam as a weak religion, which is unable to retain its followers, and Christianity as victorious against Muslims, either through the intervention of Christian God or by the apostate’s recovery to the Christian side. 1 In Robert Daborne’s A Christian Turned Turk, we witness the tragic end of Captain Ward, who, though a fierce pirate, resists conversion but eventually fails to overcome Islamic temptation because of his love for a Muslim woman. In this chapter, I want to analyze Philip Massinger’s The Renegado, another early modern English dramatization of the threat of religious apostasy, which employs a strategy in the opposite direction and presents a plot not about the punishment but about the recovery of the renegade. In containing the threat of Islam, Massinger, like Daborne, sets a Christian man’s love for a Muslim woman at the center of his play. Yet, whereas Daborne’s Christian protagonist gives away his faith for love, Massinger’s hero both preserves his faith and succeeds in changing his Muslim beloved into a Christian bride. 87

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Based on Spanish and English sources, Massinger’s The Renegado, or the Gentleman of Venice was written more than a decade after Daborne’s play. 2 It was first performed at the Phoenix playhouse in 1624 and remained well known to the English audience until the Restoration. Though the play is named after the renegade Antonio Grimaldi who, like Ward, “turn’d Pirat” 3 and converted to Islam, the main action revolves around the love relationship between the Venetian gentleman, Vitelli, and the Ottoman princess, Donusa. Vitelli has come to Tunis in a merchant’s disguise to rescue his abducted sister from enslavement in the viceregal palace. However, he is distracted from this objective when he meets the beautiful Turkish princess and submits to her amorous will. Thanks to the timely warnings of his priestly mentor Francisco, the Christian hero regrets his sexual liaison with Donusa, and, despite the temporary conversion threat he encounters, he not only resists Islam but also wins the princess to Christianity. According to Jack D’Amico, The Renegado dramatizes a direct confrontation between the Christian perspective and the sophisticated and tempting Islamic civilization, in which the imaginative re-creation of the Muslim society should be seen as “a true test” of European values. 4 He argues that Massinger builds the dramatic tension from the complex problems arising from the meeting of two different cultures and presents “sensual temptation and the threat of violence” as “the twin Islamic dangers that are confronted with varying degrees of success by the Christians.” 5 Concentrating on the threat of conversion depicted in the play, both Matar and Burton show how the discrepancies between the historical accounts of real-life renegades and the representation of the renegade on the early modern stage can be used to understand diverse English anxieties, both domestic and foreign. For Matar, the renegade of the early modern English literature is another type of the Faustian atheist who represents “the internal evil that would bring about the collapse of Christendom.” 6 While in A Christian Turned Turk Daborne shows the consequences of apostasy by punishing the renegade pirate with “a violent and fully deserved death” as Marlowe does in Doctor Faustus, Massinger in The Renegado demonstrates that despite his villainy, the apostate can be forgiven if he repents of his sin and renounces Islam. 7 Burton, on the other hand, concentrates on the gendered pattern that the play employs to manage the threat of Islamic apostasy. He argues that Massinger “carefully interlaces patriarchy with Christianity” and, by proffering a fantasy of an Islamic woman who willingly submits to the Christian man, he not only shows the power of Christianity against Islam, but also represents Christian masculinity “steadfast enough even to redeem an Eve.” 8 In my analysis, I intend to point to the significance of these critical approaches with respect to the representation of the Muslim woman in the play. The Renegado recuperates the feeble state of Christianity in the face of the imperial threat of the Ottomans by rewriting the Islamic apostasy in the form

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of Christian resistance and recovery. Since this rewriting is enacted through an interfaith desire between a Muslim woman and a Christian man, as in Daborne’s A Christian Turned Turk, Islamic femininity becomes an important dynamic of the pattern through which Christian masculinity comes to terms with Islam. With her overtly sexualized image and transgressive feminine qualities, Donusa, like Voada, is another Islamic Eve figure, who embodies the overwhelming lures of Islam and represents the most significant danger that the Christian hero needs to overcome in his encounters in the Ottoman lands. However, in Massinger’s play the Islamic femininity is used to affect positively the Christian cause, because the Muslim woman’s apostasy which comes as a result of her love for the Venetian hero not only becomes the token of the Christian victory but also upholds and validates the superiority of Christian patriarchy. Furthermore, in The Renegado the effort of containing Islam is expanded so as to comprise also the intellectual and social aspects of this civilization. The play offers an imaginative voyage into the world of Islam and represents its values and customs from the Western perspective in order to re-create a vision that completely inverts the values of the Christian West. 9 Social norms and gender prerogatives are central to Massinger’s comparison of the two cultures; consequently, the image of the Muslim woman once again becomes the focal point in the play. Unlike Daborne’s sexually permissive women, who are literally pandered by their brothers and husbands to persuade Christians, the Islamic woman represented by Massinger is veiled and oppressed. These attributions render the Muslim woman a victim of unjust Islamic rules and subjugate her. Combined with references to the practices of polygamy and concubinage, the image of the Muslim woman in Massinger’s play serves as a proof of the essential incivility of Islam and provides a negative example when compared to the status of women in the English society. In addition, The Renegado offers one of the earliest representations of the harem on the English stage. Several of the play’s major scenes take place in the setting of the Ottoman seraglio, which, in accord with the period’s travel accounts, is depicted as a site of excessive sensuality and absolute power. Besides, Massinger’s play offers us an opportunity to reflect on the existence of abducted Christian women in early modern Islamic harems through the figure of Paulina, Vitelli’s sister, who is kept as a potential concubine in the viceregal palace. Though the harem is a concept which is generally associated with Muslim women, Christian concubines in the Ottoman imperial court and the extraordinary power they attained within the dynasty form an interesting yet neglected aspect within the context of religious apostasy. Accordingly, in the first part of this chapter, I want to continue the analysis of the representation of the Muslim woman within the context of Mediterranean piracy and renegadism and offer a comparative reading of the gen-

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dered pattern of representing the threat of Islamic apostasy depicted in Massinger’s The Renegado and Daborne’s A Christian Turned Turk. In the second part, I want to concentrate on the representation of the Islamic culture in the play as a mirror image of Christian patriarchy and discuss how the assumed inferiority of women in the Ottoman society helps to explore the intricate gender issues that the English patriarchy had to face in this period. In this section, I intend to put forth my argument through a discussion of the representation of the Ottoman harem in the early modern age. By pointing to the discrepancies between the vision produced by the English writers and the real-life women in the Ottoman imperial harem, I will underline the significance of the harem myth elaborated in this period in terms of the patriarchal inscription of both Muslim and Christian women. RECOVERY OF THE APOSTATE Despite James’s persistent efforts to put an end to piracy, by the turn of the seventeenth century, the English already had a reputation as the fiercest pirates in the Mediterranean Sea. 10 Complaints that reached the court about English freebooters like Ward were particularly disturbing for the King. 11 Royal proclamations were issued, and many pirates and renegades were captured and slain in public in various parts of England, but neither piracy nor apostasy showed signs of diminishing; actually, the condition was rather the reverse. In 1600 the lawyer R. Carr complained that “so many of our men” [abjure] “all Christian rites, becomes [sic] affectors of that impious Mahumetane sect, whilst on the other part we finde none or very few of those repayring vnto us.” 12 Contemporaries perceived the extent of Christian apostasy as astonishing. In 1614, William Davies, a barber-surgeon who had visited Tunis, claimed that Turkey and Barbary contained more renegades than native Turks. 13 Obviously, Christianity was not attractive enough to rival Islam in its worldly advantages, and apostasy did not seem to demand much from those who converted. 14 Moreover, spending all their lives in the Muslim territories was not the only option for these renegades. While many of these Englishmen converted to Islam and settled in Muslim lands, others actually came to Barbary with a view to making their fortunes. They simply “worked” there, and after making enough money, they returned home. 15 In order to cause a reduction in the number of pirates, the King was willing to compromise his unrelenting attitude. In 1612, English pirates were offered amnesty and they were told that if they surrendered and promised to cease their predations, they would be allowed to keep the wealth that they had obtained from plunder. 16 A number of renegades and pirates benefited from such opportunities and returned to their homeland. In addition, hundreds of indulgences

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issued by church parishes in this period indicate that there were also many slaves and captives who had converted to Islam in North Africa but were ransomed and brought back to England. 17 Thus, alongside the intensifying problem of Christian apostasy, the renegades who returned to England and needed to be incorporated back into the society constituted another concern for the English government in the years around the performance of The Renegado. In order to accept apostates back to the religious community special ceremonies were devised, in which returned renegades performed public reclamation of their faith. 18 Apart from the lengthy sermons on recovery from apostasy offered by English clergymen like William Gouge, 19 in 1637 an official “Form of Penance and Reconciliation of a Renegado or Apostate for the Christian Religion to Turkism” was commissioned by Archbishop William Laud. In this ritual, the recovery of an apostate was described as a process that involved seven formal steps performed over a course of several weeks. 20 According to Burton, the ritualistic emphasis put on such ceremonies made it possible to conceptualize the reconversion of the apostate and functioned as an outward supplement to counter the Islamic ceremonies of circumcision by metaphorically “uncircumcising” the apostate. 21 The Renegado figures out the redemption and reconciliation of the renegade to Christian religion through the portrayal of Grimaldi. In accordance with representations of loathsome renegades described in historical and travel accounts, at the beginning of the play, Grimaldi is an unruly apostate, who is hateful of Christianity. Drunk, riotous, and in pursuit of prostitutes, he has come ashore only “to wallow in / All sensual pleasures.” 22 From Jesuit priest Francisco we also learn that Grimaldi once committed an act of blasphemy in Saint Marks and snatched from a priest the Eucharist during the Mass and “[d]ash’d it upon the pavement.” 23 However, as events unfold in the play, and with Francisco’s spiritual support, Grimaldi is gradually recovered to Christianity again. While there is not any ritualistic procedure involved as in the historical reconversion ceremonies, Grimaldi passes through symbolic stages in the process of his rehabilitation. 24 First, his guilty conscience brings on a deep despair, which makes him believe that he deserves damnation. Then, he submits to the spiritual guidance of Francisco and pledges to perform “zealous undertakings.” 25 Francisco’s intercession validates the renegade’s forgiveness and redemption, and Grimaldi’s reconversion is ensured with his decision to devote his life to the relief of captive Christians. As a successful surviving hero of the Christian faith, he finally betrays his Muslim masters and enables the Christians to run away from Tunis in his ship. The renegade Grimaldi’s repentance and recovery from apostasy is conjoined with Islamic temptation and the threat of apostasy encountered by the young hero Vitelli. In the play’s subplot, we are shown the step-by-step

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reconciliation of a renegade, while in the main action we are presented with a Christian man’s gradual approximation to Islamic conversion. The play’s course toward apostasy is actually made clear from the opening scene, where Vitelli and his servant Gazet are caught in a comical conversation about religious conversion. Enthusiastic about selling the wares that they brought from Venice, Gazet declares that in order to serve his “master’s profit” better, he will counterfeit the faith of whatever country he is in. 26 Vitelli is concerned about his servant’s loose religious morality and sarcastically asks: “And what in Tunis, / Will you turn Turk here?” 27 While Gazet is not opposed to conversions within Christianity (from Catholic to Protestant, for instance), he refrains from converting to Islam for fear of losing “[a] collop of that part my Doll enjoined me.” 28 Since it is accompanied by circumcision, Islamic conversion expresses a greater alterity for Gazet than conversions among Christians, and he makes light of the possibility that he would ever turn Turk. Before long, however, Gazet risks castration, when he learns that a eunuch can “sleep” with the Ottoman princess and foolishly longs for such a position, mistaking the nature of “[a] precious stone or two” 29 he has to lose. Massinger effectively uses the exotic, tempting, yet dangerous pirate community of Tunis as the setting of his plot, which combines adventure, romance and religious apostasy. Most of the scenes in the play occur in the palace of Asambeg, the lustful and tyrannous Turkish viceroy. However, Massinger chooses to set two specific scenes in the marketplace of Tunis: the above scene where Gazet jokes about religious conversion and the scene where Vitelli gains the attention of the Ottoman princess Donusa and is seduced by her. This marketplace is where many pirates and renegades are accepted with their booties and Christian merchants are allowed to sell their wares openly and publicly. As Vitkus argues, within this sphere of commerce and exchange, Gazet’s willingness to impersonate the apostate wherever he goes to do business emphasizes the close links between the desire for profit and other lusts that it may lead to. 30 The fact that Vitelli meets Donusa in the marketplace is also meaningful in this respect. In the third scene, Donusa, disguised as a common woman, visits Vitelli’s stall. When she suddenly unveils her face before the Christian man, her beauty immediately seizes Vitelli with “wonder.” 31 Then, the princess deliberately breaks some of the glass items in the display to aggregate the Christian man’s astonishment and bids him to “bring his bill / Tomorrow to the palace and enquire / For one Donusa,” “there he shall receive / Full satisfaction.” 32 Vitelli cannot be sure whether the fact that the princess has showed her face “argues love or speaks / Her deadly hatred,” 33 but he runs “the hazard” 34 of visiting the Turkish palace the other day and starts the events that lead him to face apostasy. As Gazet’s joke indicates, for Christians, religious identities are already blurred, and for those who are not resolute in their faith, the marketplace may easily

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become a site of temptation. In this context, the Tunisian marketplace draws an analogy between the exchangeable nature of commodity, desire, and religion and emphasizes the allied dangers of lust and apostasy that the Christians may face in their encounters with Islam. 35 Actually, before meeting Donusa at the marketplace, Vitelli has already been warned about the temptations in Tunis by priest Francisco, who has told him that the “Turkish dames” are: (Like English mastiffs that increase in their fierceness By being chained up), from the restraint of freedom, If lust once fire their blood from a fair object, Will run a course the fiends themselves would shake at To enjoy their wanton ends. 36

Francisco’s description, which emphasizes both oppression and excessive sexuality, is typical of the period’s attitude toward Turkish women. On the one hand, Muslim women are characterized by lack of freedom, which is symbolized by the veil that they are obliged to wear in public spaces. On the other hand, women hidden behind the veil are far from accepting this subordination; on the contrary, they conceal their lack of inner restraint. Their female assertiveness is sharpened as a result of masculine oppression, and because of their fierceness, they present a significant danger that may cause any man to go astray. Yet, in The Renegado Vitelli denies the risk of entangling with “base desires.” 37 He asserts that he would not be interested in such “pleasure, though all Europe’s queens / Kneeled at my feet and courted me,” and he expresses particular immunity when there is a “difference of faith.” 38 However, as even the first meeting of Vitelli and Donusa in the marketplace has made explicit, the allure of Islam is much more overwhelming than the young Venetian could ever expect. When the scene is moved to Donusa’s private chambers, the seduction becomes more evident and the naive Christian man becomes even more confused. Appearing before Vitelli “[l]ike Cynthia in full glory,” 39 the Ottoman princess immediately bewitches the Christian and sets out once more to seduce him with her “heavenly vision” 40 surrounded by the gold and jewels heaped up for the Christian’s pleasure. Though the princess makes her passionate intentions plain, Vitelli remains oblivious throughout the scene; in fact, he appears to be altogether “dumb and slow-witted” in Donusa’s presence. 41 Even when the princess offers him “the tender of [herself],” 42 the Christian man is unable to comprehend what is expected of him. Mocking the young Venetian’s naivety, the eunuch Carazie remarks: “Would I were furnish’d / With his artillery, and if I stood / Gaping as he does, hang me.” 43 Only when she kisses him and leads him to her bedchamber, Vitelli understands what the Muslim princess is up to. Yet,

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the conflict between his rebellious flesh and his “better part” is only momentary. He follows Donusa, declaring “virtue is but a word.” 44 Despite his former decisive stance against any sexual dalliance in Tunis, in the face of Donusa’s seductions, Vitelli abandons virtue almost in the blink of an eye and falls into the trap which his mentor Francisco has warned him about. He gives into the allures of a Turkish court lady, who pursues the Christian relentlessly to achieve her end. Awed by Donusa’s beauty, power, and wealth, Vitelli easily forgets himself and his purpose in coming to Tunis, which is to rescue his sister. The contrast between Vitelli’s prior resolution and his inevitable surrender to Donusa’s allurements is significant in emphasizing the extent of the power of Islamic temptation. Many European men who converted to Islam in this period were accused of having succumbed to the worldly advantages of the Islamic world, and Massinger’s portrayal of Donusa as a rich and exceedingly beautiful woman indicates how overwhelming these advantages could be. Vitelli’s yielding to Donusa does not necessarily imply that he is ready to turn Muslim immediately, but as Bindu Malieckal argues, the scene is “symbolic of many Christians’ surrender to the lure of Islam,” 45 and it clearly marks the first step toward apostasy that is represented by Grimaldi in the play. 46 Thus, in Massinger’s The Renegado, as in Daborne’s A Christian Turned Turk, “religious conversion is offered as erotic temptation” and the Islamic threat is managed through an interreligious desire in which the Muslim woman is presented as the embodiment of the sensual pleasures and material rewards associated with the Islamic world. 47 The play conflates apostasy with amorous capitulation and depicts the Muslim woman as a dangerous temptress whose promiscuity draws the unwitting and disoriented Christian man toward sin. 48 Like Voada, Donusa is the representation of Islam in feminized form, and because of her aristocratic status and extensive wealth Massinger’s Ottoman princess symbolizes the lure of Islam more effectively than Daborne’s temptress. Donusa functions as the ultimate metaphor of the life that Islam promises to many European men in return for their Christian soul, and her effect is so powerful that as Vitelli puts it, even “[a] hermit in a desert trenched with prayers / Could not resist.” 49 Furthermore, while Daborne’s temptress is portrayed as an inherently evil woman who brings about the tragic end of the Christian man with her wicked intentions, Massinger’s alluring princess is essentially a good and chaste woman who is misguided by the false religion of Islam. Though she is presented as an unruly temptress who is controlled by lust and emotions, Donusa is a virgin prior to her union with Vitelli and describes herself as involuntarily “transformed” after meeting him. She compares the desire that overtakes her to an unwelcome force of an “imperious god of love” that “triumphs” over her “freedom.” 50 Thus, unlike many Renaissance representations that portray women as either virgins or whores, the character of Do-

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nusa constitutes a blend of the dangerous seductress and the virtuous woman; and because of this dual quality, Donusa fulfills a different function than Voada within the gendered pattern of the representation of Islamic conversion. Her redeemability allows the Christian man to express a will to challenge the Islamic masculinity. In this respect, the transforming effect that Vitelli creates on the Turkish princess serves as valorization of Christian masculinity. Donusa’s attitude toward her Turkish suitor, Mustapha, completely changes after the sexual liaison with Vitelli. Though earlier in the play the princess welcomes the Basha’s courtly advances, once she falls in love with the Christian man, she proudly despises him and mocks him, comparing his “grim aspect or toadpool-like complexion” to “a bugbear to fright children.” 51 While Mustapha finds in this sudden change the typical fickleness of women, from a Christian perspective the princess’s rejection of the Muslim man validates the attractiveness of Christian masculinity. The princess’s innate potential allows Vitelli to cause also a spiritual transformation in Donusa, as she voluntarily accepts Christianity in the end, abandoning all her supposedly degenerate Islamic qualities. Thus, even though she is initially presented as the ultimate Islamic danger set before the Christian man, because of her convertibility, Donusa eventually comes to serve the Christian cause, as she enables Vitelli to gain mastery against Islamic men by winning her body and to prove the falsehood of Islam by winning her soul. These characteristics approximate Donusa to a stock figure from the romance tradition, which F. M. Warren calls, the “enamored Muslim princess.” 52 Indeed, the virtuous Saracen maiden who, after falling in love with her father’s Frankish war captive, betrays her country, converts, and escapes to Europe with her Christian lover, appears over and over in the medieval chansons and romances. 53 Stimulated by the experiences of the Crusades and Reconquista, these poems glorify the Christian enterprise by depicting the winning of a beautiful woman from the enemy side. Apart from The Renegado, several other early modern plays, including The Knight of Malta and The Island Princess analyzed in the following chapters, readily use this “converts, marries, and defects” theme in dramatizing Christian-Islamic confrontations. 54 While the central element in early modern plots—which is the conversion threat encountered by the Christian hero—is altogether absent from medieval representations, by overcoming Islam through the depiction of Muslim women as voluntary apostates, these plays apply the same strategy which functions as the Christian masculinity’s master plan in the power struggle against Islam throughout the middle ages. In Massinger’s The Renegado the Christian hero encounters the threat of conversion when he revisits the Ottoman palace to renounce Donusa’s affections and is caught by Turks. Brought back to his Christian senses through Francisco’s prompt intervention, in this second meeting, Vitelli successfully denies the allures of the Turkish princess. At first, he refuses even to look at

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Donusa, fearing that he will be unable to resist her temptation because of that “humane frailty I tooke from my mother.” 55 So he perceives himself as a victim, first of the weak traits he supposedly inherited from his mother and then of a prototypical Eve, whose lust is a “poison I received into my entrails / From the alluring cup of your enticements.” 56 Yet, the Christian hero welcomes the trial of the princess’s repeated attempts to seduce him, confident that “holy thoughts and resolutions arm me. 57 The scene offers a rewriting of Vitelli’s previous bodily transgression as a triumph of piety and spiritual resolution. 58 Finally, by returning Donusa’s gifts as in a symbolic ritual, the Christian man definitively rejects the Ottoman princess, and therefore resists Islam. However, as the two lovers are discovered by Turkish men, we realize that there is yet another test awaiting the Christian man to prove the strength of his faith. Asambeg immediately throws both Donusa and Vitelli into prison and inflicts torture on the Christian in order to force him to turn him Turk as a penance for his transgression. Yet, Vitelli nobly endures the cruelty of Muslims and with the “invincible fortitude” that he shows in his sufferings, he even wins the admiration of Asambeg. 59 Still, by the Sultan’s decree it is determined that both Donusa and Vitelli must be punished with death unless she, by any reasons, arguments and persuasion, can win and prevail with the said Christian offending with her, to later his religion, and marry her, that then the winning of a soul to the Mahometan sect, shall acquit her from all shame, disgrace and punishment whatsoever. 60

Thus, we witness one final confrontation between Donusa and Vitelli. As the Muslim princess seeks the conversion of her Christian lover, the dialogue between the two develops into a theological discussion, in which Islam is exposed as the false religion while Christianity is affirmed as the true revelation of God. 61 In the role of a female proselytizer, Donusa first tries to take advantage of the sexual freedom built into the laws of “Mahomet.” She offers Vitelli an easy passage to “certain hapinesse” 62 and service to Islam, which she describes as a less demanding mistress: Forsake a severe, nay imperious mistresse, Whose service does exact perpetuall cares, Watchings, and troubles, and give entertainment To one that courts you, whose least favours are Variety, and choyce of all delights Mankind is capable of. 63

Then, Donusa compares Islam’s power and unity to Christendom’s divided and disputing factions. She hopes that the truth of her evidence will

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force Vitelli to confess “the Deity you worship / Wants care, or power to help you.” 64 Yet, with his Christian virtue now restored, the Turkish princess’s charms and arguments have no power over the young Venetian. Scorning her offers as blasphemies tutored by the Devil, he repeats the traditional accusations against her “juggling prophet” 65 and determines: I will not foul my mouth to speak the sorceries Of your seducer, his base birth, his whoredoms, His strange impostures; nor deliver how He taught a pigeon to feed in his ear, Then made his credulous followers believe, It was an angel that instructed him In the framing of his Alcoran. 66

Donusa’s spiritual transformation comes at this very moment. Seeing Vitelli fervently expressing his disgust with Islam and refusing to renounce his faith, she suddenly recognizes that “there’s something tells me I err in my opinion.” 67 Though she was supposed to convince Vitelli to convert to Islam, moved by the Christian hero’s steadfastness, Donusa abandons her own faith, declaring “thus I spit on Mahomet.” 68 As Vitelli baptizes her in their improvised wedding ceremony, Donusa feels “the films of error / Ta’en from [her] soul’s eyes.” 69 She insists that even if she will be executed, she has been freed “from the cruellest of prisons, / Blind ignorance and misbelief.” 70 By wholeheartedly rejecting Islam in the presence of Asambeg and other Turks, Donusa does not merely convert to Christianity, she actually embraces Christian martyrdom, an action which, in effect, renders Vitelli’s defeat of Islam “an overthrow / That will outshine all victories.” 71 Thus, like Daborne’s A Christian Turned Turk, Massinger’s The Renegado manages the threat of Islamic apostasy through enactment of the Edenic temptation, while reconfiguring this pattern to restore the reversed gender dynamics in Ward-Voada relationship in line with Christian patriarchal prerogatives. Though initially Vitelli is compelled by Donusa’s exotic charms and social status to submit to her will, unlike Daborne’s Ward who repeatedly gives into desire and brings on a tragic end, Massinger’s hero repents and with his ability to resist Islam, he induces a definitive Christian victory and a happy ending. The Renegado is essentially a drama about Islamic apostasy, in which the threat of Islam is overcome by the Muslim woman’s voluntary conversion to Christianity. However, since the Muslim princess’ Christianization entails the containment of her transgressive Islamic femininity, the play simultaneously becomes an opportunity to reinforce the established gender hierarchies. 72 At the beginning of the play, Donusa is portrayed as an unruly seductress who conforms to Francisco’s description of veiled but lustful Turkish dames. At the same time, Donusa’s aristocratic status allows her to escape

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the usual restrictions on Muslim women. She commands every man around her, she is served every luxury, and, obviously, she can indulge every whim. However, after her baptism, these undesirable qualities of Donusa are erased at once, and she is transformed into a chaste woman, whose “outward beauties” now truly reflect her “mind’s pureness.” 73 Reborn as a submissive wife, Donusa assures Vitelli: “I dare not doubt you; as your humble shadow; / Lead me where you please, I follow.” 74 Thus, successfully overcoming the Islamic vice of lust by converting a Turkish Eve into an obedient Christian bride, Vitelli not only shows the superiority of Christianity over Islam but also proves man’s dominant place over woman. BEHIND THE HAREM WALLS Like A Christian Turned Turk, The Renegado conjoins the anxieties against the foreign threat of Islam with patriarchal concerns with respect to transgressive women. However, Massinger’s preoccupation with gender hierarchies is not restricted to merely correcting the Edenic temptation pattern observed in Daborne’s tragedy. The playwright presents the Islamic society as a negative mirror for Christian patriarchy and by making use of the inferior image of the Muslim woman as a discursive medium, he consciously participates in the contemporary debate in England about the proper place and role of women. Certain scenes featured in the play have interesting openings in regard to the question of women’s liberties. In these scenes Massinger uses Islam to satirize and critique the supposedly audacious position of women in the English society. In fact, the assumed Islamic hostility against women in the play is employed as a strategy that subtly forecloses any criticism that can be raised against the Christian patriarchy in its treatment of women. Massinger embodies the idealized Christian womanhood in Vitelli’s sister Paulina. This abducted Christian virgin, who is imprisoned by the viceroy of Tunis, heroically defends her chastity against the repeated attempts of the lecherous Muslim ruler. The playwright draws a distinction between Donusa and Paulina with respect to their sexual morality, and in order to construct this opposition in a common setting, he makes use of one of the most controversial sites associated with Islamic women in the European discourse: the harem. Though it is not as vivid an image in The Renegado as it is in the representations of Muslim women after the eighteenth century, the harem constitutes the physical mise en scene in Massinger’s play. While Vitelli gives in to Donusa’s lures in one of the innermost chambers of the harem, in another, Paulina is held captive by the Muslim viceroy, facing the threat of becoming his concubine. In the following section, through a discussion of the representation of the harem in the early modern age, I want to elaborate on

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the play’s allusions to this Islamic site and various other customs that specifically expose the women of the Muslim society as victims of masculine cruelty and show how the vision that these tropes create with respect to the Muslim woman is employed to address to the issues related to women of the English society. The harem, or seraglio, enters into Western imagination in the sixteenth century, and production of texts treating this theme is noticeably fertile in this period. 75 In these texts the descriptions of this mysterious and presumably erotic place hidden at the sultan’s court indicate a European fascination with the secrets of the envied Islamic empire. As Vitkus puts it, the representation of the harem in the early modern period is “a writing of power,” which reflects typical anxieties about a foreign imperial threat. 76 Writers of the period present the harem as a proverbial site for hidden sensuality and excessive power. They peep into the seraglio with an intruder’s gaze and figure the moral degeneration of the Ottoman’s despotic strength in the seductive and corrupting features associated with this image. 77 A good example for English texts that dwell voyeuristically into the seraglio can be found in the accounts of Thomas Dallam, an organ maker who traveled to Istanbul in 1599 to present an organ as a gift from Elizabeth to Sultan Mehmed III. 78 During the tour of “the Grand Sinyors privie Chamberes,” 79 his Turkish guide provides the English visitor with an unexpected opportunity to look at the court of the women’s harem. Through a thick grate barred with iron, Dallam observes “thirtie of the Grand Sinyor’s Concobines that weare playing with a bale” 80 He praises their beauty and describes the women’s fine linen clothing, noting he could “desarne the skin of their thies” which showed their sheer pants and their “naked” legs. 81 He concludes that he was “verrie lothe” to leave his gazing, for that “sighte did please me wondrous well.” 82 Yet, after telling his interpreter what he saw, Dallam is advised not to “speake of it, whereby any Turke myght hear of it; for if it weare knowne to som Turks, it would [be] present deathe to him that showed me them.” 83 Dallam’s narrative offers a male fantasy through the gaze of a prurient spectator who desires to know the secrets of the interior. He intrudes through the forbidden walls of the harem and provides a physical description of the beautiful imperial concubines, whose sexual allure is increased apparently because of the prohibition that surrounds the place they inhabit. Though their beauty is tantalizing, the sultan’s women are not allowed to be seen by a stranger’s eyes. Anyone who sneaks around the harem would immediately be killed by the merciless Turk. Merely by secretly gazing at the harem women, Dallam is already committing an act of transgression, and by explaining what he sees with minute details, he makes the reader an accomplice to his dangerous but obviously pleasing eroticized experience.

