The Sultan and the Queen

by Jerry Brotton

  27. John Aylmer to Lord Mayor of London, September 23, 1582, London Metropolitan Archive (LMA) COL/RMD/PA/01 f. 199r. For a discussion of the letter’s significance, see Matthew Dimmock, “Early Modern Travel, Conversion, and Languages of ‘Difference,’” Journeys 14, no. 2 (2013), pp. 10–26. I am grateful to Professor Dimmock for bringing this letter to my attention.

  28. CSPS, vol. 3, 1580–1586, no. 265, pp. 366–67.

  29. Alfred C. Wood, A History of the Levant Company (London: Oxford University Press, 1935), pp. 12–13.

  30. Susan A. Skilliter, William Harborne and the Trade with Turkey, 1578–1582: A Documentary Study of the First Anglo-Ottoman Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 183.

  31. Hakluyt, vol. 3, pp. 85–88.

  32. Quoted in Nabil Matar, “Elizabeth Through Moroccan Eyes,” in The Foreign Relations of Elizabeth I, ed. Charles Beem (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011), pp. 145–67; at p. 147.

  33. Castries, vol. 1, p. 391.

  34. CSPS, vol. 3, 1580–1586, no. 150, p. 199.

  35. Quoted in Willan, Studies in Elizabethan Foreign Trade, p. 167.

  36. Castries, vol. 1, pp. 413–16.

  37. Ibid., pp. 418–19.

  38. Ibid., p. 419.

  39. “Barton, Edward (1562/3–1598),” ODNB.

  40. Hakluyt, vol. 3, p. 109.

  41. CSPV, vol. 8, 1581–1591, no. 131, pp. 55–56.

  42. Bodleian Library MS. Landsdowne 57, f. 66r, Oxford.

  43. Hakluyt, vol. 3, p. 114.

  44. Quoted in H. G. Rawlinson, “The Embassy of William Harborne to Constantinople, 1583–88,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th series, vol. 5 (1922), pp. 1–27; at p. 8.

  45. CSPV, vol. 8, 1581–1591, nos. 126, 130, pp. 50–53.

  46. Ibid., no. 131, p. 56.

  47. CSPF, vol. 17, January–June 1583, addenda, May 12 and 23, 1583, no. 738.

  48. J. Horton Ryley, Ralph Fitch: England’s Pioneer to India and Burma (London: Unwin, 1899).

  49. Macbeth, 1.3.6.

  50. Castries, vol. 1, p. 459.

  51. Ibid., p. 460.

  52. Hakluyt, vol. 4, pp. 268–73.

  53. Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 146–47, 150.

  54. Ibid., p. 159.

  55. Colin Martin and Geoffrey Parker, The Spanish Armada (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1989), pp. 89–90.

  56. Letters of William Herle Project, Center for Editing Lives and Letters, www.livesandletters.ac.uk; transcript ID: HRL/002/PDF/325.

  57. Conyers Read, Mr. Secretary Walsingham and the Policy of Queen Elizabeth, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925), vol. 3, p. 226.

  58. Ibid., p. 228.

  59. Quoted in Arthur Leon Horniker, “William Harborne and the Beginning of Anglo-Turkish Diplomatic and Commercial Relations,” Journal of Modern History 14, no. 3 (1942), pp. 289–316; at p. 315.

  60. Castries, vol. 1, p. 545.

  61. Hakluyt, vol. 4, p. 274.

  62. Quoted in Mercedes García-Arenal, Ahmad al-Mansur: The Beginnings of Modern Morocco (Oxford: Oneworld, 2009), p. 115.

  63. Hakluyt, vol. 4, p. 274.

  64. Emily Gottreich, The Mellah of Marrakesh: Jewish and Muslim Space in Morocco’s Red City (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007).

  65. Nabil Matar, Islam in Britain, 1558–1685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 22–23.

  66. Carsten L. Wilke, The Marrakesh Dialogs: A Gospel Critique and Jewish Apology from the Spanish Renaissance (Leiden: Brill, 2014).

  67. Hakluyt, vol. 4, p. 274.

  68. Castries, vol. 1, pp. 480–83.

  69. Willan, Studies in Elizabethan Foreign Trade, pp. 253–55.

  70. Wood, Levant Company, p. 17.

  71. CSPV, vol. 8, 1581–1591, no. 336, p. 154.

  Chapter 6: Sultana Isabel

  1. Meredith Hanmer, D. of Diuinitie, The Baptizing of a Turke: a sermon preached at the Hospitall of Saint Katherin, adioyning vnto her Maiesties Towre the 2. of October 1586. at the baptizing of one Chinano a Turke, borne at Nigropontus (London: Robert Waldegrave, 1586).

