“Turkishness” in Two Jacobean Plays

Home , Philip Massinger, Robert Daborne, The Renegado

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Anna Mikyšková

The Image of “Turkishness” in Two Jacobean Plays

Bachelor‟s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Mgr. Filip Krajník, Ph. D. Consultant: Mgr. Alexandra Stachurová

2015

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

...... Anna Mikyšková

I would like to thank to my consultant, Mgr. Alexandra Stachurová, for her assistance and valuable advice.

Table of Contents

Introduction ...... 1

1. Historical Context ...... 5

1.1. The Powerful Ottoman Empire ...... 5

1.2. Anglo-Muslim Relations in the Renaissance Period ...... 10

1.3. Perception of the Turk within the European Literary Tradition ...... 17

1.3.1. Turkish Sources Circulating Europe ...... 18

1.3.2. The Scourge of God ...... 21

1.3.3. Response of the English Drama ...... 24

2. Literary Analysis ...... 28

2.1. A Christian Turned Turk ...... 29

2.2. The Renegado ...... 40

2.3. “Turkishness” and the English Dramatic Conventions ...... 51

2.4. “Turkishness” as a Mirror of “Englishness” ...... 56

Conclusion ...... 64

Works Cited ...... 67

Summary ...... 72

Resumé ...... 73

Introduction

English early modern drama has been a subject of significant attention of literary criticism for a considerable period of time. The numerous plays of this period being staged even nowadays testify to the cultural importance of the achievement of English

Renaissance dramatists. One of the reasons why drama written in the 16th and 17th centuries in England has always enjoyed great popularity is its intrinsic quality of reflecting, reacting on, and interpreting the current issues of the early modern period, one of these being the English experience with foreigners. A complex debate has evolved around the way in which the English playwrights were capturing the encounter of the Englishmen with the inhabitants of the various foreign countries, and particularly great attention was paid to the Anglo-Turkish contact, for example in the writings of

Edward Said, Nabil Matar or David J. Vitkus. This thesis explores two English

Jacobean plays set in a Turkish environment, A Christian Turned Turk (Robert

Daborne, 1612) and The Renegado (Philip Massinger, 1623), with regard to the image of “Turkishness”, i.e. the stereotypical portrayal of the Turks and their culture.

As England began to develop commercial relations with the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean in the late 16th century, more and more English subjects came into contact with Muslims and subsequently, shared their impressions of the experience with their compatriots at home. Such contacts could have been of various natures, such as trade, battle, piracy, or captivity. In this way, the unknown, dangerous, but, at the same, time very attractive Islamic lands became an issue about which the English were very anxious. It could not have taken much time until this topic arrived on stage, a place where general interests could be discussed, commented on, and subsequently mocked.

English early modern dramatic texts thus represent a useful means for studying the

Anglo-Islamic encounter from the English perspective.

The increased interest in exploration of the English treatments of the Islamic world on the scene of literary criticism was ignited by Edward Said‟s work Orientalism which has been very influential since its publication in 1978. In this work, Said demonstrates that the Western perception of the Orient has been artificially constructed and that this misconceived representation of the East has been followed, and maintained, in most Western narratives. This revolutionary observation has spurred an ongoing debate that has not ceased to this day, and numerous literary works have been reread, contributing, for instance, to the development of post-colonial approaches to literature and culture. However, as far as the Renaissance period is concerned, Said‟s theory cannot be applied to the texts written in the 16th or 17th centuries. As Professor

Nabil Matar in his exhaustive overview of the relations between England and Muslim countries in the Mediterranean area during the early modern period from the English perspective, Islam in Britain, 1558-1685, pointed out: even though the “Orientalism” theory is valid for the period of British colonialism since the 18th century, it is not applicable to the period preceding it (11).

Scholars such as Nabil Matar and Daniel J. Vitkus who concentrate on the

Anglo-Turkish experience in the early modern period agree that in the Ottoman Empire

England encountered an exceptionally strong enemy who endangered the insular kingdom not only by means of its military power, but also proved to be a serious cultural and religious competition for a country with a recent history of religious instability. The Ottomans thus embodied a threat that had to be confronted. Because the

English government was very much interested in the revenues from the flourishing trade with the sultan, the campaign against the Turkish dominance were launched at least rhetorically on two remaining fronts – in church and on stage. In their efforts to convince the English public of their superiority over the Turks, especially the English

2 playwrights succeeded in constructing an imaginary reality where the European

Christians were always victorious over the Muslims from the East, and this rhetoric was maintained even at the expense of historical or cultural accuracy. Moreover, the researchers on this period argue that the long tradition of defining the English self against the Muslim Other was eventually reflected in the self-determination of English identity.

To demonstrate these observations, two English Renaissance plays are examined in this thesis, A Christian Turned Turk by Robert Daborne, first published in 1612, and

The Renegado, written by Philip Massinger in 1623. Although both plays are set in

Tunis, the playwrights fail to provide an accurate image of this North African multicultural centre where different ethnicities and religions were exposed to each other and where, as a result, the notions of national or religious allegiances came into question. There are several reasons for this inaccuracy. Firstly, the authors of the

English origin in the 17th century could not have had sufficient knowledge of the

Muslim world to create a true representation of the Orient; secondly (and more importantly), Jacobean dramatists viewed the Turkish society through the lenses of their

Anglocentric perspective, burdened with European prejudices, superstitions and a long history of anti-Muslim religious polemic, which ruled out any possibility for objectivity.

As a consequence, the plays say more about the English than about the Turks.

This thesis, therefore, explores the English representation of “Turkishness” in the two aforementioned Jacobean plays, where the term “Turkishness” is understood as a stereotypical portrayal of the Turks and their culture. After taking into account the historical context of the period and the depth of knowledge the Englishmen might have had about the lands of the Ottoman Empire, the present study shall proceed to the literary analysis of A Christian Turned Turk and The Renegado, which will demonstrate

3 how the image of “Turkishness” was formed and, subsequently, confirmed in the dramatic tradition of the Jacobean period. In addition, the term “Englishness” is introduced, denoting the ideology of English superiority from which the stereotypical representation of the Turks originates. Lastly, the impact which the Anglo-Turkish experience might have had on the formation of English identity is taken into consideration.

1. Historical Context

The early modern period in Europe was a time of exploration, territorial expansion and international contact. The European countries of which the most powerful was the

Habsburg Monarchy were engaged in the struggle for colonial dominance in the

Americas in the West, and at the same time they competed in the Southeast in the lucrative trade in the area of the Mediterranean Sea. There, the Europeans encountered the peoples of the Ottoman Empire. These two fronts differentiated considerably; while in the West the Europeans took advantage of the defenceless indigenous people of

Americas and were freely profiting from the colonies, the Ottoman Empire in the East was a powerful opponent which was expanding its territories further into the Western

Mediterranean and even Europe itself (Matar, Islam 1). It was in this context that

England, eager to share the revenues from the Mediterranean trade, established in the

16th century its first trade relations with the Ottoman Empire.

The two plays under scrutiny were written in 1612 and 1623, and they deal with the legacy of the Elizabethan naval successes in the Western Mediterranean. In order to explain the Anglo-Ottoman relations in the early modern period, it has to be accounted for how the Ottomans managed to create such a huge empire and how extensive the sphere of Ottoman influence in its heyday in the second half of the 16th century was.

The final part of this chapter is devoted to the perception of Turks in the Western narrative tradition.

1.1. The Powerful Ottoman Empire

The beginning of the Ottoman Empire is confined to the region of Anatolia, a peninsula which is bounded by three seas: the Black Sea in the North, the Aegean Sea in the West

5 and the Mediterranean Sea in the South. This territory of today‟s Turkey was, at the end of the 13th century, loosely divided into numerous Muslim Turcoman emirates that bordered the old Byzantine Empire in the West and the Sultanate of Seljuk Turks in the

East, and that alternatively allied themselves with or waged wars against each other. In the 14th century, the emirate of Osman from the north-west Anatolia gradually succeeded in dominating its neighbours and the future Ottoman realm began to form under Osman I (1258-1326) as the founder of the Ottoman dynasty (Finkel 4-5).

The Ottomans ventured for the first time into the European area in the middle of the 14th century when they crossed the Bosporus and fought over the Black Sea trade routes with Venice and Genoa (16). Nevertheless, the actual demonstration of Ottoman power came in 1389 in the battle of Kosovo Polje where sultan Murad I (1362-1389) defeated Serbian Prince Lazar. Although both rulers died in the battle, the Ottomans celebrated victory and Serbia became their vassal, as was soon the fate of Bulgaria and later Moldavia (21). As a consequence, European kingdoms began to take the Ottoman threat into consideration and when Hungary asked for military aid from the West, crusading armies of France and allegedly also of England met the Ottomans at Nikopol in 1396. The battle ended favourably for the Muslims once more and they raided for the first time in the Hungarian territory; their control of the Balkans south of Danube was confirmed (25).

Even though not all the military encounters were fortunate for the Ottomans, they would usually come off victorious. All the more glorified were their defeats in the

Western Christendom. And the victory did not even have to belong to the Christian army; the famous battle at Ankara in 1402 was fought between the Ottomans led by sultan Bayezid I (1389-1402) and the Persian army under the leadership of Tamerlane, the Timuri emperor. Bayezid‟s defeat was celebrated throughout the whole Europe and

6 entered the Western narrative; Christopher Marlowe‟s main protagonist of his legendary play Tamburlain the Great from 1587 and its sequel that soon followed was inspired by none other than the Persian emperor Tamerlane.

The geographical location of the Ottoman realm next to the old, vulnerable

Byzantine Empire proved to be very strategic. Byzantine emperors had repeatedly pleaded with the Europe for assistance but they had never received sufficient military aid they needed to suppress the Ottomans. For example, when the Byzantine capital,

Constantinople, was besieged by the Ottoman sultan in 1396, the desperate Byzantine emperor Manuel travelled to Paris and then to England to seek help from European rulers. An English chronicler Adam of Usk noted that “these Greeks were the most devout in their church services, which were joined in as well by soldiers as by priests”

(27) and the English king Henry IV was so impressed by the Byzantines‟ piety that he decided to provide them with financial help (qtd. in Finkel: 27). Unfortunately, the money collected for Manuel was lost and the emperor had to leave empty-handed. As a result, the Byzantine Empire was later forced to pay an annual tribute to the sultan of the Ottomans (41).

Apart from the different political and economic interests of the European states, there were also religious values at stake. Even though the Orthodox Byzantium was considered to be the last stronghold of Christianity in the East, neither the Catholic

European kings, nor the Pope in Rome himself had ever been able to reach an agreement with the Byzantine emperor in order to rally against the Muslim enemy as a united force. The reason consisted in the insurmountable dogmatic differences between the Catholic and Orthodox Church (43).

As a consequence of the failure of Christian European countries to unite against their common Eastern enemy, the fate of the Byzantine Empire had been sealed. The

7 year 1453 prepared a severe blow to the confidence of the whole Christendom; the

Ottomans led by Mehmed II (1451-1481) conquered the Byzantine capital

Constantinople; they renamed it Istanbul and had been using the city as the capital of their empire ever since. The conquest of Constantinople was not only significant in terms of territorial expansion – it was of great symbolic value, too. The Ottomans believed that their realm was an heir to the ancient Roman Empire; a heritage claimed to the sultan‟s displeasure also by the Habsburg dynasty in Europe. With the possession of

Constantinople, the former Roman capital, Mehmed II now felt entitled to call himself the “Sultan i-Rum”, meaning „ the sultan of the Roman Empire‟ (Wheatcroft 6). Every little victory that had been won by the Christian powers in the second half of the 15th and during the 16th centuries symbolized their retaliation for the fall of Constantinople, such victories were, however, scarce. The mighty Muslim was now ruling the Bosporus, profiting from the new resources that he acquired by controlling the trade routes in the

Black Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean (Finkel 58-68). Panic had spread through the whole Europe.

The fear of the powerful Ottoman Empire grew stronger in Europe as the

Ottomans continued to pursue their expansion politics throughout the 16th century, a period that witnessed the biggest territorial growth and overall heyday of the Ottoman

Empire. Firstly, sultan Selim I (1512-1520) acquired the whole region of Syria and

Egypt in 1517. Making Syria and Egypt their provinces, the Ottomans, themselves of

Turkish origin, became rulers of Arab lands. Interestingly enough, for the first time in the Ottoman history the majority of its inhabitants consisted of Muslims (111).

Moreover, the incorporation of Syria and Egypt into the Ottoman Empire was another blow for the European Christendom; the Christian Holy Sites in Bethlehem and

Jerusalem “fell into Ottomans‟‟ hands” (112). Any efforts of Pope Leo X to call for a

8 crusade were in vain. The Ottomans had already learned during the Orthodox-Catholic conflict how to make use of the rivalry between their Europeans opponents. They confirmed their superiority with the conquest of Rhodes in 1522, another Christian outpost in the Mediterranean (118).

Selim‟s son, the legendary sultan Süleyman I (1520-1566), inherited an immense empire with many provinces and vassal states which he even expanded. Venetian ambassadors justly spoke of him as of „the Magnificent‟ or „the Grand Turk‟ (115). His most daring military enterprise that shattered the confidence of Habsburgs and other

European rulers was undoubtedly the siege of Vienna in 1529. Even though the siege ended up unsuccessfully for the sultan who had to return home because of the oncoming winter, the presence of the Muslim at the heart of Catholic Habsburg monarchy was a horrific experience that left its permanent mark in the Western consciousness and, consequently, the Western literary tradition.

During Süleyman‟s reign, a period often designated by the Ottomans as „the

Golden Age‟ (150) which partly overlaps „the Golden Age‟ in England under the rule of

Elizabeth I, and during the reign of Süleyman‟s successors until the end of the 16th century, the Ottomans gained control over the Western Mediterranean as the major centres of the North African coast, such as Algiers, Tripoli and Tunis, had been gradually incorporated into the sphere of Ottoman influence.