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In Massinger’s The Renegado, the harem is the setting where Vitelli and Donusa have sexual intercourse and, later, are caught by the Turks. As such, it offers an attractive site for the staging of the threat of conversion, and its depiction offers quite a similar picture to that presented in Dallam’s account. The play’s the stage directions emphasize Vitelli’s penetration of the outer layers of the palace to reach Donusa’s quarters, “a forbidden place / Where Christian yet ne’er trode.” 84 By giving Donusa’s privileged name, Vitelli safely passes through the doors guarded by janissaries and arrives at “some private room the sunbeams never enter.” 85 As Vitelli gradually discovers the innermost riches of the palace, the audience is offered a vision of the forbidden seraglio and is allowed to witness a scene of wealth, sensual pleasure, and danger. By indulging in exotic and erotic experiences with a veiled Islamic beauty in the Ottoman seraglio, Vitelli actually fulfills the fantasy that Dallam inspires in his readers. At the same time, as in Dallam’s account, in The Renegado the harem is presented as a deadly place, for Vitelli immediately faces the threat of conversion and death when Muslim men discover his presence there. The vision of the harem, which is charged with eroticism and framed with danger for the intruder as depicted in both Dallam’s and Massinger’s representations, inaugurates the stereotypical image of the sultan’s court which becomes “the obligatory topos” presented in almost all of the European travel and literary writings on the Orient from this period onward. 86 In regard to the image of the Muslim woman, specifically, this voyeuristic vision introduced by early modern writers denotes a critical turning point. Though it comes largely as a response to the Ottoman imperial threat, by exposing her as the object of desire of an explicit masculine fantasy, the view of the harem as a locus of sensual pleasures overeroticizes the already sexualized image of the Muslim woman and, at the same time, it designates this setting as her natural habitat where she is gradually more and more degraded, reduced, and marginalized as an inferior being. At the center of early modern representations of the harem, there is always an Islamic ruler, who conforms to the stereotype of the wrathful, lustful despot exercising absolute power over his subjects. 87 All harem women belong to this one man, who rules solely by will and appetite and commits acts of cruelty in the name of the supposedly false religion. In The Renegado, Asambeg, the viceroy of Tunis, falls into this stereotypical depiction. He is a grim and merciless man, whose “fiery looks” 88 spread horror over his subjects. Though Donusa is not one of Asambeg’s harem women (as she is the niece of the Ottoman sultan), the viceroy has a captive Christian maiden, Vitelli’s sister Paulina, who was abducted and given to him for “the fatting of his seraglio.” 89 The Turkish ruler “madly dote[s]” 90 on his beautiful prisoner and he desires to exploit her chastity. Because of jealousy, he locks her in a dark room in the palace, keeping her cut off from human contact.

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At the beginning of The Renegado, when Vitelli learns that the “fair Christian virgin” sold to the Turkish viceroy is Paulina, he laments his sister by imagining her “[m]ewed up in his seraglio and in danger / Not alone to lose her honor, but her soul.” 91 He fears that Asambeg is trying to force her to give up her chastity and her Christian faith: While he, by force or flattery, compels her To yield her fair name up to his foul lust And after, turn apostata, to the faith That she was bred in. 92

Vitelli’s fears about Paulina’s imprisonment in the Ottoman palace reveal the Christian maiden’s vulnerable position as a potential concubine for the Muslim viceroy. If Paulina surrenders to Asambeg’s sexual advances and becomes his woman, she will turn an “apostata,” a female renegade, and will never be redeemable. However, contrary to her brother’s assumptions, Paulina proves to be completely invincible in the face of the Muslim man’s lechery and seems perfectly capable of defending her virtue. While Paulina is protected from the viceroy’s lust with the sacred relic that the priest Francisco gave to her, the Christian maiden’s resolved attitude shows that she is actually thoroughly immune to Asambeg’s seductive advances. While the viceroy wishes to wed Paulina, the latter despises his flatteries, “spit[s] at ’em, and scorne[s] ’em.” 93 Assured of her “innocent virtue,” she boldly defies his “tortures” and “barbarous cruelty.” 94 Though typically a ruthless man, Asambeg feels incapacitated in the face of the unrelenting resolution of his fair captive. Overcome by his passion, he feels unable to punish the Christian woman’s express hostility. Thus, despite her imprisonment, Paulina defeats her Muslim captor with her virginal power and devotion to her faith, and contrary to her brother who succumbs to Donusa’s temptation, she effectively resists Islam. Paulina’s heroic defense of her chastity, which puts the Turkish viceroy in shame and agony, proves to be another Christian victory featured in the play; yet, at the same time, it reveals that the threat of conversion has different patriarchal implications for the Christian woman and the Christian man. Vitelli’s submission to sexual temptation is shown to be recoverable. Despite his sexual union with the Ottoman princess, the hero is easily saved by faith alone. However, the situation for Paulina seems to be far less flexible. Her bodily chastity needs to remain uncompromised; because once it is invaded by the Muslim man, the Christian woman’s identity will be completely and irrevocably undone. Within this understanding, a man’s spiritual faithfulness is independent of his body, whereas a woman’s spiritual constancy is seen as indivisible from the integrity of her body and must be supplemented by her physical chastity. In addition, a woman is supposedly inclined to sin by

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nature. When she is “slaved to appetite,” as one character comments, nothing can keep her from being “[f]alse and unworthy.” 95 Apparently, the play’s confidence in the efficiency of inner faith as a counter measure to Islamic apostasy is limited when it comes to the conversion of the Christian woman. Indeed, when Paulina feigns to desire conversion to Islam in order to gain time for the Christians’ escape and announces that she “will turn Turk,” none of the Christians in attendance responds to her with disbelief. On the contrary, with crude misogyny Vitelli’s servant Gazet encapsulates the Christian heroine’s declaration in his aside: “Most of your tribe do so / When they begin in whore.” 96 The play’s emphasis on the vision of Paulina as a potential female renegade becomes more meaningful when it is construed against the historical captivities of Christian women and their enslavement in Islamic harems in this period. Within the context of Mediterranean trafficking and piracy, hundreds of women were abducted from Christian territories and sold as desirable commodities in the slave markets of Turkey and North Africa. Islamic law allowed these women to be used as concubines, and a large number of the women of the households of early modern Ottoman royal courts were Christian slaves. Both Foxe’s Actes and Monuments and Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations attest to the vulnerability of Christian women to Turkish abduction and enslavement in harems. In addition, accounts of captive Christian virgins who became queens to Ottoman sultans were widely circulated in Massinger’s London. While most of these women were captives from Eastern European countries and the Mediterranean region, there were also Englishwomen in the Islamic courts of Algiers and Morocco. 97 The story of Paulina’s position as an abducted Christian woman enclosed in the harem of the Tunisian viceroy approximates these real-life incidents. Thus, through the confrontation between Paulina and Asambeg, The Renegado presents a second scenario for the harem; yet instead of masculine fantasies about what is going on inside its walls, this time the scenario involves patriarchal fears regarding the fate of the Christian women behind these hidden walls. The practice of concubinage, which involved enslavement of women of non-Muslim origin in the harems for the purposes of reproduction had been a standard feature of the Ottoman society since the early years of the empire. Islamic custom allowed a man to have four legal wives and as many concubines as he wanted to, as long as he could provide for all the women and children in his household. Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, members of the Ottoman ruling class regularly kept slave concubines acquired through warfare and plunder alongside their legal wives. As the Ottomans expanded their territories and imperial influence, the number of concubines in harems significantly increased. In fact, within the Ottoman dynasty slave concubinage was adopted almost as a reproductive principle from the mid-fifteenth century onward. 98 Earlier sultans contracted legal marriages

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with princesses of neighboring Christian and Muslim royal houses for diplomatic purposes. 99 By the sixteenth century, however, the empire had become a world power and establishing intimate familial bonds with lesser powers could jeopardize the sultan’s autonomy. 100 A concubine consort did not constitute such a threat for the sultanate, because her lineage was rejected by the Ottoman patriarchy upon entrance to the harem. Thus, in Massinger’s play, Vitelli’s concern that Asambeg’s violation of Paulina’s chastity would also permanently undo her Christian identity is not altogether groundless, because, obviously, Islam denied a concubine’s individual history, hence her previous inscription by Christian patriarchy. However, we should note that this rejection would not comprise Paulina’s religion, as Vitelli claims. A concubine could remain Christian even if she legally married a Muslim man. Though this can be related to the Ottomans’ tolerance to other Abrahamic religions, the same understanding was not shown to a Christian man, as demonstrated in the play by the sultan’s decree which requires Vitelli either to convert or to die for having a sexual relationship with a Muslim woman. Apparently, Christian and Muslim patriarchies shared similar concerns of miscegenation and assumed an analogy between the chastity and religious identity of their women when set against foreign men. According to this shared patriarchal perspective, a woman’s identity was determined by the identity of the man who owned her body; for this reason, once a Christian woman fell in the possession of a Muslim man, it was of less importance for both Muslims and Christians whether she remained true to her religion or not. The opposition between Islam and Christianity was essentially understood by both parties not as a war of religions but as a war of patriarchies, in which women were valued merely as commodities that were either exchanged as trophies of conquest or identified as passive bearers of male seed that should be protected from foreign men’s inscription. However, in the Islamic tradition, when a Christian concubine in an Ottoman court fulfilled her role prescribed by the patriarchy and gave birth to a Muslim man’s offspring, despite her position as a slave, she could enjoy many legal and social privileges both within the household and in the community. In nondynastic houses, for example, once a concubine had borne a child she could not be sold or alienated from the household. Her stipend was increased, she was served and treated with respect by others, and she became a free woman if her master died or wished to marry her. 101 If this Christian woman was a concubine in the imperial harem, the extent of the status and privileges that she could attain was extraordinary. Though she entered the harem devoid of lineage, her new role bestowed on “a kind of retroactive or reverse lineage” and a corresponding social status, which emanated from “the blood link to the royal family established through [her] offspring.” 102 Starting her career as the physical custodian of the child prince, a concubine mother acted as a lifelong advisor and ally for her son. If her son actually

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ascended the throne, her career could culminate in attaining the politically recognized title of the valide sultan, a title which in the Ottoman hierarchy came second only to the sultan himself. In other words, the intimate motherson relationship with the reigning sultan or his heir allowed concubine mothers to attain immense power within the dynasty. Many of these women effectively used this power to become strategic players of the empire and their activities extended beyond the walls of the harem to the internal and international Ottoman politics. Safiye Sultan (1550–1605), mother of Mehmed III, who corresponded with Elizabeth I and played a significant role in the establishment of AngloOttoman relations, as explained in the previous chapter, was one of these concubine mothers (haseki). Born as Sofia Bellicui Baffo, daughter of the Venetian governor of Corfu, she was captured and presented to Murad III’s harem sometime in the 1560s. Safiye acted as Murad’s voice in diplomatic correspondence and after his death in 1595 she became the valide sultan and ruled as the coregent with her son for eight years until her death in 1603. Concubine mothers who reigned both before and after Safiye were also very powerful women. Her immediate predecessor Nurbanu Sultan, or Cecilia Venier-Baffo (1525–1583), was also a noble woman of Venetian descent; in fact, she was a natural cousin of Safiye. 103 After she became the valide sultan in 1574, Nurbanu maintained pro-Venetian politics and also corresponded with Queen Catherine de’ Medici of France. 104 Probably, the most wellknown of these concubine women was Hürrem Sultan (1506–1558), or Roxelana as she is called in European languages. Her original name was Aleksandra Lisowska, daughter of a Ruthenian priest from western Ukraine, then part of Poland. After being abducted by Crimean Tatars, she was taken as a slave to Constantinople and selected for the harem of Süleyman I. The sultan contracted legal marriage with this concubine and fathered five children with her. 105 Hürrem was Süleyman’s advisor on internal matters of the state and corresponded with the Polish and Persian states. 106 The legendary love between the two also inspired many European artistic and literary works, including three English plays written in the seventeenth century. 107 When seen in comparison to the vulnerable position that the early modern European writers speculated for enslaved Christian women in Ottoman harems, the extent of the power and public esteem that these real-life concubine women achieved creates a meaningful contradiction. Though these women were technically slaves, they were not treated as such; on the contrary, they occupied a position at the center of the dynastic power and exercised extraordinary authority which they attained merely through their feminine roles in the royal family. 108 Systematic enslavement of Christian youths to be converted and trained to fill the highest administrative and military offices of the state was a fundamental Ottoman polity. Together with this enslaved military corps, concubine consorts of the imperial household formed the core of the

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Ottoman courtly elite in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and marriages between the members of the two groups were not uncommon. Apparently, opportunities of advancement and wealth offered by the Ottoman Empire were not restricted to Christian male converts. Also, many female apostates enjoyed social and political privileges within the Ottoman community, and several of them acted as powerful sultanas and queen mothers in the empire’s history. In addition, this historical information about the harem women is significant in pointing to certain European misconceptions about this Islamic setting as a site of orgiastic sexuality and oriental despotism, which are reflected also in Massinger’s The Renegado. While sexual desire was one of the essential dynamics of harem life, the Ottoman court was clearly not a locus of hidden sensuality or a paradise of pleasure, reserved for the gratification of one man as represented in European accounts. As in any hereditary dynasty, the outcome of the sultan’s sexual activity had political significance; thus sex in the harem was necessarily regulated by rules. 109 In addition, its vital role in the perpetuation of the Ottoman royal family and the need to prepare the concubines as potential consorts and mothers for the sultans rendered the sixteenth-century harem a “highly structured and disciplined training institution,” which resembled a “nunnery” because of its strict hierarchy and enforced chastity. 110 The harem was forbidden, off-limits to stranger eyes; yet, its inaccessibility was not due to the jealousy of a caricaturized tyrant, but rather to its status as a sacred and exalted place, where the privacy of the women needed to be protected. 111 In this respect, the harem myth elaborated by Christian writers, which is often accompanied by voyeuristic fantasies like Vitelli’s erotic penetration of Donusa’s bedroom, can be read as an ironic allegorization of Western patriarchy’s own shortcomings rather than as a sign of Islam’s degeneration. 112 Deep-rooted hostility against Islam and feelings of fear and envy about the expansionist Ottomans were important motives that drove the Christian writers to posit the harem as the secret core of the corrupt power of this empire and women inhabiting it as victimized, sexualized subjects of Islamic tyrants. Customs such as polygamy and concubinage, which were associated with the image of the harem, were unfamiliar concepts to Christians. Though many Christian writers knew that these customs were largely restricted to a small elite class, to prove Islam’s licentiousness, they often intentionally misrepresented them as if they were universally practiced by Muslims. 113 As Grosrichard argues, we should also keep in mind that the harem tale is rooted in a West which was “beginning to question the principles of its political institutions, the pools of education, the role of the family, and the enigma of the relations between the sexes.” 114 For this reason, alongside their concerns about the Ottoman imperial threat, the socioeconomic conditions and prerog-

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atives with respect to gender in their home society constituted an important reference point for Christian writers in constructing the myth of the harem. As I discussed in the previous chapter, the Renaissance and the Reformation generated a new set of attitudes at every level of the social life in England, and these changes were registered to a large extent in the notion of an ideal family. Greater responsibilities attributed to the wife in this new ideal caused an elevation in the woman’s status within the household. In addition, spiritual equality of man and woman proffered by Protestantism, together with the humanists’ emphasis on women’s education and the growing demand for industrial labor force, allowed many women to contribute actively to the social and economic life in England. However, Englishwomen’s increasing intrusion into the public domain was at the same time a continuous source of anxiety and resentment for their male counterparts. Fearing that they would lose their dominant place, Englishmen implemented greater measures to control women and showed a continuous attempt to push women back to the private realm of the household where they could merely fulfill their duties of childcare, home-keeping, and domestic production. The concept of the harem which was introduced to the English language in this period and the hostility against women implied in its image provided a great advantage as a discursive ground for early modern writers to explore and reflect on the intricate gender paradigms emerging in England. As a representation of a foreign family model, the harem was the proof that universally the woman’s domain was restricted to the household and her prescribed role was to fulfill her feminine duties and show complete submission to her husband’s authority. Yet, at the same time, the harem was a negative model for the Protestant ideal, for it showed that when left unguided by true morals, the natural male dominancy could reach to a point of tyranny, where women were veiled, enclosed, and enslaved because of male jealousy and cruelty. In the hands of the Christian writers the image of the harem and harem women became a very functional strategic tool to exhibit the civility of Christian patriarchy in contrast to the barbarity that women were presumably subjected to in other parts of the world. By underlining the extent of excessive liberties that women enjoyed in the English society, the subjugated image of the Muslim woman provided the much-needed argument to respond efficiently to the Englishwomen’s rising protests about their inferior status. The defensive stance of the Englishmen was called forth by the increasing advances of women, for, despite all the sanctions and measures taken against them, many Englishwomen continued to transgress their boundaries and actively engaged in the male domains of public life, religion, literature, and industrial production. 115 In addition, descriptions of foreign visitors to early modern London, which compare the city to a “paradise of women” where, rather than fulfilling their household chores, women went about town in their finery and went to pubs, suggest that many actual Englishwomen hardly

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conformed to the home-keeping, motherly ideal propounded in the period’s writings on proper female conduct. Even if these observations are exaggerated, they attest to the fact that early modern Englishwomen indeed challenged the established patriarchal norms at various degrees and their transgressions compelled their male counterparts to seek support even from non-European models like that of the Ottomans. The setting of the harem and the status of woman in Muslim society as represented in The Renegado serve a similar strategic function. While Vitelli’s indulgence in sensual pleasures in the dangerous Ottoman seraglio and Paulina’s role as an enslaved potential concubine conform to the typical image of the harem in early modern representations, certain scenes in the play present direct comparison of the liberties of women in the Muslim and Christian societies. By alluding to alleged Turkish forms of absolute male domination, Massinger attacks Islam as a hypocritical religion which allows sexual license to men while oppressing and enclosing women. At the same time, with misogynistic satire, he criticizes the supposed audacious and liberal position of women in the English society by explicitly exploiting the inferior image of the Muslim woman. The public trial of Donusa for her illicit sexual liaison with a Christian man is used as an opportunity to undermine and attack Islamic law as an arbitrary, irrational set of rules victimizing women. The fact that Asambeg releases Paulina from the locked room in order to allow her to watch the trial also hints that the moral lesson conveyed in this scene is specifically addressed to the female members of the play’s audience. Donusa enters the stage dressed in black, lamenting that “her sentence is gone out before” 116 and she is facing execution. All she can do is to plead Asambeg for compassion, relying on her position as the niece of the Ottoman sultan and the fact that this is “the first spot tainting [her] honor.” 117 Yet, the cruel viceroy would “dare not pity” 118 her and denies her appeals. The frustrated princess thus rises up against her accuser and condemns the double standard that she is being subjected to. She scorns the Muslim man for being “a tyrant,” A most voluptuous and insatiable epicure In his own pleasures; which he hugs so dearly, As proper and peculiar to himself, That he denies a moderate lawful use Of all delight to others. 119

Donusa is aware that Asambeg keeps in the harem a “lovely Christian virgin” 120 whom he intends to marry and she wonders: Thy offense Equal if not transcending mine, why then (We being both guilty) dost thou not descend

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She attacks the unjust laws of “Indulgent Mahomet” for making “weak women servants, proud men masters.” 122 Though Donusa’s pleasures are deemed unlawful, she claims having her “heate and May of youth,” she can be excused for her offense. 123 However, Islam’s “bloody laws” call “her embraces with a Christian a death,” 124 while allowing the Muslim men to use “cobweb edicts” 125 and license themselves to “tame their lusts” 126 with any beautiful women, whether “Persian, Moore, / Idolatresse, Turke, or Christian.” 127 Donusa’s speech reveals the Islamic hypocrisy in giving power and privilege only to men, while subjugating women with injustice and cruelty. The inferior status of Muslim women as exhibited in this scene, in effect, renders the Ottoman social order a negative mirror to Christian patriarchy, which is presumably built on principles of rationality, self-control, and restraint of base emotions. Simultaneously it functions as a reminder of the extent of the liberties that Christian women were allowed in their home society. The playwright’s preoccupation with the comparison of women’s liberties in the Ottoman and English societies is more directly observed in an earlier scene where Donusa and her English-born eunuch slave Carazie are caught in a conversation about women in England. In this scene Massinger once again presents Islam as a religion of lechery and oppression. At the same time, he criticizes the audacious Englishwomen, who ask for greater liberties, despite the excessive freedom they enjoyed in contrast to their Muslim sisters. Donusa begins by addressing Carazie: “I have heard / That Christian ladies live with much more freedom / Than such as are born here.” 128 Complaining about the position of the women of her own society, she continues: Our jealous Turks Never permit their fair wives to be seen, But at the public bagnios, or the mosques, And even then, veil’d and guarded. 129

Then, she queries Carazie about the custom among the women of England. The account that the eunuch slave gives in his response is not at all different than the descriptions of foreign visitors who view England as a “paradise of woman.” He says: Women in England, For the most part, live like queens. Your country ladies, Have liberty to hawk, to hunt, to feast, To give free entertainment to all comers, To talk, to kiss; there’s no such thing known there As an Italian girdle. Your city dame,

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Without leave, wears the breeches, has her husband At as much command as her prentice; and if need be Can make him cuckold by her father’s copy. 130

Women in Carazie’s account obviously have nothing to do with the “veil’d and guarded” women that Donusa describes. Contrary to Muslim women who are oppressed by their jealous husbands, Carazie’s Englishwomen know “nothing but [their] will.” 131 They enjoy liberties that are traditionally privileged to men. They defy the patriarchal rules by allowing their bodies and their speech to go around unrestricted. They freely cuckold their husbands and soon they will be legally entitled to do so: that is not only fit, but lawful, Your madam, there, her much rest and high feeding Duly consider’d, should, to ease her husband, Be allow’d a private friend: they have drawn a bill To this good purpose, and, the net assembly, Doubt not to pass it. 132

Taken aback by Carazie’s portrayal of women in England, Donusa ironically remarks: “[w]e enjoy no more / That are o’the Ottoman race, though our religion / Allows all pleasure.” 133 Of course, the Islamic rule that Donusa refers to licenses only men to enjoy such sexual freedom. However, even if she is veiled and supposedly secluded, by recklessly circulating in the streets and indulging sexual pleasures with the first man she sees, Donusa justifies every point in the criticism against the excessive liberties of women. Nevertheless, Carazie’s exaggerated account that depicts English women decisively opposing patriarchal constraints shows their behavior even more unnatural and immoral than that of Donusa. Within the context of Islam’s alleged licentiousness, Donusa’s statement becomes a measure for the freedom enjoyed by women in the English society and effectively denounces and forecloses any appeals for more. Thus, within a plot which combines the threat of religious apostasy with the romance pattern of a Christian hero’s conquest of a Muslim princess in the exotic setting of Tunis, Massinger not only echoes the anxieties against the expansionist Ottomans but also presents the Muslim and Christian worlds in many ways as mirror images to posit a clash of civilizations and to reflect on certain contemporary problems faced by English patriarchy. Islamic symbols, such as the veil and the harem, introduced in the play inaugurate some of the most enduring tropes of Orientalism and simultaneously they serve as strategic tools to justify the subjugation of women in England at a time when the society was going through a crisis in gender. What Christian patriarchy expects of women is embodied in Paulina, who, in contrast to her invincible defense before the aggressive Muslim lust, displays an altogether obedient

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and humble attitude in the presence of the Christian men. Once converted to Christianity, Donusa also approximates to this ideal of femininity. Free of Islamic lechery and oppression, she happily submits to the authority of her Christian husband. Though Donusa primarily functions as a dynamic of the Christian-Muslim confrontation, the instant containment of her transgressive qualities is clearly the kind of transformation that Englishmen expected from their own disobedient, unruly wives. If in the conversion of Donusa Massinger is able to erase the alterity between the Christian heroine and the Muslim princess so easily, this is largely because Donusa’s white skin and aristocratic status help to fit her into a Christian-European framework and facilitate her assimilation. Throughout the play both Donusa and Paulina are described as exceedingly beautiful and fair. Apparently, her desirability as a woman and her aristocratic rank render Donusa less than the Other, and consequently her conversion does not pose any danger on the whiteness of Christian patriarchy. The remaining chapters of this study read the representation of the Muslim woman against the racial prejudices in early modern Europe, prejudices that were particularly intensified by the Spanish experiences with black-skinned non-Christian peoples both in the Iberian Peninsula and in the Americas. The remaining two plays, ideologically inscribe the Muslim woman within the context of English colonial aspirations in the seventeenth century. Skin color plays the crucial function of codifying the differences between various kinds of Muslims, and demonstrate how discourses on color, gender, and religious ideology inform one another in the imaginative construction of the Other and in the selffashioning of a colonial ideal that reflects English nationalistic sentiments. NOTES 1. Nabil Matar, “The Renegade in English Seventeenth Century Imagination,” Studies in Literature 33, no. 3 (Summer 1993): 491. 2. According to Michael Neill, for his plot Massinger was largely dependent on several works by Cervantes, all of which were drawn from the Spanish writer’s own experience as a prisoner in Algiers. The best known of these works is “The Captive’s Tale” from Don Quixote, which was first published in English in 1612. The others are “The Liberall Lover” from Novelas ejemplares (1613), and Los Banos de Argel, which appeared in a collection of eight comedias in 1615. Also, for the Ottoman background of the play, Massinger seems to have consulted a number of English sources, including Knolles’s The Generall Historie of the Turkes (1603) and George Sandy’s A Relation of a Journey begun Anno Domini 1610 (1615) (Michael Neill, ed, The Renegado [London: A & C Black Publishers, 2010], 54–58). 3. Philip Massinger, The Renegado, ed. Daniel J. Vitkus (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 4, 1, 16. References are to act, scene, and line. 4. Jack D’Amico, The Moor in English Renaissance Drama (Tampa: University of South Florida Press, 1991), 120. 5. D’Amico, The Moor in English Renaissance Drama, 120. 6. Matar, “The Renegade in English Seventeenth Century Imagination,” 492. 7. Matar, “The Renegade in English Seventeenth Century Imagination,” 494.