  2. D. B. Quinn, Explorers and Colonies: America, 1500–1625 (London: Hambledon Press, 1990), pp. 198–204.

  3. APC, England, vol. 14, 1586–1587, p. 205.

  4. Bodleian Library MS. Tanner 77, f. 3v, Oxford.

  5. Hakluyt, vol. 3, p. 150.

  6. Nabil Matar, British Captives from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1563–1760 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 71–75; Daniel Vitkus, ed., Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).

  7. C. E. Bosworth, An Intrepid Scot: William Lithgow of Lanark’s Travels in the Ottoman Lands, North Africa and Central Europe, 1609–21 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), p. 115.

  8. Quoted in Gerald MacLean, Looking East: English Writing and the Ottoman Empire Before 1800 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007), ch. 3, n15.

  9. Hakluyt, vol. 3, p. 131.

  10. Edward Webbe, The Rare and Most Wonderfull Things Which Edward Webbe an Englishman Borne, Hath Seene and Passed in His Troublesome Travailes, in the Cities of Jerusalem, Damasko, Bethlehem and Galely: and in the Landes of Jewrie, Egypt, Grecia, Russia, and Prester John (London: William Wright, 1590).

  11. “Webbe, Edward (b. 1553/4),” ODNB.

  12. Bodleian Library MS. Tanner 77, f. 4r.

  13. Ibid.

  14. Quoted in Susan A. Skilliter, William Harborne and the Trade with Turkey, 1578–1582: A Documentary Study of the First Anglo-Ottoman Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 36.

  15. Bodleian Library MS. Tanner 77, f. 4r.

  16. Roger M. Savory, Iran Under the Safavids (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 72–75.

  17. Conyers Read, Mr. Secretary Walsingham and the Policy of Queen Elizabeth, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925), vol. 3, pp. 329–30.

  18. Ibid., p. 330.

  19. Quoted in Arthur Leon Horniker, “William Harborne and the Beginning of Anglo-Turkish Diplomatic and Commercial Relations,” Journal of Modern History 14, no. 3 (1942), pp. 289–316; at pp. 309–10.

  20. Bodleian Library MS. Tanner 77, ff. 4r–5r.

  21. Ibid., f. 4r.

  22. Quoted in H. G. Rawlinson, “The Embassy of William Harborne to Constantinople, 1583–88,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th series, vol. 5 (1922), pp. 1–27; at p. 15.

  23. CSPF, vol. 22, July–December 1588, pp. 97–110.

  24. Hakluyt, vol. 3, p. 368.

  25. Castries, vol. 1, p. 502.

  26. The description of these events is based on Gustav Ungerer, “Portia and the Prince of Morocco,” Shakespeare Studies 31 (2003), pp. 89–126; at pp. 97–98.

  27. Quoted in Nabil Matar, “Elizabeth Through Moroccan Eyes,” in The Foreign Relations of Elizabeth I, ed. Charles Beem (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011), pp. 145–67; at p. 150.

  28. Ibid., pp. 150–51.

  29. David Loades, Elizabeth I: A Life (London: Hambledon Press, 2003), p. 253.

  30. Matar, “Elizabeth Through Moroccan Eyes,” p. 150.

  31. Hakluyt, vol. 4, p. 275.

  32. Ibid.

  33. Quoted in Matar, “Elizabeth Through Moroccan Eyes,” p. 152.

  34. Hakluyt, vol. 4, p. 275.

  Chapter 7: London Turns Turk

  1. Castries, vol. 1, pp. 513–14.

  2. R. B. Wernham, “Elizabeth and the Portugal Expedition of 1589,” English Historical Review 66, no. 258 (1951), pp. 1–26.

  3. Castries, vol. 1, pp. 516–17.

  4. T. S. Willan, Studies in Elizabethan Foreign Trade (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959), pp. 229–32.

  5. Robert Wilson, The Three Ladies of London, Prolog, 1–2.

  6. Christoper
Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great, Part 1, Prolog, 1–8. All references to both parts of Tamburlaine the Great are taken from Christopher Marlowe: Doctor Faustus and Other Plays, ed. David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 1–68.

  7. C. H. Herford, Percy Simpson, and Evelyn Simpson, eds., Ben Jonson: The Complete Works, 11 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925–1963), vol. 8, p. 587.

