The presence of crusading rhetoric in seventeenth-century English drama coincides with a renewed interest in the medieval Crusades (1095-1291) as a historical context, very likely stemming from anxieties regarding an increase in opportunities for Christian countries to trade with non-Christian populations who possessed great wealth, unity, and religious-cultural influence. As claimed in seventeenth-century travelogues written by Henry Blount (1636) and William Lithgow (1640), these English anxieties were brought on by Christians’ recognition of Muslims’ excellence in agriculture and military rigour.

The emerging crusading rhetoric against Muslims, evident in political correspondence, travelogues, and dramatic works of the seventeenth-century reinforced a neat opposition between English audiences and the Other, now perceived as the violent and lustful Turk. However, anti-crusading discourse features in a small number of early modern plays, such as those written by Jacobean playwright, Thomas Goffe. Goffe, in his The Courageous Turk (1619) discusses, in a shift from his contemporaries, characters who seem to part from the traditional Orientalist portrayal of Turks whose sexual incontinence parallels with political corruption.

The Courageous Turk is a dramatization of the events that occurred within the Ottoman Empire under the reign of Emperor Amurath I (based upon Sultan Murad I, who reigned from 1362-1389). The plot sees Amurath infatuated with a captive woman from Greece—his concubine—named Eumorphe. His tutor, Lala Schahin, is convinced that Eumorphe will distract Amurath from his political duties and suggests that he murder her to avoid succumbing to lust, and thus, to political failure. Amurath, after much deliberation and feelings of guilt, kills Eumorphe. Goffe appears to portray his Amurath as an effective ruler because he removes the temptation of lust before he can engage in it. That is to say that Amurath prioritises rulership over romance and is successful in waging war against, and conquering, the Christians in the first Battle of Kosovo.

Slotkin emphasises that the “conflict between love and war, a trope derived from the romance and epic traditions” (Slotkin, 2009, p.5) often features in early modern drama, specifically when Turkish characters are present. He discusses how Knolles’s Generall Historie of the Turks (1603), which is widely understood to be a source text for Goffe’s Turk plays, also recounts the story of Irene’s (Eumorphe’s in Goffe) murder at the hands of Amurath. However, Knolles appears to frame Irene’s murder as an action carried out by the stereotypical violent, cold-blooded Turk who inflicts random acts of violence upon both his opponents and his fellow Turks alike, all without justification.

Goffe’s Amurath makes a declaration, during the first scene of the play, in which he vows not to indulge in any activity driven by lust: “Jove Ile outbrave thee! melt thy selfe in Lust…Ile not envie thee” (The Courageous Turk, 1.1.25-7). Here, a progression of the way English dramatists during the early modern period presented the Turk as a vilified trope becomes evident. From this point onwards, Amurath appears to be driven by the prospect of warfare as opposed to sexual passion, evidenced when he expresses (repeatedly) that his sole yearning is to slay, and to subsequently drink the blood of, his Christian opponents (The Courageous Turk, 3.2.44; 4.2.89). Although Goffe does not completely de-stereotype the Turk (granted his Turk protagonist still exhibits violent behaviour), his play becomes one of the first of the period to abandon the trope of the lustful Turk who is not able to be successful in romantic and military ventures simultaneously.

Such a notion may be concealed in Amurath’s concerns that his lusting for Eumorphe could result in fellow Ottomans viewing him, their leader, as “a Lusty, Lazy, wanton, Coward” (The Courageous Turk, 2.3.56) and rebelling against his political methods. In Schahin’s opinion, the relationship between Amurath and Eumorphe has merely been forged by “intemperate Lust” (The Courageous Turk, 2.4.4). Schahin further states that “Affections are good Servants: but if will / Make them once Master, theyle prove Tyrants still” (The Courageous Turk, 1.2.10). As in Knolles, the fact that Goffe’s Amurath follows Schahin’s advice (to kill Eumorphe and to focus on battle) is represented as having positive consequences for the Turks. This is because both writers’ versions of this Ottoman Sultan lead the Turks to victory in the first Battle of Kosovo. Amurath is only characterised as violent once he has renounced his lust and, so, is a political “model for admiration and imitation” because his army wins the holy battle they engage in, exhibiting what Linda McJannet argues are qualities that were admired by early modern Turks and Christians alike: “unity, martial excellence, and strict justice, qualities which they [Christians] sometimes felt were lacking in their own societies” (McJannet, 2006, p. 60).

The fact that Goffe’s portrayal of Amurath does not align with typical early modern representations of the demonised Turk is also evident when he talks of rinsing his hands with the blood of the Christian enemies he will fight in battle. When Amurath states that “Our furie's patient! now will I be a Turke” (The Courageous Turk, 3.2.9), he appears to view the adopting of such violence as a necessity in order to maintain his Turkish identity rather than choosing to adopt it because it is in his nature. As well as this, when Amurath is debating whether to stay with Eumorphe or whether to listen to Schahin and kill her so that he could enter battle, he worries that if he were to do the former, “The Christians now will scoffe at Mahomet; / Perchance they sent this wretch thus to inchant me!” (The Courageous Turk, 2.3.50-1). The demands of Turkish virtue (or what would have been considered, in the eyes of the English Christian, as Turkish vice) then, are in direct conflict with Christian virtue and are also in opposition to Amurath’s natural instincts (see Slotkin, 2009, p. 231).

Thus, The Courageous Turk functions as a framework to explore how theatre was not only a mirror to society but was also an agent in constructing a specific sense of reality. Goffe’s play, through his portrayal of Amurath, renders the moral code followed by Turks somewhat ambiguous. It not only shows a more positive portrayal of Muslim Turks but also demonstrates the progression of Christian morality. He illuminates how Christians can learn to tolerate the Other and recognise that Muslim Turks are not the stereotypical stock villain populating early modern English stages.

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Primary source

Goffe, T. (1932). The Courageous Turk. In: Carnegie, D. (ed) (1974). Couragious Turk and Raging Turk. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Secondary sources

Blount, H. (1636). A Voyage into the Levant. London: Andrew Cooke.

Knolles, R.I., The Generall Historie of the Turkes, from the First Beginning of that Nation to the Rising of the Othoman Familie with All the Notable Expeditions of the Christian Princes Against Them. Together with The Lives And Conquests of the Othoman, Kings and Emperours, Unto the Yeare 1610. Jslip.

Lithgow, W. (1640). Totall Discourse Rare Adventures & Painful Peregrinations and Painfull Peregrinations of Long nineteente Years Travayles from Scotland to the Most kingdoms in Europe, Asia and Affrica.

Image: Murad I from Wikipedia