The last important event worth mentioning here is the Ottoman capture of

Cyprus in 1571 which was surprisingly retaliated in the same year by the Ottomans‟ defeat at Lepanto (158-160). Lepanto represented one of the few victories over the

Ottomans and as such was enthusiastically presented as a symbol of ensuing reversal in the power equilibrium in the Christian-Muslim conflict which, nevertheless, proved to be a mere wishful thinking.

At the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, the Ottomans got into a 13-year-long conflict (1593-1606) with the Habsburgs in central Europe known as the Long War

(Wheatcroft 55) but the costly war exhausted both the empires considerably and the peace of 1606 was welcomed by both opponents (Finkel 175). As the pace of Ottoman expansion slowed down, the empire, dependent upon the revenues from the conquered territories, experienced financial problems. The Ottomans maintained dominance in the area of the Mediterranean Sea well into the 17th century, however, the era of flourishing expansion of the 16th century was over.

The image of the multicultural region of the Mediterranean which is the setting of the two plays under study is a reflection of the international affairs of the second half of the 16th century. The authors Robert Daborne and Philip Massinger, whose plays were published in 1612 and 1630, respectively, were reviving the glorious days that had already passed but were, nevertheless, firmly rooted in the English imagination.

1.2. Anglo-Muslim Relations in the Renaissance Period

Originally, the hub of the world trade in the Mediterranean had been dominated by the

Italian states, such as Venice, Florence and Genoa, that supplied the whole European

Christendom with the oriental goods. However, after the discovery of another passage to India around the Cape of Good Hope by the Portuguese in 1488 and after the beginning of the colonial trade in the Americas, the Italians lost their supremacy. Apart from the Portuguese, Spain, too, took advantage of the new trading opportunities in the

Mediterranean; France and England followed soon (Trevelyan 339).

Even though Spain represented a severe competition, the conflicts between the

Spanish and English fleets could have been interpreted as an undeclared war; it was the

English merchants who managed to reach the greatest naval trade achievements. Under

10 the rule of Queen Elizabeth I, England established commercial contact with markets in

Africa, Asia and America (344-345). As the English maritime commerce grew, new trade companies had to be founded to cover the expenditures and to guarantee the risks that were connected to the remote ventures in the East, such as the attacks of rival merchants or the encounters with pirates who preyed in the lucrative trade routes not only in the Mediterranean. The companies had been granted special charters from the

Queen which enabled them to exercise “diplomatic and military authority on the other side of the world” (346). That meant in practice that the crews entitled by the companies could not be designated thieves when they happened to enrich themselves at the expanse of foreign fleets they met on the route. The Levant Company for trading with the regions of the Eastern Mediterranean was formed in 1581, the East India Company followed in 1600 (347).

The official English relations with the Ottoman Empire were satisfactorily reciprocal right from the start. Protestant England did not cooperate with the naval enemy of the Turks, Catholic Venice and Spain, and “the Sultan welcomed the heretic

English at Constantinople” (347). In last two decades of the 16th century, Queen

Elizabeth maintained regular correspondence with the Ottoman emperors; there are at least twenty letters recorded that were sent to the English Queen successively by the

Sultans Selim II, Murad III, and Mehmed III, and by Grand Vezirs (Kurat 25). No matter what occurred on the international political scene during this time, the official relations of England with the Ottoman Empire remained friendly (26).

Their mutual cooperation was formally confirmed in 1583 with the establishment of the English embassy at Constantinople, with the agent of the Levant

Company, William Harborne, as the first English ambassador there (Horniker 289). His task was to move the Sultan to grant the English merchants free access to his

11 dominions, a privilege enjoyed until then only by the French. At last, he was successful and obtained a commercial treaty from Sultan Murad III, “which conceded to all subjects of the queen of England full freedom of trade in the ports of the Levant under their own flag” (301).

Moreover, apart from the commercial objectives, Queen Elizabeth hoped for

Ottoman military assistance against the Catholic Spain and Harborne was instructed to urge that matter at the sultan‟s court even more persistently as the Anglo-Spanish war became inevitable in the late 1580s. The Ottomans‟ attitude towards the Spanish had been hostile for a long time and they longed to avenge the humiliating defeat at Lepanto from 1571 for it was the Spanish armada that had routed the Turkish fleet (305). Under these circumstances, Elizabeth‟s confidence in the Anglo-Ottoman alliance was very much substantiated and even enhanced by the assurances of his military support that

Murad III (1574-1595) was sending to her via English ambassadors. Nevertheless, these promises eventually proved to be vain; the Anglo-Ottoman alliance against the Spanish monarchy had never been accomplished (Kurat 26) and England had to face the Spanish

Armada in 1588 on its own.

However, the fact that the English trade under the rule of Queen Elizabeth flourished in the Mediterranean cannot be denied, and the English subjects prided themselves on their successes in the maritime business. An English writer of the period named Richard Haklyut glorified the scale of English exploration:

Which of the Kings of this land before her Majesty had their banners ever

seen in the Caspian Sea? Which of them hath ever dealt with the Emperor

of Persia, as her Majesty hath done, and obtained for her merchants large

and loving privileges? Who ever saw, before this regiment, as English

Ligier [Ambassador] in the stately porch of the Grand Signor of

Constantinople? Who ever found English Consuls and Agents at Tripoli

in Syria, at Aleppo? (qtd. In Trevelyan: 338)

The patriotic enthusiasm for the profiting business and expansion of naval power was one thing, but the fact that the English official relationships with the sultan were favourable did not necessarily mean that the English were not affected by the Ottoman expansion and aggression. As has been already mentioned, an integral part of the dangerous naval business in the Mediterranean was piracy; moreover, all the merchants trading in the Ottoman waters had to take the risk of being taken into Turkish captivity.

First, the romanticized issue of piracy has to be explained. Most of the nationalities trading in the Mediterranean, be it the English, the Spanish, the French, the

Portuguese, the Dutch or the Ottomans, were involved in the piratical activities, often with the unofficial authorization of their monarchs either simply for profit or for other political goals. Especially the English Queen was very capable in utilizing piracy as an indirect means of politics. Barbara Fuchs argues that the Anglo-Spanish rivalry in the

1570s and 1580s was carried out mainly through the piratical attacks on the ships of each other (45). Fuchs then distinguishes between piracy and privateering. A privateer was a person engaged in the piratical activities and thus de facto a pirate, but with a mandate issued by his government to justify his piratical actions on the grounds of his country‟s needs. A crew who did not possess such a document were designated as mere pirates. However, this seemingly clear distinction was difficult to impose in practice; most pirates, including the English, attacked ships “regardless of international allegiances” (46-7). The boundary between a merchant, a privateer and a pirate was very ambiguous.

Nevertheless, piracy, the once comfortable way of indirectly imposing power in the Mediterranean, fell out of governmental favour as the time passed. After Queen

Elizabeth died in 1603 and James I negotiated peace with Spain, the still ongoing

English piratical activities became a source of embarrassment for the English monarch because the English pirates were subverting the image of the king‟s sovereignty (48). In

1612, James I even offered royal amnesty to all English pirates on the condition that if they surrender and promise never to resume their piratical activities, they could retain all their wealth and property (Vitkus, Three 31). However, this attempt to get English pirates under control did not prove very efficient. It is no wonder that it was difficult to suppress the unlawful attacking of foreign ships which was financially very attractive and which had produced epic figures such as the notorious Sir Francis Drake, Queen

Elizabeth‟s royal pirate and a scourge of the Spanish sailors at his time who was for his services even awarded a knighthood.

The second risk of trading in the Mediterranean which every crew had to take into account consisted in the constant threat of Ottoman captivity. Numerous accounts show that it was not a minor problem; since the accession of Elizabeth I to the throne in

1558 until the end of the reign of Charles II in 1685, thousands of English subjects had ended up on Turkish slave markets (Matar, Islam 2). The attacks of the Turks were not confined only to the coast of the North Africa; they ventured on the land of British Isles, too, and invaded English ports and villages. As a result, not only the sailors on the high seas, but also the common English subjects were directly confronted with the mighty

Turk. Nabil Matar makes it clear that there were “large numbers of English, Scottish,

Irish and Welsh men, women and children” enslaved by the Turks (4). The situation even aggravated after the death of Queen Elizabeth. There is, for instance, an account stating that in summer 1625, the “Turks took out of the Church in Mount‟s Bay

[Cornwall] about 60 men, women and children, and carried them away captives”, and apparently this was not an exceptional event (7).

The ransoming of the captives was an expansive matter, for the Englishmen in the Turkish captivity must have been really numerous. Religious sermons started to incorporate appeals for money collections for redeeming “prisoners of the Turks or other heathens” and a lot of these collections consequently did take place, for example in London in January 1584 (6). Later after Elizabeth‟s death, the desperate women of

England whose husbands had disappeared on Muslin slave markets and who thus had been deprived of their only bread-winners often petitioned to the Parliament to ransom their kinsmen (10).The growing number of English captives apparently became a financial burden for the English government. Therefore, the English monarch was very much engaged in redeeming of her or his subjects as can be deduced from a letter written in the early 1580s to Elizabeth where the East Levant Company agent in

Constantinople beseeched the Queen:

to preserve her subjects . . . from future captivity in his [the Ottoman‟s

Sultan‟s] dominions, the redemption of which in these 20 years (no

doubt) hath cost this realm four thousand pounds, and yet divers to this

day remain there unrescated of which some (the more pitied) have turned

Turks. (qtd. in Matar, Islam: 5)

This account shows that the issue of captivity was made even more complicated by the religious dimension. In the European perspective, all the captives in Muslim lands were in serious danger of converting to Islam or, to use the contemporary expression, of “turning Turk”, notwithstanding the testimonies of former captives informing that the acceptance of Islam did not guarantee one‟s freedom. For example, there is an account from 1570 warning that “all hope of fredome onely dependeth at their [captives‟] masters free will and pleasure” (qtd. in Matar, Islam 26); it was generally believed that the conversion to Islam could relieve or even free the captives

15 from their enslavement and that the Turks forced or at least encouraged their prisoners to do so. No matter how true these assertions were, it is undeniable that “a high number of Christians and Britons were reported in English writings to have converted to Islam”

(48).Conversion to Islam and the consequent fear of the Christian world losing its faithful constituted a troublesome issue the English and the Europeans in general were very anxious about. It seems that the possibility of „turning Turk‟ worried Christian leaders more than the miserable life of their compatriots in captivity itself.

Furthermore, not only did some of the English captives embrace religion of the

Ottomans in the hope of redemption, there were even cases of Englishmen who voluntarily converted to Islam on their own account. Such a person who denounced the

Christian faith for Islam was called a „renegado‟, an expression that stemmed from

Spanish and which was adopted by the English with other variants such as „renegade‟ or

„runnugate‟. The Spanish origin of the term might allude to the fact that the English used to associate apostasy with the Papist Spain (22-23). The majority of English renegades were merchants who realized that the Ottoman society, where wealth and status were not based on hereditary law but could be acquired though individuals‟ abilities, offered them better chances for social promotion. Indeed, all the travellers‟ accounts describe renegades as men who led a prosperous life and often held important offices in the socially more flexible Ottoman world (50).

The Christian authorities were appalled at their coreligionists who of their free will converted to Islam, to the faith of the Eastern infidels. No matter how unsuccessful the English fleets in combat with the Turks were, according to the European rhetoric they still maintained spiritual supremacy over the Ottomans; however, the English who chose Islam over the salvation through Christ undermined the certainty of Christians that their faith was the only true, God-chosen religion. Such doubts had to be

16 suppressed in Europe, of course, and as for England, the church together with literary authors started a crusade against the renegades who were, in their perspective, villains who followed the allure of wealth and bodily pleasure and who were not only traitors of their religion but also of the English realm itself (51). Especially drama represented a powerful tool for the anti-renegade polemic in the first half of the 17th century.

During the period of the flourishing sea trade with the Ottoman Empire, the

English met not only a profitable business partner but also a powerful enemy in terms of both warfare and religion. A great number of ordinary people experienced severe hardship due to the Ottoman aggression and as a result, the Muslim Ottomans found their permanent place in the consciousness of English people. It is thus no wonder that the image of the Turk spread in England and in the whole Europe usually brought about negative connotations. The perception of the Muslims and their literary representation in the Western tradition are the subject of the following subchapter.

1.3. Perception of the Turk within the European Literary Tradition

The two plays under study were not produced in a vacuum; neither did their authors possess objective knowledge of the historical events concerning their topic. On the contrary, the plays A Christian Turned Turk and The Renegado are products of an interplay between the general beliefs, stereotypes, political and religious propaganda, and the knowledge about the Turks in England at the beginning of the 17th century. In order to understand the era in which the two plays were created, the European attitude towards the Ottoman Turks has to be taken into account.

This subchapter discusses the possible sources about the Ottoman Empire in

Europe that could have also potentially reached the British Isles, the perception of the

Turks from the perspective of the Church, and last but not least the reaction of the

English playwrights to the Turkish matter.

1.3.1. Turkish Sources Circulating Europe

First major experience of the Europeans with the Muslims from the East dates back to the medieval period. The crusades to the Holy Land that the Christian Europe had led during the 12th and 13th centuries against the Turks of the Seljuk Empire (Wheatcroft 3) predetermined later the perception of the empire of the Ottomans who were the symbol of Islamic power in the early modern period. Apart from the widespread stereotype of the Turkish notorious cruelty, Europeans had before the beginning of the 16th century virtually no or at least very limited knowledge about the inhabitants of the Ottoman

Empire or about their way of life. The term „Turk‟ had been in Europe for a long time interchangeable with the term „Muslim‟ (Rataj 76); the difference between ethnical and religious identity was understood much later.