  8. Thomas Nashe, “To the Gentlemen Students of Both Universities,” in Robert Greene, Greene’s Arcadia or Menaphon (London, 1589), sig. A2.

  9. Robert Greene, Perimedes the Black-Smith (London, 1588), sig. A3r. Buskins are boots often worn by actors.

  10. Marlowe, Tamburlaine, Part 1, 3.3.40–47.

  11. Ibid., 4.2.2.

  12. Ibid., 4.2.31–32.

  13. John Michael Archer, “Islam and Tamburlaine’s World Picture,” in A Companion to the Global Renaissance: English Literature and Culture in the Era of Expansion, ed. Jyotsna Singh (Oxford: Blackwell, 2009), pp. 67–81; at pp. 76–77.

  14. Marlowe, Tamburlaine, Part 2, 1.1.137–42.

  15. Ibid., 5.1.171–74.

  16. Ibid., 5.1.185–89.

  17. Ibid., 5.1.190–95.

  18. Ibid., 5.1.196, 198.

  19. Ibid., 5.3.42–53.

  20. David Riggs, “Marlowe’s Life,” in The Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe, ed. Patrick Cheney (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 24–40.

  21. Title page of the first edition of the two parts of Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great (London, 1590).

  22. George Peele, The Battle of Alcazar, 1. Prolog, 6–7, 16. All references to Peele’s play are taken from Charles Edelman, ed., Three Stukeley Plays (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), pp. 59–128.

  23. See “Moor, n.2.” OED.

  24. Leo Africanus, quoted in Jerry Brotton, “Moors,” in The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare, ed. Michael Dobson and Stanley Wells (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 304.

  25. Peele, Battle of Alcazar, 1.1.64–65.

  26. Ibid., 1.1.10–11.

  27. Ibid., 2.2.15–16.

  28. Ibid., 2.2.69–82.

  29. Emily C. Bartels, Speaking of the Moor: From Alcazar to Othello (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), pp. 21–44.

  30. George Peele, “A Farewell Entitled to the Famous and Fortunate Generals of Our English Forces,” in The Works of George Peele, ed. Alexander Dyce, 2 vols. (London: William Pickering, 1829), vol. 2, pp. 169–72: at p. 170. “Poo” is an archaic word for poll, or head.

  31. Wernham, “Elizabeth and the Portugal Expedition,” first part, pp. 19–23.

  32. Quoted in R. B. Wernham, “Elizabeth and the Portugal Expedition of 1589 (Continued),” English Historical Review 66, no. 259 (1951), pp. 194–218; at p. 207.

  33. Nabil Matar, Britain and Barbary, 1589–1689 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005), pp. 18–19; Mercedes García-Arenal, Ahmad al-Mansur: The Beginnings of Modern Morocco (Oxford: Oneworld, 2009), pp. 84–85.

  34. Castries, vol. 1, pp. 532–34.

  35. Ibid., pp. 537–38.

  36. Ibid., pp. 536–37.

  37. Matar, Britain and Barbary, p. 19.

  38. Quoted in Nabil Matar, “Elizabeth Through Moroccan Eyes,” in The Foreign Relations of Elizabeth I, ed. Charles Beem (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011), pp. 145–67; at p. 152.

  39. The Fugger Newsletter, Second Series: Being a Further Selection from the Fugger Papers Specially Referring to Queen Elizabeth and Matters Relating to England During the Years 1568–1605 (London: John Lane, 1926), p. 217.

  40. Quoted in García-Arenal, Ahmad al-Mansur, p. 105.

  41. Matar, “Elizabeth Through Moroccan Eyes,” p. 154.

  42. Peter Berek, “Tamburlaine’s Weak Sons: Imitation as Interpretation Before 1593,” Renaissance Drama 13 (1982), pp. 55–82; at p. 58.

  43. All references to Greene’s play are taken from Daniel Vitkus, ed., Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), pp. 55–148.

  44. Greene, Selimus, 10.16, 12.20, 2.98, 2.102, 2.105.

  45. Ibid., Conclusion, 5–6.

  46. Robert Greene, Alphonsus, King of Aragon, 3.3.1248, s.d. All references to this play are taken from W. W. Greg, ed., Alphonsus, King of Aragon, 1599 (Oxford: Malone Society, 1926).

  47. Ibid., 5.1.2077.

  48. Jonathan Gil Harris, Untimely Matter in the Time of Shakespeare (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), pp. 77–81.