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8. Jonathan Burton, Traffic and Turning: Islam and English Drama 1579–1624 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005), 138. 9. D’Amico, The Moor in English Renaissance Drama, 120. 10. Lois Potter, “Pirates and Turning Turk in Renaissance Drama,” in Travel and Drama in Shakespeare’s Time, eds. Jean Pierre Maquerlot and Michelle Willems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 125. 11. Daniel J. Vitkus, Three Turk Plays from Early Modern Period (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 30. 12. Robert Carr quoted in Matar, “The Renegade in English Seventeenth Century Imagination,” 500. 13. William Davies quoted in Potter, “Pirates and Turning Turk in Renaissance Drama,” 129. 14. Matar, “The Renegade in English Seventeenth Century Imagination,” 491. 15. Matar, Turks, Moors, and Englishmen, 63. 16. Daniel J. Vitkus, Turning Turk: English Theatre and the Multicultural Mediterranean, 1570–1630 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 151. 17. Numerous religious indulgences that survive from the first quarter of the seventeenth century are available on Early English Books Online (EEBO). One indulgence from 1624, for example, petitions church parishes to promote the cause of “Fifteen hundred loving subjects, English men, remaining in miserable servitude and subjection in Algiers, Tunis, Sally, and Tituane . . . who are forced and compelled by intolerable and unsufferable punishments and torments to deny their savoir and turn to the Mahumetan religion” (London, 1624) [STC 8729]. 18. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 99. 19. William Gouge, A Recovery from Apostacy: Set out in a Sermon Preached in Stepny Churchneere London at the Receiving of a Penitent Renegado into the Church, Oct. 21, 1638 (London: George Miller, 1638). Another example might be the sermons preached by Edward Kellet and Henry Byam, both in 1627. These sermons were published together under the title “A Returne from Argier” (London: Thomas Harper, 1628). 20. Burton details: “Following a formal excommunication and submission of contrition, the penitent, dressed in white sheet, carrying a white wand, and begging for the prayers of the congregation, appeared on the church porch for Sunday services. On the following two Sundays, he was admitted to positions increasingly close to the minister, and made to participate in prayers, indicating his slow but steady reincorporation” (Traffic and Turning, 150). 21. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 150. 22. The Renegado, 1, 3, 52–53. 23. The Renegado, 4, 1, 31–32. 24. Vitkus, Turning Turk, 160. 25. The Renegado, 4, 1, 88. 26. The Renegado, 1, 1, 16. 27. The Renegado, 1, 1, 38–39. 28. The Renegado, 1, 1, 41. 29. The Renegado, 3, 4, 53. 30. Vitkus, Turning Turk, 158. 31. The Renegado, 1, 3, 141. 32. The Renegado, 1, 3, 156–60. 33. The Renegado, 1, 3, 171–72. 34. The Renegado, 1, 3, 174. 35. Vitkus, Turning Turk, 158. 36. The Renegado, 1, 3, 9–13. 37. The Renegado, 1, 3, 19. 38. The Renegado, 1, 3, 15–17. 39. The Renegado, 2, 1, 14. 40. The Renegado, 2, 4, 6. 41. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 148. 42. The Renegado, 2, 4, 102. 43. The Renegado, 2, 4, 11–13.

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44. The Renegado, 2, 4, 136. 45. Bindu Malieckal, “Wanton Irreligious Madness: Conversion and Castration in Massinger’s The Renegado,” Essays in Arts and Sciences 31 (October 2002): 32. 46. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 148. 47. Vitkus, Turning Turk 158. 48. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 127. 49. The Renegado, 2, 4, 112–13. 50. The Renegado, 2, 1, 39–40. 51. The Renegado, 3, 1, 50, 60. 52. F. M. Warren, “The Enamoured Moslem Princess in Orderic Vital and the French Epic,” PMLA 22 (1914): 344, https://doi.org/10.2307/456926. 53. This stock figure was first invented by the Anglo-Norman cleric Orderic Vital in the story of the Frankish crusader Bohemond’s Eastern imprisonment in his Historia Ecclesiastica (1130–1135). Sir Bevis of Hampton (1300), a popular romance circulated in medieval England also features a Saracen princess who converts for the love of a Christian knight. In the Romance of Sowdone of Babylon and of Ferumras His Sone Who Conquerede Rome (early 1400s), the Sultan’s daughter converts, marries the Christian knight, and defects to his land (Warren, 348). 54. The term was first used by Mohja Kahf in Western Representations of the Muslim Woman: From Termagant to Odalisque (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002), 37. 55. The Renegado, 3, 5, 12. 56. The Renegado, 3, 5, 46–47. 57. The Renegado, 3, 5, 38. 58. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 151. 59. The Renegado, 4, 2, 46–47. 60. The Renegado, 4, 2, 151–55. 61. Matar, “The Renegade in English Seventeenth Century Imagination,” 497. 62. The Renegado, 4, 3, 66. 63. The Renegado, 4, 3, 79–84. 64. The Renegado, 4, 3, 101–2. 65. The Renegado, 4, 3, 115. 66. The Renegado, 4, 3, 125–31. 67. The Renegado, 4, 3, 138–39. 68. The Renegado, 4, 3, 158. 69. The Renegado, 5, 3, 123–25. 70. The Renegado, 5, 3, 131–32. 71. The Renegado, 4, 3, 149–50. 72. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 151. 73. The Renegado, 4, 3, 146, 147. 74. The Renegado, 5, 3, 85–86. 75. The term seraglio is first used in 1581 by Barnaby Rich in Farewell to Military Profession, while the first recorded use of the word harem occurs in 1634 in Sir T. Herbert’s Travels (OED). 76. Vitkus, Turning Turk, 115. 77. Vitkus, Turning Turk, 115. 78. Dallam installed the organ in the harem section of Topkapı Palace, thus he was actually one of the very few Christian men who actually entered to the Ottoman harem (Stanley Mayes, An Organ for the Sultan [London: Putnam, 1956], 214). 79. Thomas Dallam, “The Diary of Master Thomas Dallam 1599–1600,” reprinted in Early Voyages and Travels in the Levant, ed. Theodore Bent, 1–98 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1893), 74. 80. Dallam, “The Diary of Master Thomas Dallam 1599–1600,” 75. 81. Dallam, “The Diary of Master Thomas Dallam 1599–1600,” 75. 82. Dallam, “The Diary of Master Thomas Dallam 1599–1600,” 75. 83. Dallam, “The Diary of Master Thomas Dallam 1599–1600,” 75. 84. The Renegado, 2, 4, 32–33. 85. The Renegado, 2, 4, 130.

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86. Alain Grosrichard, The Sultan’s Court: European Fantasies of the East, trans. Liz Heron (New York: Verso, 1998), 125. 87. Vitkus, Turning Turk, 115. 88. The Renegado, 2, 5, 73. 89. The Renegado, 2, 5, 16. 90. The Renegado, 2, 5, 119. 91. The Renegado, 1, 1, 128–30. 92. The Renegado, 1, 1, 136–39. 93. The Renegado, 2, 5, 125. 94. The Renegado, 2, 5, 126, 128. 95. The Renegado, 4, 2, 15, 16. 96. The Renegado, 5, 3, 152–53. 97. Matar, Turks, Moors and Englishmen, 41. 98. Leslie P. Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1993), 17. 99. Peirce, The Imperial Harem, 29. 100. Peirce, The Imperial Harem, 30. 101. Peirce, The Imperial Harem, 30. 102. Peirce, The Imperial Harem, 41. 103. Actually, the origins of these two harem women are debated. While it is generally acknowledged that both were Venetian patricians, this view is challenged in various ways. Some historians attribute Venetian descent only to Nurbanu and claim that Safiye was of Albanian origin, born in the Dukaqjin highlands. Others believe that also Nurbanu was not a Venetian, but a Greek from Corfou, named Kale Kartanou. See S. A. Skilliter, “Three Letters from the Ottoman ‘Sultana’ Safiye to Queen Elizabeth I,” Documents from Islamic Chanceries, First Series (Oriental Studies) 3, ed. S. M. Stern (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965); Benjamin Arbel, “Nur Banu (c. 1530–1583): A Venetian Sultana?” Turcica, 24 (1992): 241–59; John Freely, Inside the Seraglio: Private Lives of the Sultans in Istanbul (New York: Tauris Parke Paperback, 2016); and Özlem Kumrular, Haremde Taht Kuranlar: Nurbanu ve Safiye Sultan (Istanbul: Doğan Kitap, 2017). 104. Peirce, The Imperial Harem, 153. 105. Normally Hürrem should have been disqualified as the sultan’s sexual partner after the birth of her first son Mehmed under the “one-mother-one-son” rule and would have eventually accompanied her son to an Ottoman province. However, Hürrem’s reign departed from the established practice and the power she attained created a general mood of discontent within the Ottoman community (Bernadette Andrea, Women and Islam in Early Modern English Literature [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007], 17.). Many thought the Sultan was “bewitched” by his concubine (Peirce, The Imperial Harem, 63). 106. Peirce, The Imperial Harem, 67. 107. Fulke Greville’s Mustapha (composed c. 1604, published 1609), Sir William Davenant’s The Siege of Rhodes (1656), and Earl of Orrey’s Mustapha (1665). In Greville’s play, which was influenced by Senecan drama, Hürrem is involved in the murdering of Süleyman’s eldest son Mustapha to secure her own son’s position. 108. This particular period, which is known in both popular and scholarly literature as “the sultanate of women,” continued until the death of Kösem Sultan in 1651. Kösem, originally named Anastasia, was the daughter of a priest on the Island of Tinos and was probably the most powerful woman in the Ottoman history. She was valide sultan for almost thirty years (1623–1651) and she practically ruled the empire alone when she acted as the official regent during the minority of her son, Murad IV, between 1623 and 1632 and her grandson, Mehmed IV, between 1648 and 1651. The imperial harem’s rise to power is considered as one of the most dramatic developments in the Ottoman history and was often interpreted by Ottoman politicians “as a sign of the ‘decline’ of the empire” (Andrea, Women and Islam in Early Modern English Literature, 14). 109. Peirce, The Imperial Harem, 3. 110. Peirce, The Imperial Harem, 6.

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111. Peirce, The Imperial Harem, 4. In fact, to an Ottoman subject the term “harem” would not connote a space defined exclusively by sexuality. Derived from the Arabic root h-r-m, the harem is by definition a sanctuary or a sacred precinct. It refers to private quarters in a domestic residence to which general access is forbidden or controlled, as well as to the female members of a family. (Francisci Meninski, Lexicon Arabico-Persico-Turcicum, 4 vols. [Vienna, 1780–1802], 2, 464–65). 112. For a deconstruction of the harem as a Western fantasy, see Grosrichard, The Sultan’s Court, 143–46. 113. In A True and Faithful Account of the Religion and Manners of the Mohammetans, with an Account of the Author’s Being Taken Captive (1704), Joseph Pitts says: “It hath been reported that a Mohammetan may have as many wives as he pleaseth, and I believe it is so, yet there is not one in a thousand hath more than one wife, except it be in the country, where some here and there may have two wives, yet I never knew but one which had as many as three wives” (Reprinted in Daniel J. Vitkus, Piracy, Slavery and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England [New York: Columbia University Press, 2001], 246). 114. Grosrichard, The Sultan’s Court, 125. 115. For evidence of women’s achievements in the Renaissance period see Judith Brown, “A Woman’s Place Was in the Home: Women’s Work in Renaissance Tuscany,” in Rewriting the Renaissance, eds. Margaret Ferguson et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 206–24; Margaret Ezel, The Patriarch’s Wife: Literary Evidence and the History of the Family (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987); Elaine Beilin, Redeeming Eve: Women Writers of the English Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987); Alison Wall “Elizabethan Precept and Feminine Practice: The Thynne Family of Longleat,” History 75, no. 243 (January 1990): 23–38; and Tina Krontiris Oppositional Voices: Women as Writers and Translators of Literature in the English Renaissance (London: Routledge, 1992). 116. The Renegado, 4, 2, 75. 117. The Renegado, 4, 2, 97. 118. The Renegado, 4, 2, 67. 119. The Renegado, 4, 2, 118–22. 120. The Renegado, 4, 2, 139. 121. The Renegado, 4, 2, 139–43. 122. The Renegado, 4, 2, 128, 127. 123. The Renegado, 4, 2, 130. 124. The Renegado, 4, 2, 129. 125. The Renegado, 4, 2, 132. 126. The Renegado, 4, 2, 133. 127. The Renegado, 4, 2, 135–36. 128. The Renegado, 1, 2, 16–18. 129. The Renegado, 1, 2, 19–21. 130. The Renegado, 1, 2, 27–35. 131. The Renegado, 1, 2, 38. 132. The Renegado, 1, 2, 43–48. 133. The Renegado, 1, 2, 49–51.

Chapter Five

“Hell’s Perfect Character” Dark Female Sexuality and the Fear of Ottoman Colonialism in The Knight of Malta

The Ottoman menace that threatened Europe throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries should be seen a complex and multifaceted one, which operated on several levels and shifted over time. As European economies became increasingly dependent on the luxury goods that were obtained from the territories under the Ottoman control, the Christian-Muslim contact inevitably intensified. Despite King James’s explicit animosity against the Turks, England’s trade with the Ottoman Empire reached its peak point in 1620s. With the growing participation in the Mediterranean commerce, the number of English merchants and seamen venturing in Ottoman lands also increased. Consequently, piracy, enslavement, and religious conversion remained as constant risks for Christians throughout this period, as demonstrated by the two “turning Turk” plays I analyzed in the preceding chapters. Both A Christian Turned Turk and The Renegado call our attention to the immediate economic and religious threats that this commercial and cross-cultural contact implied for the Englishmen of the early modern period. However, given the particular military strengths and imperial aspirations of the Ottomans, implications of the contemporary Turkish power were far more extensive and generic for Europe. The successive military conquests of the Ottoman Empire in Christian territories and its extortion of taxes and labor from colonized states indicated that European nations had to face not only the religious and commercial but also the imperial and colonial implications of the Ottoman expansion. This chapter’s focus is the Christian anxieties in the face of Turkish expansionism in Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean and discuss the representative 115

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strategies of early modern English writers in countering the perceived territorial and colonial threat of Islam. A close reading of The Knight of Malta (1616–1619) by John Fletcher, Nathan Field, and Philip Massinger, shows how the dramatists of the period employed the gendered pattern of representation that expressed the English concerns with respect to the cultural and commercial contact with Islam also to reflect the Christian fears about Ottoman colonialism. The play features two Muslim female characters, one of whom is marked by the black color of her skin; and not surprisingly, the political and ideological struggle in the play is centered on the sexual affinities of these women with Christian male characters. In my analysis, I argue that in the depiction of the black Muslim woman the play embodies the racial and moral contamination threat associated with Ottoman expansionism and presents a strategy of resistance by countering the malignity of this woman and ultimately expelling her from the Christian community. In the portrayal of the white Muslim woman, on the other hand, the play represents the object of colonial desire, and through the dramatization of her honorable conquest by a civilized Christian masculinity, it presents us with a model of a European colonizer who is fashioned to counter the presumed Ottoman tyranny. OTTOMAN COLONIALISM AND THE ORDER OF MALTA Having reached the very gates of Vienna as early as 1529, the Ottomans defeated the vast majority of Christian territories in Eastern Europe within the following several decades. North African regencies in Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli also became Ottoman dominions in 1530s, enabling the Turkish Empire to assert control over the entire eastern part of the Mediterranean region. Turkish vessels were regularly raiding the coasts of Italy, Spain, and France. Though the Ottoman navy was unexpectedly crushed by a joint European fleet in 1571 at the Battle of Lepanto, this proved to be merely a temporary withdrawal. The Turks soon resumed territorial expansion, and two years later after the Lepanto defeat, the Venetians were forced to recognize the Ottoman possession of Cyprus, which was the initially declared cause of the war. In addition, in this period European nations started their first voyages to the Americas in pursuit of exploitation and conquest of foreign lands. Though the contact with the peoples of the New World generated a sense of European superiority, this was clearly not valid for the interaction with the Islamic East. As Vitkus puts it, while Christian nations were establishing their first permanent colonies in America, they constantly faced the threat of being colonized by the Ottomans at home. 1 Until the very end of the seventeenth century, the result of the contest for world resources and power remained uncertain and the Turk continued to represent a colonial threat to entire Christendom.

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Centered in Constantinople, the military strength of the Ottoman Empire was derived from its unified geographical presence and governmental authority and superior military technology including, crucially, gunpowder. These aspects allowed it to maintain control over colonized territories and ensure protection against revolt. The key to the structure of the Ottoman state was the system of timariots. Similar to the arrangement of European feudal vassals, timariots were entrusted the control of a colonized territory and its inhabitants. During the times of war, they joined to the Ottoman army, and at times of peace, they took care of the sultan’s land by exploiting the workforce of the local peasants. 2 In addition, while the Ottomans did not force the native Christian populations of conquered lands to convert to Islam, they exerted heavy taxes from Christian communities within their dominions. Many contemporary travel writers and historians attest to the fact that the implications of the Turkish colonization of Christians were mostly economic. For example, in A Voyage into the Levant (1636) Henry Blount asserts that rather than merely putting Christian subjects to death, the Turk “takes a more pernicious way to extinguish Christianity. . . . Hee rather suckes the purse [of Christians], then unprofitable blood, and by perpetuall poverty renders them low towards himself, and heavie to one another.” 3 The heaviest tax that the Turks levied on the Christians living in their dominions took the form of systematic enslavement. Once every three years, ten to twelve thousand Christian children were taken from their parents as tribute to the sultan. These Christian youths “were distributed amongst the Turkish husbandsmen in Asia, there to learne the Turkish language, religion, and manners: where after they had been brought up in all painefull labour and travaile by the space of two or three yeeres, they were called unto the court,” where they were trained to become Janissaries, who formed a highly feared cadre of the Turkish army. 4 In addition, the sultan’s “Bassaes, his Generals of his armies, and the Governours of his provinces and cities” were all selected from these tribute children. 5 The system served the Ottomans well, as it drew off from the Christians their “best elements, who might otherwise have been the natural leaders in resistance to the Turks.” 6 In fact, undergoing a forced conversion to become the very agent of the Turk’s invasion and subjugation of other Christians, these “creatures” of the sultan were the most striking and horrific figures that represented the Ottoman colonization and assimilation. 7 Such terrifying implications of Ottoman domination over Eastern Europe created a commonsense, which urged the Christian nations to unite under a single cause and mount a general crusade against the Islamic empire. Many contemporary writers adopted the religious rhetoric of the crusades to characterize the Ottoman imperial threat. For example, Knolles attests to the territorial threat that the Ottomans posed on the entire Christendom by saying “having conquered so much of [it] as far exceedeth that which is thereof at

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this day left.” 8 He argues that in “turning their weapons one upon another,” Christian nations “weakened themselves and opened a way for [the Turk] to devoure them one after another” and urged them to forget their “endlesse quareles” and “joyne their common forces against the common enemie.” 9 In line with the growing ambivalence about strategic alliances among Christian nations, many early modern English playwrights dramatized or alluded to coalitions of Protestants and Catholics against the Turks. For example, in A Christian Turned Turk, the dying Captain Ward’s final speech sounds like nothing but a call for a crusade where he curses the Turks praying: O may, the force of Christendom Be reunited and all at once requite The lives of all that you have murdered, Beating a path to Jerusalem Over the bleeding breasts of you and yours. 10

In a similar fashion, in The Renegado, Massinger gives us a highly sympathetic portrait of a Catholic priest in the character and accomplishments of Francisco, notwithstanding the fact that a bitter anti-Catholic rhetoric prevailed in England at that time. By depicting Francisco as a heroic figure who not only saves both Grimaldi and Vitelli but also devises the escape plan for all the Christians in Tunis, the playwright encourages the notion of Christian common cause against the evil of the Islamic enemy. Written sometime between 1616 and 1619, The Knight of Malta presents us with an actual dramatization of a pan-Christian brotherhood forged against Ottoman imperialism on the small island setting of Malta. Together with Rhodes and Cyprus, throughout this period Malta represented a crucial battleground for military and commercial control of the Mediterranean and was heavily contested by Christian and Ottoman forces. Rewriting the historical siege of the island by the Ottomans in 1565, the play invokes the real European anxieties about the Turkish territorial expansion. At the same time, as a strategy to resist conquest it adopts the rhetoric of a Christian crusade. Without denying their Catholic orientation, it idealizes the Knights of the Order of Malta and their mission to combat the religious and colonial threat of the Ottomans. Protestant Reformation explicitly denounced the vow of chastity that all members of the Order should take, however, in the play this vow is depicted as crucial for maintaining the immunity of both the knights and the island to foreign intrusion and invasion. The Order of the Knights Hospitallers was founded during the late crusading period as an alliance of various Christian states and later became known as the Knights of Rhodes and of Malta. The mission of these Knights was to perform works of charity and provide protection for sick and poor pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem. After the Turks drove them out of Pales-

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tine in 1291, the Knights established themselves on Cyprus. In 1309, they conquered the island of Rhodes and ruled it as an independent state until Süleyman I defeated them in 1522. The Knights operated without a base for seven years, then they settled on the island of Malta. In 1530, Roman Emperor Charles V gave the Order of Malta the task of taking Tripoli from the Turks. Apart from this capital mission, the Knights’ avowed aim was to counterattack the expansionist Ottomans in the Mediterranean Sea by harassing their shipping and searching out and destroying Turkish corsairs. 11 Unlike the footloose pirates and renegades, who, in many cases, were men outlawed from their own country, the Knights of the Order of Malta were recruited from men of noble birth who were obliged to take vows of poverty and chastity. Yet, as Senior puts it “it would be naïve to pretend that such vows were strictly adhered to, or that all vessels that sailed from Malta . . . were manned by saints.” 12 The Knights’ attempt to take Tripoli failed and the island itself became open to attack by the Ottomans in 1565. The siege was famously repulsed by the Maltese Grand Master Jean la Valette, who is also represented in the present play. This great victory that the Knights achieved provided the historical background for The Knight of Malta. Despite the fact that Christians were able to keep the island in their possession and hold the Turks at bay on both Venetian and Austrian fronts, boundaries continued to be threatened throughout the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. THE KNIGHT OF MALTA The Knight of Malta rewrites the exceptional triumph of Christians in defending Malta against the Ottomans, and, by so doing, it foregrounds a moment of Christian ascendancy against Ottoman imperialism. Interestingly, while the setting is the historical siege of Malta, the play attaches little importance to the Ottoman invading forces and avoids the dramatization of an actual combat between the Turks and the Knights. In the plot the Ottomans do not impose a significant military conflict. Rather, the Christians confront the Turks offstage at the beginning of the play and the Christian victory is signaled only by stage directions. The sea fight takes place “within a league” 13 of the island’s coast. The Knights return safe from the battle and before the second act begins the Turkish siege of Malta is effectively dealt with and diverted. Moreover, in the play there is not a single male Turkish character that represents the threat of the Ottoman military forces. Instead, the military invasion threat is dislocated by an internal problem within the ranks of the Christian fellowship, which originates from the spiritual contamination of one of the knights, whose illicit sexual relationship with a black Muslim woman appears to be the principal cause of all his evil doings. In other words, rather than depicting an actual military encounter, the play