Before the Renaissance period, apart from the direct participation in the combat, the life of ordinary people in Europe was only indirectly affected by the Turkish wars.

They were burdened with more taxes levied to cover the expansive campaigns to the

East; when important battles were being fought, special church services were held and processions pleading for Christian victories took place (142). Only the educated royalty, nobility and clergy were, due to their international correspondence, informed about the current affairs (26).

However, at the beginning of the 16th century, a new medium for spreading information had been devised in the German lands; a form of printed newspapers released on the occasions of important battles or sieges such as the siege of Vienna in

1529 (27). However, these four-leaf quartos with an eye-catching illustration on the

18 front were subjected to the governmental censorship and its main purpose was to encourage people in the belief that the Muslim enemy was not invincible, justifying thus the new taxes (35). These early newspapers then fulfilled more propagandistic function than informative one; nevertheless, they contributed to the general raise of interest in the oriental matter.

As the fighting in the second half of the 16th century intensified, the demand for literature about the Ottomans increased and numerous books and pamphlets about the feared enemy from the East were flooding Europe. Most of the histories and chronicles about the Turkish expansion were written by authors who “worked largely from hearsay” (Wheatcroft 28). Their works also included exciting illustrations and engravings that were immensely important in the era when the rate of illiteracy was very high (xxiii). It was precisely this sort of literature that contributed to the spreading of fear across whole Europe that originated from stories and illustrations that depicted the cruel Turks in the act of murdering innocent children, raping women and enslaving whole families of the Christian world (Rataj 61). Such literature also served the purposes of political propaganda.

Other sources, such as Jean-Jacques Boissard‟s Lives and Portraits of the

Turkish Sultans (1596, seemed more respectable but they, in fact, contained numerous inconsistencies as their authors had recycled older European texts whose credibility was even more doubtful (Wheatcroft 28). For example, Richard Knolles was drawing on

Boissard‟s text when he wrote his Generall Historie of the Turkes in 1603, the first chronicle on the Ottomans written in the English language (Şenlen 379) which provided the English readers with chronological history of the Turkish sultans and their conquests of Christian kingdoms whose fate “might mooue euen a right stonie heart to ruth”

(Knolles).

But gradually, the European Christians were supplied with the information from more reliable sources; that is, from people who had actually visited the Ottoman

Empire. Most of them gained their experience with the Muslim world as envoys or emissaries of the Hapsburg Emperor to the Ottoman court and then wrote books of travels that became very popular on the continent. Such was the fate of Johannes

Loewenklau, a German humanist and historian, who visited sultan‟s court as an emissary in 1584 and wrote the history of the Turkish state. His work Neuwe Chronica

Türkischer Nation (New Chronicle of the Turkish Nation) published in 1588 had been circulating in the central Europe for a long time (Rataj 75).

Other authors whose works were enjoying international popularity and undoubtedly reached the British Isles were two Frenchmen Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq and Nicolas de Nicolay. During his stay in Constantinople, De Busbecq had sent four letters to his friend in Europe where he captured the everyday life of the Turks. Later, he had them published and produced a “European bestseller” Letters of the Turkish

Embassy (Wheatcroft 29). Nicolas de Nicolay, on the other hand, was sent to the

Ottoman‟s court by the French king and his task was to secretly draw everything he would encounter. The result was as illustration book published in 1576 which included engravings depicting traditional Turkish attires and other scenes of everyday life of the

Ottoman capital (30). Nicolay‟s contribution to the European knowledge of the

Ottomans consisted in the visualisation of the East; until then, the ordinary people of

Europe had had only hazy ideas about the Turkish appearance.

As still more travellers brought exciting information from the far Muslim lands, the Europeans longed to learn more about this powerful enemy from the East; there was a demand for information about the Ottomans‟ origin or about their social and religious practices. Apart from the accounts of various diplomats and pilgrims to the Holy Land,

20 also stories of former captives were attracting wide readership (Rataj 73). The adventurous story of Johannes Schiltberger who had been captured by the Turks at the battle of Nikopol in 1396 and who had returned home after thirty years of captivity became one of the most reprinted classics; by the end of the 16th century it was published eleven times (Wheatcroft 89-90).

Two conclusions can be drawn from the rich canon of European writing on the

Turks. First, all of the early modern texts about the Ottomans which circulated Europe had one thing in common: an appeal to the Christian kingdoms to strike at the mutual enemy as a united force. This wish of the authors had unfortunately never come true.

And second, the subjects of European kingdoms yearned for any information that would enable them to learn more about the powerful empire from the East; they were intrigued by the scale of Ottomans‟ expansion and by their apparent invincibility. Throughout the

16th century, the already traditional fear associated with the Ottoman Empire was mingled with growing fascination.

1.3.2. The Scourge of God

The military activities against the Turks had always been connected in the European thinking with the religious rhetoric. Medieval crusades used to be justified as the Holy war against the infidels; the Ottoman threat in the early modern period was then interpreted as an endangerment of Christianity. As a result, war against the Turks had been led not only with actual weapons on the battlefield but also from the pulpits in the

European churches. This religious war gave rise to a new literary genre – the Christian polemics with Islam. In these texts, the Turkish attacks were explained as a punishment sent by God upon Christians for their sinful way of life. Moreover, some texts even claimed that the Turk was without a doubt the biblical Antichrist and thus a sign of the

21 oncoming apocalypse (Rataj 164).In short, the church had contributed the most to the atmosphere of fear in Europe.

Most of the polemics with Islam consisted in the comparative analysis of the

Bible and the Koran. The Muslim holy book was translated into Latin for the first time by an English clergyman Robert of Chester in 1143 and it must have been this text the early modern polemicists turned to as Chester‟s translation of the Koran was in use well into the 17th century. In the middle of the 16th century, the immense interest in oriental matter initiated demand for the printed version but it was much opposed by the Catholic

Church. Chester‟s text was eventually printed in Basil through the intercession of

Martin Luther. The 17th century saw the translation of the Koran into the main European languages; the English could read it in their mother tongue since 1649 (123).

In the perspective of Christian theologians, the many differences between the

Christian and Muslim holy texts demonstrated that Islam was a distorted Christian faith and Muslims were thus perceived as mere heretics of Christianity (124). As a consequence, there appeared suggestions about the Christianization of the Ottomans;

Pope Pius II attempted to convince Mehmed II (1451-81) to convert to the Christian faith, the Dutch humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam supported the idea of missionary endeavours in the regions of the Ottoman Empire, and a Bohemian theologian and pedagogue John Amos Comenius even started organizing the translation of the Bible into Turkish (125). Indeed, the Europeans were anxious to get the upper hand in this spiritual struggle.

Christian polemics with Islam were usually written on the occasion of Turkish victories. Although addressed to the Muslims, they were aimed at the European

Christians in order to encourage them in their faith, and to convince them about their religion‟s superiority over the blasphemous faith of the Eastern infidels (125). A fiery

22 polemic of Pope Pius II immediately following the fall of Constantinople in 1453 can serve as a good example. However, the genre of religious polemics created space not only for the Christian-Muslim debate; in the early modern Europe, divided by the

Reformation, this genre also became an important weapon in the religious struggle between the Catholics and the Protestants.

The German reformer Martin Luther represented the voice of the Protestants and his opinions had been adopted throughout the whole Europe. His view was clearly anti-

Catholic: the Turks were the scourge of God which meant that only a sincere penance of the Christians can avert the Eastern threat; consequently, Luther denied the idea of holy war, he saw crusades as efforts of the greedy Catholics to gain power; and last but not least, the pope did not differ much from the Turk as both embodied the Antichrist (164).

Such accusations did not have to wait long for the Catholic retaliation which came in the statement that the “Protestants were worse that the Turks” and Luther himself was called “the son of Satan” (165). What enraged the Catholic camp perhaps most was

Luther‟s comparison of Catholicism and Islam in terms of religious tolerance where he decided in favour of the Eastern infidel (167). Such assertion actually contained a grain of truth; the Ottomans allowed their non-Muslim subjects under certain restrictions to preserve their religious practices (Finkel 139), and Christian and Jewish communities had lived among the Ottomans since the beginning of the empire in relative peace. All that strongly contrasted with the religious persecutions in Europe.

Many Christian theologians had to acknowledge that the religion of Islam possessed indeed some qualities in which it even exceeded Christianity such as tolerance, charity or unity in faith. In an attempt to suppress the arguments in favour of the Muslim faith, they devised rhetoric of Muslim hypocrisy; every Muslim virtue was superficial and the salvation was impossible without the sincere faith in Christ. Such

23 was the message of another polemic with Islam worth mentioning here which originated in the heart of the Habsburg territory. A Bohemian Protestant aristocrat, Václav

Budovec z Budova, produced an interesting synthesis of a book of travels and a religious polemic, the Antialkorán, written deliberately in 1593 as an encouragement for soldiers fighting in the Long War, but which was not allowed to be published until 1614 due to the Catholic censorship. During his stay at the Ottoman court in 1577 as an envoy of the Habsburg emperor, Budovec had the opportunity to speak with several renegades. Having been influenced by these conversations, he resolved to write a book where he would expose the hidden hypocrisy of Islam and he then devoted one of the final chapters, De Apostatis (Of Apostates), to the discouragement of other Christians from turning Turk (129). In his view, the apostates were “epicures and atheists”, guilty of the “conscious blasphemy against God” (Budovec 303, translation mine).

To conclude, the Christian church was in the early modern period engaged in the spiritual struggle with the faith of the Muslims. The perception of the Ottomans as the

“scourge of Christendome” (Knolles 432) fuelled the general fear of the Turks in

Europe which was then used for propagandistic ends and for tying the Europeans firmer to the fold of Christianity. The Christian polemics with Islam also served as a means of war between the Catholics and the Protestants and therefore, have to be understood in the context of the European Reformation.

1.3.3. Response of the English Drama

The general anxiety about the Turks naturally found its way on the English stage, another public source of information for common people apart from the pulpit. The statistics clearly proves that the Turkish matter was a topic of considerable interest for early modern English audiences; since the year 1579, when the first oriental play was

24 written, to the closure of English theatres in 1642, 47 plays had been produced that deal in some way with the oriental theme; unfortunately 13 of them did not survive to the present day. The authors were most prolific in the period from 1586 to 1611, marking thus the time of the biggest anxiety of the Englishmen about the threat from the East

(Wann 166).

The first category of oriental dramas can be identified as plays that took well- known historical events as their main subject. Christopher Marlowe‟s Tamburlaine the

Great (1587-8) which describes the adventures of Tamerlane, the victor of the battle at

Ankara in 1402 has been already mentioned. Another play by Marlowe, The Jew of

Malta (1589), incorporates the Turkish threat and the tribute Malta was obliged to pay to the Ottomans. George Peele found inspiration in the battle of Alcazar of 1578 when

Portugal invaded Morocco on the Barbary Coast (Finkel 169) and his play The Battle of

Alcazar came into existence in 1588.

The second category form plays which were biographical pieces portraying lives of various Ottoman sultans. How faithful these plays were to their sources is highly debatable; however, it was through this channel that the common Englishmen came to know the feared rulers of the Ottomans. The play that is attributed to Robert Greene,

Selimus, Emperor of the Turks (1594), shows the sultan Selim I as a treacherous prince who gain his throne by poisoning his father and murdering his younger brothers.

Although there is no historical evidence for these events, the act of fratricide, even a multiple one, was not unprecedented in the Ottoman history. For example, the two of the three sultans with whom Queen Elizabeth negotiated, Murad III and Mehmed III, both had their brothers executed to ensure smooth accession to the throne (Finkel 165).

Another author who focused on the Ottoman sultans, Thomas Goffer, wrote two plays in 1618. The Courageous Turk based on Knolles‟s Generall Historie of the Turkes,

25 depicts the life of Murad I (1362-1389) and includes the Battle of Kosovo Pojle in 1389; his second play The Raging Turk captures the life of Bayezid II (Vitkus, Three 3).

There were also dramas whose settings did not reach the mainland of the

Ottoman realm but focused on the dangerous waters of the Barbary Coast where the regions under Ottoman control, Morocco and strategic ports of the Western

Mediterranean such as Tunis, Algiers and Tripoli were situated. Thomas Heywood decided to place a female character into this setting in his adventurous two-part play

The Fair Maid of the West (1602). A young Englishwoman Bess cruises the Barbary

Coast in search of her lover, encounters pirates, bravely faces lascivious proposals of the Moroccan king, and finally, united with her beloved, escapes the Muslim threat.

Apart from the unusual employment of a heroine, this play differs from the rest of the

English Turkish drama in terms of genre; this Heywood‟s comedy stands out from the rest of the oriental tragedies.

In contrast to the Turks in the region of Anatolia, the western areas of the North

Africa were populated by the inhabitants of different ethnical origins of which the most distinctive were the Moors. Thomas Dekker described the malicious intrigues of a

Moorish prince Eleazar at the Spanish court in his play Lust’s Dominion (1600).

However, the most famous Moor on the English stage was and will always be undoubtedly Shakespeare‟s Othello. Even at the beginning of the play Othello, The

Moor of Venice (1604) the Venetians are confronted with the threat of the Turks who are just about to attack Cyprus. Apart from this brief Turkish appearance, the critics have identified Turkish identity in the main hero himself; countless essays have been written on Othello‟s „moorishness‟ or on his “turning Turk” (Vitkus, Three 2). In the consciousness of the Englishmen, the identities of the “„pagan‟ Moor and the „infidel‟

Turk” have merged together in one Muslim Other (2).

