1
Rita Banerjee
The Ocean and its Traffique: Miscegenation and Conversion in The Island Princess and The Renegado
In the very first volume of Purchas His Pilgrimes, Samuel Purchas showers encomiums on the sea and the art of navigating it. The most important way the ‘multitudinous seas’ served humankind was by uniting it, through trade: “Uniter by Traffique all Nations,” providing an
“open field for Merchandize in Peace.”1 It was international trade that connected Jacobean
England to the East. Purchas echoes the sentiments expressed in Elizabeth I’s letter to six kings in the Indies which she sent with the East India Company in 1601:
That one Countrie should have need of another, and out of the abundance of
the fruit which some region enjoyeth the necessities of another should be
supplied: By which means men of several and far remote countries have
commerce and traffic one with another, and by their interchange of
commodities are linked together in amitie and friendship.2
Likewise, the sea enables the spread of the message of Christianity to all lands.
Purchas hopes that “as there is one Lord, one Faith, one Baptisme, one Body, one spirit, one
Inheritance, one God and Father, so there may thus be one Church truly Catholike, one Pastor and one Sheepfold? And this also wee hope shall one day be the true Ophirian Navigation, when Ophir shall come into Jerusalem, as Jerusalem then went unto Ophir.”3 Conversion was closely related to marriage between Christian and non-Christian partners, and ‘connubium’ often facilitated ‘commercium.’4 While Pocahontas’s much- publicized case in the New
World provided an example to the East-Indian ventures, conversion and marriage, like trade, acquired its own distinctive character in the East.
This paper looks at the different ways that international trade functions in The Island
Princess (1621)5 and The Renegado (1624)6. In the Moluccas, the desire to monopolize spice 2 trade caused intense rivalry among European nations and often motivated European powers to conquer islands in the interest of trade. Sometimes, islands accepted the sovereignty of a
European power, as Polaroon ceded to the English in 1620. By contrast, the Mediterranean was dominated by the Ottomans during the seventeenth century. Tunis, where The Renegado is set, had become an Ottoman province by 1577. It was a cosmopolitan and a wealthy city, thanks to the corsairs, many of them Christian renegades like Grimaldi in the play, who carried on their raids off the coast. Piracy thrived as a practice parallel to legitimate trade.
The power relations of each region determined the character of trade and exchange in the region. I argue that the exigencies of international trade in the East Indies and the
Mediterrranean and the realities of political and religious supremacy in each determine the mercantile and Christian identities of the Europeans and their conception of the natives.
Both plays, and especially the Renegado, look back to The Tempest ,7 performed more than a decade back in their staging of mixed marriages. Alonso’s act of “loosing” Claribel to an ‘African’(2.4.126) and an Islamic monarch in Tunis, was a loss to Naples and Europe. The threat of miscegenation through Caliban’s attempted rape is, of course, thwarted by Prospero who safely marries his heir to Naples. By contrast, the later tragicomedies present miscegenation as a gain, materializing in the Christianized brides, Quisara and Donusa. In
Fletcher’s play, conversion of the princess Quisara of Tidore to Christianity and marriage with the Portuguese Armusia facilitate not only trade but also colonization. In The Renegado,
Vitelli, a Venetian gentleman who comes to Tunis, disguised as a merchant, to rescue his sister, Paulina, who had been sold as a slave to the Viceroy of Tunis by Grimaldi, the renegade, marries the Turkish princess, Donusa. While the colonizing Portuguese face the prospect of reigning in Tidore on the demise of the present king (5.5.71), the redeemed
Paulina, Vitelli, and Donusa “with all their traine / and choysest jewels” (5.8.26-27) escape in the reclaimed renegado’s recovered ship, “shewing a broad side” (5.8.30) to the Tunisian 3
Viceroy “in scorne of all pursuit” (5.8.29; emphasis added). Writing in 1624, Massinger redeems Alonso’s and Naple’s loss in Tunis by Vitelli’s, and Venice’s gain.
The variant situations in the East Indies and the Mediterranean virtually create the varying identities of the Europeans in the two plays. In The Island Princess, the Portuguese see themselves as “stirring, unwearied soules,” who seek adventures and honor in sea voyages and feature as a latter-day version of medieval knights. Their courage and hardiness in the oceanic voyages towards unknown lands reward them with wealth. The “new worlds disclose their riches, / Their beauties and prides to our embraces” (1.3.10-11; emphasis added). Although it emphasizes conquest, the overtones of profit are not forgotten and later receive greater stress in Armusia’s depiction of the islands courting the Europeans with spices, their commercial wealth. Commerce and heroism coalesce and commerce is sometimes exalted into heroism in the description of Portuguese traders.