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represents the danger of foreign invasion in the figure of a Muslim woman, who through her sexual affair with the Christian knight, assertively works against the Christian community and threatens the Maltese religious and racial integrity. Thus, like in the previous “turning Turk” plays, in The Knight of Malta the vice of lust is shown as the weak point that leaves the Christians vulnerable to foreign intrusion and contamination, and the sexuality of an unbridled Islamic woman becomes the catalyst of the ChristianMuslim struggle, threatening the solidarity and unity of the Christian patriarchal order. The moral and bodily peril to the male fellowship of the Knights of Malta is exposed by the duplicity of the French knight named Mountferrat. As the villain of the play, Mountferrat breaks his vow of chastity, gets into sexual intimacy with the Moorish waiting-woman Zanthia, and, together with her, he designs conspiracies against the other members of the community. The French knight’s evil revelation at the opening of the play demonstrates his lustful intentions toward Grand Master Valetta’s virtuous sister Oriana and exposes him as a dishonorable man who is unfit to serve as a protector of Malta. In his soliloquy, Mountferrat confesses that, having served as a good soldier for sixteen years, he is no longer willing to adhere to his celibacy vows. He is already in a sexual relationship with Zanthia and wants to have the same with Oriana. Though the virtuous maiden explicitly refuses him, even the smiles of pity that she sends are apparently bliss for Mountferrat: Great Solyman that wearies his hot eyes, But to peruse his deck’d Ceraglio, When from the number of his Concubines He chooseth one for that night, in his pride Of them, wives, wealth, is not so rich as I In this one smile, from Oriana sent. 14

For the Knights of Malta, chastity is essential in protecting the community of Christians. Mountferrat’s imaginative glimpse of the Ottoman seraglio, which, rather than denouncing it, approves of this Islamic symbol, clearly places him on the negative side of the play’s officially declared values. Thus, the play draws a direct association between the Ottoman sultan’s lust and Mountferrat’s uncontrollable desire, approximating the French knight to the enemy and identifying him as the fracture in the Christian brotherhood. The play dramatizes the potential initiation of two worthy men into the Order of Malta. The two knights-to-be, Italian Miranda and Spanish Gomera, are distinguished by the same prerequisite qualities that make them good candidates for the fellowship. Yet, the play suggests that, rather than these qualities, the true measure of the knights’ fitness for the Order involves their ability to maintain the vow of chastity and imposes a series of tests to ensure that only a man fully devoted and capable of sustaining a life of chastity will

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be allowed to the fellowship. During the Order’s meeting, Valetta invites Miranda and Gomera to join the brotherhood. Yet, both men express uncertainty. Though, at first they plead their general unworthiness for the honor of knighthood, soon it becomes clear that the real reason for their hesitation is their love for the same woman, who also Mountferrat desires. Because of Mountferrat’s evil conspiracy, things get even more complicated and the question of who shall marry Oriana gains broader national implications for Malta and its safety. In the meeting, Mountferrat accuses Oriana publicly of facilitating a Turkish invasion by secretly agreeing to marry the Basha of Tripoli. The forged letter resembling Oriana’s handwriting gives the direct evidence of treason. In front of Valetta and other members of the Order, the contents of the letter are read out loud: Let your forces by the next evening be ready; my brother feasts then; put in at St. Michaels; the ascent at that port is easiest; the keys of the castle you shall receive at my hands. That possess’d you are the Lord of Malta, and may soon destroy all by fire; than which I am hotter, ’till I embrace you. Farewell! Your wife Oriana. 15

The fake letter draws an obvious connection between female sexual availability and possibility for territorial invasion, as it suggests that Oriana’s “hot” lust for the Basha and her desire to “embrace” him compel her treason against Malta, which will enable the Basha to invade and become the “Lord” of the island. The safety of Malta suddenly becomes dependent on the Christian woman’s chastity and the patriarchal order demands her unbreakable virtue as a force of resistance against the Turkish invasion. Though Oriana is never at the risk of being lost to the Basha of Tripoli, the less secure integrity of the male characters in the play is immediately threatened when a woman is charged with treachery. Oriana is sentenced to death by her brother, Grand Master Valetta, without even being allowed to defend herself. This fact reveals that it is indeed not the safety of Christianity but the safety of Christian masculinity that is at stake on the island of Malta. Upon being convicted of treason, Oriana calls herself a “martyr” “[a]lmost faith as innocent as borne.” 16 Though she cannot prove her innocence, her innate virtue seems to shine through, and Gomera rises up in her defense and challenges the accuser to a duel. With the undercover help of Miranda, who timely understands the villain’s conspiracy and fights in Mountferrat’s place in order to lose on purpose, Gomera wins the battle and frees Oriana from the charges of treason. Though on this occasion each man proves his worthiness as a potential husband for Oriana, Valetta awards Oriana to Gomera, who “deserves her more” since he was “the first to undertake her cause.” 17 Within a single scene the play first showcases a challenge to the Christian masculinity with an alleged treachery of a woman, and then allows it to

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resume its dominant place, when the virtue of this woman proves constant and her chastity remains unbroken. In this case, the Christian woman’s body functions in the service of masculinity, allowing the Christian male ego some space to act out its superiority and uphold its honor. At the same time, this scene reveals the significance of the chastity of the members of the Christian community as a safeguard against the political and imperial threat of the Ottomans. Just as the Knights of the Order are required to take a vow of chastity to prove their worth to become protectors of Malta, the sexuality of Christian women is charged with the responsibility of protecting its territory and national unity. 18 The play maps a hostile exterior world constituted by Muslims at the edges of Malta and the bodily chastity of the Christians who inhabit it is presented to be crucial in securing the island from the risk of Turkish conquest. The only weak point in this strict guard line of chastity is Mountferrat, who devises the conspiracy that threatens the solidarity of the Order. However, the real evil and treachery in the play appear to spring from the malignity of the Moorish waiting-woman, Zanthia. The forged letter that accuses Oriana of betraying the island has actually been written by this black woman, and the language of this letter exhibits both the depraved moral disposition and the ingenuity of its true author. By her act of creative writing, Zanthia subtly plays with the Order’s patriarchal insecurities and exposes the fragility of the assumed virtuous position of European masculinity. She shows how quickly Christian men’s jealousy and suspicion can be provoked and victimize even a woman like Oriana as a “devil’s dam,” though she is the ultimate embodiment of the Order’s feminine ideal. The play portrays Zanthia as a vile and lascivious woman whose only concern is the gratification of her lust. Her uncontrolled desire for Mountferrat appears as her primary motivation for perjury and malice. At the same time, her transgressive femininity renders her a general threat on the established order of Malta. Her illegitimate relationship with the French knight becomes a platform for her treacherous deeds, which are specifically aimed at her mistress Oriana and more generally at virtue, order, and the community of Malta. Her black skin, which is the external proof of her spiritual state, renders Zanthia a symbol of sin and lechery. Unlike Oriana, who, despite her conformism with the island’s patriarchal rule, is easily discredited by her Christian brothers, Zanthia exactly knows how she is being used in the male economy. As Mountferrat approaches her with allurements, calling her his “black swan,” his “Pearle that scorns a staine,” 19 Zanthia immediately understands that this is the hint of a new favor that he would ask and reacts: Ay, you say so now; But like a property, when I have serv’d Your turns, you’ll cast me off, or hang me up

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For a sign, somewhere. 20

Zanthia is aware that the French knight does not value her as a lover, nevertheless she enters the game, as she has her own ambitions. She knows that being black-skinned, the community does not see her as a beautiful woman; yet, she claims an alternative understanding for sexual beauty: My tongue Sir, cannot lispe to meet you so, Nor my black Cheeke put a feigned blush To make me seem more modest than I am. This ground-worke will not beare adulterate red, Nor artificial white, to cozen love. . . . and yet Mounferrat, know I am as full of pleasure in the touch As e’re a white fac’d puppet of them all, Juicy and firme. 21

Moreover, contrary to patriarchal assumptions, Zanthia speaks up for women’s pleasure when, in an exchange with Oriana, she compares the merits of husbands of various professions. She concludes that a soldier’s wife, like Oriana, is best because her husband will never cheat her. “Like a great Queen” she will collect the booty he wins: He layes it at her feet, and seeks no further For his reward, then what she may give freely, And with delight too, from her own Exchequer Which he finds ever open. 22

Oriana, of course, is unwilling to face the fact of female sexual desire that Zanthia raises: “Be more modest / Thou talkst of nothing.” 23 Yet, witty Zanthia puts down with her. Pointing to the pregnant belly of her mistress, she says: “Of nothing Madam? / You have found it something; / Or with the raising up this pretty mount here, / My lord hath dealth with spirits.” 24 In Black Face Maligned Race, Anthony Gerard Barthelemy defines the blackamoor maid figure as a specific dramatic type of the early modern English stage. 25 Indeed, featured under the variations of the name Zanthia and commonly characterized as licentious women threatening the white patriarchal supremacy, blackamoor maids indeed appear in a number of plays produced in this age, including John Marston’s Wonder of Women (1606), John Webster’s The White Devil (1612), and Philip Massinger’s The Bondman (1623) and Believe as You List (1631). The presence of black female servants, who were brought to England through slave trade and employed in menial household jobs in the early seventeenth century, as documented by a number of scholars, might have provided the material context for these dramatic representations. 26 However, the trope of blackness had much broader

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significations in the early modern English discourse. In fact, the very word “black” was already loaded with negative connotations long before the English actually met dark-skinned people. In Christianity white/black or light/dark polarity was inherently associated with the dualism of Good and Evil. In conventional religious symbolism blackness stood for sin, death, mourning, and danger, while white represented purity, innocence, and perfect human beauty. 27 As the English contact with non-European peoples intensified and the slave trade proliferated in the sixteenth century, this traditional aesthetic discrimination and religious dogma became infused with ideas about the black peoples of Africa, as well as the New World, “offering infinitely malleable ways of establishing a sense of superior organization of Western European male and female in the Renaissance.” 28 The popular explanation for blackness was that the inhabitants of Africa were descended from Ham, Noah’s disobedient son, who contrary to his father’s commandment copulated with his wife while still on the ark and was punished by fathering a child named Chus, “who not only itself, but all his posteritie after him should be soo black and loathsome that it might remain spectacle of disobedience to all the world.” 29 Thus, rather than as an environmental or biologic condition, blackness was understood as “a curse of infection of blood” that originated in the sin of a white man, reflecting “the nether side of a white self.” 30 In addition, the view that many Africans, especially the sub-Saharans, lived under no organized religion and were “savage” and “wild” people “of beastly living” circulated in many travelogues, including an influential account of Africa by Leo Africanus, a converted Moor under the custody of Giovanni Medici, Pope Leo X. 31 The alleged departure of the black peoples of Africa and America from normative gender roles and their sexual exoticism as described in these travelogues, “helped shape a model to control the meaning of Africa and legitimize conquest and exploitation, while consolidating normative gender roles and sexuality at home.” 32 The long tradition that associated blackness with Islam can be traced back to the later period of the Reconquista movement, which involved the effort of the Christians of the Iberian Peninsula to take back their lands from the Moors, people of mixed Arab and Berber origin and of Islamic faith who came through Gibraltar and invaded most of their lands in the eighth century. Though these people were not necessarily dark-skinned and had already become a powerless minority within the territories of Spain by the sixteenth century, fearing that the Muslims might regain the control of the land, the state and the Catholic Church systematically oppressed and discriminated the Moorish people on the basis of skin color and religion. 33 The concept of purity of blood, or limpenzia de sangre, introduced by the Inquisition in 1480, sought to identify “pure” Christians from converted Moors and Jews. As Loomba points out these blood laws marked a crucial turning point in the history of race and dated the “new” racial vocabulary by introducing a corre-

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lation “between a ‘cultural’ category like religion and a ‘biological’ category like lineage.” 34 In Spain the difference between Christians and Muslims was a site of intense ideological anxiety and after the independent political existence of Muslims ended in 1492, forcible conversions of the Moors began throughout the country. Interracial marriage was banned, and racism came to such a point that castration was suggested as a method to prevent the repopulation of Spain with Muslims. 35 Spain’s extraordinary closeness to the Moors and its efforts to cleanse the assimilated Muslim elements from its territories constituted an instructive precedent with respect to cultural exchange and hybridity for the rest of Europe, including England. 36 While evidence for black presence in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries mostly appears as isolated entries in parish records, household accounts, or personal diaries, Elizabeth’s two public proclamations dated 1596 and 1601 for the deportation of blacks from her realm indicate that black people had a viable existence and cultural significance in England in this period. The proclamation issued in 1601 states that: whereas the Queen’s majesty, tendering the good and welfare of her own natural subjects greatly distressed in these hard times of dearth, is highly discontented to understand the great numbers of Negars and Blackamoors which (as she is informed) are crept into this realms since the troubles between Her Highness and the King of Spain, who are fostered and relieved here to the great annoyance of her own liege people that want the relief which those people consume; as also for that the most of them are infidels, having no understanding of Christ or his Gospel, hath given especial commandment that the said kind of people should be with all speed avoided and discharged out of her majesty’s dominions. 37

The “Blackamoors” mentioned in the document are actually the Muslim people of the Iberian Peninsula who were expelled by the Spanish state and relocated in England. Yet, the queen conflates this distinct designation with a historically more generic and meaningful one, the “Negar,” which was often used in relation to sub-Saharan Africans whom the English had been trading as slaves since as early as 1555. Though Matar cautions us that these two terms were not interchangeable in early modern England, 38 the queen erases the geographical distinction between the two and creates “a composite subject group of ‘black’” who, by virtue of their innate characteristic of blackness, form a race, a people, which should be avoided. 39 In addition to this color coding, Elizabeth defames “most” of the blacks as “infidels, having no understanding of Christ and his Gospel.” If these blackamoors were indeed the Muslims of Spain, then Elizabeth’s accusation clearly contradicts with her foreign policies toward Islamic states like the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Morocco, with whose rulers she sought military and commercial

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alliance based on common religious doctrines. Apparently, while the darkskinned Muslim people of North Africa were seen as important trade partners, those within the territories of England could easily be labeled as the “black infidel” and targeted as the source of wider social problems at times of crisis. Early modern English dramatic works include a number of black/Moorish characters who are mostly depicted as villainous outsiders representing the “darkly subversive forces that threaten the European society from within.” 40 As an opposite in race, religion, and disposition, the Moor is used by English writers as an opportunity to underline the overly simplified oppositions between fair Western standards and the dark barbarian, civilization and the savage, or the human and the monster. 41 The most well-known black character of the early modern English stage is undoubtedly Shakespeare’s Moorish commander Othello, who, as a dually constituted subject, exemplifies the universal struggle between the forces of good and evil. 42 Othello has converted to Christianity, adapted to the Venetian life, and like a European, he imagines himself in opposition to the infidel Turk. The stories of his sufferings has won him the love of Desdemona and his loyalty to the state is apparent enough to convince the Duke not only to entrust him with the defense of Cyprus, but also to counsel Desdemona’s frustrated father, Brabantio, saying “Your son-in-law is far more fair than black.” 43 Despite his initial secure position in the Christian society, the ideological incompatibility of Othello’s dark skin and faith makes him susceptible to be easily inscribed as a stranger or the tainted Other, and once Iago starts his insinuations, Othello’s newly adopted identity collapses, revealing a jealous and violent man that confirms the Christian reading of his skin. 44 When it comes to the representation of black female characters, the significance of the dark skin becomes even more heavily charged than their male counterparts. In depictions of black women, racial and religious inscriptions overlap with the patriarchal fear of the darkness of female sexuality. English dramatic works of the early modern age frequently depict black male characters as protagonists of tragic plots that involve love relationships with white women. After all, Othello is a romantic hero who conquers the heart of a fair Venetian lady. Black women, on the other hand, appear mostly in minor roles as lascivious servants, and, though they are allowed to pay homage to white men, they can never be whitened or become part of a Christian family. 45 According to Boose the need to suppress the black female-white male union in English literature is related to the culture’s preexisting fears about the female sex and gender dominance. 46 Drawing from Janet Adelman, Boose argues that patriarchal society depends on the principle of inheritance in which the father’s identity is transmitted from father to son and “the mother’s dark place” is the weak point that leaves the father’s designs for

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“perfect self-replication” susceptible to contamination. 47 As a mother, the black female was a threat that could cause “the wholesale negation of white patriarchal authority,” because with her skin color, which is more powerful than white and capable of absorbing and coloring it, “black women controlled the power to resignify all offspring as the property of the mother.” 48 A good example from the period’s drama in support of Boose’s argument might be the unseen, voiceless Moorish woman, who apparently is the girlfriend of Shylock’s servant Lancelot in The Merchant of Venice. Though the entire dramatic life of this black woman is offstage, still she is sexually exploited in a joking conversation between Lancelot and Lorenzo. When Lancelot mocks Lorenzo by saying that the latter’s conversion of Jessica will raise the price of pork in the commonwealth, Lorenzo replies: “I shall answer that better to the commonwealth than you can the getting up of the negro’s belly: the Moor is with child by you Lancelot.” 49 To this, Lancelot gibes: “It is much that the Moor should be more than reason, but if she be less than an honest woman she is indeed more than I took her for.” 50 This comical exchange about an invisible black woman is significant with regard to both the racial and the gender politics of Shakespeare’s play. In the first place it suggests that there is a difference between Lorenzo’s marriage with the Jew’s daughter and Lancelot’s liaison with the Moor. The implications of the second union with respect to miscegenation would be found more threatening by the commonwealth than the Lorenzo-Jessica relationship because of the Moor’s black skin. In the second place, Lancelot’s concerns about his girlfriend’s honesty not only reflect the early modern associations of blackness with lechery, but also reveal the deep patriarchal fear of losing the reproductive authority that Boose argues about. Lancelot will never be able to confirm the identity of the father of the offspring of this pregnant black woman, as the child will be stigmatized with the color of his mother’s skin. This attitude toward black women receives fuller development in representations of several waiting women in the seventeenth-century English drama. Both Zanthia in John Marston’s Wonder of Women (1606) and Zanche in John Webster’s The White Devil (1612) are faithless and lascivious black servants who place the satisfaction of their desires before loyalty and present danger to the virtuous Christian society. Though they are legitimate members of the community, they symbolize everything evil and base. Marston’s Zanthia, like her namesake in the present play, is set in contrast with her fair and virtuous mistress, Sophonisba, while Webster’s Zanche functions as “a degraded mirror” of the culture’s collective vision of the play’s white devil, Victoria. 51 Both black women lustfully pursue white men, but they are merely castigated as bawds by their lovers. Barthelemy considers Zanthia in The Knight of Malta as probably the most malevolent and aggressive of all the black female characters of the

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period’s drama. 52 Though she is similar to her counterparts in many aspects, Zanthia is indeed more textually prominent and more articulate than any of these women, militating vigorously against the Christian patriarchal authority. Mountferrat’s weak masculinity enables Zanthia to reverse the gender hierarchies and overpower him. In addition, unlike her counterparts in the contemporary plays, Zanthia marries the man she pursues, though this marriage is decreed merely as a punishment for Mountferrat. Zanthia is clearly more than a debased whore; she is the vivid embodiment of all the patriarchal fears which, according to Boose’s argument, required the suppression of her representation. Of course, Zanthia’s role as the demonic agent of the play must also be contextualized within the plot’s historical setting. The emphasis on the wickedness and evil nature of this black woman is better understood when seen in connection with the association drawn between her and the enemy that surrounds the island. Though Zanthia is not an Ottoman or specifically identified as Muslim, the long-established link between Islam and blackness aligns her on the same side with the Turk. Thus, in addition to the racial and feminine threat she poses on the Christian community, this black woman also functions as a visual corollary to the threat of moral contamination that might be caused by a possible Islamic invasion of Malta. Like both in A Christian Turned Turk and in The Renegado, the two “turning Turk” plays analyzed earlier, in The Knight of Malta, an opposition is set between the non-Christian woman and her Christian counterpart in terms of morality and sexuality. However, in the present play this opposition attains a special significance since the non-Christian woman is black and the emphasis on the vow that the members of the Christian order need to take renders chastity essential in protecting Malta from the enemy. Women’s sexuality is seen as a primary danger to the solidarity of the fellowship and the Order can tolerate only a woman like Oriana, who upholds the values of the patriarchal society and encourages chastity, order, and self-control. With her passive, white femininity Oriana functions in the community as the appropriate vessel enabling the father’s prefect self-replication and the continuation of the lineage. Zanthia’s disregard of honor, which is motivated by venery and license, on the other hand, stands in sharp contrast with Oriana’s uncompromising modesty. With her “black shape and blacker actions” Zanthia sabotages all the prerogatives of the Christian community of Malta. Indeed, through Zanthia’s blackness the play explicitly employs an allegory to emphasize Mountferrat’s conflict between vice and virtue. 53 Being “hell’s perfect character,” Zanthia stands as the ultimate source of evil. Her opposite, Oriana, on the other hand, represents the ever-constant virtue. When falsely accused, Oriana claims for herself “spotless white” as “the emblem of my life, of all my actions.” 54 As the two women contrast in virtue, they contrast in color. Against faithful and “matchless Oriana,” 55 whose fairness

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of the skin implies her chaste and virtuous disposition, Zanthia’s dark complexion is the outward sign of her debased morality. Yet, driven by his “strong libidinous will,” 56 Mountferrat cannot see the distinction between the blackness of Zanthia and the fairness of Oriana, as for him “[n]ight makes their hues alike, their use is so.” 57 “Were he to aspire virtuously to Oriana, he would have achieved her spiritual perfection; however, since he wishes to spoil her, he can only embrace the spoiled Zanthia.” 58 Thus, the play explicitly connects Mountferrat’s failed manhood to his uncontrolled sexual desire, making it imperative to banish him from Malta, as the island depends on a civil and virtuous masculinity to protect it and defend its cause. Earlier, the consequences of the joint treachery of Mountferrat and Zanthia about the forged letter have shown how vulnerable the virtuous masculinity idealized by the members of the Order is and how easily even the chaste Oriana can become the target of suspicion and hatred. In fact, not much later than being cleared of the charges of treason, Oriana, this time, is doubted by his newly wed husband Gomera, who starts pouring out his insecurities when he is provoked by Oriana’s praise of her former suitor Miranda. Concluding that Oriana is still in love with Miranda, he expresses resentment: Fool that I was, to give it up to the deceiving trust Of wicked woman! For thy sake, vile creature, For all I have done well in, in my life, I’ve digg’d a grave, all buried in a wife. 59

Even though the Christian patriarchal understanding of Malta distinguishes Oriana as the embodiment of good womanhood against Zanthia’s malignant femininity, Gomera’s hasty conclusions about his wife’s virtue make it apparent that patriarchy inherently considers every woman to be a transgressive Eve, posing a potential threat to the masculine order. In fact, male jealousy, unsteadfastness, and suspicion repeatedly surface in the play and test or victimize women, especially Oriana, who as one character comments in the end, “knows now / What is the curse of the divine justice laid / On the first sinful woman.” 60 When Oriana faints upon Gomera’s accusations, Zanthia finds the opportunity to pour a sleeping potion into her mistress’ mouth to bind her senses and make others think that she is dead. In doing so, her design is to give Mountferrat the chance to satisfy his desires and then kill Oriana in order to save the villain only for herself. The sleeping potion attributes Zanthia the role of the enchantress, bringing together the magic associated with nonEuropean cultures and the sorcery associated with witches, both domestic and alien. 61 In travel narratives of the period, women of Africa are described as unbridled and sexually pervert women who dominate their husbands using

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dark magic. In addition, the female poison-maker who concocts potions in order to control male behavior is a figure found both in medieval and Renaissance texts. In Zanthia’s portrayal the play combines these two images and renders this black woman as the ultimate symbol of the dark and devious side of the female sex with its potential to cause a troubling inversion of gender roles. 62 Even though it is not Mountferrat who drinks the potion, having the control of Oriana’s destiny gives Zanthia the power to rule the Christian man too. From this point onward, Zanthia not only becomes the conspirator of the villainies, but also asserts dominance over the villain himself. When she tests Mountferrat by saying that Oriana is dead, the latter gets outraged and discards his black lover immediately. Seeing the French knight’s ungratefulness, Zanthia promises to exact her vengeance: That ’tis in my power To punish thy ingratitude. I made trial But how you stood affected, and since I Know I’m used only for a property, I can and will revenge it to the full: For understand, in thy contempt of me, Those hopes of Oriana, which I could Have chang’d to certainties, are lost for ever. 63

Upon the clue that Oriana is still alive, Mountferrat this time changes his attitude altogether and agrees to fulfill any of Zanthia’s wishes, including the murder, and promises to be only hers if she lets him quench his “mad desires / For once in Oriana.” 64 The weakness of lust turns Mountferrat into a toy in the hands of Zanthia, enabling the black woman to attain the power to dominate the Christian man. In addition, while Mountferrat shows signs of repentance for his evildoings, fearing that he “shall ne’er find mercy,” 65 Zanthia proves to be more courageous and determined than him. When Mountferrat expresses hesitation about entering the church with criminal intentions, Zanthia despises him as a “fearful fool.” 66 Upon discovering that Oriana is not in the tomb as Zanthia promised him, the French knight once again retorts: thou damn’d one, worse; Thou black swoln pitchie cloud, of all my afflictions, Thou night hag, gotten when the bright Moone suffer’d, Thou hell it self confin’d in flesh: what trick now? 67

Yet, the black woman does not even stir: “Let him burst! / Neither his sword, nor anger do I shake at.” 68 Then, she disdains Mountferrat: “I’m sorry you’re so poor, so weak a gentleman / Able to stand no fortune.” 69 While Mountfer-

