Abstract/Summary

This thesis examines the early modern English theatre’s dramatization of Turks during the period 1581-1642. Although scholars have recently turned their attention to the playhouse’s interest in various others, the Ottoman presence has been almost entirely ignored; where critics have been alert to its presence they have tended to invoke the binary model of cultural and religious opposition underpinning western imperialism promoted by Edward Said. However, on both historical and theoretical grounds this approach is untenable for the early modern period. The thesis thus identifies an area in urgent need to reassessment. The aim of the study is two-fold: to establish the range of the ‘Turk narrative’ in the playhouse, and examine in detail how a selection of these plays may have worked in performance. It seeks to offer both a scholarly resource, providing a critical survey of scholarship to date and a survey of plays collated in appendices, and a series of close readings of individual texts to test the validity of conventional approaches and illustrate the argument proposed in the present study. Although scholars assume that representations of Turks in both non-dramatic and dramatic texts are always already negative, the playhouse’s role in establishing this Christian-Muslim binary opposition has not been subjected to critical examination. The study finds that plays and playgoers resist this imperative, and register England’s Protestant interest in pursuing commercial and diplomatic relations with the Ottoman Empire to counter Catholic Spain. Audiences attuned to the threat posed by Spain were presented with plays which by no means automatically activated anti-Turkish sentiment. By asking whether plays succeed in demonizing the Ottoman Empire the study finds that rather than conveniently endorsing the binary approach they register the historical re-evaluation and re-formation of attitudes to the Ottoman Empire in early modern England. [2000]