The last category of English oriental plays to be identified here is preoccupied with the issue of apostasy. Those plays usually show the fate of a European renegade who eventually receives a severe punishment for his apostasy, usually in from of a horrible death, or who repents and returns to the Christian faith (Matar, Islam 51). The first play of this sort was Thomas Kyd‟s The Tragedye of Soliman and Perseda written in 1588 (52); however, much greater attention was paid to the unsettling figure of renegade after the turn of the 16thcentury. This category includes the two plays that are the subject of literary analysis in the next chapter, Robert Daborne‟s A Christian Turned

Turk (1612) and Philip Massinger‟s The Renegado (1623). Daborne and Massinger provide their audiences with similar and at the same time also different perspectives on the issue of Christian apostasy.

To conclude, the Turks represented such an intriguing topic that most of the major playwrights of the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre, such as Marlowe, Kyd,

Shakespeare, Dekker or Heywood, incorporated some oriental theme into at least one of their plays (Wann 167). The Turk had even entered the texts whose plot had originally nothing to do with the Muslims; for instance Edgar in Shakespeare‟s King Lear claims that he had “in women, out-paramoured the Turk” (3.4.89-90). All of these plays formed and at the same time confirmed European stereotypes about the Turks such as their cruelty and lasciviousness. In short, the Turk had become during the early modern period a new dramatic archetype.

2. Literary Analysis

The two analysed plays were both composed in the first half of the 17th century under the rule of James I. Robert Daborne wrote the play A Christian Turned Turk between

1609 and 1612, Philip Massinger produced his play on similar topic The Renegado about ten years later at the turn of the year 1623. The authors had much in common.

They were approximately of the same age; both received some kind of university education, even though only Daborne is believed to have completed the degree; and most importantly, both worked for Philip Henslowe, a prominent theatre entrepreneur of that time. Even though the start of their career was similar, it was Massinger who managed to become a playwright of great renown. Whereas little is known about

Daborne‟s dramatic career which he ended in 1618 only to die ten years later in Ireland;

Massinger succeeded William Shakespeare and John Fletcher on the position of the leading playwright for The King‟s Men. He was a co-author of numerous plays and fifteen of his own dramas survive to this day (Vitkus, Three 24-40). No matter how different the lives of these two playwrights were, they both felt the need to produce a piece of work that addressed the general anxiety about the threat of the Ottoman

Empire, particularly the unsettling possibility of the conversion to Islam. Their representation of the Turks coincides with the European religious polemic of that period and as a result, both plays offer the traditional stereotypical portrayal of the Turks and their culture. As shall be demonstrated in the following analysis, the image of

“Turkishness” is interwoven into the very fabric of both plays. The present chapter then takes into consideration the role which the English dramatic conventions of the period played in shaping of the stereotypical representation of the Turks. Lastly, a concept of

“Englishness” is introduced which signifies the ideology of English superiority through which the Turkish characters of the analysed plays are viewed.

2.1. A Christian Turned Turk

The play A Christian Turned Turk printed in 1612 was most probably written for the company of the Queen‟s Revels Children. Robert Daborne found the inspiration for his plot in two pamphlets that were published in London in 1609, namely True and Certain

Report of the Beginning, Proceedings, Overthrows, and now present Estate of Captain

Ward and Dansiker, the two late famous Pirates by Andrew Barker, and News from

Sea, Of Two Notorious Pirates, Ward and Dansiker by an anonymous author. As the titles suggest, both texts depict the adventures of two pirates who indeed cruised the

Ottoman waters of the North Africa at the beginning of the 17th century. They gained wealth and a considerable social status due to cooperation with the Ottoman commanders of the North African ports (Vitkus, Three 24-25). The most striking aspect of their story consisted in their origin; they did not belong to the Barbary pirates, Simon

Dansiker was a Dutchman, Ward came from England itself. They even entered popular legends; various ballads about their adventures circulated London at that time. Because they dared to turn their backs on their countries and raided Christian ships including that of their compatriots, the ballads condemned them as traitors, renegades and “the sons of devils” (Song of Dansekar 349). At the same time, however, the authors of the ballads expressed their wonder about the fortunes and wealth that the pirates managed to acquire, for example in the description of Ward‟s “gallant palace and a royal place in

Tunis” that was “fitter for a prince than him” (Seaman’s Song 347). It was this atmosphere of mixed consternation and awe that prompted Daborne to the composition of his play.

The play A Christian Turned Turk is divided into a prologue, 16 component scenes and an epilogue. While the first five scenes take place at sea and their main topic is the crime of piracy, for the rest of the play the plot shifts into Tunis where the play

29 acquires its religious dimension that arises from the multicultural character of this North

African trade centre under the Ottoman control. In short, the play describes the fate of

Captain Ward, an English pirate, who later turns Turk and who, at the end, dies by his own hand, an act which is interpreted as a divine punishment for his crimes.

The first part of the play showed to the English audiences the corrupt nature of piracy. The opening scene presents the pirate captain Ward playing cards with unsuspecting French merchants on their ship who very soon become Ward‟s captives.

When he attempts to recruit them for his crew, Ferdinand, a Frenchman loyal to his country, who serves as a voice of morality throughout the play, declines Ward‟s offer and explains to him the scale of the injury they inflict upon the European countries by their piratical activities:

Piracy, its theft most hateful, swallows up

The estates of orphans, widows, who – born free –

Are thus made slaves, enthralled to misery

By those that should defend them at the best. (1.58-61)

Shortly after this episode, a different French ship, pursued by another pirate vessel, attempts to take refuge on Ward‟s ship of which he immediately takes advantage. In the ensuing combat between the French and Ward‟s crews members a

French nobleman named Lemot encourages his compatriots to think upon their moral superiority over the pirates and employs a Christian simile that “truth fights ‟gainst theft, and heaven opposes hell” (2.72) . However, the courage and the righteous cause do not ensure the French their victory; Ward‟s men eventually seize the ship and ruthlessly kill most of the French crew except for a few captives whom they intend to sell on the slave market, including Lemot‟s sister Alizia who was travelling to meet her

30 fiancé Raymond. The pirate is here presented as a figure of a cruel disposition incapable of showing any mercy.

Moreover, Francisco, the rival captain of the pirate ship that previously pursued the now captured Frenchmen, challenges Ward, and while they are having a duel, a group of Ward‟s men led by a pirate named Gallop betray him, flee with the seized

French ship and Ward‟s captives, and head for Tunis. This disloyalty demonstrate their utter corruption; the pirates are shown as base individuals, “a race of thieves” (2.44) who “for mere hate to virtue [are] pursuing vice” (2.50).

On the other hand, Daborne also provides his audiences with an exemplary pirate counterpart to the figure of Ward and that is none other than Dansiker, a Dutch pirate. Dansiker enters the stage with a royal pardon granted to him by the French king in his hand and is full of honourable intentions to “redeem [his] honour and not to return into [his] country with the names of pardoned thieves, but by some worthy deed” (5.13-

15). As a result, he resolves to blow up the Tunisian harbour and destroy the ships of all the pirates there. From the point of view of the historical accuracy of the events,

Dansiker was indeed granted a royal pardon, entered the service of the French crown as a privateer, and continued to pillage ships with English and Spanish flags (Vitkus, Three

31). However, his intentions could have been hardly admirable; he merely ensured that his piratical actions had no longer been deemed unlawful, at least from the French perspective. Whatever the true story might be, Daborne‟s Dansiker embodies the possibility of a reformed pirate, a criminal who wants to pay his debts to his country.

In short, the first part of Daborne‟s play served as a reminder for the English of the abominable crimes committed on the high seas of the Mediterranean by the

Europeans who had renounced their national allegiances and who, in the pursuit of fortune, had “branded [their] foreheads with the hateful name of thieves” (1.57).

Nevertheless, the issue of piracy, taken from the moral perspective, could not have much impressed the Jacobean audiences: it was far from being original, the act of piracy had always been defined rather ambiguously as the distinction between a pirate and an explorer had never been totally clear, and last but not least, there was a “sense of popular admiration” for the adventures of famous pirates in the contemporary imagination (Vitkus, Three 30). Daborne must have been aware of this, and as a result, piracy was only the beginning of Ward‟s transgression as shall be demonstrated in the analysis of the rest of the play.

As has been mentioned before, the core of the play takes place in Tunis, Ward‟s base for his piratical expeditions. One of the important settings in Tunis is the house of

Benwash, a Jewish merchant who serves as a middleman for the pirates and who is also engaged in the slave trade. The Jews, who had been more than once expelled from

European kingdoms (in case of England, they were expelled from the country by King

Edward I‟s edict in 1280 and only invited back as late as 1655, during the later years of

Oliver Cromwell‟s reign), were very much welcomed in the Ottoman Empire, and as a consequence, they constituted an important ethno-confessional group in the sultan‟s realm. The Turks valued their trade abilities and the Jewish community thrived in this

Eastern society which provided them with considerable religious tolerance and rich economic opportunities (Vitkus, Three 36). The Europeans were aware of this symbiotic relationship and perceived both the Turks and Jews as their Eastern enemies, sometimes even not differentiating between the two (38). Daborne‟s Benwash is a typical example of a greedy, cruel Jew with a lack of conscience, which was a stereotypical image of the

Jews in Europe at that time.

Moreover, it is the house of the Jew where the notions of religion come into play. The sixth scene begins with a discussion about religion between Benwash, his

Turkish wife Agar, his Jewish servant Rabshake, and Agar‟s sister, a Turkish woman named Voada. When taunted to turn Christian, Rabshake dismisses it at once saying that

“they [Christians] have Jew enough already amongst ‟em” (6.16). Daborne also puts some critique aimed at his Christian audiences into Rabshake‟s mouth when stating that

Christians often “devour one another” when they should “have more charity amongst

‟em” (6.25-6). Furthermore, the religious affairs become even more complicated when it is revealed later in the play that the Jewish Benwash is, in fact, a renegade who has turned Turk in order to protect his wife from sexual harassment from the Turks.

All the Christian characters introduced in the first five scenes successively find their way to Benwash‟s house; the treacherous pirate Gallop wants to sell his booty there, and Captain Ward and his new ally Francisco intend to sell their captives, including Alizia‟s fiancé Raymond, to the Jew; Dansiker, too, is invited into the house.

They have all entered the alluring world of the exotic Islamic society whose charm consists not only in the promise of easy profits but also in the form of beautiful Turkish women. Immediately upon his arrival, Gallop starts plotting to arrange a rendezvous with Benwash‟s wife Agar which she is inclined to. The story line of their amorous adventure and Benwash‟s vain attempts to prevent it provides for the comic subplot of the play.

Nevertheless, it is the irresistible attraction Ward is feeling towards the Turkish woman Voada that puts the religious matters at stake. The Tunisian society would very much appreciate if they had the services of the famous Captain Ward, “the lord of the ocean” (1.23) at their disposal. In order to achieve it, Ward would have to become a full member of the Ottoman society but initially, he has no reason for doing so. However, his desire for Voada has not gone unnoticed and as a result, Benwash, Voada‟s brother

Crossman and the governor of Tunis, himself a renegade, resolve to approach Ward with their offer.

They employ different arguments to convince him to convert to Islam. First of all, they try to appeal to Ward‟s ambition by offering him the position of the sultan‟s admiral. When Ward objects that his Christian faith could be an obstacle, he is given such advice:

BENWASH. Christian or Turk, you are more wise, I know,

Than with religion to confine your hopes.

GOVERNOR. He‟s too well read in poesy to be tied,

In the slave‟s fetters of religion,

What a difference in me as I am a Turk

And was a Christian? Life, liberty,

Wealth, honor – they are common unto all!

If any odds be, ‟tis on Mahomet‟s side:

His servitors thrive best; I am sure (7.25-33).

In short, what they are suggesting is that Ward should not let any religion step between him and his aspiration, and if possible, then to choose such a creed which would assure him the biggest promotion.

When Ward is, quite understandably, suspicious of this “hook [their] golden bait doth cover” (7.34), Benwash replies with a relevant argument that once convinced himself to turn Turk, and that was worrying the European Christians for the whole course of the Ottoman expansion and their military successes: “If this religion were so damnable / as other make it, that God which owes right, / profaned by this, would soon destroy it quite” (7.38-40). Indeed, the question why God allows Islam, the religion of heresy in the perspective of Christians who were convinced of their spiritual superiority,

34 to rule such a powerful realm as the Ottoman Empire, was a repeated topic of countless

European religious polemics. At this point, Ward is still able to justify this contradiction and he expresses faith in God‟s mercy. Therefore, Ward resists the first temptation and declines the offer of the conversion to Islam on the grounds that he does not wish to

“abjure the belief [his] ancestors left to [his] being” (7.74-76).

However, his tempters do not surrender as they still have one weapon in store: on the assumption that “what devils dare not move men to accomplish, women work them to” (7.87-8), Crossman sends for his sister Voada. As they expect, she proves to be the most powerful motivation for Ward‟s conversion; as soon as he spots her, he knows he is doomed. Unaware of Voada‟s selfish interest only in his riches, Ward, repeatedly referring to the power of her beauty, consents to turn Turk as she cannot marry a man

“whose religion speaks [her] an infidel” (7.121-2).

Even though Ward‟s fate is almost sealed, there is a last chance for redemption proffered to him: the enslaved Frenchwoman Alizia (lit. “a noble one”), disguised as

Voada‟s page Fidelio (lit. “faithful”), and the French merchant Ferdinand both entreat

Ward and plead with him not to “sell his soul for such a vanity” and not to accept “the abhorred name of Turk upon [him]” (7.206, 209). At one point, he is almost on the verge of recanting his vow to turn Turk; nevertheless, encouraged by Voada‟s sweet looks and convinced of the futility of any attempts to atone his crimes, Ward decisively agrees to the conversion.