The Portuguese identity in The Island Princess also reflects the intense competition in trade by rival European powers and also (as I intend to show) the respective colonial policies.
The Portuguese initially had their stronghold in the East Indies. However, by the seventeenth century, the Dutch had virtually monopolized the spice trade, while the English were new- comers. Significantly, the colonial identity in the play is a divided one. Ruy Dias and the new-comer Armusia appear as rivals in love for the princess of Tidore, Quisara, who, though partial to the Ruy Dias, had set a condition that she would marry her brother’s liberator.
Armusia redeems the king from the prison of the enemy governor of Ternate and gains her as a prize. Later, he supersedes his countryman in her love by his courtesy, sincerity, selflessness, and zeal.
The Ruy Dias-Armusia rivalry in the text may be interpreted from various perspectives. With respect to class, the Ruy Dias-Armusia opposition demonstrates the 4 difference between two groups of colonizers in England: the earlier group representing the gentry voyaging to the New World and the latter group, constituted by newcomers, the profit- seeking merchants, especially of the East India Company.8 Captain Ruy Dias is an aristocrat and primarily a soldier while Armusia is an adventurer-cum-merchant. Armusia’s mercantile identity is emphasized as he tours the streets of Ternate in the guise of a merchant and rents a lodging as a merchant. Unsuspected because of his mercantile identity, he lights a fire, which keeps the governor and his men busy while he rescues the king. Armusia’s language, which contrasts with Ruy Dias’s Petrarchan metaphors, invites identification with commerce. His use of paradisal metaphors to glorify the spice, which constitutes the commercial wealth of the islands, and his use of economic and contractual metaphors to define Quisara as the prize he labored for would argue for a commercial identity: “A recompense so rich and glorious / I durst not dreame it mine, but that ‘twas promised; / But that it was propounded, sworne and sealed” (2.6.43-45; emphasis added).9
However, the complexity of the characters as well as the intense fluidity of the colonial situation in the islands enables us to recover manifold facets of representation.
While, on one level, the Ruy Dias- Armusia divide represents a class division, on another level, it could signify the Portuguese- English or Dutch-English divide.10 Neill interprets the erotic conflict in terms of the enmity between the Dutch and the newcomers English,11 which seems plausible in view of the fact that the Portuguese themselves at this point of time had been ousted from the Moluccas by the Dutch, who occupied a dominant position. There was considerable enmity between the Dutch and the English. Despite the nations signing a treaty in 1619, Robert Hayes of the East India Company reports how the Dutch displaced the
English by force at Lantore, which had surrendered to the English and had acknowledged
James I as their king.12 This was not an isolated instance. The story was repeated in 5
Poolaroone, and the two nations were fast progressing towards the Amboyna Massacre in
1623.
However, I would suggest that the fluidity of identity that exists in the colonial situation and is almost a generic requirement in the tragicomedy,13 would prevent us from categorically and statically interpreting the enmity and subsequent reconciliation between the two Portuguese in terms of inter-European rivalry. Interpreting the Ruy Dias-Armusia opposition in terms of colonial policies would lead us to argue for a Dutch- English divide in
East Indian colonial policy. By his treacherous design of murdering Armusia, Ruy Dias initially seems to justify identification with the Dutch, who had been characterized as false and guileful and cruel in their dealings with the natives as well as with the English. However, the later resolution of the conflict14 and Ruy Dias’s gallant action of defending his countryman would make more likely an internal division about the colonial policy among the
English, some following the Dutch principles and others supporting free trade.