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rat proves to be nothing more than a coward, Zanthia exhibits a resolved attitude in achieving what she aims for. The vice of lust effeminates the French knight and becomes the weak point through which the alien black female penetrates and realizes the darkest nightmare of Christian patriarchy, the ultimate overthrow of Christianity by Satan’s heiress, who, using her dark sexuality, dominates and overpowers men. In fact, Zanthia’s contempt for Christian patriarchal ideals is vividly displayed when she suggests to Mountferrat to seal their marriage contract in blood: Come Mountferrat Here join thy foot to mine, and let our hearts Meet with our hands! The contract that is made And cemented with blood, as this of ours is, Is a more holy sanction, and much surer, Than all the superstitious ceremonies You Christians use. 70

This pervert and grotesque rite that Zanthia offers instead of the sacred Christian matrimonial ceremony once again revokes her image as a black African witch, but, at the same time, it reveals that Zanthia’s threat on the Christian order of Malta is very real. Just as the Ottoman enemy that besieged the island is trying to destroy Christianity from outside, the black woman tries to destroy it from inside. Zanthia’s attack on the Maltese order reaches its climax when she wounds a Christian man with a pistol on the stage. When discovered together with Mountferrat in the church, Zanthia does what she sarcastically describes a “poor woman’s part” 71 and shoots Gomera on his right arm so that he drops his sword. Though Mountferrat asks her to “[c]ut his throat,” 72 Zanthia refrains. She turns to Gomera and says: Forbear!— Yet do not hope ’tis with intent to save thee, But that thou mayst live to thy further torment, To see who triumphs o’er thee. 73

Then she also aims at the general Norandine, but he disarms her. Even if she has been captured, Zanthia has proven her victory and remains unrepentant. With her last words she rebukes the men defeated with her: “From me learn courage.” 74 Because of his evil treachery Mountferrat is banished from Malta as the “[c]orrupted and contagious member” 75 of the Order and is forced to marry Zanthia. Before Zanthia is banished from the island with Mountferrat, the Order’s soldiers insult her abusively. For Gomera, she is an “enchanting witch,” the “agent dam” to the “damn’d hell hound” Mountferrat. Norandine calls her confession “the only truth that / Issued out of hell, which her black

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jaws resemble” 76 and despises her “bacon-face” which “looks like the picture of America.” 77 Despite this insulting language that employs animal imagery and connects the black woman’s devil side to the assumed savagery of the natives of the New World, it remains an ironic political achievement on Zanthia’s part that she leaves Malta with her newly wed French husband and in the prospect of engendering her “devillings.” 78 OTTOMAN COLONIALISM VS. EUROPEAN COLONIALISM In The Knight of Malta there is one other Muslim woman Lucinda, the “milk white” Turkish virgin of noble origin, who has been captured by the Knights from the Ottoman forces during the defense of the island. Lucinda functions as a foil to the depraved morality of black Zanthia. Even though she is referred to as “slave” by the members of the Christian community of Malta, her inner virtue clearly distinguishes her from Zanthia’s debased servitude. She elevates the prerogatives of the Christian patriarchal order with regard to both Christian-Muslim and male-female hierarchies, thus becomes an ideal conquered subject on whom the Knights can reflect their ideology. Despite their divergent portrayals, ultimately both of these Muslim women serve to uphold the values of the established order of Malta which represents the ideology of Christian white male supremacy. While Zanthia embodies the threat of moral and bodily contamination which should be banished in order to preserve the integrity of the Christian community, Lucinda helps to cultivate a model of European masculinity that can honorably convert and redeem the colonized subject. Through the contrasting depictions of Lucinda and Zanthia, the play employs the Muslim woman material not only to express anxieties about Ottoman imperialism, but also to suggest a strategy for European colonialism. As I discussed in the previous chapter, the fact that Christian women were abducted by Muslims during military conquests and piratical operations was a serious concern for Europe in this period. Christians constantly accused the Turks of being lecherous barbarians who forcefully captured Christian women and enslaved them in harems to satisfy their lustful appetites. The “beautiful Turkish woman,” Lucinda, who first appears as loot taken in the battle against the Turks, can be considered as the Muslim counterpart of these Christian women and her initial treatment by the Maltese soldiers indicate that it was not uncustomary also among the Christians to capture women of the enemy and violate their bodies. Soldiers enter quarrelling about whom shall take the newly captured beautiful maiden and approach their general Norandine to ask him to award her to one of them. Though a general in the service of a Christian order reputed for its members’ commitment to chastity, Norandine, at first, shows no respect for the captive maiden’s honor and

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immediately dismisses her, instructing his soldiers to “share her among ye.” 79 Thanks to her eloquent speech which exposes her inner virtue Lucinda is saved from the “soldiers’ wildnesse” and succeeds in taming Norandine’s aggression. “Victorious sir,” she reproaches: Seldom seen in man so valiant, Minds so devoid of virtue: he that can conquer Should ever know how to preserve his conquest, ’Tis but a base theft else. Valour’s a virtue, Crown of men’s actions here; yours, as you make it. And can you put so rough a foil as violence, As wronging of weak woman, to your triumph? 80

According to Lucinda’s speech, there is a distinction between legitimate conquest and “base theft,” and this distinction helps to preserve the rationalizing structure for imperial domination. As a captive Lucinda is not interested in her “liberty,” 81 but she pleads for a kinder, gentler domination which would not include the violent “wronging of weak woman,” as all she expects within this power structure is to protect her “honour.” 82 Norandine is impressed by Lucinda’s speech and decides to give the Turkish maiden to the service of Miranda, who actually captured her during the battle, and this solution satisfies her. While it is Lucinda’s pleadings that convince the Christian general to change his mind about her destiny, by refraining from awarding her to his soldiers, Norandine displays a civilized attitude toward the Turkish captive, who, in return for this kindness, submits and even seems content with her inferior position. Norandine’s treatment of Lucinda contrasts with the sexual tyranny that Christian slave-women were presumably subjected to in the Ottoman lands. It displaces masculine sexual aggression against a foreign woman’s body with sexual self-restraint, thus legitimizes domination. In the case of Zanthia, this model of self-controlled Christian masculinity functions as a guard against the threat of Turkish invasion. In Lucinda’s case, however, the same model of self-disciplined masculinity is suggested as a social component of the ideal European colonialist who is distinguished from the violent Ottoman expansionist with his virtuous disposition. In his prominent essay, “The Work of Gender in the Discourse of Discovery” (1991), Louis Montrose suggests that “the female body maps an important sector of the Elizabethan cultural unconscious” and within the protocolonialist discourse it “serves an emergent imperialist project of exploration, conquest and settlement.” 83 Pursuing instances of this gendered textualization in Sir Walter Raleigh’s accounts on the discovery of Guiana, Montrose argues that the discursive representation of the early colonial exploitation and domination assumes a narrative form “as a mode of symbolic action whose agent is gendered masculine and whose object is gendered femi-

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nine.” 84 Though I will focus on the English proto-colonial experience in the New World and India in the following chapter, Lucinda’s position as a potential colonized subject allows us to apply the sexual and power dynamics suggested in Montrose’s essay in explaining the captive maiden’s function in relation to the Christian patriarchal authority of Malta. In fact, the Donusa-Vitelli relationship in Massinger’s The Renegado has already shown how the conquest of a foreign woman’s body, alongside her proper redemption to Christianity, is deemed analogous to a definitive victory against the Islamic enemy. In addition, earlier in the present play, Mountferrat’s forged letter has revealed how the inviolate female body of the Christian heroine is conflated with the national and territorial integrity of Malta as a strategy to defend Christian patriarchy against Ottoman invasion. In Lucinda’s portrayal the play once again associates female sexual contest with religious and imperial conquest and uses the discursive power of the female body as a medium to act out Christian colonial assertions. Indeed, the sexual desire becomes almost synonymous with the imperial and territorial desire. Lucinda’s tempting beauty becomes a test for her captor Miranda to prove his virtuous masculinity not only as a potential knight of Malta but also as a model European colonizer. In the play, the Turkish woman is repeatedly referred to as a woman of “incomparable beauty” 85 and “[m]ost exquisite” form. 86 Actually as Colonna, a former Turkish slave rescued by Miranda, explains Lucinda’s temptation is the sole reason why Miranda at first denies her request to meet him: You are a woman of a tempting beauty, And he, however virtuous as a man, Subject to human frailties; and how far They may prevail upon him, should he see you, He is not ignorant; and therefore chuses With care t’avoid the cause that may produce Some strange effect, which will not keep rank With the rare temperance which is admir’d In his life hitherto. 87

Colonna’s explanation implies that even if Miranda is a virtuous man, Lucinda’s foreign beauty could produce a “strange effect” in the young Christian which is unlike the other female temptations that he is accustomed to. In fact, the extent of the Spanish knight’s “human frailties” and the uncertainty of his chastity are revealed when he later gives into his desire to meet Lucinda and is immediately overcome by her allures. Even though Colonna warns Lucinda not to wear “artificiall dressings” 88 that might enhance her sexual appeal to Miranda, her natural beauty is tempting enough to cause the Christian man to lose self-control in her presence.

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When Lucinda starts praising her Christian enslavers for their civil treatment of her, the scene’s purpose to test Miranda’s potential as a model colonialist becomes clear. Lucinda approaches Miranda expressing her gratitude for being treated with “all content and goodness.” 89 Though she expected her captivity to be nothing but a “heavy and sharpe burden,” 90 she says she has found “civility and sweetness of behaviour / Dwell round about me,” 91 and adds: “therefore, worthy Master / I cannot say I grieve my liberty.” 92 However, Miranda is already bewitched by the Turkish maiden’s beauty and acts in complete opposition to her good opinion of him. He draws near her and whispers into her ear, “I must lie with ye Lady.” 93 To her surprise, he then asserts: “I would get a brave boy on thee / A warlike boy.” 94 The sexual desire that instantly arises in Miranda reinforces his position as the conqueror against his colonized subject, Lucinda. In other words, the Christian desire of conquest is validated through Miranda’s masculine potency before a foreign and desirable woman. However, while the play offers a virile masculinity as an essential attribution of the ideal Christian colonialist, it, at the same time, privileges sexual continence as an inseparable component of the colonial strategy, because unless curbed by virtuous disposition, just like Mountferrat’s uncontrolled desire which causes him to succumb to female sexuality and compromise his masculine dominancy, Miranda’s erect manhood might be subject to decay and degeneration. Colonna, who later turns out to be Lucinda’s lost husband, watches the whole seduction scene from hiding. Patriarchal concerns with respect to female sexuality once again surface as the young man prepares the audience by saying that if Miranda succeeds with this “virgin of fourteen,” it will be her fault because: “they are all born Sophisters, to maintain / That lust is lawfull, and the end and use / of their creation.” 95 However, contrary to the misogynistic assumptions of her disguised husband, Lucinda proves that her chastity is secure. Despite Miranda’s importunate blandishments, by recalling the true meaning of the Cross of Malta that he is wearing, she successfully evades the knight’s allures and helps him to overcome the overwhelming sexual temptation. Amazed with the virtue of this “excellent woman,” 96 Miranda lets Lucinda go “unravished” and disdains his display of “wantonness” as “the foulest play I’ll shew.” 97 As she leaves the stage, Lucinda assures Miranda of the rewards of this “noble” and “gentle” treatment saying “I’m half a Christian / The other half I’ll pray for; then for you, sir.” 98 With this exchange between Miranda and Lucinda, the play models an ideal Christian colonizer who conquers and converts honorably, while sexual restraint grants him the license for domination. Within the context of the play’s historical plot which features a Christian alliance in opposition to the expansionist Ottomans, the behavioral attributes of the virtuous Christian masculinity which is self-fashioned through the portrayal of Miranda can be seen in contrast to those of the tyrannous imperialism of the Turks. In fact,

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the above scene can be compared to the confrontation between Asambeg and Paulina in The Renegado, where the enslaved Christian maiden heroically defends her chastity against the raging lust of her colonizer. Unlike Miranda, who models the legitimate conqueror by abstaining from harming Lucinda as an expression of manly prowess, Asambeg exemplifies the wrongful colonizer, who, though relentlessly pursues Paulina, is incapacitated by his sexual desire and destined to lose his dominant position. As he accepts defeat by his weak and vulnerable captive, the Muslim viceroy confesses: There is something in you That can work miracles, or I am cozened, Dispose and alter sexes. To my wrong, In spite of nature, I will be your nurse, Your woman, your physician, and your fool. 99

In both plays lust is identified as an effeminizing vice which renders the conqueror impotent and his domination of the conquered illegitimate. While Miranda’s avoidance of this vice is rewarded by the voluntary half-conversion of his conquered subject, because of his blinding lust, Asambeg not only fails in subjugating Paulina, but also goes through a gender confusion which puts him into a shameful position before his captive. In The Knight of Malta, the chaste, civil, refined and self-disciplined masculinity embodied in Miranda which primarily functions as a safeguard against foreign invasion and contamination, is, at the same time, offered as a correct alternative for the aggressive but ineffective masculinity of the Ottoman colonizer. The colonial paradigm implied in the relationship between Miranda and Lucinda can also be practical in analyzing the divergence of the Turkish maiden’s portrayal from that of the Moorish woman Zanthia. In different ways the sexual temptation and threat associated with these two female characters endow the imperatives of Christian masculinity with colonial and racial significance. Although both women are directly associated with Muhammad and the religion of Islam, there is an apparent discrepancy between their representations, and this discrepancy clearly corresponds to their difference in skin color. Against the innate villainy of the “black” bawd Zanthia, the virtue of “fair” virgin Lucinda helps to cultivate the prerogatives of the Christian patriarchal authority of Malta. The play racializes Zanthia’s villainy by conflating her moral debasement with her skin color. Zanthia threatens to contaminate and her expulsion is requisite for the safety of the island as well as for the Christians inhabiting it; however, “white” Lucinda is utterly convertible and assimilable as a Christian wife into the society. The black/white contrast which the play used earlier to set the opposition between non-Christian Zanthia’s dark sexuality and Christian Oriana’s virtuous womanhood, is now employed to determine the exchange value and the

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colonial significance of the two foreign women in cross-cultural interaction. With her blackness, which signifies her physical and moral inferiority, Zanthia embodies the already colonized in the play. Her portrayal is loaded with intensely negative qualities, such as lust, savagery, and deceit, which were present in the emergent European discourse on the black peoples of Africa. Reflecting the degrading effects of colonization, Zanthia’s depiction is a blend of the basic ingredients of this proto-colonialist ideology and a crude and anxious misogyny. The play offsets Zanthia’s marginality with the conversion of her white counterpart Lucinda. Even though she has an alien status like Zanthia, the Turkish woman’s whiteness and female passivity make possible her reproduction as a Christian wife. Due to her links with the powerful Ottomans, Lucinda is portrayed in a neutral light, and her noble origins render her capitulation and conversion more meaningful. Thus, while the white Muslim woman is attributed significance as the object of ideological contest, the black Muslim woman, the powerful conjunction of the savage and the feminine, becomes a site for the European masculinity to project its primitive desires which should either be expelled or destroyed. Zanthia can never be romantically linked to Mountferrat, but “fair” Lucinda’s alien faith and ethnicity can easily become the elements of a romantic story which ends with her marriage to a European and her conversion into Christianity. 100 Indeed, toward the end of the play we learn from Lucinda’s disguised husband Colonna that she has already been converted to a Christian. Colonna met her when he was a Christian prisoner in Turkey and he “doubly won her,” first to the true faith, then to himself. 101 The couple fled Constantinople before consummating the marriage, but was captured first by Turkish galleys, then by the Knights of Malta, who seized the vessels in the recent battle. Lucinda is already a Christian at heart, and by the end of the play her assimilation as a Christian wife is affirmed to the extent that she wishes Oriana to see her boy “toss a Turk.” 102 Finally, the model that The Knight of Malta provides for establishing racial hierarchies and colonial domination through the portrayals of these two Muslim women involves some crucial implications with respect to the Christian patriarchal concerns about reproductive control, which I discussed earlier. In the seduction scene, when Miranda whispers into Lucinda’s ear his intention to have children from her, the latter responds: “[s]ure we shall get ill Christians.” 103 Yet, Miranda’s solution for this concern seems effective and easy: “We’ll mend them in the breeding then.” 104 As Loomba suggests, Miranda’s reply implies that through the penetrating Christian seed, Lucinda’s children “can be blanched off their inner stain.” 105 For the Christian community, Lucinda’s difference as a Muslim woman constitutes a much smaller reproductive threat when compared to the results of miscegenation between a white man and a black Muslim woman. In fact, as Mountferrat and

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Zanthia are banished from Malta after their villainy is discovered at the end of the play, Norandine confirms the reproductive implications of Mountferrat’s punishment when he says “Away French stallion, now you have a Barbary mare of / your own go leap her and engender young devillings.” 106 With her procreative ability, Zanthia represents a fearful alterity to Christendom, while Lucinda, with her fair skin confirming her convertibility, denotes what Loomba calls “the possibility of controlled exchange.” 107 The following chapter analyzes yet another Jacobean play that features a convertible non-European woman, who is distinguished from her people with the white color of her skin. The fact that the play’s setting is the Moluccan Islands, which were highly contested territories among European colonizers in the early period, allows us to explore the colonial implictions of this “delicious traffic” further. NOTES 1. Daniel J. Vitkus, “Early Modern Orientalism: Representations of Islam in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Europe,” in Western Views of Islam in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, eds. David R. Blanks and Michael Frasetto, 207–30 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 210. 2. V. J. Parry, A History of the Ottoman Empire to 1730 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 105. 3. Sir Henry Blount. A Voyage into the Levant: A Briefe Relation of a Journey, Lately Performed by Master H. B. Gentleman from England by the Way of Venice, into Dalmatia, Sclavonia, Bosnia, Hungary, Macedonia, Thessaly, Thrace, Rhoades, and Egypt unto Gran Cairo: With Particular Observations Concerning the Moderne Condition of the Turkes and Other People under That Empire (London: R.C., 1636), 110. 4. Richard Knolles, The Generall Historie of the Turkes, from the First Beginning of That Nation to the Rising of the Othoman Familie: With All Notable Expeditions of the Christian Princes Against Them. Together with the Lives and Conquests of the Othoman Kings and Emperours. Faithfully Collected out of the Best Histories, Both Auncient and Moderne, and Digested into One Continual Historie until This Present Yeare 1603 (London: Islip, 1603), 71. 5. Knolles, The Generall Historie of the Turkes, 72. 6. Parry, A History of the Ottoman Empire to 1730, 73. 7. Nicholas de Nicolay in The Nauigations, Peregrinations and Voyages Made into Turkie (London: Thomas Dawson, 1585) claims that the Turks do “by outrageous force ravish these most deare infants & bodies, free by nature, from the lappes of their fathers & mothers, into a servitude of enmity more than bestiall, from babtisme to circumcision, from the companie of the Christian faith, to servitude and Barbarous infidelity, from childly & fatherly kindness to mortal enmity towards their own blood” (69). 8. Knolles, The Generall Historie of the Turkes, Preface to the Reader. 9. Knolles, The Generall Historie of the Turkes, Preface to the Reader. 10. Robert Daborne, A Christian Turned Turk, in Three Turk Plays from Early Modern Period, ed by Daniel Vitkus (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 16, 309–13. 11. C. M. Senior, A Nation of Pirates: English Piracy in Its Heyday (New York: Crane Russack, 1976), 99. For more historical information on the Order of Malta also see Peter Mullany’s “The Knights of Malta in Renaissance Drama,” Bulletin of the Modern Language Society 74 (1973): 297–310, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43342826. 12. Senior, A Nation of Pirates, 99

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13. John Fletcher, Nathan Field, and Philip Massinger, The Knight of Malta, ed. Fredson Bowers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 1, 3, 16. References are to act, scene, and line. 14. The Knight of Malta, 1, 1, 34–39. 15. The Knight of Malta, 1, 3, 156–60. 16. The Knight of Malta, 1, 3, 174. 17. The Knight of Malta, 2, 5, 184, 185. 18. The inviolable chastity of the Christian heroine is a common strategy for resistance to the Turkish threat employed in many contemporary plays. Throughout the genre Muslim men regularly desire Christian women. In turn, Christian women actively defend their chastity against the repulsive advances of these corrupt and foolish Islamic rulers. In Massinger’s The Renegado, for example, Paulina is protected from the Muslim viceroy Asambeg’s lust by a sacred relic that she wears around her neck. In Thomas Kyd’s Soliman and Perseda (1591), Perseda puts poison on her mouth and forsakes her life in order to preserve her chastity, ensuring that her pursuer dies the moment he kisses her. Probably, the most unambiguously portrayed Christian heroine that overpowers a Muslim ruler is Bess Bridges in Thomas Heywood’s The Fair Maid of the West (1600–1604). In the play, this beautiful English maiden is desired by Mullisheg, the king of Fez. Yet, in her encounters with the Moorish king, Bess successfully preserves her virginity in memory of the Englishman Spencer. Moreover, taking advantage of the king’s doting, she affects the liberation of various Christian men that the Muslim ruler holds captive. Bess’ role in the play, actually transgresses that of the Christian maiden who is merely devoted to a Christian hero. In charge of her own ship and men, Bess is a masculinized Christian woman, who is able to unite and mobilize the men around her for a greater cause (Jean E. Howard, “An English Lass Amid the Moors: Gender, Race, Sexuality and National Identity in Heywood's The Fair Maid of the West,” in Women, Race, and Writing in the Early Modern Period, eds. Margo Hendricks and Patricia Parker, 101–17 [London and New York: Routledge, 1994], 102). 19. The Knight of Malta, 1, 1, 163. 20. The Knight of Malta, 1, 1, 166–69. 21. The Knight of Malta, 1, 1, 172–82. 22. The Knight of Malta, 3, 2, 60–63. 23. The Knight of Malta, 3, 2, 64–65. 24. The Knight of Malta, 3, 2, 68–70. 25. Antony Gerard Barthelemy, Black Face, Maligned Race: The Representation of Blacks in English Drama from Shakespeare to Southerne (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987), 124. 26. Both James Walvin and Peter Fryer argue that black serving maids were common in England. In Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (London and Sydney: Pluto Press, 1984), Fryer says it was “the smart thing for titled and properties families in England to have a black slave or two among the household servants” (9). However, except for the existential evidence collected from household accounts and incidental personal memories the black Tudor woman remained historically unrecorded. According to Imtiaz Habib this documental scarcity was “a function of the particular dynamics of the black subject’s colonial encounter” (“‘Hels Perfect Character’; Or the Blackamoor Maid in Early Modern EnglishDrama: The Postcolonial Cultural History of a Dramatic Type,” Literature Interpretation Theory 11, no. 3 [2000]: 280). At the moment of their arrival, black people existed in the historical narrative of their capturers “only as miscellaneous goods and as a kind of human curiosity,” and since they had “no place in the colonizer’s hierarchy,” they had “no value for his scribal record” (Ibid.). 27. Peter Fryer, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (London and Sydney: Pluto Press, 1984), 135. 28. Kim F. Hall, Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England (New York: Cornell University Press, 1996), 4. 29. George Best, True Discourse of the Late Voyages of Discoverie (London: H. Bynnyman, 1578), 56.

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30. Kim Hall, “‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?’ Colonization and Miscegenation in The Merchant of Venice,” in New Casebooks: Merchant of Venice, William Shakespeare, ed. Martin Coyle, 92–116 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 106. 31. Joannes Leo Africanus (original name al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi) was a Spanish traveler, scholar and a diplomat who was captured by pirates and delivered to Vatican in 1518. It is told that the Pope was impressed by Leo’s learning and decided to convert him and become his godfather. He later encouraged him to write the stories of his travels. Leo’s work, A Geographical Historie of Africa was translated to English by John Pory in 1600. Leo’s accounts were also included in Purchas’s collection and remained as “the single most authoritative travel guide on Africa for the next three centuries” (Hall, Things of Darkness, 28). 32. Ania Loomba, Shakespeare, Race and Colonialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 10. 33. Throughout the sixteenth century, the Moorish people on the Iberian Peninsula revolted many times against the Spanish state, but each time were suppressed more rigorously. A 1566 edict which was protested by the Revolt of Alpujarras in 1568 prohibited “the Moriscos the use of the Arabic language, annulling of all contracts written in Arabic, surrendering all Arabic books within thirty days and prohibiting any Moorish rite, Moorish clothing, and the use of Arabic names and customs” (Anwar G. Chejne, Islam and the West: The Moriscos, a Cultural and Social History [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983], 10). In 1609, Spain decreed the expulsion of over a million of Moriscos “so that” as the Duke of Lerna put it; “all the kingdoms of Spain will remain pure and clean from this people” (Chejne, Islam and the West, 13). 34. Loomba, Shakespeare, Race and Colonialism, 7. 35. Chejne, Islam and the West, 10. For more information on the history of the Moors also see R. W. Southern, Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages (Harvard University Press, 1962); Normal Daniel, The Arabs and the Medieval Europe (London: Longman Group and Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1975); and Albert Hourani, A History of Arab Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1991). 36. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 110. 37. Reprinted in Eldred D. Jones, The Elizabethan Image of Africa (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1971), 20. 38. Nabil Matar, Turks, Moors and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1999), 7. 39. Emily Bartels, “Too Many Blackamoors: Deportation, Discrimination, and Elizabeth I,” Studies in English Literature 46, no. 2 (Spring 2006): 305. https://www.jstor.org/stable/ 3844644. 40. D’Amico, The Moor, 2. Apart from Shakespeare’s Moorish commander Othello and Aaron in Titus Andronicus, black characters of villainous type on the early modern English stage include Muly Mahamet in George Peele’s The Battle of Alcazar (1589), who is featured also in an anonymous 1605 play The Famous History of the Life and Death of Captain Thomas Stuckeley, also Ithamore in Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta (1590), Eleazar in Thomas Dekker’s Lust’s Dominion, or the Lascivious Queen (1600), and Mulymen in William Rowley’s All’s Lost by Lust (1619). 41. Senior, A Nation of Pirates, 99. 42. Virginia Mason Vaughan, Othello: A Contextual History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 27. 43. William Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Stephen Greenblatt (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), 1, 3, 290. 44. Jonathan Burton, “‘A Most Wily Bird’: Leo Africanus, Othello and the Trafficking in Difference,” in Post-Colonial Shakespeares, eds. Ania Loomba and Martin Orkin, 44–63 (London: Routledge, 1998), 58. 45. Loomba, Shakespeare, Race and Colonialism, 125. 46. Linda E. Boose, “‘The Getting of a Lawful Race’: Racial Discourse in Early Modern Englandand the Unrepresentable Black Woman,” in Women, “Race,” and Writing in the Early Modern Period, eds. Margo Hendricks and Patricia Parker (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 46.