The English audiences could have viewed lightly Ward‟s crimes, which he committed as a pirate who had renounced the allegiance to his country; many of them might have even felt deep admiration for his adventurous, if unlawful, expeditions.

However, the fact that he also renounced his faith represented a severe transgression

35 which could not have been forgiven. While numerous Englishmen suffered in the

Ottoman slavery and managed to preserve their faith in Christ despite their hardship;

Ward embraced the faith of the Infidel merely for his lust for a Turkish woman. To enhance the effect of Ward‟s turning Turk on his audiences and to show to the English the sheer blasphemy of it, Daborne decided to do something very daring: to stage the very act of conversion. But because the staging of such a heretical deed was at least debatable, the whole ceremony is presented as a dumb show, commented on only by the chorus which assures the spectators that binding oneself to obey “the laws of [the

Muslims‟] damned Prophet” (8.16) guarantees that such “black deeds will have black ends” (8.28).

And indeed, as soon as Ward turns Turk, only ill fortune is awaiting him. First, he learns that Dansiker has burnt down all the ships in the harbour except for Ward‟s which makes him a suspect in the eyes of the Turks. When he tries to find some solace in Voada‟s love, she tells him that “[their] Prophet hates false runagates” (13.27) and condemns him as “a most abject slave” (13.34). Furthermore, enraged by his wife‟s coldness, Ward finds out that Voada is attracted to her page Fidelio, who seems to welcome her seductive proposals. But Ward is not aware that Alizia, in the disguise of

Fidelio, merely tries to save her beloved Raymond whom Voada has promised to ransom from captivity for one night spent with her page. Thirsty for revenge, Ward decides to betray Tunis and to blow up the castle, but janissaries, the sultan‟s elite army, are already at his heels. After his narrow escape, Alizia approaches Ward and offers him revenge on Voada in exchange for his help in freeing her beloved and the other captives to which he consents. However, he is already resolved to use Alizia‟s trust for his own ends and secretly imparts the time of the rescue mission to Voada.

The climax of the play then takes place in the dark corridor of the castle where

Raymond is waiting for Alizia, Voada expects to meet her Fidelio and Ward seeks his revenge on Voada. The outcome is naturally tragic: jealous Voada shoots Raymond dead in whose embrace dies also Alizia who commits suicide to die with her love, and

Voada gets injured in the fight with Ward and sets the castle watch against him for the crime of wounding his wife. As a result, Ward is arrested, in vain invoking the officers‟ compassion as he addresses them as “honest friends and Turks” (15.100).

Meanwhile, Dansiker returns to Tunis with a mission to assassinate the Jewish merchant Benwash. When he, however, enters his house, he finds Benwash wounded on the floor together with his wife Agar and his servant Rabshake, both strangled. As it turns out, Benwash has murdered Agar for her adultery and, to get rid of an inconvenient witness, he has killed Rabshake, too. When he tries to put the blame on

Dansiker, Dansiker stabs him, thus completing his mission. After he is arrested by the

Turkish officers, Dansiker proudly confesses his intentions to destroy Tunis, the city of infidels, and refuses to save his soul by the offered possibility of turning Turk; rather, he kills himself. Resolved to die as a Christian, begs heaven for forgiveness, and presents himself as an example for all the Christians who may have been ever led astray to the life of piracy:

Let my example move all pirates, robbers,

To think how heavy thy revenging hand

Will sit upon them. I feel thy justice now.

Receive my soul; accept my intended vow. (16.233-6)

In contrast to Dansiker‟s noble farewell, Ward is desperately trying to save his skin by referring to his recently acquired Turkish identity when he pleads: “I am a Turk, and I do crave the law” (16.241). When this does not have the desired effect, he

37 attempts to entreat Voada but she laughs at his foolish naivety. Seeing that there is no hope, Ward curses all the Turks for their ingratitude as he was the one who had disclosed to them “the seaman‟s art” and consequently “the way to conquer Europe”

(16.301-2). What he is referring to was a painful fact that must have had an unsettling effect upon Daborne‟s audiences. A considerable number of English renegades became admirals in the Ottoman navy and provided the Turks with the knowledge of European naval navigation, mainly ship building (Vitkus, Three 33). They thus enhanced the expansion of the Christian arch enemy. This fact makes Ward‟s betrayal of his homeland even more treacherous.

At the end, Ward, just as Dansiker, chooses death by his own hand and makes an attempt to die with dignity. However, Ward‟s last words reflect more the final message which the author wanted to impart to his spectators than a sincere conviction of the dying pirate. He encourages the Christian forces to reunite against their mutual

Eastern enemy, expresses his wish to be the last Englishman to serve to the Turks, and following Dansiker‟s example, he reminds all the pirates of the God‟s justice that awaits them all:

All that you 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. (16.317-321)

Such is the end of the Captain Ward, the “conqueror of the Western world”

(1.24), as designed by Robert Daborne. It must have been strange to see Ward‟s death staged in London and, at the same time, know from the pamphlets that the real Captain

Daborne was actually contentedly living in his Tunisian palace (Vitkus, Three 27).

Notwithstanding this contradiction, the truth has never been the primary goal of the theatre and Daborne‟s play bears a clear didactic message – to dissuade common people from the crime of piracy and, consequently, to condemn everybody participating in this offence against one‟s country. Furthermore, the staging of Ward‟s abominable conversion to Islam, his capital transgression, should have encouraged the Englishmen in their constancy in their Christian faith.

The image of “Turkishness”, i.e. the representation of the Turkish environment in this play is in accordance with the European stereotypes about the Eastof the time. In the play, Tunis is presented as a corrupted society based on a false religion which gives opportunity to European criminals and treacherous Jewish merchants, and which undermines all Christian values and spreads this subversion into Europe itself. The dichotomy of good and evil is here conveyed by contrasting characters; Ward‟s despicable behaviour contrasts with the Frenchmen‟s pious acceptance of their fate and their selfless attempts to put Ward on the right path again. However, it is the juxtaposition of the Christian and Turkish women that most clearly expresses the

European moral superiority. The embodiment of Christian chastity and piety is the tragic character of the Frenchwoman Alizia. Notwithstanding all the hardship she must endure among the Turks, she is resolved not to “betray [herself] unto their lust” (2.27), keeps her faith till the very end, and serves as Ward‟s voice of conscience throughout the play. Conversely, the Turkish women, Agar and Voada, embody the stereotypical lasciviousness of the Muslim world. This is well captured in the moment when Voada spots the fair Alizia disguised as a page Fidelio and swears: “I must enjoy his love, though quenching of my lust did burn the world besides” (6.100-1). Lust is also seen as the chief motivation for the renegades; both Benwash and Ward turn Turk for a woman‟s sake. In short, Muslims are here presented as cruel, blasphemous people

39 whose religion is based on their passions and base desires. This alleged corrupt nature of Islam is interpreted as the main motivation for the European renegades to renounce their Christian faith.

Moreover, the representation of the Turks and their religion in this play is reinforced by the specific use of colour imagery. The white, signifying chastity, innocence and truth is naturally opposed by the predominating black; for example when

Raymond warns Ward against the “black revenge” that awaits him (6.326) or when

Ward laments his “soul more black ( . . . ) than is the raven night” at the end of the play

(16.271). The colour black is used more than fifteen times throughout the text for evocation of various ideas such as blasphemy, damnation, skin colour or evil intentions, and underscores the sinfulness of the Turkish world in the eyes of the English audiences.

To conclude, Robert Daborne‟s play A Christian Turned Turk is a didactic lesson for the English subjects of the 17th century celebrating the Christian values and condemning the Ottomans and the Europeans who succumbed to the allure of the corrupt Muslim society in the pursuit of riches and earthly pleasures. Ward‟s transgression consists in the fact that he has abjured both his national as well as religious allegiance. The Turkish characters are stereotypically presented as lascivious, aggressive people with false religion which poses a constant threat to the Christian world. In short, the play A Christian Turned Turk is firmly embedded in the European tradition of the stereotypical representation of the East.

2.2. The Renegado

Philip Massinger wrote his tragicomedy The Renegado most likely at the end of 1623, after he had temporarily interrupted his cooperation with the King‟s Men, and the play 40 was then repeatedly staged by the companies of Lady Elizabeth‟s Men and Queen

Henrietta‟s Men at the Cockpit theatre. Apparently, Massinger‟s play was much more successful than Daborne‟s A Christian Turned Turk, which is also demonstrated by the fact that Massinger‟s The Renegado was reintroduced on the English stage later in the

Restoration period. As far as his sources are concerned, Massinger found inspiration for the historical and cultural context of his play in the works of the period dealing with

Islamic lands, such as Richard Knolles‟s The Generall Historie of the Turkes (1603), and for the personal dimension he drew heavily on Cervantes who himself spent five years in Algerian captivity (Vitkus, Three 40-1). Besides, Massinger must also have had

Daborne‟s play in mind when writing his Renegado; even though the main message differs, it cannot be a coincidence that their texts are analogical in so many respects.

Unlike Daborne‟s text, Massinger‟s play is divided into five acts. However, the main topic of Daborne‟s play is preserved; the whole plot takes place in Tunis and its main themes are again piracy, religious apostasy, the allure of the lascivious Muslim society, and the emphasis on Christian virtues. The main difference between the plays lies in the fate of the renegade characters; whereas Ward is deservingly punished and commits suicide, Massinger‟s renegade Grimaldi is able to find the right path to God‟s grace by means of sincere repentance and he manages to escape from Tunis alive together with all the Christian characters of the play. The most striking aspect of

Massinger‟s play is the successful conversion of a Turkish character, princess Donusa, to Christianity, an event which reverses the religious equilibrium at the end of the play.

The play begins in a multicultural environment of a Tunisian bazaar where the

Venetian nobleman Vitelli, disguised as a merchant, and his servant Gazet display their goods. The discussion immediately turns to religion, predetermining thus the play‟s main topic, when Vitelli, irritated by his servant‟s blasphemous comments, asks what

41 his faith is. Gazet, the chief comic character of the play, proves to be religiously very adaptable as he answers: “Live I in England, Spain, France, Rome, Geneva: / I‟m of that country‟s faith” (1.1.36-7). However, he instantly denies the possibility of himself turning Turk with a witty remark on circumcision and pre-sets a series of jokes aimed at this religious practice of the Muslims, which recurs throughout the play. An honourable reverend Francisco approaches Vitelli and informs him that the “perjured renegado”

Antonio Grimaldi, a pirate who captured and sold Vitelli‟s sister Paulina to the Turks, is in the town (1.1.106). Vitelli, enraged and thirsty for revenge, is appeased only by

Francisco‟s assurance that he gave Paulina a special amulet which will protect her from any harm provided she supports its power by daily prayers.

Meanwhile in the palace, celebrations are in preparation at the occasion of the betrothal of the royal princess Donusa, the sultan‟s niece, to Mustapha, the basha of

Aleppo. Attended by her two servants, Turkish Manto and English eunuch called

Carazie, who represents the only direct link to England in this play (Matar, “The

Renegade” 496), Donusa receives her fiancé Mustapha and convinces him to accompany her to the bazaar. There she encounters Vitelli, who, unaware of her high birth, tries to sell her “the rarest beauties of the Christian world” (1.3.135). Donusa accepts this as a challenge to her own beauty and decides to do something unprecedented: she, a Turkish noblewoman, shows her face to a mere Christian merchant. Astonished by her boldness and beauty, Vitelli acknowledges that she has won the argument. To ensure they will meet again, Donusa then breaks a precious mirror and with a suggestion that the Venetian should come to the palace for compensation, she takes her leave.

When enchanted Vitelli later finds out who his charming customer was, he tries to conceal his eagerness to see her again with a feeble excuse that she might help to

42 rescue his poor sister Paulina from captivity. Forgotten is the advice that his counsellor

Francisco has given him a moment ago which, echoing Daborne, was a warning against the snare of lascivious “Turkish women / [who] from the restraint of freedom” will do anything “to enjoy their wanton ends” (1.3.8-13). Vitelli is firmly resolved to visit the palace at all costs.

The first act introduces also the abominable crime of piracy. The pirate Grimaldi enters the stage for the first time and makes a proud speech about his profession; he calls himself “the Neptune of the ocean” (1.3.65) and goes on:

Though we carouse

The tears of orphans in our Greekish wines,

The sighs of undone widows paying for

The music bought to cheer us, ravished virgins

To slavery sold for coin to feed our riots,

We will have no compunction. (1.3.69-74)

Although it is not very credible that a pirate would spare a thought for poor orphans and widows, it conspicuously resembles Daborne‟s denunciation of piracy and it must have had a direct impact on the English spectators, many of whom had themselves experienced at home the hardship which the European pirates had brought upon them by their piratical activities at sea, predominantly in the far Mediterranean.

However, Massinger devoted much less space to the question of piracy than Daborne which might suggest that this issue was either no longer as topical as it had been in the

1610s or that the question of religion was more pressing than that of piracy at that time.

The relationship of Vitelli and Donusa represents a counterpart to the Christian-

Turkish relationship of Ward and Voada; however, there are considerable differences.

Whereas Voada stands for a typical example of a treacherous Turkish female driven by

43 her passions, the character of Donusa is not so simple. Though sensuous and vain, her feelings for Vitelli are sincere, and she is very much aware of the risk she takes when she intends “to draw [her] bark of chastity [...] into the gulf of a deserved ill fame”

(2.1.31-3). Similarly, Vitelli is not the self-evident villain as Daborne‟s Ward is. His crime lies merely in falling in love with a Muslim woman and succumbing to his passion, thereby denying his former conviction that the “difference in faith / Must of necessity strangle such base desires” (1.3.17-18, 20). Moreover, as Donusa before, he is aware of his transgression; when he is invited by Donusa to her boudoir, he consciously prefers pleasure to virtue: “I follow! Now I find / That virtue‟s but a word, and no sure guard / If set upon by beauty and reward” (2.4.135-7). Nevertheless, unlike Ward,

Vitelli never, even for a second, considers the possibility of turning Turk and preserves his Christian faith to the very end of the play.