While the Dutch colonial policy in the East Indies was military suppression to monopolize trade, the English advocated free trade. The English criticized the 1619 treaty between the two nations that compelled the English to share equally in the expenses of the
Dutch for building defensive fortifications against the Portuguese and the Spanish but got them only a third of the share of the spice trade. Moreover, the English questioned the need for any fortification at all. Valerie Forman argues that the restoration of goodwill and amity between the Tidorean king and the Portuguese at the end of the play suggests that there would no longer be any need for coercive trade: “We thus could read the play as representing a utopian vision of trade, that, as in Elizabeth’s letter, makes friends out of enemies and allows profit to accrue without possession.” Forman emphasizes the fact that the king retains sovereign rights to both islands at the end, which precludes conquest of Ternate and Tidore by the Europeans.15 I would like to point out, however, that even if the king possesses 6 ultimate sovereignty, that he has given Pyneiro effective control over Ternate (“the Towne and Castle, / In which I lay myself most miserable, . . . Signeur Pyniero I bestow on you”
(5.5. 80 – 5.5.83; emphasis added) might suggest acquisition of power.
Moreover, without Ruy Dias’s crucial military aid, Armusia, the merchant, might have suffered martyrdom along with his wife, as the disguised governor of Ternate, had been advising the king of Tidore to torture and execute the Christian Armusia for his abuse of their gods. Eventually, Armusia thanks his rival for his ‘life,’ his ‘wife’ and his ‘honour’ (5.5.87).
Like Armusia and his associates bearing soldiers’ arms beneath their merchants’ dress, the continual existence of the Portuguese fort in a friendly Tidore, implies an acknowledgement by the English of the necessity for both free trade as well as defensive fortification. The
Island Princess concludes by unifying the division of class as well as policy in the colonial identity.
Finally, the successful colonizer Armusia features also in the role of an enlightened missionary in winning over the reluctant Quisara to Christianity and his zealous aversion to idolatry: “And where I meet your maumet Gods, I’le swing ’em / Thus o’re my head, and kick ‘em into puddles (4.5.114-115). It is important to remember that the islands of Ternate and Tidore were predominantly Muslim at the time, although before their conversion to
Islam, they had been pagans and it is possible that some remembrances of their earlier faith had lingered. However, in the reference to “maumet Gods,” both faiths seem to coalesce. The word ‘maumet’ referred to a false idol, but it was derived from Mahomet, the prophet of
Islam. The combination of the two occurred due to the mistaken but common medieval notion that Muhammed was worshipped as a god in Islam.16
But, Armusia’s aversion to ‘maumet Gods’ is reminiscent of the usage of the word by
Protestants to refer to the images of Christ and his saints worshipped by Roman Catholics. It would be useful to remember that Fletcher’s father was the bishop of London and was known 7 for his Protestant loyalties. Fletcher’s patronage connection with the Huntingdons would also reinforce his Protestant zeal. Despite Armusia’s Portuguese lineage, the play emphasizes his
Protestant identity rather strongly to make him recognizably English. Loomba argues with reference to The Island Princess as well as The Renegado that “in the face of non-Christian others it was also possible to forge a pan-Christian brotherhood.”17 I would maintain, however, that The Island Princess maintains a distinction from The Renegado in this respect.
Not only does the colonizer demonstrate shifting identities, the persona of the colonized shows similar flexibility. At the beginning, the alignment between the colonizer and the islanders in several respects precluded completely differentiated identities. Both the king and Quisara, for instance, are temperate, which is the prime virtue of Armusia and is designated especially in many of Fletcher’s plays as a Protestant virtue. By his stoic courage and temperance, the king defies all hardships in the governor’s prison. Quisara too asks for “a well-confirm’d, a temperate, and true vallour” (1.3.128) from her suitors. When Ruy Dias accuses her unjustly of inviting Armusia for a private conference with her and haughtily demands answers, she asks him to be ‘temperate’ (3.3.127). The fluidity of the colonial situation in the East Indies in the first half of the seventeenth century did not permit the colonizer-colonized dichotomy that solidified in established European empires.18
Significantly, the image of Quisara in her lover’s perception also undergoes changes.
Initially, she appears as a beautiful, noble, virtuous, and spirited princess to native princes and Portuguese adventurers alike. Even after he has fulfilled her condition for marriage by liberating her brother, Armusia, like a medieval Christian knight, is ready to serve his mistress’s will and entreats that she would put his love to the test: “Something of such a greatnesse to, allow me / These things I have done already, may seem foyles too” (4.5.17-18).
