My current research investigates dramatic representations of Ottoman culture in early modern England. In particular, I examine those dramatists who situate their plays within an anti-crusading discourse. Fulke Greville’s Mustapha (1609), Thomas Goffe’s The Raging Turk (1631) and The Courageous Turk (1632), and Roger Boyle’s Mustapha (1665) discuss, in an interesting shift from their contemporaries, characters who seem to part from the traditional portrayal of Turks whose sexual incontinence parallels with political ambition and corruption aligned with Saidian Orientalism when applied to early modern drama.

In my previous blog post, I discussed how Goffe’s texts blur the distinction between the virtuous Christian and the villainous Muslim, evidenced through his unconventional portrayals of Amurath and, even to an extent, of Bajazet. I concluded that the Goffe texts may illuminate a new framework in which to view what being a ‘successful ruler’ means through promoting the establishment of peaceful English-Turkish relations under the rule of current monarch, James I. According to Öz Öktem (2019), James signed a peace agreement with Spain in 1604, which not only ended the Anglo-Spanish war that began in 1585 but also, as a consequence, inverted the amicable ties that former monarch Elizabeth I had previously formed between Protestant England and the Ottoman Empire. In making these connections, Goffe’s de-villifying of his Turks—aligned with historical narratives as opposed to dramatic tropes—may have prompted his early modern audience to consider the political turmoil that the restoration brought about in England, given that the country was more stable in a religious and political sense under the rule of Elizabeth.

However, to develop a sense of what the crusading agenda that the works of Goffe, Greville, and Boyle oppose, I also feel it is necessary to briefly discuss examples of early modern on-stage portrayals of Turks which explicitly advocate for crusading ideals.

The realisation that England had not published any significant literary works depicting a Christian hero who waged holy war upon the Muslims and conquered their lands may have inspired English writers to fill this void. During the first half of James I’s rule, several pageants, such as ‘London’s Love to the Royal Prince Henrie’ (produced May 1610 by Henry, Prince of Wales, Alfred, W. Pollard, and G. R. Redgrave) and ‘Heaven’s Blessings and Earth’s Joy’ (1613, directed by John Taylor), were staged to aid the celebration of royal affairs and contributed to fulfilling the anti-Muslim agenda. Through facilitating this religious agenda, these pageants also communicated “an international message to Britain’s friends and foes by exhibiting the power, wealth, and military might of the [English] monarchy”.^[1] For the focus of this blog, I will further explore the aspect of these pageants that depicted a fictionalised Christian triumph over the Turk who, in reality, was yet to be conquered.

‘London’s Love to the Royal Prince Henrie’ highlighted the conflict between the Turks and the English through the inclusion of religious language. Such language highlighted that the conflict was between virtuous Christian traders and evil Muslim pirates. In a wider context, this type of religious conflict, although enacted by men, could have been interpreted as a conflict between faiths by its English audience. The conflict staged in this pageant was a dispute over the lands of the Muslim (Ottoman Empire) and Christian (England) faiths respectively. The men participating in the conflict were defenders of the land of their belief. 

In this pageant, staged on the Thames, a “water-fight” between a “Turkish pirate” ship and a “Worthie Fleete of her Citizens” on board “two merchant’s shippes” was enacted.^[2] This fictional episode emphasised the strength of the heroic English merchants, who defeated the Turkish fleets. The Progresses, Processions, and Magnificent Festivities, of King James the First (1828) comments upon this episode, stating that “the merchants and men of war, after a long and well-fought skirmish, prooved too strong for the pirate, they spoyled bothe him and blew up the castle, ending the whole batterie with verie rare and admirable fire-workes, as also a worthie peale of chambers”.¹  However, the directors of these pageants appeared to ignore the increase in early seventeenth-century Moroccan and Algerian seizure of thousands of English ships, instead choosing to fabricate instances of heroic Christian conquest and the weakness of their opposers through an exhibition of Muslim dishonour.^[3] Thus, the pageants voiced hopes, rather than realities, for the defeat of the Turk at the hands of a united Christendom.

In reality, however, Anglo-Ottoman relations were known to have been much more civil than these pageants suggested. This can be evidenced, for example, through a collection of letters exchanged between James I and the Turkish Sultan Ahmad I from 1603-1624. Many of these letters allude to the fact that efforts were being made to maintain civil interactions, and to prevent (or at the least, to limit) the outbreak of conflict between English and Turkish merchants and travellers. One of these letters from James addressed to Ahmad in 1605 requested that the latter release adventurer, traveller, and politician, Thomas Sherley from a prison in Constantinople after he attacked the Greek-Turkish island of Zea in the February of 1602. According to E. Denison Ross, English diplomat “Mr. [Henry] Lello, writing to [the First Earl of Salisbury] Sir Robert Cecil from Constantinople on 26th February, 1602, expresses his opinion that Thomas [Sherley] and his men must have "used no friendly and lawful means" of procuring victuals from the islanders of Zea” in an impromptu attack on the island. In addition to Sherley’s anti-Turkish agenda, his brother Sir Anthony Sherley, had also previously “been engaged in stirring up the Christian powers against the Sultan” by serving the Shah of Persia, whom Ahmad had been in conflict with over a thirteen-year period (Ross, 1934, p. 209).

As a consequence of his attack on the island, Sherley was captured by Greek Turkish citizens of Zea and was detained on the island before being taken to Negropont approximately one month later and was further held captive from 20th March 1602 until 25th July 1605. After being detained at Negropont, Sherley was relocated to Constantinople, where he was held captive under the orders of Ahmad, prompting James to write to Ahmad in July 1605 requesting that Sherley “is our subject, and on that account ought to be given up to us, unless he deserved this punishment for some shameful crime; we are moved by their prayers, to entreat you again on his behalf; and by these letters solicit Your Majesty for his liberty to be effected”.^[4]

Despite the issues the Sherley brothers had attempted to cause for Ahmad and his nation, he still elected to release Thomas Sherley from prison on 6^th December 1605 upon James I’s request. Ahmad’s decision may have been testament to his willingness to preserve civil relations with England and possibly to prevent further unprovoked English attacks upon the Ottoman sphere in retaliation to his detainment of Sherley.

It appears that Thomas Sherley’s actions were more aligned with the stereotypically violent way in which Turks were often characterised on the early modern stage than those of Sultan Ahmad, with even James I stating in his letter to the Sultan that Sherley was an “unfortunate and miserable man” who had committed a “shameful crime”. This historical evidence of the blurring of the divide between seventeenth-century English expectations of Turkish versus English (mis)conduct seems to resonate with Goffe’s rendering of the moral code followed by Turks and by Christians as being somewhat ambiguous. As I continue with this research, I am further drawing upon this kind of supporting evidence when identifying and exploring how the emergence of a new Turkish type on stage in the works of Greville, Goffe, and Boyle reflects what can be identified as an anti-crusading rhetoric.

Image: Panorama of London (1616), available here

^[1]Matar, N. (1999). Turks. Moors, and Englishmen in the age of discovery. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 145.

^[2]Henry, Prince of Wales, Alfred, W. Pollard, and G. R. Redgrave in The Progresses, Processions, and Magnificent Festivities of King James the First, ed. by John Nichols, (Whitefish: Kessinger Publishing, 2008), p. 323.

^[3]Matar, N. (1999). Turks. Moors, and Englishmen in the age of discovery. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 145.

^[4] Denison Ross, E. (1934). A letter from James I to the Sultan Ahmad. London: Longmans, Green & Co. p. 1.