In accordance with the dramatic conventions of his period, Massinger, as well as

Daborne a decade before, inserted a comic subplot into his play. As has been already mentioned, Vitelli‟s servant Gazet represents the clown and it is him at whose expanse the comic subplot is built. After Vitelli returns from Donusa, in fine clothes and loaded down with his financial compensation for the broken mirror, he gives some gold to

Gazet and frees his servant from his service. As soon as Gazet tastes the flavour of freedom and wealth, he begins to yearn for some profitable employment in the palace.

He addresses Carazie, the English eunuch, and queries him about the position which could be the most suitable for him. Eventually, impressed by Carazie‟s assertion that he is regularly his mistress‟s bedfellow, Gazet decides to become a eunuch, too. The comic effect lies in the fact that Carazie has intentionally withheld from him that castration is a necessary requirement for this position. That launches a series of puns upon the act of castration in the second half of the play.

Meanwhile, the renegade Grimaldi falls out of favour of the Tunisian government after he offends the viceroy Asambegh. As a result, Grimaldi is deprived of all his possessions and privileges, in vain appealing to Asambegh for his past services he had done for Tunis, namely the capture of Vitelli‟s sister Paulina who is now

Asambegh‟s prisoner. This degradation initiates in Grimaldi an internal moral transformation; he acknowledges his crimes and sincerely despairs because he is convinced that there can be no redemption for somebody who has stained himself with

“black guilt and misery” and who is “a devil already” (3.2.62, 77). Reverend Francisco pities him and takes Grimaldi in with the resolution to relieve his wounded conscience.

It is revealed later in the play that the heaviest burden on Grimaldi‟s conscience is an offence once committed at a mass at St Mark‟s in Venice when he snatched the Blessed

Sacrament from the hands of the priest serving at the main altar and dashed it on the ground. As it turns out, that priest was none other than reverend Francisco and as such, he is the only one who can absolve the pirate from his disgraceful sin through the act of forgiveness. Grimaldi embraces this chance for his redemption and pledges to lead a virtuous life for the rest of his life and to undergo every possible penance to compensate for his past crimes. In this way, the renegade is welcomed back to the fold of

Christianity. For Massinger, unlike for Daborne, it was possible for a renegade to return to his original faith provided he sincerely repented of his crimes. The play thus expresses a hope that the allure of Islam could be only temporary.

Besides, Vitelli has already come to the realization that his actions were not worthy of a virtuous Christian and intends to amend his transgression. However, in comparison with Grimaldi‟s passionate penitence, Vitelli‟s expression of remorse seems rather insincere and covers a negligible amount of lines which contrast with Grimaldi‟s long speeches of despair. The very act of Vitelli‟s confession to Francisco is not staged

45 and the audience only witnesses their short conversation thereafter, where Vitelli first reminds Francisco of his vow of silence and then continues: “Let it suffice you have made me see my follies / and wrought, perhaps, compunction; for I would not / Appear an hypocrite” (3.2.4-6). But that is precisely what he seems to be in his attempt to apologize his affair with Donusa by simply stating that it is difficult to “put off the conditions of a man” and asking Francisco to “at the least excuse, if not pardon, his disobedience” (3.2.9, 10-11). Moreover, when Vitelli, resolved not to succumb to her charm again, confronts Donusa, he refuses to take his part of responsibility for their relationship and accuses her of being a lascivious “siren” and of seducing him (3.5.22).

He even returns to her a casket of jewels which she gave him last time when they parted and calls it “the price and salary of your lust” (3.5.48-9), rendering her almost a prostitute. All this evidence supports the opinion of Joshua Mabie who argues that, in comparison with Vitelli‟s superficial confession and his lack of regret, “Grimaldi‟s conversion seems much sounder theological lesson” (311). Notwithstanding how strongly the evidence speaks against Vitelli‟s alleged honourable character, it is him who is made a heroic Christian martyr at the end of the play.

Meanwhile, princess Donusa‟s affair with the Christian merchant has been discovered by the jealous Mustapha who grew suspicious of his fiancée‟s coldness and who then, appalled by such a gross offence committed by a member of the royal family, ran to report it to the viceroy Asambegh. Both Donusa and her lover are arrested when she is begging Vitelli not to reject her love, confirming thus her guilt.

The plot is now in the middle of the fourth act and the question of religion begins to be indeed at stake. While the trial of the Turkish princess is in hasty preparation and the viceroy Asambegh is waiting for the sultan‟s verdict (as he is the only one entitled to pronounce death sentence upon a member of the Turkish royal

46 family), Vitelli in the prison becomes an exemplary Christian martyr who endures his torture with patience and puts his fate solely in the hands of God. Vitelli‟s courage and religious devotion impress even the noble Turks, Asambegh and Mustapha, who admit that they have never been “witness of such invincible fortitude as this Christian”

(4.2.45-6). Their awe in the face of such Christian piety that is embodied in their Italian prisoner does not abandon them to the very end of the play.

Moreover, after the sultan‟s verdict condemning his niece to instant death arrives, Donusa stands her trial and, having been read her sentence, criticizes the hypocrisy of her religion which is the cause of an ingrained inequality between Turkish men and women when it makes “weak women servants [and] proud men masters”

(4.2.127 ). Whereas she is now condemned to the capital punishment for having a sexual intercourse with a Christian, had the same offence been committed by a Turkish man, “let her be fair, though Persian, Moor, / Idolatress, Turk, or Christian, [he is] privileged / and freely may enjoy her” (4.2.134-7). Massinger here demonstrates his accurate knowledge of the Muslim law which dictated rules for cases of inter-faith marriage. It states that a Muslim woman can marry a man of a different faith on the condition that he accepts the religion of his wife, whereas non-Muslim wives of Turkish men are allowed to continue to practise their original faith without restrictions (Vitkus,

Three 42). As a result, the only option which Donusa has for saving both herself and her lover is to turn Vitelli Turk and marry him. Despite her judges‟ discouragement from branding “the Ottoman line with such a mark of infamy” (4.2.162-3), her lawful wish has to be granted and the whole courtroom moves to Vitelli‟s cell to witness Donusa‟s attempt at the act of his conversion.

The following scene represents the climax of Massinger‟s play comprising a theological debate from which Christianity naturally comes off as the only true faith

47 through which one can reach salvation (Matar, “The Renegade” 498). The Christian-

Muslim argument is initiated by a traditional emphasis on the alleged sensual aspect of

Islam, which is consistent with all the previous allusions to and accusations of Turkish lasciviousness in the play. Donusa begins with advising Vitelli to forsake the “severe, nay, imperious mistress / whose service does exact perpetual cares, / watchings, and troubles”, i.e. his strict Christian faith, and to accept, instead, that religion “that courts you, whose least favor are / variety and choice of all delights / Mankind is capable of”

(4.3.79-81, 82-84). Donusa is here using the same strategy due to which Vitelli has already once succumbed when she seduced him in her boudoir. When that does not seem to have the desired effect, Donusa comes up with an argument which already

Daborne‟s Benwash used about a decade before – she attempts to convince Vitelli by the means of logic: “Look on our flourishing empire […] and then turn back and see / the narrow bounds of yours, […] you must confess that the deity you worship / wants care or power to help you” (4.3.95, 97-8, 102-3). Vitelli, of course, remains unshaken in his belief, wonders at her blindness, and repeats the conventional “demonization” of

Prophet Mohammed which comes from the medieval anti-Islamic tradition (Vitkus,

Three 343):

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. (4.3.125-31)

What Vitelli is here referring to is an old European legend which narrates a story how Mohammad trained a pigeon to nibble his ear and then pretended that the bird embodied the Holy Spirit mediating him God‟s words (Macfie 43), this being the reason why the European Christians regarded the Prophet Mohammad as an imposter.

Up to this point, Massinger‟s argument brings nothing innovative into the

Christian-Muslim debate. However, Vitelli goes on to mention something that prompts

Donusa to reconsider her beliefs: he accuses her that her desperate attempt to turn him

Turk merely stems from her fear of death. He asks: “Can there be strength in that / religion that suffers us to tremble / at that which every day – nay, hour – we haste to?”

(4.3.135-7) This is the crucial turning point in the play when the Turkish princess begins to doubt seriously her Muslim faith. Eventually, she resolves to abjure Islam and seek her salvation through Christ together with her beloved, and she symbolically

“spit[s] at Mahomet” (4.3.158). As a result, the act of conversion does take place, however, with a reversed result; it is Donusa who turns Christian in the end.

Both Vitelli and Donusa are, naturally, condemned to death and the fifth act stages the ceremony of their execution. Notwithstanding the fact that he has just converted Donusa to Christianity, Vitelli is still held in great respect by the Turks for his outstanding courage and piety, and that is the reason why they grant him his last wish – to perform an act of baptism on Donusa. This completes the transformation which Donusa‟s character is undergoing throughout the play: an infidel Turkish princess changes into a Christian martyr. The execution of these two martyrs is then interpreted as a blessed marriage.

However, the execution itself is unexpectedly interrupted by Paulina, who has so far been only a mute observer of her brother‟s trial. Pretending to have undergone a change of heart and to be willing to accept Asambegh‟s sexual proposals, she entreats

49 him to defer the execution so that the former princess Donusa could be her servant for twelve hours and Paulina could scorn her for her foolishness in abjuring Islam.

Asambegh, eager finally to win his prisoner‟s favour, agrees. This enables the

Christians to execute a rescue plan devised by reverend Franciscus and all the

Christians, including Gazet who escapes his castration, flee from Tunis on Grimaldi‟s ship.

As far as the depiction of the Turks is concerned, Massinger recycled the same stereotypes that had been employed already in Daborne‟s play. The Muslims in Tunis are accused of “barbarous cruelty” and of being “falser than [their] religion” (2.5.128,

135-6), and a great emphasis is repeatedly laid upon the alleged lascivious nature of the

Turks. That proves to be also the chief weakness of the Tunisian Muslims which the

Christian characters take advantage of when Paulina deceives Asambegh and thus ensures their escape. The vice of the Turkish exaggerated lust is contrasted with

Paulina‟s chastity which is “built upon the rock of [her] religion” (4.2.28-9). In short, regarding the image of “Turkishness”, Massinger‟s play does not bring anything new to the corpus of English oriental drama.

Nevertheless, the analysed texts diametrically differ in the handling of the renegade characters. Both A Christian Turned Turk and The Renegado try to explain the motives of the renegade that lead him to betray his country as well as his religion; however, each play offers a different solution to the renegade‟s condition. Whereas

Daborne mercilessly condemns his renegade to death as a punishment for his transgression against Christianity, Massinger provides a more positive alternative where a sincere penance can save the sinner. Massinger‟s play thus marks a significant shift in the perception of Islam; at least in the minds of English playwrights, Islam was no longer invincible.

In short, even though the play The Renegado stages only one direct link to

England, the minor character of English eunuch, the other European characters, in this case the Italians and the French, sufficiently compensate for the absence of the English.

In the dichotomy of the West and the East, the Christian and the Muslim, the inter-

European differences cease to exist, at least in the realm of English Renaissance drama.

Despite the differences, the plays The Renegado and A Christian Turned Turk were both written with the same intention: to stress the spiritual superiority of Christians over the

Muslims which arises from the image of “Turkishness”, the stereotypical representation of the Turks as lascivious people with a corrupt culture based upon a heretical religion of Islam. The fact that a play about the Turkish conversion was composed twice in the interval of more than ten years demonstrates how persistently topical this issue must have been in Jacobean England.

2.3. “Turkishness” and the English Dramatic Conventions

Despite Daborne‟s and Massinger‟s efforts to portray the Turkish environment, their plays remain embedded in the English dramatic tradition of the period. The texts are specific products of the time and place of their origin, and as a result, they are English in all respects. The present subchapter demonstrates how the plays reflect the legacy of the dramatic production of the Elizabethan era, and how the authors conformed to the dramatic conventions of the time even at the expense of the historical and cultural accuracy. Additionally, the forces that determined the English dramatic production of that period are taken into consideration because those were the drives that formed the image of “Turkishness” as it is presented in Daborne‟s and Massinger‟s plays.

Daborne and Massinger wrote in the Jacobean period, whose dramatic tradition was built upon the legacy of Elizabethan theatre. It is, therefore, no wonder that their

51 texts often include references to the plays of Elizabethan playwrights. An example illustrating this continuation of previous dramatic tradition might be Daborne‟s character of the Jewish servant Rabshake. When being tricked into the noose by

Benwash, who wants to murder him, Rabshake becomes suspicious of his master‟s intentions and warns Benwash that he has “seen the play of Pedrigano” (16.128). He refers to a character from Thomas Kyd‟s The Spanish Tragedy where a servant called

Pedrigano is also deceived by his master and eventually hanged. On another occasion,

Benwash the Jew laments: “My bags, my obligations, my wife!” (11.4) after the pirate

Dansiker sets his house on fire. An experienced theatre-goer might have recalled

Shylock, Shakespeare‟s Jewish merchant from The Merchant of Venice, and his cries:

“My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter!” (2.8.15), or Barabas, another Jewish character, and his lamentation: “O my girl, my gold, my fortune” (2.1.51-2) which the

London audiences could see in Christopher Marlowe‟s The Jew of Malta one generation before the staging of Daborne‟s play (Vitkus, Three 37).