But, when she asks him to change his religion prompted by the Moor priest, the disguised governor of Ternate, Armusia’s perception of Quisara changes. While she was the 8 incarnation of beauty earlier, he sees her as ugly: “And it looks ugly now methinks”
(4.5.104). The use (in fact it is reiterated in 4.5.108) of the word ‘methinks’ is important, for it foregrounds perception. What he recognized as beautiful at a certain point of time, he later perceives as ugliness. Moreover, his understanding of his own emotions seems to have changed as well. Earlier, when he had intruded in her room, she had thought his feelings dishonorable: “I see dishonor in your eyes” (3.3.43), but, he had pleaded innocence: “By all that beauty they are innocent” (3.3.45; emphasis added). But, after she asks him to abandon his religion, he sees his own emotions as dishonorable: “Now I contemne ye, and hate my selfe / for looking on that face lasciviously” (4.5.102-103; emphasis added). The feeling that he had earlier thought was honorable appears as lascivious at a later point.
Since conversion is crucial for the benefit of the colonizer, the virtuous mistress who inspires honorable love becomes an evil seductress who lays traps to “catch his immortall life” (4.5.111) when she asks him to change his religion, and finally concludes her journey as a pure-souled Christian. It is customary in stories of conversion that the non-Christian woman should appear as a temptress and ‘other’ before she can be won over to virtue and
Christianity. In Fletcher’s play, Quisara’s initial image poses a discrepancy, negating the intrinsicality and consistency of both identity and perception in a tragicomedy staging shifting cross-cultural encounters.
Despite the similarities of miscegenation and conversion in the two plays, the multiple identities of the trade-colonizer in The Island Princess contrast with the European identity, as presented in The Renegado. Moreover, as I hope to show, the construction of the identities of the ‘other’ evince demonstrable differences.
The Renegado presents a different image of Venetian trade in Tunis, which was a tributary state of the Ottoman Empire. The Venetians in Massinger’s play vent art objects like
Michaelangelo’s reproductions, China dishes, Venetian mirrors etc. but they can scarcely 9 dictate terms against the Turks and the Muslims. For the Europeans, trade and conquest could not go hand in hand in Tunis as they did in Ternate and Tidore. Apart from the controlling power of Ottoman Empire, the Venetian traders in the Mediterranean had to deal with the problem of piracy.
Piracy in the Mediterranean posed a threat to trade and travel. The Barbary corsairs were known for their extreme cruelty and barbarity especially towards Christians. Although the presence of the Knights of Malta testified to Christian role in the Mediterranean piracy, the Muslim pirates and Christian renegades made trade difficult for European ships which were often not only looted but the seamen were enslaved. The Mediterranean was a much- contested space, desired and feared alike: “the Whirlepoole of these Seas, the Throne of
Pyracie, the Sinke of Trade and the Stincke of Slavery . . . the Receptacle of Renegadoes of
God, and Traytors to their Country.”19 Tunis in the Renegado recalled not only Claribel’s
Tunis but also Caliban’s maternal heritage of Algiers in The Tempest, both places havens for pirates. In reclaiming a pirate, therefore, Massinger’s play registers a gain for Christianity.
The title foregrounds the act of reclamation as a central concern of the play. By staging Grimaldi’s reconversion, The Renegado neutralizes the fear of English renegades strengthening the Muslim pirates, the transfer of nautical technology to the less-skilled
Turks,20 and severs the connection between Europe and its “Satanic other,” Islam.21 While
Fletcher’s tragicomedy establishes an atmosphere of goodwill and friendship between the
Europeans and the natives for the progress of trade, the Renegado dissociates its Christians from the taint of Islam. Said’s paradigm applies to Massinger’s characters more than it does to the earlier play.
Unlike The Island Princess, the Renegado puts the identities of the European and the
Turk, the Christian and the Muslim in opposition. The Turks in the play are imperious, self- willed, tyrannical, and unjust. Asambeg demands impossible feats from his subordinates and 10 punishes Grimaldi for speaking the unpleasant truth. Very like the tyrannical Soliman in
Soliman and Perseda and Mullisheg in The Fair Maid of the West, he is amenable to the influence of the Christian woman he adores and is finally outwitted by her.