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47. Boose, “‘The Getting of a Lawful Race,’” 46. 48. Boose, “‘The Getting of a Lawful Race,’” 46. 49. William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, ed. Stephen Greenblatt (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), 3, 5, 38–39. References are to act, scene, and line. 50. Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, 3, 4, 39–40, 42. 51. Boose, “‘The Getting of a Lawful Race,’” 47. 52. Barthelemy, Black Face, Maligned Race, 128. 53. Barthelemy, Black Face, Maligned Race, 129. 54. The Knight of Malta, 2, 5, 35–36. 55. The Knight of Malta, 1, 3, 119. 56. The Knight of Malta, 1, 1, 219. 57. The Knight of Malta, 1, 2, 222. 58. Barthelemy, Black Face, Maligned Race, 129. 59. The Knight of Malta, 3, 2, 220–23. 60. The Knight of Malta, 4, 3, 4–5. 61. Kahf, Western Representations of the Muslim Woman, 100. 62. Kahf, Western Representations of the Muslim Woman, 100. 63. The Knight of Malta, 4, 1, 100–107. 64. The Knight of Malta, 4, 1, 132–33. 65. The Knight of Malta, 4, 1, 40. 66. The Knight of Malta, 4, 2, 108. 67. The Knight of Malta, 4, 2, 132–35. 68. The Knight of Malta, 4, 2, 143. 69. The Knight of Malta, 4, 2, 150–51. 70. The Knight of Malta, 4, 4, 42–48. 71. The Knight of Malta, 4, 4, 30. 72. The Knight of Malta, 4, 4, 38. 73. The Knight of Malta, 4, 4, 39–42. 74. The Knight of Malta, 4, 4, 59. 75. The Knight of Malta, 4, 4, 275. 76. The Knight of Malta, 4, 4, 202–3. 77. The Knight of Malta, 4, 4, 244. 78. The Knight of Malta, 4, 4, 345. 79. The Knight of Malta, 2, 1, 151. 80. The Knight of Malta, 2, 1, 160–66. 81. The Knight of Malta, 2, 1, 171. 82. The Knight of Malta, 2, 1, 171. 83. Louis Adrian Montrose, “The Work of Gender in the Discourse of Discovery,” Representations, no. 33 (Winter 1991): 2. 84. Montrose, “The Work of Gender,” 6. 85. The Knight of Malta, 3, 2, 61. 86. The Knight of Malta, 3, 2, 67. 87. The Knight of Malta, 3, 3, 19–27. 88. The Knight of Malta, 3, 3, 67. 89. The Knight of Malta, 3, 4, 41. 90. The Knight of Malta, 3, 4, 36. 91. The Knight of Malta, 3, 4, 42–43. 92. The Knight of Malta, 3, 4, 44–45. 93. The Knight of Malta, 3, 4, 70. 94. The Knight of Malta, 3, 4, 90. 95. The Knight of Malta, 3, 3, 91, 92–94. 96. The Knight of Malta, 3, 4, 142. 97. The Knight of Malta, 3, 4, 115, 161. 98. The Knight of Malta, 3, 4, 159–60. 99. The Renegado, 2, 5, 149–53.

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100. Ania Loomba, “‘Delicious Traffick’: Racial and Religious Difference on Early Modern Stages,” in Shakespeare and Race, eds. Catherine M. S. Alexander and Stanley W. Wells, 203–19 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 216. 101. The Knight of Malta, 5, 2, 228. 102. The Knight of Malta, 5, 1, 4. 103. The Knight of Malta, 3, 4, 92. 104. The Knight of Malta, 3, 4, 93. 105. Loomba, “‘Delicious Traffick,’” 216. 106. The Knight of Malta, 5, 2, 344–45. 107. Loomba, “‘Delicious Traffick,’” 213.

Chapter Six

The Island Princess Colonialism, Religion, (Inter)Sexuality, and Intertextuality

John Fletcher’s The Island Princess is a tragicomedy, which was performed for the first time in 1619 by the King’s Men at the Blackfriars Theatre, and like many of Fletcher’s plays, it remained popular throughout the seventeenth century. The play’s plot is based on Le Signeur de Bellan’s novella, L’Historie du Ruis Dias, et de Quixaire, Princess des Moluccas (1615), which derives from a historical account of early Portuguese enterprise in East India, Conquista de Las Island Moluccas (1609), by Bartoleme Leonardo de Argensola. The play is the earliest and fullest treatment in English theater of the Moluccan Islands (also known as the Spice Islands) of the Indonesian archipelago, and contemporary critics generally interpret the play within the context of the English mercantile and colonial enterprise in the early modern period. Some scholars even argue that in certain aspects the play articulates both the desire and contradictions associated with this enterprise in a more sophisticated and expanded way than Shakespeare’s The Tempest. 1 The setting of this play links it to the world of East Indian commercial expansion, one of the two principal sites of early imperial enterprise together with the Americas. Moluccan Islands were the sole source of highly prized spices such as clove, mace, and nutmeg, and they constituted a key point in the Eastern colonial trade in the early modern period. Since their “discovery” by the Iberian powers in the fifteenth century, the colonial possession of these islands had always been problematic for the Europeans. In the earlier decades of the sixteenth century, the possession of Moluccas had caused a serious conflict between Portugal and Spain. Though the struggle was resolved in 1529 in favor of the Portuguese, the country lost its dominance in 143

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the Indian Ocean in the following years. Similarly, the English saw great commercial potential in Moluccas and showed considerable interest in them. Sir Francis Drake was the first Englishman to step on the Islands. In fact, this voyage, which took place in 1579, was greeted in London as a sign of the long-awaited fulfillment of English dreams of riches from the East. 2 During James’s reign, the East India Company, which assumed growing importance in the King’s foreign policies, set its eyes on the lucrative spice trade on the Islands. However, in this period the English found it impossible to gain a stable position in the Moluccas, because of the fierce competition with Dutch colonists, who already had succeeded the Spanish and the Portuguese as the principal European power in the East Indies. In the first two decades of the seventeenth century, the rivalry between the English and the Dutch for the Eastern colonial expansion became both apparent and brutal. In February 1623, things came to a bloody end, when the Dutch massacred ten English merchants on the island of Amboyna, a catastrophe that unexpectedly diminished the English interest in the Spice Islands. Clearly, when Fletcher wrote The Island Princess, the ideological and political atmosphere in England was highly charged with concerns related to early colonial enterprise. In light of these current and problematic events, the play seems to be much more than an innocent romantic story as it is likely to appear at first glance. The plot of The Island Princess centers on the competition for the hand of Quisara, princess of the Island of Tidore. She is courted by many suitors, including the rulers of neighboring islands Bakam, Siana, and Ternata, as well as the captain of the Portuguese garrison in Tidore, Ruy Dias, who is also the princess’s favorite. When the evil governor of Ternata kidnaps her brother, the king of Tidore, Quisara announces that she will marry whoever rescues him. She hopes that Ruy Dias would perform this honorable deed, because in turn it would allow him to claim her hand legitimately. However, Ruy Dias fails to rise to the challenge and the king is rescued by another Portuguese gentleman, Armusia, who has recently arrived at the island and fallen in love with the beautiful princess. Quisara is sorely disappointed with Ruy Dias’s incapacity to act, yet she remains reluctant to keep her promise to marry Armusia. However, as she recovers from disappointment, she transfers her affections to this newcomer Portuguese, and in the end unites with him. Even such a brief introduction for the plot will indicate that in The Island Princess, Fletcher draws on the familiar gendered tropes of colonial expansion that are frequently found in the discourse of early imperial enterprise. Representing the riches and beauties of her land, Quisara embodies in herself the essential metaphor of colonialism, and her status as a desirable bride motivates all the actions in the play. In this context, the love contest among the princess’s native suitors, the Portuguese commander and the gallant newcomer Armusia, can be read allegorically as a struggle for the control of the island’s material resources. 3

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In the play’s recent criticism, scholars have insistently highlighted colonial contexts as well. Shankar Raman, for example, argues that the play is a projection of English colonial ambitions in the East, with the play’s Portuguese hero as a version of Sir Francis Drake, representing the ideal English knight-merchant. 4 Michael Neill’s analysis shows that we need to read the Portuguese rivals, Ruy Dias and Armusia, representing the conflicting claims and identities of the Dutch and the English in their struggle for the Spice Islands. 5 Gordon McMullan locates the play against a western context arguing that India, the play’s location specified in the dramatis personae, probably connotes as vague an area as “the Indies,” a term applied to newfound lands both to the west and the east of Europe. He offers the play as a resetting of English experiences in the Americas and suggests that the much-publicized marriage between John Rolfe and Pocahontas in 1614 should be seen as “thoroughly rehearsed” in The Island Princess. 6 While the text does not necessarily authorize any of these interpretations in particular, since it demonstrates anxieties that are characteristic of the colonial through the metaphor of a non-European woman as the object of desire, the play can be understood as a colonial text in the broadest sense. Fletcher’s alteration of his chief source, de Bellan’s L’Historie du Ruis Dias, et de Quixaire, Princess des Moluccas (1615) is also relevant here. In de Bellan’s text, the hero is a young Tidorean aristocrat, Salama, and he performs the roles allotted to Armusia in Fletcher’s version: he rescues the captive King of Tidore, confounds his Portuguese rivals, and wins the love of Quisara. By displacing a native with a foreign husband, as Neill observes, Fletcher transforms the meaning of the story and “gives it a distinctively colonial twist.” 7 While the plot generally focuses on a tale of an interracial marriage within a romantic framework, with another significant departure from de Bellan’s text, Fletcher hints that the sole concern of the play is not early modern English colonial politics. From Act 4 onward, with an unexpected turn in the plot, the religious venture occupies center stage. Expanding the role given to the villainous governor in his principal source, Fletcher introduces him once again to the play in the disguise of a “Moorish priest” to return to Tidore and orchestrate a plan for everyone’s destruction. He urges Quisara to insist on Armusia’s conversion as a proof of his faithfulness and integrity. When Armusia refuses to convert, delivering a thundering critique of the native religion, he is thrown into prison and faces torture and martyrdom. However, this misfortune is prevented as Quisara, moved by Armusia’s resoluteness in his faith, converts to Christianity and the Portuguese act concertedly to rescue their compatriot. The play closes as the governor’s machinations are revealed, Quisara is given to Armusia, and the islanders and the Portuguese are reconciled. The sequence of events that follows the return of the governor to Tidore in priestly disguise are reminiscent of the conversion scenes that we see in

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“turning Turk” plays, which dramatize the conflict between Christianity and Islam in the Mediterranean. The threat of apostasy is, in fact, an interesting insertion to the plot, which, for the most part, seems to employ a pattern of colonial appropriation and possession. Since religious expansion was one of the essential goals of the European imperial project, Quisara’s conversion fits into a colonial scheme. Yet, the conversion threat posed to the Christian hero is uncommon in the Moluccan setting, which was geographically distant from the Ottoman influence and the religious discords between the Spanish and the Moors on the Iberian Peninsula. One may argue that Fletcher’s point in making this addition is to draw attention to the possibility of “going native” in colonial terrains. 8 Still, when Armusia vehemently refuses to convert to Quisara’s religion, he acts as little more than a mouthpiece for Christian propaganda, and within the colonial context, as McMullan notes, this is “clearly awkward.” 9 Islam appeared in the Moluccas in the late 1300s, with the arrival of Arabic merchants who became the dominant traders of spice in the region. Many of the islands, particularly those that were centers of trade, peacefully converted to Islam in that period and adapted the “sultanate” as the new social organization. Yet, Islam was only one of the religions practiced in the Moluccas. On some of the islands and in the hinterlands indigenous religions, such as animism, continued. Similarly, in Fletcher’s play it is not clear whether the Moluccans are Muslim or not. While the play includes frequent allusions to Islam, it, at the same time, carelessly equates the Muslim religion with idolatry, polytheistic and pantheistic religious practices. Nevertheless, critics like Ania Loomba and Jonathan Burton accept the Moluccans as Muslim people and concentrate on the religious conversion thematized in the play. In Quisara’s conversion to Christianity, Loomba sees a “fantasy of an Eastern queen who willingly crosses religious and cultural boundaries,” and by tracing the differences between Fletcher’s play and its source material, she focuses on the ideological work that this fantasy performs in making religion emblematic of colonial difference. 10 Burton, on the other hand, sees the play’s conversion theme from the opposite end and concentrates on the threat of apostasy posed to the Christian hero. In reading the gender dynamics of Quisara’s relationship with both Ruy Dias and Armusia separately, he shows how the play “participates in a dramatic recuperation of Christian masculinity that works to offset the effeminizing specter of turning Turk.” 11 In my analysis, I want to credit the Moluccans as both Islamic and colonial people and see Fletcher’s drama as a contextual and textual interplay between the discourse of early modern colonial experience and the discourse on Islam that was generated by trafficking in the Mediterranean. Emphasizing the play’s resemblances with the English proto-colonial narratives on the one hand, and the contemporary dramatic representations of the Christian-Muslim encounters in the Mediterranean on the other hand, I

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demonstrate how the play uses various indices of difference interchangeably and productive of each other. By employing the bodily and spiritual conquest of a non-European/Muslim woman by an idealized Christian male as a common discursive pattern, The Island Princess not only articulates the early modern English colonial desire, but also imagines the containment of the threat posed to Christianity by powerful Islam in the same period. Until its spectacular expansion in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, neither in the Western nor in the Eastern world was England considered as a preeminent power in the European colonial enterprise. In contrast to successive territorial conquests of the Portuguese and the Spanish in the Americas, England could lay claim only on a few feeble colonies. As early as the 1560s, the conquistadores started to enslave Indians to mine gold and other precious metals, almost decimating the native population. Despite several attempts, England, like other European powers, had to wait until the decline of the Spanish to gain a foothold in the New World. The first English settlement in America, Jamestown colony, was founded in 1607, and until that date, England had to make do with plunders of English privateers on Spanish shipping and attacks on the already established Spanish colonies in the Caribbean. Spain retaliated even to these small-scale initiatives and subjected the captured English sailors to the rigors of the Inquisition, which, from the point of view of Protestant England, was a major embarrassment. For this reason, the Anglo-Spanish rivalry in the New World translated into a rhetoric of Protestant resistance against the tyranny of Catholic Spain, in which the Spanish were vigorously condemned for their brutality against both their colonial rivals and native Indians. 12 Nevertheless, the main route of English expansion was not toward the West in the early modern period. The riches of the East still occupied a larger place than the New World in the imaginative horizon of English colonial and mercantile enterprise. 13 Yet, this time, the English attempts were countered by Dutch colonists, who already had established a clear strategic advantage in Eastern plantation. Unlike Catholic Spain, the Dutch were habitually conceived by the English as their Protestant brothers; however, the monopolistic claims of the United Provinces on the profitable Eastern spice trade resulted in growing hostilities between the two nations. During his voyage to the East Indies, allegedly Drake had reached a verbal agreement with the King of Ternate, who agreed to be confederate with the Queen and offered to put his kingdom under English protection. 14 However, the Dutch were unwilling to abandon their recently gained superior position and the English had to postpone their dream of a real toehold in the profits of Eastern trade. Dutch colonists did not allow the English to assert any dominance in the Moluccas and the neighboring islands by regularly attacking English ships and destroying their goods and properties.

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Clearly, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, England was not in a position to claim any superiority in the colonial rivalry among the European states. However, both in the court and in the press there was an ongoing propagandist debate, where projections were made on the future direction of English colonial plantation. As Raman remarks, unlike their Spanish and Portuguese rivals, who continuously produced epics, plays, and fictional histories to glorify their colonial ventures, Englishmen did not generate many literary representations of their colonial projects in the early modern period. 15 Yet, the bulk of other nonliterary texts that reflect a clear ideological stance toward colonialism as a vital national project indicates the determined attitude of the English in performing the task to transform the country from a mere onlooker to a central figure in the context of European expansionism. Probably the most widely acclaimed among these publications is Richard Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589; expanded 1598–1600). Both in this work as well as in his other writings, Hakluyt aimed to promote English overseas trade and colonialism by raising awareness of the benefits that England could gain from such exploits. Similarly, when Walter Raleigh published The Discoverie of the Large, Rich and Beautiful Empyre of Guiana (1596) soon after he returned from his expedition to North America, he hoped to provide support and investment for exploration and colonization of the unsettled parts of the New World. Following the establishment of the first colony in Virginia in 1607, vast numbers of texts imagined and celebrated the English colonial project. In addition, there were many well-publicized English travel accounts to the East Indies and Japan. One of these texts was the growing editions of Samuel Purchas’s Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas his Pilgrimes (1625), an encyclopedic collection, which was written as continuation to Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations. Though not published until 1625, Purchas’s text circulated in pamphlet form from 1613 onward. The common argument that is found in all these texts is that expansion and trade would be the means to strengthen the position of England as an overseas empire both economically and strategically. In fact, as Jowitt argues, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, colonial writing was a tool by which English writers articulated their own emerging sense of nationhood. 16 England’s colonial self-image was inevitably linked to its representation of other European nations, and, though they shared similar imperialistic ambitions, the English sought to form a colonial identity in contradistinction to their rivals. In these writings, the English colonists are praised for their honor, heroism, and true religious faith, while their colonial rivals are condemned for their faithlessness, cruelty, and corruption. For example, for Purchas, the monopolistic claims of the Dutch on the Spice Islands constitute the principal obstacle for the providential fulfillment of England’s mercantile destiny. In his book, he represents the Dutch in the most unflattering light

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possible, drawing attention to their cruelty, and the illegality of their hegemonic practices in the region. Similarly, Richard Hakluyt justifies English territorial interests in the New World by comparing English colonists’ relationships with indigenous Americans to Spanish colonists’ brutal treatment of the native peoples. 17 As discussed in the previous chapter, Louis Montrose’s analysis of the discourse of discovery in the early modern period shows how the feminization of the exotic territory served as a textual strategy in articulating colonial ambitions in English travel narratives. In his reading of the discourse prevalent in Renaissance accounts of encounters with the New World, Montrose argues that in proto-colonial writing representations of gender and sexual conduct provide a ready-made hierarchy of relations with which English writers negotiated a broader range of cultural differences. By gendering the land as feminine and by sexualizing its exploration and conquest, early modern colonial writers created a discursive crossover between the sexual and the colonial. 18 The starting point of Montrose’s argument is the following description of Guiana from Sir Walter Raleigh’s Discoverie: To conclude, Guiana is a countrey that hath yet her maydenhead, never sackt, turned, nor wrought, the face of the earth hath not been torne, nor the vertue and salt of the soyle spent by manurance, the graves have not bene opened for gold, the mines not broken with sledges, nor their images puld downe out of their temples. It hath never bene entered by any armie of strength, and never conquered or possessed by any Christian prince. 19

As Montrose observes, in this passage Raleigh represents Guiana as a virgin female body, which is at the same time sexually available. By means of the metaphor of maidenhead and the subsequent negations, the text emphasizes the unspoiled nature of Guiana, yet in effect, it simultaneously arouses in Raleigh’s masculine readers, an excitement at the prospect of despoiling this maiden status. 20 Drawing an analogy between a woman’s body and the land, Raleigh invites the English colonist, like the predestined husband, to come to claim this unpossessed territory, to cultivate its unwrought soil, and to extract its unmined gold. However, this enforced defloration of the land also involves destruction of the native religion and culture, as the text calls the Englishmen to pull down the pagan images out of the temples as well. Thus, Raleigh’s metaphor conveys a larger meaning than merely equating the plenitude and fertility of a woman’s body with the colonial terrain. By subsuming the indigenous peoples of Guiana in the feminine Other of the land, it effaces their cultural existence and provides an ideologically legitimized pattern of representation, which allows the subjugation of the natives by “naturalizing” the exchange between the colonizer and the colonized “as the male’s mastery of the female.” 21

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Similarly, Raleigh deploys feminine figures for making comparisons between the conduct of the Englishmen and the Spaniards in the New World. While the text identifies England and Spain as manly rivals for possession of the feminized land, it constructs a moral opposition between the English and Spanish colonists, which is epitomized in contrasting their attitudes toward Indian women. Whereas the Spanish abuse their position of mastery and use native women “for the satisfying of their own lusts,” 22 the English are distinguished from their rivals with their ability to maintain their temperance and chaste conduct. For Raleigh, what is at issue is not the masculine sexual prowess; on the contrary, it is through self-mastery and generosity that the Englishmen earn the admiration of the natives of Guiana, and it is exactly this superior morality that justifies the English territorial and colonial interests in the region. 23 Articulation of the colonial experience of the Englishmen through gendered tropes is widespread in the New World narratives of the early modern age, and as England channeled its mercantile efforts toward the East, they seem to have been readily adapted in figuring the colonial desire in East India as well. For example, when Banda attempted independent trade with the English in 1620, the Dutch responded by deporting or killing almost the entire native population and by capturing the English spice factory on the island. In Hakluytus Posthumus, Samuel Purchas represents the Dutch conquest of Banda in the kind of gendered and sexual terms that we see in Raleigh’s text: Banda is “a rich and beautiful bride [who] was once envied to English arms, and seemeth by the cries on both sides, to have been lately ravished from her new husband, unwarned, unarmed, I don’t know whither by greater force or fraud.” 24 Purchas’s rhetoric is indeed an expansion and complication of Raleigh’s metaphor. By using the social institution of marriage, he constructs the English colonialists’ intention as that of honorable and legitimate unity with the region, while representing the Dutch as violent invaders, who by fraud and ravishment defiled the honor of their recently won bride. The English traders are thus constructed sympathetically as grieving new husbands deprived of the caresses of their lawful wives. 25 Fletcher’s The Island Princess is clearly informed by these contemporary colonial writings describing the newfound lands in America as well as the encounters with the non-European cultures in East India. The depiction of Princess Quisara and the “manly” rivalry between the two European men to win her is remarkably similar to the colonial metaphors which are frequently used by English travelers. In substitution of the riches and beauties of her island, Quisara is an asset to compete over, and for the play’s male characters sexual mastery over her becomes a way of articulating the success of their masculinity. 26 Despite a number of other local suitors, the competition for the hand of Quisara concentrates on two Portuguese characters: Ruy Dias, the commander of the garrison in Tidore and the play’s hero Armusia. As a

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soldier and the master of the fort appointed by the Portuguese king, Ruy Dias is representative of the established colonial authority on the island. Armusia, on the other hand, is the newcomer, one of the “worthy Portugals” who have been “intic’d forward” 27 by the “bravery of [their] minds and spirits.” 28 In the play the gender dynamics of the love triangle between the island princess and these two characters can be read as a political allegory which figures a struggle for colonial control. By putting these two characters to test with respect to their manly vigor and virtue, the play creates an opposition between them, and idealizes a new model of Christian-European colonial identity in Armusia by endowing him with moral attributes such as heroism, temperance, and honesty. From the beginning, Fletcher’s Portuguese imagine their national enterprise in an erotically charged language, which strikingly resembles the one used in colonial narratives. Welcoming Armusia and a group of other newly arrived Portuguese, Pyniero, Captain Ruy Dias’s nephew, remarks: “Where time is, and the sun gives light, brave countrymen, / Our names are known, new worlds disclose their riches, / Their beauties, and their prides to our embraces; / And we, the first of nations, find these wonders.” 29 As in Raleigh’s Discoverie, here Pyniero creates a direct connection between the discovery and the possession of new worlds. He describes Tidore as an exotic landscape, which, like Guiana, willingly opens itself to the exploitative embraces of its discoverers. Armusia in response employs a similar rhetorical technique and represents the island as an earthly paradise: We are arriv’d among these blessed Islands, And every breath of air is like an Incense: The treasure of the Sun dwells here, each tree As if it envied the old Paradise, Strives to bring forth immortal fruit; the spices Renewing nature, though not deifying, And when that falls by time, scorning the earth, The sullen earth should taint or suck their beauties, But as we dreamt, for ever so preserve us: Nothing we see, but breeds an admiration; The very rivers as we float along, Throw up their pearls, and curl their heads to court us; The bowels of the earth swell with the births Of thousand unknown gems, and thousand riches; Nothing that bears a life, but brings a treasure; ... The people they show brave too, civil manner’d, Proportioned like the Masters of great minds, The women which I wonder at— Of delicate aspects, fair, clearly beauteous, And to that admiration, sweet and courteous. 30

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Elaborating on Pyniero’s metaphor, Armusia describes the land completely in gendered and sexual terms. He evokes the sensual delights that the island offers to them and portrays the landscape as a place “where every wind that rises blows perfumes,” and whose rivers “[t]hrow up their pearls” to “court” them. He compares the bowels of the earth to a woman’s womb, which is swollen with births of “[n]othing that bears life, but brings treasure.” Yet, the climax of Armusia’s speech comes when his description slips from abundance of land to abundance of women. 31 He expresses his admiration for the Moluccan women who are “[o]f delicate aspects, fair” and “clearly beauteous,” and he presumes that they ought to be as much “courteous” as the other products of the island, which voluntarily offer themselves to the colonists. Kindled with Armusia’s reveries of wonder, Soza proclaims “[w]e are fire already; / The wealthy magazine of nature sure / Inhabits here. 32 Despite the similarities in their reactions to the beauties and riches of the islands, Pyniero and Armusia differ significantly in their attitudes toward the native population. Though Pyniero acts as a mediator between the rival Portuguese factions at a later point in the play, at this early stage, as Ruy Dias’s nephew, he represents the old colonial rule. Proper to the attributes of this former type of colonist, Pyniero views the East Indian people with suspicion and urges control over them. In the opening scene of the play, he describes them as “base breedings” and warns the guards to keep “[t]heir vigilant eyes fix’d on these Islanders,” because “[t]hey are a false and desperate people, when they find / The least occasion open to encouragement, / Cruel and crafty souls, believe me Gentlemen.” 33 By contrast, echoing the tendency in travel narratives to represent the English as sympathetic friends to the natives, Armusia discovers in the islanders a people, “brave too, civil mannered / Proportioned like the Masters of great minds.” 34 Thus, from the very beginning Fletcher draws a distinction between the two types of European colonialists represented in the play with respect to their purpose and position against the native people of the Moluccas. In contrast to the established rule, which seeks military domination, Armusia’s role looks like a civil one, reflecting mercantile intentions similar to those expressed in English colonial writings. If the natives are “base” and “crafty” as Pyniero suggests, Princess Quisara is clearly different from her people with her admirable beauty and honorable behavior. At the very beginning of the play, we learn from Pedro that “fair” Quisara is much sought after by suitors, and she has proved her “noble mind” by her anguish at the capture of her brother. The fairness of the princess is more explicitly described when Christophero imagines that “[t]he very sun . . . affects her sweetness / And dares not as he does to all else, dye it / Into his tawny livery.” 35 Thus, the first thing that the play emphasizes about Quisara is her beauty and white skin. In European thought, whiteness is traditionally associated with Christian purity, and, here, it is used as a mark

