The Crescent on the Stage: Islam and Muslims in the Plays of two Elizabethan Dramatists

Abstract

This article investigates the convention of Elizabethan Orientalism vis-à-vis historical, political, and cultural context of the period. Anglo-Islamic contact during the age of discovery is at the heart of this study. Since Queen Elizabeth consolidated strong economic and diplomatic alliance with the Muslim empires of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, her subjects exhibited special interest in the Orient. Two chief dramatists of the age, Shakespeare and Marlowe, staged their plays saturated with Islamic themes and characters. This study capitalises on the negative image of the Orient in the works of these writers. It is further argued that Elizabethan (mis) representations of the Orient were fraught with ambiguities. It witnesses that the Orients were always depicted as barbaric and uncivilised, the antipode of civilised Europe. Shakespeare and Marlowe, in their portrayal of Muslim characters, deviated from real historical facts and depicted them in a very despicable manner. They also employed many pejorative appellations for these characters. For example, ethnic terms like ‘Turks’ and ‘Moors’ were used for Muslim characters. These writers synonymized black people with tyranny and lechery. I have tried to read their plays in their true historical background. While Queen Elizabeth was establishing favorable relationships with the mighty Ottomans and the kingdom of Morocco, her writers were demonizing and vilifying them. Most of the plays by Shakespeare and Marlowe translate Muslim characters on the stage as powerful and erotically alluring. It is also shown that these dramatists thrived on paradox and ambivalence.