Massinger constructs the European Christian identity as a polar opposite from that of the Turks. Unlike the Portuguese in Tidore, the Venetian trader in Tunis is not even remotely heroic. Vitelli’s real agenda is to liberate Paulina, but he hopes to do so with the Jesuit priest
Francisco’s aid, by strategy rather than heroism. When Vitelli in his rage offers to run to the
Tunisian court and “digge out Grimaldies heart” (1.1.127) with his poniard, showing in his revenge that he is ‘Noble’ (1.1.120), Francisco pacifies him by questioning if his motives are justified by religion. Massinger’s play does not question the power of Ottoman sovereignty in the Mediterranean, and it is not as a soldier that Francisco asks Vitelli to excel. Unlike
Quisara, Donusa does not require her lover to perform heroic deeds. Donusa finds her ‘neate
Italian’ (3.1. 24) charming. By contrast, she abhors the basha of Aleppo’s “grimme aspect”
(3.1.50) like a soldier, the battle “scarres” he “glories in” (3.1.51) and his roughness. In fact, despite Vitelli’s origin as a gentry, he excels in salesmanship, and his discourse on Venetian mirrors, crystal glasses, and paintings of Michael Angelo, meant to win buyers, wins him his
Turkish bride.
The only Venetian who displays heroism and also barbarity and cruelty is Griamldi, the renegade pirate, who partakes of the qualities of the Turks. He glorifies piracy as a heroic enterprise: “We are the Neptunes of the Ocean, / And such as traffique, shall pay sacrifice /
Of their best lading” (1.3.66-69). Piracy, like trade, depends on the sea for the profit it unlawfully reaps, and the Mediterranean yields pirates rich loot from the Levantine traders.
But, Grimaldi’s brand of heroism is amoral and anti-Christian, as he himself realizes later:
“The Sea? I that is justice, there. I ploude up / Mischiefe as deepe as Hell there” (3.2.91-92).
He realizes that he had “pressed” the “Oceans breast” in an “unlawful l course” (3.2.96). His 11 unholy trade reinforces his amorality. Massinger shows Grimaldi as perverse and irreligious by nature rather than a victim of extenuating circumstances.22 Grimaldi serves as a foil to
Vitelli in ‘turning Turk’ for the splendor of wealth. An earlier act of desecrating a holy
Christian rite demonstrates his “wanton irreligious madnesse” (4.1.29). It is his perverseness that qualifies him for conversion to Islam and piracy. It requires the power of Francisco to ensure his repentance and re-conversion.
It is Paulina and Vitelli, who exemplify the ideal Christian character in the play.
Paulina stands steadfast in imprisonment and resists all enticements of the Turkish Viceroy.
Her influence on Asambeg makes him courteous and mild, occasionally even “choking his fury” (2.5.111). Forsaking the virile image of the adventurer or the discoverer, Massinger shows Christian identity as typically feminine. It is in his readiness to suffer martyrdom for his religion that Vitelli lays claim to heroism. Even Asambeg admires his constancy and
“brave courage” (4.3.162) in the face of death.
Curiously, even as a Christian, Vitelli is not an impeccable character like Armusia. He succumbs to Donusa’s seductive, sensual charm, and might even have ended up a Turk later to avert death, but for Francisco’s timely counsel. The play does not shy away from presenting a weak, average Christian as its hero and accentuates the role of the priest’s intervention. The repentant Vitelli remains steadfast against all the Epicurean arguments of
Donusa and, when they are surprised, stoically accepts punishment with the consolation that he remains a Christian. When Donusa seeks to convert him to Islam to save both their lives, he wins her to Christian faith by the argument that only Christianity teaches people to die:
“Can there be strength in that / Religion, that suffers vs to tremble / At that which euery day, nay hower wee hast to” (4.3.135-137). Her conversion and marriage become almost simultaneous and synonymous, and Vitelli envisages a marriage “at which celestiall Angels shall be waiters” (4.3.152). In winning Donusa to his faith, he becomes the heroic and 12
‘tragicomic’ counterpart of Ward who converts to Islam to marry the Turkish woman Voada in Daborne’s tragedy A Christian Turned Turk.23
It is Francisco, the Jesuit priest, who is the principal agent of the tragicomic resolution. His charmed ‘relique’ preserves Paulina’s chastity and his religious discourse wins not only Vitelli’s but also Grimaldi’s repentance. With the aid of Grimaldi and Paulina who pretends to accept Asambeg and “turne Turke” (5.3.152), he achieves a safe escape for all. By giving so important a role to the priest and inspiring faith in relics, Massinger shows his faith in Catholicism. Vitelli’s baptism of Donusa was also an instance of Catholic ritual.