As for Massinger, his play several times echoes Shakespeare which is certainly not surprising, taking into account Massinger‟s long cooperation with The King‟s Men

(between 1625 and 1640, he was their principal playwright, replacing Shakespeare‟s apprentice John Fletcher after the latter‟s death). When Vitelli, in love with the Turkish princess, praises his beloved and says: “that blessed name, Donusa, although pronounced / by my profane but much unworthier tongue” (2.4.31), the last line conspicuously resembles Romeo‟s words when he first addresses Juliet at the ball: “If I profane with my unworthiest hand” (1.5.95-96). It cannot be a coincidence that both lines use the words “profane” and “unworthy”, and employ a body part at the end.

Similarly, when Vitelli scorns Donusa for her fear of death and asks, “Can there be strength in that / religion that suffers us to tremble / at that which every day – nay, hour

– we haste to?” (4.3.135-7), Massinger might have had the death-contemplating soliloquies of Hamlet in mind when writing those lines. Whether direct or indirect, whether deliberate or unintentional, those examples of intertextuality clearly show how strongly embedded Daborne‟s and Massinger‟s plays are within the dramatic tradition of the English Renaissance period. As in the case of Daborne and his reference to

Thomas Kyd‟s Pedrigano, the playwrights even relied on their spectators‟ knowledge of the old dramatic pieces and they expected an appropriate response from their audience.

Moreover, the authors did not hesitate to sacrifice historical accuracy so as to adhere to the contemporary theatrical conventions. Most of the authors of the

Renaissance period drew on the tradition of ancient Greek and Roman literature and culture. As for English Renaissance playwrights, they were heavily influenced by ancient mythology and their plays abound in numerous references to various Greek and

Roman deities, heroes and myths. Both Daborne and Massinger followed this convention and their plays are permeated by numerous allusions mainly to the Greek mythology. An educated European would have been familiar with all those Greek myths since the curriculum of that period put a great emphasis on the Classics (Hibbert 271).

As a consequence, it is perfectly appropriate for the Italian nobleman Vitelli in his speech to refer to the goddess of love Venus or to the hero Ganymede. However, the fact that such allusions are also uttered by Turkish characters is highly disputable as far as historical and cultural accuracy is concerned. Because of her noble birth, the Turkish princess Donusa might have had the sufficient knowledge of Greek mythology to refer to the “Gorgon‟s head that turns men into stones” (2.4.20) or to state that her and

Vitelli‟s love is as virtuous and chaste as that of “Hippolytus and the virgin huntress” would have been (3.5.65). But for the character of Turkish people that are of lower birth than Donusa, it is very unlikely that they would have used such remarks. Still,

Benwash‟s Turkish wife Agar explains her infatuation with Gallop as a doing of Cupid

(6.40), the Turkish woman Voada curses “false sirens” (7.141), Tunisian viceroy

Asambegh mentions the story of how “Jove and Alcmena begot Alcides” (5.8.3) and later, thirsty for revenge, he invokes the Furies (3.5.84). Similarly, Donusa‟s Turkish servant Manto compares her mistress to “Cynthia in full glory” (2.1.13). From a historian‟s perspective, all the provided examples would be considered as inconsistencies, at the least. In addition, an actual error was committed by Daborne when his Turkish character Crossman uses a Christian swear word “S‟foot” (6.433-4), which is a contracted form of “By Christ‟s foot”. Such Christian profanities appear repeatedly in English Renaissance drama; however, it sounds rather out of place when uttered by a Muslim. To conclude, the authors simply used the same linguistic patterns for all their characters alike, regardless of their characters‟ origin or religion, conforming thus unquestioningly to the English dramatic conventions of their period.

As far as the presentation of Islam is concerned, not only was it heavily stereotyped, as has been shown in the previous two subchapters – the English playwrights had an absolutely incorrect conception of the Muslim religion. Especially

Daborne‟s play demonstrates how little the author, and presumably all the Englishmen in general at that time, knew about Muslims. Apart from the fact that Islam was commonly misunderstood in the European religious polemic as a mere heresy of

Christianity, there was another opinion that interpreted the Muslim faith as a pagan religion. Accordingly, the Prophet Muhammad was then mistakenly considered to be the Muslims‟ pagan god (Vitkus, Three 236). Robert Daborne must have shared this conception because his Captain Ward beseeches Voada “By thy god, by the great

Mahomet” (7.114) and later, during his conversion ritual, Ward even “swears on the

Mahomet‟s head” (Scene 8). According to Vitkus, this misinterpretation of Islam was

54 present in English writings until the end of the 17th century (236). Historical and cultural accuracy had never been the playwright‟s priority.

The dramatic production of the English Renaissance period was determined by the interaction of various forces. Some of them were clearly political; the plays used to be subjected to the governmental censorship because every piece of drama had to be licensed for a certain fee by the Master of Revels (Clare 34). As a result, the image of

“Turkishness” could be partly affected by the ends of political propaganda. Other forces were of religious character as playwrights must have been aware of the strict ecclesiastical eye of the Church of England that critically scrutinized the plays for possible heretical or subversive content. That ensured that the representation of the

Turks on stage would correspond to the official religious rhetoric of the period.

However, dramatic texts were primarily shaped by the current mood of English theatre- goers whom the authors, dependent on their audience‟s favour, longed to please.

As a result, every part of Daborne‟s and Massinger‟s plays was written with the intention to address a specific contemporary issue about which the Englishmen were concerned. Because piracy got out of governmental control during the reign of James I as English merchants suffered considerable losses and an immense number of English subjects captured at the sea were sold into slavery, the crime of piracy was harshly condemned on the London stage. Similarly, dramatizations of the Turks were a direct response to the general fear of the powerful Ottoman Empire that was ingrained in the

European consciousness since the medieval period and even intensified by the Ottoman expansion in the century preceding the composition of the analysed texts. This fear is clearly articulated by Captain Ward when he asks, “What is one island compared to the

Eastern monarchy?” (7.181-2), reflecting thus the Englishmen‟s concern about their military and economic inferiority in comparison to the mighty realm of the sultan. The

55 final image of “Turkishness”, which provided such a hateful and stereotyped picture of the Ottomans, was, therefore, chiefly formed by the English audiences themselves as the playwrights thematically responded to their spectators‟ interests, anxieties and prejudices.

To conclude, the image of “Turkishness” in the analysed plays was shaped by the interaction of various forces that were dominant in English society at the time of the plays‟ composition, such as dramatic conventions, political propaganda, religious polemics and public sentiment. With its historical and cultural inaccuracy as an ingrained characteristic, “Turkishness” proves to be a largely artificial construct employed in the plays A Christian Turned Turk and The Renegado. The stereotypical portrayal of the Turks and their culture are then based on not much more than on contemporary prejudices, false information and deliberate distortion of truth.

2.4. “Turkishness” as a Mirror of “Englishness”

The forces which gave rise to the image of “Turkishness”, as it is presented in the analysed plays, can be unified in one common concept of “Englishness”. The term

“Englishness” is in this thesis understood as “a state of ideological, invented superiority”, to use the definition of Lloyd Edward Kermode from his book Aliens and

Englishness in Elizabethan Drama (1). In the context of the plays A Christian Turned

Turk and The Renegado, it is naturally the religious superiority of the English which the authors employ when they portray their Turkish characters and their culture. As a consequence, “Turkishness” serves as a mirror to the concept of “Englishness”. As did the ideology of English superiority predetermine the way the Turks and their culture are depicted in the plays, so does the image of “Turkishness”, in turn, reflect the ideology

56 of its making. This subchapter first explores how the ideology of English superiority responds to the subversive possibility of Christian conversion to Islam, and second, how the concept of “Englishness” on the English stage contradicts the reality of the actual

Anglo-Turkish encounter. A conclusion is then drawn with regard to the impact which the image of “Turkishness” might have had for shaping of the English identity.

The fact that the image of “Turkishness” is a product of the culture in which the plays were composed implies that the stereotypical portrayal of Daborne‟s and

Massinger‟s Turkish characters can, in turn, give an account of the environment in which it was created, i.e., the English society of the Jacobean period. The image of

“Turkishness” then represents a manifestation of “Englishness”, which in this context primarily designates the superiority of the English religion. It has to be pointed out that such a world view was not characteristic only of the English writers alone; on the contrary, Daborne and Massinger merely followed the rhetoric of Christian superiority over Islam that had been adopted by all the Christian countries in Europe with the experience of the Ottoman military or cultural aggression. The conflict of the West and the East rendered the inter-European religious differences unimportant and as a result, the English and the Christian ideologies of superiority, which are employed in the analysed plays, overlap and are considered identical for the purposes of this analysis.

As has been demonstrated in the close analyses of their plays, Daborne‟s and

Massinger‟s portrayal of the Turks is entirely in accordance with the ideology of

Christian superiority. Initially, “Englishness” is underscored by the recurrent juxtaposition of the corrupt Muslim characters with the virtuous Christians. All the

Muslim characters in the plays are always morally inferior to Christians, with the Turks being stereotyped as inherently cruel, violent and lascivious people who are “falser than

[their] religion” (Massinger 2.5.136). The only exception is princess Donusa, who even

57 turns to a Christian martyr at the end of Massinger‟s play, but only after she abjures the faith of her Turkish ancestors. However, the religious dynamics is disrupted once the possibility of the conversion to Islam is introduced. In English cultural consciousness of the period, when a person turned Turk in order to avoid the ordeal of Ottoman slavery, such conversion could be acknowledged as a “survival strategy” and the convert was pitied by his former coreligionists; nevertheless, the alternative scenario where the conversion to Islam would be the “result of heartfelt religious conviction” had to be categorically rejected (Vitkus, “Turning Turk” 153). Both Daborne and Massinger attempted to place the unsettling reality of Christians converting to Islam into the framework of “Englishness” and thus to justify the ideology of Christian superiority in their plays at all costs.

The first strategy that is employed to undermine the significance of the conversion to Islam is manifested in the dismissive manner with which the authors approach the act of circumcision. This ceremony, which should logically be part of

Ward‟s turning Turk, is completely missing in Daborne‟s staging of the conversion ritual and only later does one of Dansiker‟s men inform the audience that Ward “played the Jew with [the Turks]” (9.3), meaning he deceived the Turkish surgeon and thus escaped from receiving the permanent mark of his apostasy. As for Massinger, the act of circumcision is in The Renegado presented as a mere object of ridicule and it is even mistakenly confused with the practice of castration. Apart from the recurrent jokes and puns upon the irreversible physical condition of eunuch Carazie, the comic subplot of

Massinger‟s plays is built upon Vitelli‟s servant Gazet who pursues the career of a eunuch at the Tunisian court, ignorant of the need of undergoing castration to attain such a position. This strategy is identified by Jonathan Burton as a “comic relief” which enables the English playwrights to acknowledge this unsettling aspect of the conversion

58 to Islam “but only in the context of a joke or farcical episode that waves off the seriousness of the matter” (50). By understating the practice of circumcision and by making it an object of ridicule, the English playwrights succeeded in depriving the act of turning Turk of any religious significance. As a consequence, the possibility of an honourable renegade who would convert out of his sincere religious conviction was ruled out.

Furthermore, the very existence of the renegade undermined the Englishmen‟s belief in their Christian superiority over the Muslims. The considerable number of

Britons who willingly renounced their faith reminded the English of the terrible possibility that “as Christianity had replaced Judaism, so would Islam replace

Christianity” (Matar, “The Renegade” 500). Such a possibility had to be naturally refuted and that is the reason why the English playwrights either condemn their renegades to death, as in the case of Daborne‟s Ward, or restore them to their original faith, as is the fate of Massinger‟s pirate Grimaldi (502). Similarly, the motivation which led the renegade to his apostasy had to be satisfactorily accounted for in front of the English spectators. That is the reason why the authors identified the allure of bodily pleasures and earthly riches as the chief motives for Ward‟s conversion as well as

Vitelli‟s transgression. Under those circumstances, the deliberate renunciation of

Christian faith could be ascribed solely to the renegade‟s corrupt character.

However, not even the renegade‟s reconversion and sincere repentance could liberate him from the general suspicion and uneasiness that his compatriots at home felt about his person. The reintegration of renegades into the English society must have been a problematic process in the first half of the 17th century. Except for the traditional warnings against the danger of apostasy, the sermons in the period included admonitions for English subjects; they dissuaded them from ostracizing the renegades

59 who longed to be readmitted into their homes. Moreover, in an attempt to control the reintegration of renegades by the means of ecclesiastic authority in 1637, the then

Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud felt the need to introduce his promulgation

“Form of Penance and Reconciliation of a Renegado or Apostate from the Christian

Religion to Turkism”, which was a set of instructions how to readmit a renegade back into the Church of England (Shoulson 38). The general feeling of uneasiness that surrounded people branded with the stain of apostasy was projected into contemporary drama. As Joshua Mabie points out, English Renaissance playwrights avoided at all cost a dramatization of the renegade‟s return to his country although many captured his

“felicitous escape from Muslim captors” (300). Indeed, Massinger, too, decided not to stage Grimaldi‟s homecoming. The Renegado ends with the scene of raging Asambegh who laments his captives‟ escape. Massinger‟s play is thus concluded with the picture of a defeated enemy instead of the glorious return of the Christian heroes to their country which would have been tainted by the presence of a former apostate. In brief, the image of the damned or repenting renegade validated the supremacy of Christianity over Islam on the stage; nevertheless, the playwrights‟ refusal to stage the return of the renegade testifies to the ineffectiveness of the ideology of “Englishness” when confronted with reality of Renaissance England.

It is necessary to realize that the ideology of English superiority, as well as the image of “Turkishness”, was an artificially invented concept. Even though it was ingrained in the English literary tradition, and the European thinking in general, the inferiority that was stereotypically connected to the culture of Islam was valid only as long as it was preached and staged within the confines of Anglo-European cultural space. Outside this environment (for example in Eastern Europe or in the area of the

Mediterranean Sea where the power and threat of the Ottoman Empire could not be

60 denied), both “Englishness” and its product, “Turkishness”, lacked the grounds on which they were based, such as the safe place of an English church or a theatre where verbal campaigns against the Eastern enemy could be launched, the sympathetic audience with their deep-rooted prejudices and stereotypes, and, most of all, the absence of the Turks on whom “Englishness” then could be safely imposed.