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that distinguishes Quisara from the dark-skinned Moluccan people and approximate her to the Portuguese colonists. The racial implication of Christophero’s remarks becomes clearer as cynical Pyniero refuses to be “fool’d” by the princess’s fair skin. He asserts that she merely “keeps herself at a distance” from the sun “[a]nd wears her complexion in a case; let him but like it / A week or two, or three, she’d look like a Lion.” 36 In other words, Quisara is “complete” 37 in the eyes of the Portuguese soldiers, only by virtue of being white. If she were exposed to sunrays, soon she would be like her fellow Moluccans, who, apparently, for Pyniero look like nothing but savage animals. Thus, her skin color is essential in constructing Quisara as a woman desirable by the European men; and when she will convert to Christianity and marry Armusia at the end of the play, her conversion will help to assimilate her more easily into the European framework by eliminating the problem of miscegenation. In this respect, Quisara aligns with the Ottoman princess Donusa in The Renegado, and the Turkish virgin Lucinda in The Knight of Malta. In all three cases, the whiteness and noble rank of the non-European women limit the alterity between them and their Christian counterparts, and signal that they can be smoothly incorporated into European culture, religion, and family without posing any particular threat to the society’s integrity. 38 As a white, beautiful, and unmarried princess with considerable territorial dowry, Quisara is indeed, as Jowitt puts it, “tempting bait” for the Portuguese. 39 While, on the one hand, she is the metaphor for the virgin and fertile territories of her island ready to be husbanded by the colonists, on the other hand, with her whiteness, she acts as a go-between that creates the necessary link to facilitate the process of colonization and assimilation of the Moluccans by the Europeans. 40 While the plot is structured on a simple question of the male characters that will make the best husband for the princess, Fletcher complicates the issue by depicting Quisara, not as the passive colonial terrains of travel narratives but as an active participant in making this choice. Quisara decides to use the quest to release her brother as a love-test and promises to marry the man who rescues him. In her opening words, she complains that though she is an independent and powerful princess, she is vulnerable as a woman, plagued by impatient suitors at a time when her brother is absent: though I be A Princess, and by that Prerogative stand free And no ways bound to render up my actions, Because no power above me can examine me; Yet my dear brother being still a prisoner, And many wand’ring eyes upon my ways, Being left alone a Sea-mark, it behoves me To use a little caution, and be circumspect. 41

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Thus, despite her commanding position as a princess, Quisara is obviously in need of a champion who will combine gentleness toward her with the ability to rescue her brother. 42 She gathers her suitors together and announces her decision; then, like the personification of the maiden colonial lands described in travelogues, she declares the essential features of this champion who will win her: “he must travell for me / Must put his hasty rape off and put on / A well confirmed, a temperate and true valour.” 43 Quisara vows to be the bride of this true knight, yet soon we learn that she already has a favored candidate in her mind, the Portuguese captain Ruy Dias. In private, she attempts to incite him to take on the deed with promises of love. Whereas Ruy Dias “dare[s] not speak” his passion, Quisara takes the initiative in expressing her desires and speaks for him: “I dare then / That you might to hope to marry me.” 44 She urges him to “[d]o some brave thing . . . of such an unmatch’d nobleness” “[t]hat may compel my faith, and ask my freedom.” 45 Quisara half-promises to convert, yet her forward speech seems to render Ruy Dias completely inactive, as he finds himself tongue-tied. 46 In this scene, Quisara approximates bold Saracen princesses of medieval romances, who eagerly pursue their Christian lovers, and in turn demand heroic action as proof of desire and worth. At the same time the inversion of the normative gender hierarchy between the two lovers reveals the female-dominated nature of the power relation between them. 47 Though Ruy Dias uses the appropriate language of knightly devotion in responding to his lady’s request, all reveals to be empty rhetoric, as he makes it clear that he is pathetically unable to perform the heroic role expected of him. While he proclaims “[c]ommand dear Lady, / And let the danger be as deep as hell, / As direful to attempt,” 48 in the next scene he proves to be too slow to undertake the deed, finding excuses for his delay. In contrast, his younger fellow citizen Armusia offers the fantasy of a more virile and virtuous Christianity. 49 Leaving Ruy Dias in frustration, he storms the governor’s prison, frees the captive king, and claims the princess. The implicit contrast is significant. On the one hand, Ruy Dias, the representation of the established military rule in the colonial East, is shown to lack the necessary courage and virtue to be worthy of becoming the husband of the princess. On the other hand, Armusia, the new colonial ideal, acts swiftly in rescuing the captive king and proves his courage and manly vigor. The Portuguese hero’s victory over his compatriot, Ruy Dias, becomes definitive when Pyniero, impressed with Armusia’s bravery, confesses: “He will get her with child too, ere you shall come to know him.” 50 Despite her vow to marry her brother’s rescuer, Quisara displays no intention to wed Armusia. While the king, who is now restored to the throne, wants to hasten the nuptials between them, Quisara asks for time, and in the meantime, she and Ruy Dias separately plot against Armusia in order to get rid of him. Armusia is disappointed with the princess’s reluctance, however

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he refrains from forcing her affections. His companions Soza and Emanuel advise him to establish his mastery in the proper manly way: “shake her / Take her and toss her like a bar,” “pitch her upon a feather bed” where “you may break her will but bruise no bone sir.” 51 Yet, Armusia declines such “shows too boisterous, / For my affections are as fair and gentle, / As her they serve.” 52 Thus, Armusia is not only a man of action, but also a true gentleman. While his chivalric success in the princess’s love-test shows that he is no less manly than Ruy Dias, his self-mastery and virtuous conduct clearly distinguish him from his rival countryman, who, meanwhile, is conspiring behind his back. 53 In emphasizing this distinction between the two Portuguese suitors, the scene in Quisara’s bedchamber acquires considerable symbolic weight. When Armusia enters into her room secretly, hoping to convince her by talking, Quisara accuses him of trying to dishonor her. Yet, Armusia protests elaborately by saying that his deep humility and service should not be misread as “violence” or a “ruffian’s boldness.” 54 He entices the princess and mitigates her hostility with his courtly manners. However, Ruy Dias, who storms into the room at this moment, displays completely the opposite behavior. Realizing that he is losing the contest for the princess’s affections, he becomes jealous and loses his temper. While Armusia declines to argue in front of the princess and leaves the room peacefully, Ruy Dias starts to question Quisara in a manner that is clearly not appropriate to his status as the princess’s servant. It is exactly at this moment that Quisara sees through Ruy Dias’s fraud. She furiously asserts her royal status and, contrasting him with Armusia, she rejects the Portuguese captain, as he is: nothing but a sound a shape, The mere sign of a Soldier—of a Lover The dregs and draffy part, disgrace and jealousy, I scorn thee, and condemn thee. 55

Though Quisara earlier thought that the Portuguese were “rare wonders, / The Lords of fate and fortune,” 56 she now understands that what she saw in Ruy Dias was only the “shape,” a “mere sign.” His failure in the love-test and his show of intemperance prove that he possesses only the outward trappings of virtue and lacks the valuable inside needed as a soldier and lover. On the other hand, Armusia opens Quisara’s eyes to his “pure soul” 57 and to his “innocence.” 58 She recognizes that Ruy Dias’s “fog still” has prevented her from seeing the truth: “Sure I was blind when I first loved this fellow.” 59 Thus, the island princess makes her choice between the two Portuguese suitors. However, within the colonial scheme of the play she does more than simply choosing the right husband for herself: she chooses between two colonizing powers that look alike but are actually very different. 60 With his

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virtuous conduct and superior temperance, Armusia rises above Ruy Dias’s violent jealousy and earns the love and admiration of Quisara, just like Raleigh’s Englishmen, who distinguish themselves from their Spanish rivals by the same qualities and earn the allegiance of the natives of Guiana. By making use of gendered tropes similar to those found in English travel narratives, Fletcher dramatizes a colonial allegory through the romantic relationship between the island princess and her two Portuguese suitors. By drawing a comparison between these two men with respect to their masculine virtue and manly valor, the playwright idealizes in Armusia a colonial identity which he offers as a worthy alternative to the older type represented by Ruy Dias. Fletcher supports the colonial context of the play also by means of theatrical devices that emphasize the superiority of the Europeans over the colonized Moluccans in terms of both their subtlety and their technical knowledge. The fulfillment of the quest by Armusia is enabled by the use of gunpowder, a relatively new technology unfamiliar to naive Moluccans. Armusia’s followers start a spectacular firing in the town of Ternata, which leaves the natives “stand wond’ring at” 61 and gives Armusia the time needed to free the captive King. In addition, in order to penetrate into the enemy’s stronghold “suspectless,” 62 the Portuguese rescuers disguise themselves as “merchants, arm’d underneath.” 63 Using disguise as a stage device Fletcher superimposes the identities of merchant and soldier in his Portuguese characters. 64 By doing this, he proposes a cunning strategy for the course of European colonial project, in which, as Raman argues, “mercantile activity provides title and right for the military colonizing subject,” 65 or if we use Armusia’s terms, in which “policy” prepares the way for “manly force.” 66 Yet, at the same time, the play surprisingly acknowledges the duplicity of this strategy, when the governor of Ternata attempts to persuade the king of Tidore of the dangers posed by Portuguese colonists: These men came hither as my vision tells me, Poor, weatherbeaten, almost lost, starv’d, feebled, Their vessels like themselves, most miserable; Made a long suit for traffic, and for comfort, To vent their children’s toys, cure their diseases: They had their suit, they landed and to th’rate Grew rich and powerful, suck’d the fat, and freedom Of this most blessed Isle, taught her to tremble; Witness the Castle here, the Citadel, They have clapp’d upon the neck of your Tidore, This happy town, till that she knew these strangers, To check her when she’s jolly . . . Though you be pleased to glorifie that fortune, And think these strangers Gods, take heed I say, I find it but a handsome preparation,

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A fair fac’d Prologue to a further mischief. 67

At this point in the play, the governor is disguised, seeking to advance another plot against Tidore, and for this reason his credibility is severely undermined. Yet, his perception of the reality under the surface of the Portuguese support for Tidore is startlingly accurate. Without exaggerating, he describes the process of colonization starting from the moment of arrival when the colonists are weak and seemingly harmless people, to their taking over of the island and the likelihood of a future oppression. As McMullan notes, this is a remarkable deconstruction of the motives of the entire colonial project and denotes a European awareness with respect to the real nature and consequences of the process of colonization. 68 Despite the fact that The Island Princess strikingly fits into the discursive patterns used in articulating the colonial experience of England in the early modern age, certain elements of the play align it significantly with the dramatic works analyzed earlier in this study, works which center on ChristianIslamic encounters in the Mediterranean in the same period. As the governor of Ternata returns to Tidore in the guise of a Moorish priest to take his revenge, a play that has been proceeding quite smoothly suddenly diverts into the enactment of the fantasy of unchallenged Christian manhood against the feminized threat of Islam. Because of the governor’s evil insinuations, Quisara demands the conversion of Armusia to her religion as a condition for marriage. The entailing events follow almost the identical sequence of the plot of Massinger’s The Renegado. Terrified at the thought of changing his religion, Armusia expresses hatred against both Quisara and the native religion, risking captivity and death. However, in the end, his absolute stubbornness and honor win Quisara to his side, as she recognizes the truth contained in her lover’s religion and willingly converts to Christianity. Quisara’s conversion to Christianity clearly makes sense within the colonial context of the play. Converting the natives to Christian religion was essential to the logic of imperial expansion. It was indeed, as McMullan notes, “the godly duty that justified the entire colonial enterprise.” 69 In the play this motive is emphasized in the initial act, when, in order to encourage Ruy Dias to undertake the love-test, Quisara allows him to believe that she would convert to his religion and become “a sweet soul’d Chistian.” 70 In the beginning, the possibility of a marriage between Quisara and Ruy Dias does not pose any particular threat on the religious faith of the Christian man. However, from Act 4 onward, the direction of conversion is turned to the opposite side and presented as a principal danger to the princess’s Christian lover, who is now Armusia. Since the Moluccan kingdoms were not powerful Islamic empires, like the Ottoman or Persian ones, depicting a tale of apostasy in the Moluccan setting is quite atypical. While there are few examples of European men “going native” in the eastern colonial territories, these

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instances do not involve religious conversions, and their numbers fall short of explaining the play’s emphasis on the threat of apostasy. 71 The central role given to the religious conflict within the economy of Fletcher’s drama can be understood fully only when the play is seen as an interplay between two separate discourses which are generated by the contact with non-European cultures, but within different contexts. While in the male rivalry between the two Portuguese for the hand of Quisara the play alludes to colonial metaphors, when it introduces the threat of religious conversion it borrows from contemporary dramatizations of Christian encounters with Islam in the Mediterranean. While both discourses negotiate the contact with the Other, the driving forces that undergird their productions are distinctive. Within the context of colonization, the Europeans of the play clearly have the upper hand against the Moluccans and they try to justify their colonial interests on the islands. Yet, in the Mediterranean context, the power balances are quite the opposite. Here, the threatened ones are the Europeans, because they frequently succumb to lures of Islam and face conversion and assimilation. Though it appears contradictory and thus a bit awkward, Fletcher combines these two different contexts in his romantic drama, employing the established dynamics of gender relations as their common characteristic. In other words, by using images, paradigms, and metaphors related to separate contexts interchangeably, the play reveals how various categories of difference can be used generative of each other in mediating and negotiating concerns associated with the Other. In dramatizing the conversion threat posed to his Christian hero, Fletcher employs a similar pattern that we observe in “turning Turk” plays. The governor tries to turn Quisara’s affections away from Armusia by appealing to her religious and nationalist sentiments. In order to persuade the princess to his schemes, he praises her beauty with exaggerated flatteries and urges her to “[u]se it discreetly” to the advantage of her own people. 72 He compares her to a “heavenly form” whose “miracle must work on” the Portuguese like a “chain” that Quisara should keep fast “[a]nd link it to our gods, and their fair worships.” 73 While all this is nothing more than a ploy for him, because he anticipates Armusia’s reaction, the governor here applies the same strategy that the Turkish men in Daborne’s A Christian Turned Turk use in convincing Ward. He seeks to draw the Christian man into apostasy by using the allure and desirability of a Muslim woman. Despite the fact that the governor speaks of a polytheistic religion here, his disguise as a Moorish priest is clearly a religious denominator. 74 When Armusia rejects to change religion and is imprisoned immediately thereafter, the play approximates the stories of physical captivity and forced conversions that inform Daborne’s and Massinger’s plays. Additionally, the portrayal of Quisara falls into the stereotype of the Muslim women in “turning Turk” plays, who are depicted as powerful and

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dangerous temptresses. Though her exceptional beauty and honor are frequently praised by the Portuguese, if we “observe her close” as Pyniero warns us in the opening act, we shall indeed “find her nature . . . will not prove excellent.” 75 Quisara’s sexuality is a dangerous dynamic in the world of the play, and she thoroughly exploits her royal status and beauty causing unjust and corrupt actions. The love-test she orchestrates in Act 1 is shown to be ill-intended. It is not a fair contest, because Quisara has designed it with a winner in mind, even if she has entirely misread the character of her favored candidate. When Ruy Dias proves inadequate to the task, Quisara withdraws her promise to marry the victor, and meanwhile she attempts to corrupt Pyniero with veiled promises of sexual favors in exchange for murdering Armusia. Yet, most importantly, the apparent reason for the love-test, the welfare of her brother, is shown to be utterly subservient to the fulfillment of her erotic desires, as it is solely about securing the man she wants for her husband rather than the safe return of her brother. 76 In other words, she plays with her brother’s life in order to fulfill her vanity and romantic whims. Quisara is clearly a woman controlled by her emotions, and in the play, instead of powerful Muslim men, the threat of apostasy comes from this spoilt and unruly non-European woman. When Quisara attempts to convert Armusia to the native religion under the cautious eye of the governor, the Christian hero’s earlier excitement about the exotic wonders of the Moluccan Islands instantly evaporates into hateful disgust, and the real stakes of the whole encounter between Armusia and Quisara reveal to be religion. When the princess asks Armusia to “[w]orship our Gods, renounce that faith you are bred in,” 77 he violently rants against the “maumet Gods” 78 of Quisara’s religion, which he presents as a confused mixture of Islam and idolatry. He accuses the islanders of human sacrifice and devil worship, and threatens to destroy them and their temples for having tried to beguile him. While the princess can hardly be claimed to have seduced Armusia throughout the play, as she was trying to avoid marriage to him, at this point, the Portuguese hero represents her as an emblem of the temptress who causes man’s self-destruction. He regrets succumbing to her and repents: Have mercy heaven, how have I been wand’ring? Wand’ring the way of lust, and left my maker? How have I slept like a Cork upon a water, And had no feeling of the storm that toss’d me? Trod the blind paths of death? Forsook assurance, Eternity of blessedness for a woman? For a young handsome face hazard my being? 79

While cultural or racial differences have not impeded Armusia in pursuing Quisara’s affections up to this point, after the princess asks him to convert,

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religion becomes the absolute marker of irreconcilability between the two lovers. In the eyes of Armusia, Quisara’s once “young” and “handsome” face is now transformed into ugliness that “looks like death itself.” 80 When Quisara persists in her efforts, Armusia finds her “painted” and “crafty,” and accuses her of using “devilish arts” to tempt him. 81 Lowering Quisara from her former goddess-like status, Armusia presents her as the incarnation of the Devil in woman form, and in doing this, he uses the differences of gender, color, and religion interchangeably. Interestingly, it is at this particular moment, when Armusia vehemently curses and scorns Quisara that the princess is transformed suddenly, recognizing how truly she loves and honors this man. As in the conversion of Donusa in Massinger’s The Renegado, the Christian hero’s fervent rejection of her seduction, authority, and religion creates a curious effect on the princess, and she declares her intention to convert to Christianity. As Armusia gives one final speech scolding frantically the Moluccan gods and challenging them to “glut themselves with Christian blood” 82 she crosses over to his side: Stand fast sir, And fear ’em not; you that stepp’d so nobly Into this pious trial, start not now, Keep on your way, a virgin will assist ye, A virgin won by your fair constancy, And glorying that she is won so, will die by ye; I’ve touched you every way, tried ye most honest, Perfect, and good, chaste, blushing-chaste, and temperate, Indeed the perfect school of worth I find ye, The temple of true honour. 83

Rather than converting her Christian lover, Quisara is herself converted by Armusia’s “fair constancy” and steadfastness, which induced her to abandon her own faith. As the “mist of ignorance” 84 is cleared away from her eyes, she finally recognizes the “truth” in Armusia’s religion and willingly chooses to embrace martyrdom together with him. As in The Renegado, so in Fletcher’s play the Muslim princess’s conversion clearly comes as a consequence of her love for the Christian hero. Quisara is persuaded to change religion as she understands the value of the Christian faith through her lover’s character, which she describes as “the perfect school of worth.” As she converts, she simultaneously transforms into an embodiment of womanly compliance. The once unruly and authoritative princess now asks Armusia to be her guide, to “instruct” her. Like Donusa in Massinger’s play, who declares to be her Christian lover’s “humble shadow,” 85 Quisara insists: “Which way you go sir, I must follow.” 86 The change in Quisara’s character contrasts strikingly with her earlier depiction. It appears that her submission to Christianity en-

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tails her submission to masculine authority as a natural consequence. Thus, by turning the dangerous non-Christian princess into a tractable paragon of Christian womanhood, the play not only confirms the superiority of Christianity to the infidel, but also validates Christian patriarchal prerogatives that urge men’s dominant place over women. In her conversion speech, Quisara also puts emphasis on her status as a virgin, recalling the colonial context of the play in which she signifies the unravished and fertile territories of the Spice Islands. While Quisara’s conversion denotes that she is sexually and spiritually conquered by Armusia’s “honest,” “chaste,” and “temperate” masculinity, it at the same time legitimizes the conquest of her virgin body by the same masculinity in the marriage which is soon to take place. Thus, by using the gender dynamics of the relationship between Quisara and Armusia as a proving ground, Fletcher’s drama negotiates both the European colonial desire and Christianity’s conflict with Islam simultaneously. While with his virtuous and temperate conduct, Armusia becomes victorious against his rival compatriot, with religious resistance, he overcomes the Islamic threat, and both cases are inscribed in a pattern that ensures a greater male control over the female in general. The happy conclusion of the play is also provided through a similar instance of interfaith desire between Quisara’s waiting woman Panura and Ruy Dias’s nephew Pyniero. Panura’s love for Pyniero eventually leads her to betray the disguised governor to the Portuguese, and with her bravery and wholeheartedness, she charms him. Yet, in this relationship, the Christian man’s religion is never threatened; on the contrary, Pyniero uses his intimacy with Panura as an opportunity to win her to Christianity and immediately offers to convert her. Simultaneously, the information provided by Panura allows the Portuguese soldiers to initiate a bold rescue of their captive countryman. In the face of religious challenge Armusia and Ruy Dias, who were once rivals and divided, reunite and defeat the governor, revealing him as a “false prophet”—the same charge laid against Muhammad in the European accounts of Islam. The play closes as the king seizes Ternata, giving its main castle over to Pyniero, and announces that he too is “half persuaded” 87 toward the new faith. While the play’s end is clearly to the advantage of the Portuguese colonists, Fletcher subtly undercuts the significance of this victory. Since the king remains only “half persuaded” and firmly established on the thrones of both Tidore and Ternata, the princess’s betrothal to Armusia stands in more for a familial infiltration of the colonial rather than a full conquest. In view of England’s weak position both against Islam and as a European colonial power, it is understandable that Fletcher refrains from securing definitive domination over the Moluccan people of the East Indies. Perhaps this is a projection that would only be redeemed at a later time, when England stamps the world as the principal colonial power and establishes

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irreversibly the hierarchy between a dominant England and a dominated East. NOTES 1. See for example Gordon McMullan’s critical analysis in The Politics of Unease in the Plays of John Fletcher (1994). 2. Shankar Raman, Framing India: The Colonial Imagery in Early Modern Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 157. Sir Francis Drake began his circumnavigation of the globe from Plymouth on December 13, 1577. Having plundered Spanish settlements and shipping on his voyage through the Straits of Magellan and up the coast of Chile to the north of California, he arrived at Ternata in the East Indies on November 3, 1579. 3. Michael Neill, Putting History to the Question: Power, Politics, and Society in English Renaissance Drama (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 325. 4. Raman, Framing India, 160 5. Neill, Putting History to the Question, 318. 6. Gordon McMullan, The Politics of Unease in the Plays of John Fletcher (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994), 224. John Rolfe, the survivor of the wreck of the English ship, Sea Venture, wrote to the governor of Virginia in 1614 to ask his permission to marry the Virginian princess Pocahontas. Rolfe’s arguments to justify his marriage exemplify those propounded in the English proto-colonial discourse as he claims that his endeavor is not driven by his “vnbridled desire for carnall affection,” but his intention to do something “for the good of plantacon, the honor of or Countrye, for the glorye of God, for myne owne salvacon, and for the convertynge to the true knowledge of God and Iesus Christ an vnbelievnge Creature, namely Pokahuntas” (quoted in McMullan, The Politics of Unease in the Plays of John Fletcher, 223). 7. Neill, Putting History to Question, 323. 8. Raman, Framing India, 179. 9. McMullan, The Politics of Unease in the Plays of John Fletcher, 234. 10. Ania Loomba, “Break Her Will and Bruise No Bone Sir: Colonial and Sexual Mastery in Fletcher’s The Island Princess,” in Mastering Western Texts: Essays on Literature and Society, ed. A. N. Kaul, 91–115 (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003), 94. 11. Jonathan Burton, Traffic and Turning: Islam and English Drama 1579–1624 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005) 139. 12. Joan Pong Linton, The Romance of the New World: Gender and Literary Formations of English Colonialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 6. 13. Neill, Putting History to Question, 315. 14. Raman, Framing India, 157. Raman considers this treaty as England’s first real toehold for a share in the eastern trade. 15. Raman, Framing India, 161. 16. Claire Jowitt, Voyage Drama and Gender Politics, 1589–1642 (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2003), 2. 17. While the colonial writers tend to represent the competition between England and its rivals as a crucial opposition between distinct systems of value and exchange, as the experience of settlement in Ireland in the same period demonstrates, England’s colonial predecessors also served as models for the nation’s imperial projections. Though they produced a whole body of literature condemning the Spanish atrocities in the West Indies, as Fuchs points out, this seems not to have prevented the English from using the same colonial logic in characterizing the Irish as barbarous and subjecting them to a similar treatment that the Native Americans received at the hands of the Spanish (Barbara Fuchs, “Conquering Islands: Contextualizing The Tempest,” Shakespeare Quarterly 48 no. 1 [Spring 1997]: 52). 18. Louis Adrian Montrose, “The Work of Gender in the Discourse of Discovery,” Representations, no. 33 (Winter 1991): 2. 19. Walter Raleigh quoted in Montrose, “The Work of Gender,” 12.