According to Neill, the belief in “the efficacy of lay baptism” was restricted to those committed to the Catholic faith. But, it was the belief in such transformatory powers that made the Catholic Church powerful proponents of conversion.24 The notion of “pan-Christian brotherhood” uniting the Christians of all sects against the non-Christian ‘other’ that Loomba envisages for both Fletcher’s and Massinger’s plays applies unqualifiedly to The Renegado.25
Unlike Quisara, Donusa conforms to the typical lascivious Muslim seductress, who, as Francisco says, like chained “English mastiues,” would “runne a course the fiends themselves would shake at / To enjoy their wanton ends” (1.3.10, 13-14). She seduces Vitelli into an illicit sexual intercourse and tempts him later to embrace Islam to save both their lives. Although at the outset, Donusa appears independent, spirited, good-hearted, and, by reputation, an invincible virgin, after meeting Vitelli, she loses her virginity without much ado. By contrast, Quisara shares in Christian virtues like temperance and inspires honorable love in her lover. She also remains a pure virgin without attempting to sexually seduce
Armusia. In Massinger’s characterization, Donusa seems to come closer to the polarized non- western ‘other’ that Said envisages as opposed to the East-Indian princess of Fletcher.26
The attribute of the ‘temptress’ sticks to Donusa. The enticements of her private chamber testify to her sensual nature. In Vitelli’s view, her skilful arguments in favor of 13 religious betrayal win her the title of ‘Siren’ or the Devil’s pupil. At this point, she appears as a foil to Paulina, the virtuous Christian virgin, until she converts to Christianity and almost simultaneously acquires virtue. In my view, Donusa does not quite conform to the pattern of the virtuous Saracen woman who falls in love with a Christian knight and converts to
Christianity, as Vitkus would have her.27
The cross-cultural mobility which results in partial identification of the self and the
‘other’ apply to the volatile colonial and trading situation in the East Indies, where Europeans vies with Europeans for supremacy. The specificities of the situation also account for the multiplicity and fluidity of identities of the Europeans and the natives. Massinger’s
Mediterranean text which has a preventive agenda, on the other hand, invests relatively more in oppositional identities to keep the European self distinct from the ‘other,’ and relies more on pan-Christian brotherhood to eliminate the taint of Islam and reduce piracy and renegadoes.
Notes
1. Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes, Glasgow: James
Maclehose, 1905, vol. 1, 46.
2. George Birdwood & William Foster eds. , The First Letter Book of the East India
Company 1600-1619 (1892; London: Bernard Quartich, 1965), 19-21.
3. Purchas, vol. 1, 56. 14
4. Michael Neill, “’Material Flames’: The Space of Mercantile Fantasy in John Fletcher’s The
Island Princess,” Putting History to the Question: Power, Politics, and Society in English
Renaissance Drama (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 323.
5. “The earliest date of performance is Saint Stephen’s Day, 26 December 1621, at court,” writes George W. Williams in the Introduction to his edition of the play. The Island Princess,
Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, Cambridge UP, 1982, vol. 5, 141.
Quotations from the play are from this edition and are cited in the text.
6. The play was “licensed for performance by Sir Henry Herbert on 17 April 1624,”
Introduction to the edition, The Plays and Poems of Philip Massinger, ed. Philip Edwards &
Colin Gibson (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1976), vol.2, p. 7. Further references to this play are to this edition and are cited in the text.
7. “On 1 November 1611 (‘Hallomas nyght’) Shakespeare’s acting company ‘presented att
Whithall before the kings Majestie a play Called the Tempest,’” Introduction, The Tempest, ed. Virginia Mason Vaughan & Alden T. Vaughan (Walton-on-Thames, Surrey: Thomas
Nelson, 1999), p.6. Further references to the play are cited in the text.
8. See Shankar Raman, Framing “India”: The Colonial Imaginary in Early Modern Culture,
(California: Stanford UP, 2002), 172.
9. Although she emphasizes the composite character of the colonial identity, as I do, Ania
Loomba seems to discount the mercantile role of Armusia. She writes: “The Island Princess finds it curiously hard to employ the language of mercantilism for its hero, who is only briefly disguised as a merchant” (94-95). See “’Break her will, and bruise no bone sir’:
Colonial and Sexual mastery in Fletcher’s The Island Princess,” JEMCS 2.1 (2002), 94-05.
