Islam and English Drama: A Critical History

Abstract

Early Modern English Drama and the Islamic World Islam and English Drama: A Critical History Though it may seem to be a recent phenomenon, scholarly interest in Islam and early modern English drama goes back almost a hundred years to Louis Wann's 'The Oriental in Elizabethan Drama' (1915) and Warner Grenelle Rice's 'Turk, Moor, and Persian in English Literature' (1927). 1 In its exhaustive scope, Rice's unpublished dissertation anticipates Samuel C. Chew's The Crescent and the Rose (1937), which is usually seen as the pioneering discussion of the topic in modern times. 2 The dominant concerns of these early critics were the historical accuracy (variously defined) and aesthetic merits of the plays in hand. Wann identified the historical sources used by the playwrights and judged that, while the sources themselves were often inaccurate, the dramatists achieved 'a much more accurate and dispassionate portrayal of oriental character than we are wont to [assume]'. 3 By contrast, both Rice and Chew were more likely to see the representations of Islamic characters (especially Moors) as examples of monstrous cultural stereotypes. In their view, the playwrights' adherence to their sources doomed rather than redeemed them, and their interventions were seen as usually making matters worse. 4 Rice argued that as a result Muslim characters are 'dreadful beyond belief ' and are therefore 'failures'-artistically and perhaps ideologically, though this category was not explicit in his analysis. 5 Chew likewise comments with mordant irony on the plays' excess of prejudice and lack of artistic merit. After summarizing the denouement of The Courageous Turk, he concludes: 'and the tragedy comes to an end-much to the reader's relief '. 6 Similarly, having noted that prefatory verses to Osmond the Great Turk stress the author's youth, Chew observes that the author 'needed whatever excuse could be offered for him'. 7

Intercultural ‘Traffique’ in Fulke Greville's Mustapha

“…In the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, there were dozens of plays and pageants about Turks and Moors in England . Linda McJannet, Patricia Parker, Ania Loomba and Jonathan Burton have shown that the depictions of Muslims on the early modern stage were ‘far more nuanced, fluid, and ambivalent than previously reported’ (McJannet 186). On the one hand, Patricia Parker's and Jonathan Burton's analyses of early modern texts about conversions from Christianity to Islam and vice versa demonstrate that both Muslims and converts to Islam were often depicted as dangerous, violent, lustful, greedy, vain, ambitious, superstitious, deceitful, preposterous and unnatural (Burton, ‘English Anxiety and the Muslim Power of Conversion’ 59) or, especially in civic pageants, as ‘generous, tractable puppet[s]’ and potential Christians who ‘vindicate and encourage’ Christian missionary and mercantile interests (Burton, Traffic and Turning 180).…”

The staging of William III's politics of peace with the Turks andThe Alcoran of Mahometin Nicholas Rowe'sTamerlane

“… 2 2 Other modern critics emphasize also the importance of reading English Renaissance drama during the precolonial era of England through the complex relations of trade, military alliance, and cultural confrontations away from the Saidian “Self” versus “Other” dichotomy (see Andrea & McJannet, 2011, 2; Barbour, 2003, 3; Burton, 2005, 12; Kolb, 2009, 205; MacLean, 2005, 7; Matar, 1999, 10; McJannet, 2009, 187; Robinson, 2007, 25; Vitkus, 2003, 11). …”