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20. Montrose, “The Work of Gender,” 12. 21. Montrose, “The Work of Gender,” 12. 22. Walter Raleigh quoted in Montrose “The Work of Gender,” 20. 23. Montrose, “The Work of Gender,” 20. 24. Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes, vol. 5 (Glasgow: J. MacLehose and Sons, 1905), 237. 25. Jowitt, Voyage Drama and Gender Politics, 1589–1642, 125. 26. Jowitt, Voyage Drama and Gender Politics, 1589–1642, 124. 27. John Fletcher, The Island Princess, edition prepared for the Royal Shakespeare Company (London: Nick Hern Books, 2002), 1, 3, 13. 28. The Island Princess, 1, 3, 14. 29. The Island Princess, 1, 3, 9–11. 30. The Island Princess, 1, 3, 20–40. 31. McMullan, The Politics of Unease in the Plays of John Fletcher, 228. 32. The Island Princess, 1, 3, 42–44. 33. The Island Princess, 1, 1, 3–6. 34. The Island Princess, 1, 3, 33–34. 35. The Island Princess, 1, 1, 60–62. 36. The Island Princess, 1, 1, 63–64. 37. The Island Princess, 1, 1, 59. 38. Loomba, “Break Her Will and Bruise No Bone Sir,” 99. 39. Jowitt, Voyage Drama and Gender Politics, 1589–1642, 134. 40. Jowitt, Voyage Drama and Gender Politics, 1589–1642, 134. 41. The Island Princess, 1, 2, 6–11. 42. Loomba, “Break Her Will and Bruise No Bone Sir,” 99. 43. The Island Princess, 1, 3, 126–28. 44. The Island Princess, 1, 2, 52–53. 45. The Island Princess, 1, 2, 57, 69. 46. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 141. 47. Jowitt, Voyage Drama and Gender Politics, 1589–1642, 126. 48. The Island Princess, 1, 2, 72–74. 49. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 141. 50. The Island Princess, 2, 5, 68–69. 51. The Island Princess, 3, 2, 23, 28. 52. The Island Princess, 3, 2, 46–48. 53. Loomba, “Break Her Will and Bruise No Bone Sir,” 101. 54. The Island Princess, 3, 3, 58, 60. 55. The Island Princess, 3, 3, 155–58. 56. The Island Princess, 2, 5, 15–16. 57. The Island Princess, 3, 3, 122. 58. The Island Princess, 3, 3, 122. 59. The Island Princess, 3, 3, 123. 60. Raman, Framing India, 163. 61. The Island Princess, 2, 2, 41. 62. The Island Princess, 2, 1, 13. 63. The Island Princess, 2, 2, 1. 64. Raman, Framing India, 168. 65. The Island Princess, 171. 66. The Island Princess, 2, 2, 18, 19. 67. The Island Princess, 4, 1, 41–52, 55–58. 68. McMullan, The Politics of Unease in the Plays of John Fletcher, 232. 69. The Island Princess, 228. 70. The Island Princess, 1, 2, 47. 71. For example: Francisco Serrão, a Portuguese explorer and a cousin of Ferdinand Magellan, shipwrecked and stranded at Hitu Island in 1512. Later, he established ties with the Sultan of Ternate and became his personal advisor for all matters including military and family issues.

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Having been well received by the Sultan, Serrão never left the island, married a native woman and lived like a “white rajah” until he was poisoned by the Sultan of Ternate in 1521. 72. The Island Princess, 4, 2, 153. 73. The Island Princess, 4, 2, 161,170. 74. Burton, Traffic and Turning, 141. 75. The Island Princess, 1, 1, 43, 44. 76. Jowitt, Voyage Drama and Gender Politics, 1589–1642, 130. 77. The Island Princess, 4, 5, 34. 78. The Island Princess, 4, 5, 41. 79. The Island Princess, 4, 5, 56–62. 80. The Island Princess, 4, 5, 104. 81. The Island Princess, 4, 5, 119, 143, 145. 82. The Island Princess, 5, 2, 87. 83. The Island Princess, 5, 2, 97–106. 84. The Island Princess, 4, 5, 88. 85. Philip Massinger, The Renegado, ed. Daniel J. Vitkus (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 5, 3, 85. 86. The Island Princess, 5, 5, 55. 87. The Island Princess, 5, 5, 89.

Conclusion

The subjugated and voiceless Muslim woman represented in North American and European mass media today might seem as an immutable, essential image that is rooted in the historical past. Yet, the analyses that I have offered in this study reveal quite a different picture. Instead of the oppressed, secluded, and silenced figures of modern discourses on Islam, early modern English texts feature assertive and articulate female figures, who transgress the traditional bounds of femininity. In some of these texts, Islamic women are presented as powerful queens or noblewomen, who are endowed with sovereign authority and act as representatives of the earthly Islamic power. In some others, they are depicted as unruly seductresses, who invert the patriarchal gender dynamics and dominate both Muslim and Christian men. While the notions of the harem and veil are not absent from these representations, they appear to be indicators of camouflaged lust and outrageous sexuality, rather than characterizations of Islam as prohibitive religion. The rhetorical move in many early modern texts involving a Muslim woman is not to free her from oppression, as it is in modern representations, but to subdue her. Instead of the emphasis on her irreducible alterity, there is often an attempt to recuperate her as a Christian. Postcolonial theory sees the image of the Muslim woman that is constructed by late-twentieth-century media as an outcome of Orientalist discourses which emerged in the late-eighteenth century with the French invasion of Egypt and continuously expanded as the European military and political superiority over the Middle East became more certain. The hegemonic power that the Europeans attained over the East enabled them to define the Oriental Other as their inferior opposite, in terms of culture, religion, and social structure, and the image of the Muslim woman became an effective discursive vehicle for expressing the European desire of conquest and justify165

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ing domination. Yet, as I have tried to show in the preceding chapters, global power balances were not always in favor of Europe throughout history. Especially in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, none of the European states was in the position to claim superiority against the powerful Islamic empire of the Ottomans. Like in the colonial period, in the early modern era the image of the Muslim woman appeared as an essential discursive catalyst in the articulation of Europe’s cross-cultural relationship with Islam. Yet, rather than denoting the East’s backwardness or its availability for Europe’s possession, this earlier image was loaded with meanings which reflected anxieties with respect to the perceived religious and imperial threat posed by the Ottoman Empire. The arguments and the analyses of various early modern English historical and dramatic texts that I presented in this study point to the conclusion that the image of the Muslim woman, rather than being considered a timeless phenomenon, should be seen as an evolving picture, whose elements were modified throughout the ages in parallel with both the global and the domestic dynamics that informed the European mindset in each particular period. 1 In this process of evolution, some of the previously emerged attributes of the image of the Muslim woman were discarded and some new ones were acquired, while still some others were reappropriated and reintroduced to the image in line with the political and ideological implications of specific moments in history. The modifications in the representation of the Muslim woman were dependent mostly on how Europe defined itself vis-à-vis the Islamic world. In other words, the power balances between Europe and Islam had a direct impact on how Islamic women were perceived by Western people. In addition, the notions of difference that shaped the European sense of normative selfhood, such as gender, sexuality, race, and class, significantly contributed to this evolution. Especially Christian-European patriarchal prerogatives with respect to gender, as well as the changing definitions of ideal womanhood had profound effect on how Europeans understood and represented Islamic femininity in different ages. In our contemporary era, when the equality between man and woman is considered a hallmark of civilized Western societies, Muslim women are portrayed as weak and subordinated figures, who are victimized by the absolute Islamic male domination. However, at a time when European patriarchy condemned female independency and favored a passive and humble disposition in women, Western writers often represented Islamic women as transgressive and degenerate female figures, who subverted the established gender norms. To sum up, the image of the Muslim woman in early modern European discourses was cut out according to the gender standards of European men, alongside the political and ideological meanings attributed to Islam in that particular era. For this reason, any study on Western representations of Is-

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lamic women should be historically and geographically specific, rather than resorting to generalizations, and should involve a multidisciplinary approach, which incorporates the reading of literary and historical texts against both the European politics toward Islam and the domestic constructions of gender and social hierarchies dictated by the dominant ideology in a given age. NOTE 1. Mohja Kahf, Western Representations of the Muslim Woman: From Termagant to Odalisque (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002), 4.

Appendix A Further Reading

Adelman, Janet. “Her Father’s Blood: Race, Conversion and Nation in The Merchant of Venice.” Representations 81, no. 1 (Winter 2003): 4–30. Alexander, Catherine M.S. and Stanley Wells, eds. Shakespeare and Race. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Barthelemy, Anthony Gerard, ed. Critical Essays on Shakespeare’s Othello. New York: G.K. Hall and Co., 1994. Bate, Jonathan. “Shakespeare’s Islands.” In Shakespeare and the Mediterranean: The Selected Proceedings of the International Shakespeare Association World Congress, Valencia, 2001, edited by Tom Clayton, Susan Brock, and Vicente Forés, 289–307. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2004. Battenhouse, Roy. Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, a Study in Renaissance Moral Philosophy. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1964. Beilin, Elaine. Redeeming Eve: Women Writers of the English Renaissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. Benjamin, Arbel. “Nur Banu (c. 1530–1583): A Venetian Sultana?” Turcica 24 (1992): 241–59. Boerth, Robert. “The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World on the Stage of Marlowe and Shakespeare.” Journal of Theatre and Drama 2 (1996): 35–38. Braudel, Fernand. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. Translated by Sian Reynolds. 2 vols. London: Collins, 1972. Brown, Judith. “A Woman’s Place Was in the Home: Women’s Work in Renaissance Tuscany.” In Rewriting the Renaissance, edited by M. Ferguson, Maureen Quilligan, and Nancy J. Vicker. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Brummet, Palmira. Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1994. Ezell, Margaret. The Patriarch’s Wife: Literary Evidence and the History of the Family. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987. Hull, Suzanne. Chaste, Silent and Obedient: English Books for Women, 1475–1640. San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1982. Jones, Eldred D. Othello’s Countrymen: Africans in English Renaissance Drama. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965. Inalcık, Halil. From Empire to Republic: Essays on Ottoman and Turkish Social History. Istanbul: Isis Press, 1995.

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Appendix A

Linehan, Peter. History and the Historians of Medieval Spain. Oxford: Clanderon Press, 1993. Lupton, Julia Reinhard. “Othello Circumcised: Shakespeare and the Pauline Discourse of Nations.” Representations 57 (Winter 1997): 73–98. MacLean, Gerald. “Ottomanism before Orientalism? Bishop King Praises Henry Blount, Passenger in the Levant.” In Travel Knowledge: European “Discoveries” in the Early Modern Period, edited by Ivo Kamps and Jyotsna Singh, 35–52. New York: Palgrave, 2001. Menocal, Maria Rosa. The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain. New York, NY: Back Bay Books, 2002. Montrose, Louis. The Purpose of Playing: Shakespeare and the Cultural Politics of the Elizabethan Theatre. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Munson, Deats Sara. Sex, Gender and Desire in the Plays of Christopher Marlowe. University of Delaware Press, 1997. Özlem, Kumrular. Haremde Taht Kuranlar: Nurbanu ve Safiye Sultan. Istanbul: Doğan Kitap, 2017. Parker, Patricia. “Fantasies of ‘Race’ and ‘Gender’: Africe, Othello, and Bringing to Light.” In Women, “Race,” and Writing in the Early Modern Period, edited by Margo Hendricks and Patricia Parker, 84–100. New York: Routledge, 1994. Simon, Barton, and Robert Portass eds. Beyond the Reconquista: New Directions in the History of Medieval Iberia (711–1085). Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2020. Southern R. W. Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages. Harvard University Press, 1962. Wall, Allison. “Elizabethan Precept and Feminine Practice: The Thynne Family of Longleat.” History 75, no. 243 (January 1990): 23–38.

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Index

Africanus, Leo, 124, 140n31 Agar (character in A Christian Turned Turk), 72, 73, 74 Algiers, 14, 59, 63, 74, 82n19, 102, 110n2, 111n17, 116 Alphonsus (character), 47–48, 50, 51–52, 53 Amazons, 48–49, 50, 51 America, 110, 131, 143, 145, 150, 165; and colonization, 29, 116, 124, 147, 148; female body, 9 Amurack (character in Alphonsus), 47–48, 50, 52, 58n127 Anglo-Ottoman, 15, 20, 27, 28, 29, 36, 38, 54n23, 59. See also Elizabeth I (Queen of England) apostasy, 16, 64, 66, 71, 74, 75–76, 77, 79, 81, 88, 89, 90, 91, 109, 157; recovery from, 90–91; threat of, 65, 90, 145, 146, 158. See also conversion; renegadism/ renegade; turning Turk Arab/Arabic, 39, 82n19, 124, 140n33, 146 Armusia (character in The Island Princess), 3–4, 144–146, 150–152, 154–156, 157–161 Artemel, Süheyla, 52 Asambeg (character in The Renegado), 4, 92, 96, 97, 100–101, 103, 107, 136, 139n18 Atlantic Ocean, 2, 62, 63, 81

Bajazeth (Bayezid), 25, 26, 31, 32, 33–34, 36, 42–45, 47, 55n49 Bartels, Emily, 25–26 Barthelemy, Anthony Gerard, 123, 127–128 Battle of Lepanto, 60, 82n19, 116 Benwash (character in A Christian Turned Turk), 72, 73–76, 77 Biddulph, William, 69 blackamoor, 125; maids, 123 blackness, 18, 123–124, 125, 127, 136; and Islam, 128 Blount, Henry, 14, 117 Boose, Linda, 1–2, 126–128 Britomart, 49–50 Brotton, Jerry, 13 Bulliet, R. W., 75 Burton, Jonathan, 13, 23n36, 27, 34, 35, 72, 79, 81, 88, 91, 111n20, 146 Byzantine (Greco-Roman), 11, 13 Catholic/Catholicism, 11, 12, 30, 31, 54n23, 59, 62, 63–64, 91, 118; and the Moors, 124; Spain, 11, 14, 29, 59, 147. See also Reconquista Chew, Samuel C., 12 Christendom, 11, 22n29, 31, 33, 64, 76, 88, 96, 116, 118; common corpse of, 59, 81n2 Chus, 124. See also Ham circumcision, 59, 79, 91, 138n7

179

180

Index

Cleopatra, 8–9, 10, 19 colonialism, 18, 144, 148; of the Ottoman Empire, 115, 132 concubine/concubinage, 17, 33, 38, 43, 51, 74, 98, 99, 101, 102–103, 104, 105, 107, 113n105, 120 conversion: to Catholicism, 63; to Christianity, 4–5, 97, 124, 127, 137, 145, 153, 160, 161; to Islam, 3, 15, 18, 20, 53, 64, 71, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 81, 84n57, 85n125, 87, 88, 91, 94, 95, 96, 100, 101, 110, 115, 117, 145, 157, 158. See also apostasy; renegadism/ renegade; turning Turk Crusades, 6, 9, 11, 64, 84n57, 95, 117 Cyprus, 6, 15, 116, 118–119, 126 Daborne, Robert: A Christian Turned Turk, 20, 70, 71–72, 73, 76–77, 78, 79–81, 85n124, 87–88, 90, 94, 97, 98, 158 Dallam, Thomas, 74–75, 99–100 D’Amico, Jack, 88, 126 Dansiker, Simon: as character in A Christian Turned Turk, 72, 73; as historical figure, 70, 81 Davies, William, 90 De Busbecq, Ogier Ghiselin, 22n30 Donusa (character in The Renegado), 3–5, 20, 88, 89, 92, 93–98, 100–101, 105, 107–110, 134, 153, 160 Drake, Francis, 144, 145, 147, 162n2 East India Company, 144 East Indies, 2, 18, 20, 57n91, 143, 145, 147–148, 161, 162n2 Edenic temptation, 65, 97, 98 Egypt, 5, 10, 165; and Roman colonization, 8–9; Sultan of (in Tamburlaine), 45 Elizabeth I (Queen of England), 18, 37–38, 39, 54n23, 56n74; as Amazon figure, 49–50, 58n137; and blacks, 125; and the Ottoman Empire, 11, 15, 27, 28, 29–31, 36, 59, 62, 64, 66, 68, 75, 99; and Safiye Sultan, 28, 38, 39–41, 43, 46, 104. See also Anglo-Ottoman enamored Muslim princess, 9, 95. See also Saracen, princess Englishwomen, 18, 24n72, 68, 102; vs. Muslim women, 19, 69, 106, 108, 109

eunuch, 33, 92, 93, 108 Eve figure, 65, 68, 70, 81, 88, 95, 97, 129 Fausta (character in Alphonsus), 20, 48–49, 50, 52 Faustus (character), 79, 88 Fletcher, John: The Island Princess, 3–5, 20–21, 143–146, 150–153, 156, 158, 161; The Knight of Malta, 116 Foxe, John, 55n49, 102 Gazet (character in The Renegado), 92, 102 Gouge, William, 91 Greenblatt, Stephen, 25, 35 Greene, Robert (The Comicall Historie of Alphonsus, King of Aragon), 20, 47–48, 50, 51, 52, 53 Grimaldi (character in The Renegado), 88, 91, 94, 118 Grosrichard, Alan, 105 Hakluyt, Richard, 31; Principal Navigations, 30, 39, 57n91, 102, 148, 149 Hall, Kim, 1 Ham, 124 Harborne, William, 29 harem (seraglio): history of, 13, 38–39, 102, 103–104, 105, 112n75, 113n103; in The Renegado, 100, 101, 107, 109; as western myth, 17, 61, 75, 99, 100, 131, 165; and women’s liberties, 19, 89, 105–106 haseki, 39, 56n79, 104 Howard, Jane, 64, 71 humanism/humanists, 18, 25, 67, 106 Hürrem (Roxelana), 39, 56n79, 104, 113n105 Iberian Peninsula, 2, 6, 110, 124, 125, 140n33, 146. See also Moors; Reconquista Iphigena (character in Alphonsus), 20, 47, 48, 50–52, 53 James I (King of England), 12, 18, 144; and enmity against Turks, 59–60, 82n4, 115; and piracy, 62, 90 janissaries, 70, 100, 117

Index Jardine, Lisa, 13, 23n43 Jowitt, Claire, 148, 153 Knolles, Richard: The Generall Historie of the Turkes, 13–14, 56n79, 117 Krontiris, Tina, 24n72 Levant, 13, 14, 31, 54n21, 57n91, 59; Company, 12, 30 limpenzia de sangre, 124 Lithgow, William, 17–18, 70, 80 Loomba, Ania, 2, 3, 124–125, 126, 137–138, 146 Lucinda (character in The Knight of Malta), 132–138, 153 Malta: history of, 15, 118–119; in The Knight of Malta, 119, 120–122, 128, 131, 133, 137 Mandeville, John, 17 Marlowe, Christopher, 15, 20, 25–26; Doctor Faustus, 79, 88; and Muslim woman, 27, 29, 36, 39, 42, 43, 45, 46, 52, 53; and the Turk, 26–28, 29, 31–34, 35, 36, 47, 55n36 Massinger, Philip, 4, 20, 88, 92, 94, 95, 97, 98, 100, 103, 105, 107, 108, 109–110, 110n2, 116, 118, 123, 134, 139n18, 157, 160 Matar, Nabil, 12, 23n36, 57n91, 60, 69, 79, 80, 85n125, 88, 125 McJannet, Linda, 27, 34, 55n49 McMullan, Gordon, 145, 146, 157 Mediterranean: and colonization, 6, 9, 23n36, 115, 116, 118; multicultural, 2, 4, 11, 14, 15, 18, 20, 29, 46, 53, 60, 62, 63, 64, 70, 84n57, 87, 90, 102, 115, 145, 157 Mehmed III (Ottoman Sultan), 39, 99, 104 Miranda (character in The Knight of Malta), 120–121, 129, 133, 134–136, 137 Moluccan Islands (Moluccas; Spice Islands), 3, 138, 143, 146, 152–161 Montrose, Louis, 1, 133–134, 149–150 Moors, 6, 20, 124–125, 140n35, 145 More, Thomas, 60, 67, 81n2 Morocco, 63, 102, 125–126

181

Mountferrat (character in The Knight of Malta), 120–122, 128–132, 137–138 Muhammad (Mahomet), 16–17, 32–33, 35–36, 40, 73, 76, 79, 96, 97, 108, 161 Murad III (Ottoman Sultan), 28, 30, 37, 38–41, 59, 74–75, 104 Neill, Michael, 110n2, 145 New World, 2, 3, 9, 18, 29, 116, 131, 133, 147, 148, 150 Newton, Thomas, 11 Old World, 1, 3 Olympia (character in Tamburlaine), 46–47 Orcanes (character in Tamburlaine), 15, 35 Order of Malta (Knights of Malta; Knights Hospitallers), 116, 118–121, 128, 132, 138n11 Oriana (character in The Knight of Malta), 120–123, 128–130, 136 Orient, 5, 7, 9, 10, 25, 100, 105 Orientalism/Orientalist, 5, 12, 36, 41, 109 Osman, Cara (Crosman), 70–71, 72, 76, 77 Othello (character), 126, 140n40 Parker, Patricia, 1 Paulina (character in The Renegado), 4, 98, 100–103, 107, 109–110, 136, 139n18 Peirce, Leslie, 38–39, 56n79 Penthesilea, 49–50, 58n136 piracy/pirates, 16, 62–63, 64, 70, 73, 81, 87, 90, 92, 102, 115, 118 Plutarch, 8, 10 Portuguese/Portugal, 3, 143, 145, 150–151, 153–159, 161; and colonization, 4, 18, 143–144, 147, 148, 163n71 Protestant/Protestantism, 11, 12, 30, 40, 59, 60, 63, 91, 118, 147; and women, 18, 24n72, 67, 106 Purchas, Samuel, 140n31, 148, 150 querelles des femmes, 19 Quisara (character in The Island Princess), 3–5, 21, 144–146, 150, 152–161 Rabshake (character in A Christian Turned Turk), 72–74, 79 Radigund, 49–50

182

Index

Raleigh, Walter, 133, 148, 149–150 Raman, Shankar, 145, 148, 156, 162n14 Reconquista, 6, 9, 21n19, 60, 95, 124. See also Iberian Peninsula; Moors Reformation/Reformists, 63, 118; and Islam, 11, 14, 31; and women, 19, 56n74, 67, 106 Renaissance, 1–2, 5, 14, 23n36, 25, 32, 38, 149; and women, 24n72, 95–106, 114n115 renegadism/renegade, 15, 63, 64, 70, 71, 72, 74, 79, 81, 82n19, 87, 88, 90, 91–92, 101, 118. See also apostasy; conversion; turning Turk Rhodes, 6, 15, 118–119 Roman (Catholic), 12, 59, 118 Rome/Roman (ancient), 7–8, 10 Ruy Dias (character in The Island Princess), 3–4, 144–145, 146, 150–151, 152, 154–158, 161 Safiye Sultan, 28–29, 37, 38–43, 45–46, 52, 104, 113n103 Said, Edward, 5 Sandys, George, 66, 74, 79, 85n125 Saracen, 11, 22n30, 84n57; princess, 95, 99–154. See also enamored Muslim princess Senior, C. M., 63, 119 Shakespeare, William, 8, 10, 126, 127, 143 Sheba, 9 Shepherd, Simon, 26, 27, 49 Skilliter, S.A., 39 slaves/slavery, 1; in A Christian Turned Turk, 71, 78, 80; European trade in, 123–124, 125, 132, 133, 134, 139n26, 147; in Faerie Queene, 49; in harems, 102, 103–104; in Islamic lands, 15, 30, 32, 75, 82n19, 91, 108, 117 Spain, 23n36, 29, 38, 54n23, 62, 116; and colonization, 18, 143, 147, 150; and England, 11, 14, 16, 26, 31, 59, 60, 63, 147; and the Moors, 2, 6, 21n19, 124–125, 126, 140n33. See also Iberian Peninsula; Reconquista Spanish Armada, 29, 38, 58n137 Spence, Leslie, 33 Süleyman I (Ottoman Sultan), 22n30, 39, 52, 56n79, 104, 113n107, 119

Tamburlaine (character), 25–27, 31–36, 42–48, 51, 53, 55n49, 55n58 timariot, 117 Timur (Turco-Mongolian ruler), 26, 32, 45, 55n49 travel narratives/travelogues, 13, 15, 16, 23n48, 52, 65–66, 69, 70, 87, 91, 100, 117, 124, 130, 148, 149, 152, 153, 154, 155 Tunis, 14, 63, 116; in A Christian Turned Turk, 70–71, 73, 76, 78, 80, 81; in The Renegado, 3, 88, 91–93, 94, 98, 100, 102, 109, 111n17, 118 turning Turk, 15, 20, 64, 76, 79, 115, 119, 128, 145, 158. See also apostasy; conversion; renegadism/renegade Valetta (character in The Knight of Malta), 120, 121 valide sultan, 38–39, 41, 42, 56n79, 104, 113n108 veil, 17, 19, 61, 92, 93, 97, 100, 106, 108, 109, 165 Vitelli (character in The Renegado), 4, 20, 88, 91–98, 100–102, 103, 105, 118, 134 Vitkus, Daniel, 7, 13, 27, 71, 81, 92, 99, 116 Voada (character in A Christian Turned Turk), 20, 72–74, 77–79, 81, 95, 97 Ward, John (Captain Ward): as character in A Christian Turned Turk, 71–72, 76–81, 87–88, 90, 97, 118; as historical figure, 70–71 Warren, F. M., 95 Zabina (character in Tamburlaine), 20, 27, 28, 34, 36, 37, 42–45, 48–49, 52, 53, 55n36 Zanthia (character in The Knight of Malta), 20, 120, 122–123, 127–132, 133, 136–137, 138 Zenocrate (character in Tamburlaine), 20, 27, 28, 34, 36, 37, 42–45, 46, 48, 51, 52, 53, 55n36

About the Author

Öz Öktem graduated from the Department of English Language and Literature of Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey. After receiving her master’s degree from Çanakkale University, she worked as a journalist and a translator, alongside her position as a research assistant at the same university. Later, she decided to become a full-time academician and moved to Greece to enroll in Aristotle University of Thessaloniki for a PhD degree. Since she came back to Turkey in 2014, Öktem has been working as a faculty member in the English Language and Literature Department of Istanbul Aydın University. Her research interests include Shakespearean drama and cultural representations of gender, race, and religious difference in early modern England.

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