10. Raman reads the conflict as occurring between the Portuguese and the English. I find it hard to accept Raman’s contention that Armusia represents Francis Drake, who had landed 15 there. In The Sea Voyage which followed The Island Princess in 1622, Fletcher and
Massinger condemn privateering in no uncertain terms.
11. See Neill, 326.
12. Hayes writes that in March 1620, the Hollander’s forces “marched to Lantore, and tooke the Towne and fired it.” They forcibly took the Company’s merchandise and other goods.
The English defending the Company’s goods were “taken and stript to their skinnes, bound, beated, throwne over the Towne-wall.”See Purchas, vol.5, 133.
13. See for instance, E. M. Waith, The Pattern of Tragicomedy in Beaumont and Fletcher’s
Plays (New Haven: Yale UP, 1952) and A. C. Kirsch, Jacobean Dramatic Perspectives,
(Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 1972) pp. 40-43. The Island Princess had been entitled a
‘tragicomedy’ (2nd Folio, 1679) and is generally recognized as one. Massinger’s The
Renegado is also described as a tragicomedy.
14. According to Neill, the union between the erstwhile Portuguese rivals is becomes possible because despite their enmity in trade, their common Protestant identity made the English and the Dutch friends. But, the explanation becomes suspect, in view of the fact that the history of
Dutch-English rivalry in the Spice Islands scarcely contains instances of friendship and acceptance of each other. See Neill, 326).
15. See Valerie Forman, Tragicomic Redemptions: Global Economics and the Early Modern
English Stage (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2008), pp. 141-145.
16. Oxford English Dictionary.
17. See Loomba, 99-100.
18. I refer to Edward Said’s well-known concept of oppositional identities. Edward Said,
Orientalism ( 1978; New Delhi: Penguin, 2001)
19. Cited in Barbara Fuchs, (Mimesis and Empire: the New World, Islam, and European
Identities, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001), 123; John Smith in generall Historie of 16
Virginia, explains that many English became renegade pirates because they were disbanded and impoverished soldiers, some, erstwhile privateers, because they were slighted. See Fuchs,
123.
20. Fuchs writes: “Perhaps the most infamous of the English renegadoes’ achievements was the transfer of nautical technology to the Barbary pirates.” See Fuchs, 123-124. Stories of captivity narratives also support such accounts of renegades. John Rawlins’s “The Famous and Wonderful Recovery of a Ship of Bristol” shows how the Turks made use not only of renegades but also European slaves for navigating their ships, who rebelled when they got a chance. See Daniel J. Vitkus ed, Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption: Barbary Captivity
Narratives from Early Modern England (N. Y.: Columbia UP, 2001), 96-120.
21. Fuchs writes: “The English turn to piracy in the Mediterranean established a connection between England and Islam, the Satanic other of Christian Europe,” 122.
22. Grimaldi is a pirate by choice not because circumstances compel him. He is won by the splendor of Turkish magnificence.
23. Daniel Vitkus reads The Renegado as a “rewriting” of Daborne’s play, which reverses the tragic outcome of the later play. See ‘Turning Turk:’ English Theater and the Multicultural
Mediterranean, 1570-1630, Houndmills, Basingstroke: Palgrave, Macmillan, 2003, 161.
24. See the Introduction to The Renegado, ed. Michael Neill (London: Methuen, 2010), 38.
Neill writes: “It was perhaps the belief in the transformatory power of the sacrament that made the Roman Church, as Dunn notes, so much more ‘rigorous in proselytizing’ than its
Protestant rivals,” 38, note1. In this connection, we may note that plays like The Virgin
Martyr, The Maid of Honour also show Massinger’s Catholic leanings.
25. Vitkus argues along similar lines: “In the character and accomplishments of Francisco,
Massinger includes a highly sympathetic portrayal of a Jesuit priest. The play . . . encourages 17 the notion of Christendom’s cause against Islamic evils and temptations.,” Vitkus (2003),
160.
26. Vitkus and Nabil Matar caution against the use of Saidian paradigm to early modern representations of the Mediterranean. Vitkus, for instance, says “the bipolar model fails to account for the mobility, interactivity, and variety of identity positions that emerge in texts about cross-cultural encounters,” (Vitkus, 2003), 11.
27. Vitkus 2003, 159.