Nabil Matar, in his Islam in Britain, carefully scrutinizes the contradiction between the reality of the actual Anglo-Ottoman encounters and the alternative reality presented on the English stage, and comes to a conclusion that the English authors freely “sacrificed the truth” in an effort to present to their audiences the desirable

Anglocentric view of the East (52). Daborne did not hesitate to condemn his renegade

Ward to death, even though it was generally known that the real Ward was happily living in Tunis. This might be a result of the contemporary political propaganda because, as Matar points out, “at a time when Christians were constantly being lost to

Islam, there was desperate need to present such a make-believe victory” (“The

Renegade” 501). At least on the stage, all the victories, though based on complete fabrication, had to belong to the Christians.

As a consequence, English Renaissance drama supplemented the anti-Muslim doctrine that was being preached from English pulpits in the first half of the 17th century. Whereas contemporary sermons interpreted the Turk as a scourge of God and encouraged English parishioners to pray earnestly for the victory of Christian armies, the theatre had the power to show the people an alternative reality in which Islam could be actually defeated. In this reality, Grimaldi realizes his mistake and begs for forgiveness to be eventually readmitted back into the fold of Christianity, Paulina‟s amulet protects her from Asambegh‟s lust when supported by the power of Christian prayer, and the Turkish princess Donusa casts off her original faith in favour of the

61 salvation through Christ. On the stage, the image of “Turkishness”, the stereotypical image of the Turks and their culture, became reality in which Europeans, including the

English, were always victorious.

Lastly, a considerable number of scholars who focus on the Anglo-Turkish contact in the early modern period agree that the English experience with the inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire must have had some impact on the shaping of English identity.

As it is apparent from the analysis of the two Jacobean plays, the English were very much concerned about the danger of turning Turk, which seemed to have been looming in the area of the Mediterranean. It challenged the traditional unity of national and religious allegiances and thus raised questions about the nature of one‟s identity.

Moreover, Burton argues that the English found the topic of conversion particularly unsettling due to their own turbulent religious history because “a dutiful subject of the

English crown was supposed to have converted not just once, but no less than three times in the mid-sixteenth century [which] left England's religious identity fractured

[and] uncertain” (45-6). As a result, the playwrights‟ need to punish or reconvert the renegade might have stemmed not only from the renegade‟s despicable renunciation of

“all that defined England to Englishmen [by] adopting a religiously different culture of

Islam”, but because he reminded the English that they themselves were technically a nation of renegades (Matar, Islam 71). One way or the other, the renegade was an outcome of the Anglo-Turkish encounter in the Mediterranean, clearly showing that it was, in fact, the Turk who could claim the superiority in the Christian-Muslim polemical struggle of the early modern period. After so many years which the English spent devising their anti-Muslim rhetoric, “Muslims and their Arab-Islamic legacy

[became] part of the religious, commercial and, at certain times, military self-definition

62 of England” (184). The Turk on the English Renaissance stage gradually turned into a significant Other against whom the English defined their understanding of themselves.

In conclusion, the ideology of English superiority, designated in this thesis as a concept of “Englishness”, was, too, an artificial construct maintained by English

Jacobean playwrights by the means of fabrication and ridicule. The theatre, as well as the church, participated in the formation of the image of “Turkishness” based on the conviction of Turkish cultural inferiority, and neither the accounts of the Ottoman victories nor the high number of Christian converts to Islam in the Mediterranean could undermine the strong belief in Christian superiority that was ingrained in the then

European consciousness. Furthermore, the unceasing efforts to deny their own vulnerability to the powerful Eastern culture led the English to start defining their identity in the opposition to the Muslim Other. As a result, the Anglo-Muslim experience had an immense impact on the self-determination of the English people. In short, the stereotypical portrayal of the Turkish environment and of the Turks themselves in A Christian Turned Turk and The Renegado reflect the general anti-

Turkish sentiment that was widely spread in England in the first half of the 17th century.

Conclusion

English Renaissance drama constitutes a remarkable period of literary production.

Starting with Elizabethan drama marked out by Shakespeare‟s works and later proceeding into Jacobean era, English playwrights had been reflecting on the then current affairs of the English Kingdom, one of these being the imminent threat of the

Ottoman Empire. The early modern plays A Christian Turned Turk (1612) and The

Renegado (1623) are examples of English dramatic production which helped to fuel in

England an anti-Muslim sentiment that was spread all over the Europe in the 16th and

17th centuries. Since the medieval crusades, Europeans had always perceived the Turks as an arch enemy of the whole Christendom. As the pace of expansion of the Ottoman

Empire reached its maximum in the second half of the 16th century, at the time when the

Ottomans, with their extensive territories in Asia, Europe and Africa, could even rival the might of the ancient Roman Empire (Finkel 1), the conflict between the West and the East intensified. European Christians, unable to compete with the Ottoman military and economic power, confronted the Turkish threat by launching an ideological campaign against the Muslim Other. As a result, the European rhetoric of Christian superiority over Islam was established. To ease the feelings of degradation, which

David J. Vitkus calls the “Christian West‟s inferiority complex” (Three 7), resulting from the Europeans‟ inability to defeat or, at least, to push the Ottomans out of Europe,

European Christians created an illusory space where they could safely attack their powerful Eastern enemy and where the Christian was always victorious over the Turk.

To justify their spiritual and moral superiority, most of the religious authorities and literary writers of Europe of that time present the Turks in their sermons, polemical tracts and literary writings as a corrupt nation with a blasphemous religion. The purpose

64 of this thesis was to show that the English dramatists of the early modern period helped to affirm this stereotypical image of the Turks.

Generally speaking, in the dichotomy of the West and the East, the Christian and the Muslim, the inter-European differences cease to exist, at least in the realm of

English Renaissance drama, and, as a result, the Anglocentric view coincides with the

Eurocentric perspective. Therefore, the image of “Turkishness”, i.e., the stereotypical representation of the Turks as inherently cruel, lascivious and blasphemous people, as well as Daborne‟s appeal to his spectators for the unification of all Christian forces against their mutual Eastern enemy, echo the rhetoric of European religious polemics at the turn of the 17th century. And even though the prejudiced image of the inferior Turks on the English early modern stage must have clashed with the reality of Ottoman victories (for instance in the area of the Mediterranean area), the Anglocentric world view, which the analysed plays presented to London audiences, had an immense impact on Englishmen‟s confidence, religious security and self-determination.

A study of English texts written in the “preliminary phase of [England‟s] colonial drive” is essential for understanding the forces that later led to the development of the English literature in the era of British imperialism (qtd. in Masood 646). As many scholars, such as Nabil Matar, argue, Edward Said‟s theory of “Orientalism”, i.e., the recurrent misconception of the Orient in the Western literary tradition, is applicable to the texts written firm the 18th century onwards. Such an image of the Orient was not established in a vacuum; on the contrary, the English experience with the Ottomans in the early modern period predetermined their perception of the Orient for years to come.

As a result, the biased approach to the Orient, identified by Said as immanent in the

Western narratives, is based on the stereotypes devised in the period that only

“witnessed the beginnings of British colonial ideology” (Matar, Islam 190). Among the

65 stereotypes was the image of “Turkishness” in Jacobean plays. Moreover, the stereotypical portrayal of the Turks/Muslims has never been confined only to the works of literature or religious polemics: it is ingrained in the European consciousness.

Whenever the issue of the differences between the West and the East arises, even at the beginning of the 21st century, we are prone to reach for the framework of “Turkishness” which dates back at least to the early modern period. In short, the source of our prejudices and beliefs is always worth re-examining.

Works Cited

Primary Sources

Plays under study:

Daborne, Robert. A Christian Turned Turk. Three Turk Plays from Early Modern

England. Ed. Daniel J. Vitkus. New York: Columbia UP, 2000. 149-231. Print.

Massinger, Philip. The Renegado. Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England. Ed.

Daniel J. Vitkus. New York: Columbia UP, 2000. 241-339. Print.

Other early modern works:

Budovec z Budova, Václav. Antialkorán. 1593. Praha: Odeon, 1989. Print.

Knolles, Richard. The Generall Historie of the Turkes. Michigan: University of

Michigan, Digital Library Production Service (Mar 2004). Web. 16 Feb. 2015.

Marlowe, Christopher. “The Jew of Malta.” The Complete Plays. Ed. J. B. Steane.

Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1969. Print.

“Seaman’s Song of Captain Ward, the Famous Pirate of the World, and an Englishman

Born.” Appendix I. Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England. Ed. Daniel

Vitkus. New York: Columbia UP, 2000. 345-348. Print.

Shakespeare, William. King Lear. The Arden Shakespeare. (3rd ed.). Ed. Kenneth Muir.

London: Routledge, 1992. Print.

Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice. Ed. W. G. Clark and William Aldis

Wright. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905. Print.

Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. Ed. William T. Betken. New York:

Rhinebeck, 1984. Print.

“Song of Dansekar the Dutchman.” Appendix I. Three Turk Plays from Early Modern

England. Ed. Daniel J. Vitkus. New York: Columbia UP, 2000. 348-350. Print.

Secondary Sources

Burton, Jonathan. “English Anxiety and the Muslim Power of Conversion: Five

Perspectives on „Turning Turk‟ in Early Modern Texts.” Journal for Early

Modern Cultural Studies 2 (2002): 35-67. JSTOR. Web. 3 Jun. 2014.

Clare, Janet. Art Made Tongue-tied by Authority: Elizabethan and Jacobean Dramatic

Censorship. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1999. 22-44. Print.

Finkel, Caroline. Osman’s Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire 1300-1923. New

York: Basic Books, 2005. Print.

Fuchs, Barbara. “Faithless Empires: Pirates, Renegadoes, and the English Nation.” ELH

67.1 (Spring 2000): 45-69. JSTOR. Web. 16 Jun. 2014.

Hibbert, Christopher. The English: A Social History, 1066-1945. London: Paladin,

1988. Print.

Horniker, Arthur Leon. “William Harborne and the Beginning of Anglo-Turkish

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Central. Web. 22 Mar 2015.

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Summary

The aim of this thesis is to analyse two English early modern plays, A Christian Turned

Turk written by Robert Daborne and The Renegado written by Philip Massinger, with respect to the image of “Turkishness”, i.e., the stereotypical portrayal of the Turks and their culture. Since the medieval crusades, the Europeans had always perceived the

Turks as the arch enemy of the whole Christendom. As the conflict of the West and East intensified due to the territorial expansion of the Ottoman Empire in the course of the

15th and 16th century, the European Christians, unable to compete with the Turkish threat by means of military and economic power, launched an ideological campaign against the Muslim Other where they rhetorically attacked the Turks for their corrupt nature and false religion, justifying thus their own superiority over the Muslim enemy.

The purpose of this thesis is to show that the English dramatists of the early modern period helped to affirm the stereotypical image of the Turks and that the two analysed plays emphasize the superiority of Christianity over Islam.

The first chapter provides the historical background of the period, concentrating on the Ottomans, their relationship with England and the representation of the Ottoman

Turks in the European literary tradition. The second chapter then focuses on the literary analysis of the plays A Christian Turned Turk and The Renegado, which demonstrates how the English dramatists conformed to the European anti-Turkish sentiment which led them to the stereotypical depiction of their Turkish characters. Lastly, the

Anglocentric perspective of the English playwrights is identified as a concept of

“Englishness”, i.e., the Englishmen‟s conviction of their spiritual and moral superiority over the Turks. The last subchapter of the analysis deals with the way the image of

“Turkishness” stems from the concept of “Englishness”.

Resumé

Cílem této práce je analyzovat dvě anglické renesanční hry, A Christian Turned Turk od

Roberta Daborna a The Renegado od Philipa Massingera, s ohledem na tak zvanou

„tureckost“, tj. stereotypní portrét Turků a jejich kultury. Už od dob středověkých křížových výprav vnímali Evropané Turky jako úhlavního nepřítele celého křesťanstva.

Když se později konflikt mezi západem a východem kvůli územní expanzi Osmanské

říše v průběhu 15. a 16. století ještě vyostřil, evropští křesťané, kteří byli neschopni soupeřit s tureckou hrozbou ani vojensky, ani ekonomicky, zahájili kampaň ideologického boje proti muslimům. Evropské duchovní autority a literární autoři ve svých spisech tak alespoň rétoricky začali napadat Turky pro jejich údajnou zkaženou povahu a rouhačské náboženství, aby tím ospravedlnili svou vlastní nadřazenost nad tímto muslimským nepřítelem. Účelem této práce je ukázat, jak angličtí dramatici renesance pomáhali utvrzovat tento stereotypní obraz Turka a jak dvě hry analyzované v této práci zdůrazňují nadřazenost křesťanství nad islámem.

První kapitola popisuje historické pozadí zkoumaného období a zaměřuje se na

Osmany, jejich vztah k Anglii a nakonec na zobrazení osmanských Turků v evropské literární tradici. Následuje druhá kapitola s literární analýzou her A Christian Turned

Turk a The Renegado, která ukazuje, jak se angličtí dramatici přizpůsobili evropskému proti-tureckému cítění, což je vedlo ke stereotypnímu zobrazení svých tureckých postav. Tento anglocentrický náhled na svět je dále zahrnut do pojmu „anglickost“, tj. přesvědčení, že Angličané jsou Turkům duchovně a morálně nadřazeni. Poslední část literární analýzy se zabývá tím, jak obraz „tureckosti“ ve skutečnosti z oné „anglickosti“ pramení.