  49. Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta, 1.1.37, 127. This and all subsequent references to the play are from Bevington and Rasmussen, Christopher Marlowe, pp. 247–322.

  50. Ibid., 2.3.216.

  51. Ibid., 5.5.83–85.

  52. Ibid., 2.3.175–81, 192–99.

  53. James Shapiro, Shakespeare and the Jews (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).

  54. Marlowe, The Jew of Malta, 1.1.19–24.

  55. Ibid., 1.1.37.

  56. Charles Nicholl, The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe (London: Jonathan Cape, 1992).

  Chapter 8: Mahomet’s Dove

  1. R. A. Foakes, ed., Henslowe’s Diary, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 16–18. On the exact sequence in which the three parts of Henry VI were written and with whom, see Gary Taylor, “Shakespeare and Others: The Authorship of Henry the Sixth, Part One,” Medieval and Renaissance Drama 7 (1995), pp. 145–205.

  2. James Bednarz, “Marlowe and the English Literary Scene,” in The Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe, ed. Patrick Cheney (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 90–105; Jonathan Bate, The Genius of Shakespeare (London: Picador, 1997), p. 108.

  3. Quoted in the introduction to Henry VI, Part 1, in The Oxford Shakespeare, ed. Michael Taylor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 2.

  4. Henry VI, Part I, 1.2.52–54.

  5. Ibid., 1.2.72, 84.

  6. Ibid., 1.2.140–45.

  7. Meredith Hanmer, D. of Diuinitie, The Baptizing of a Turke: a sermon preached at the Hospitall of Saint Katherin, adioyning vnto her Maiesties Towre the 2. of October 1586. at the baptizing of one Chinano a Turke, borne at Nigropontus (London: Robert Waldegrave, 1586), p. 9.

  8. Sir Walter Raleigh, The History of the World, 6 vols. (Edinburgh, 1820), vol. 2, p. 170.

  9. Thomas Nashe, “The Terrors of the Night, or a Discourse of Apparitions,” in The Unfortunate Traveler and Other Works, ed. J. B. Steane (London: Penguin, 1972), p. 214.

  10. Wallace T. MacCaffery, Elizabeth I: War and Politics 1558–1603 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 137–83; Chris Fitter, “Emergent Shakespeare and the Politics of Protest: 2 Henry VI in Historical Contexts,” English Literary History 72, no. 1 (2005), pp. 129–58.

  11. Quoted in Matthew Dimmock, New Turkes: Dramatizing Islam and the Ottoman Empire in Early Modern England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), p. 163.

  12. “Barton, Edward (1562/3–1598),” ODNB; De Lamar Jensen, “The Ottoman Turks in Sixteenth Century French Diplomacy,” Sixteenth Century Journal 16, no. 4 (1985), pp. 451–70; at p. 468.

  13. Quoted in Nancy Lyman Roelker, One King, One Faith: The Parlement of Paris and the Religious Reformations of the Sixteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), p. 412.

  14. Quoted in MacCaffery, Elizabeth I, p. 178.

  15. Richard Verstegen, A Declaration of the True Causes of the Great Troubles, Presupposed to be Intended against the Realm of England (Antwerp, 1592), p. 48.

  16. Ibid., pp. 48–49.

  17. Francis Bacon, “Certain Observations made upon a Libel Published this Present Year, 1592,” in The Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon, ed. James Spedding, 7 vols. (London, 1861–1874), vol. 1, pp. 146–208; at p. 204. />
  18. CSPD, vol. 3, 1591–1594, no. 79, April 27, 1594.

  19. Hakluyt, vol. 4, p. 8.

  20. Leslie P. Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 224–28; Susan Skilliter, “Three Letters from the Ottoman ‘Sultana’ Safiye to Queen Elizabeth I,” in Documents from Islamic Chanceries, ed. S. M. Stern (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), pp. 119–57.

  21. Quoted in Skilliter, “Three Letters,” pp. 131–32.

  22. Arthur Golding, trans., The xv bookes of P. Ovidius Naso, entytuled Metamorphosis (London, 1567), sig. B1.

  23. Titus Andronicus, 3.1. s.d.

  24. Ibid., 2.4.12.

  25. Ibid., 3.1.184.

  26. T. S. Eliot, “Seneca in Elizabethan Translation,” in Selected Essays, 1917–1932 (London: Faber & Faber, 1932), pp. 65–105.

  27. Quoted in Dominic Shellard, Kenneth Tynan: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 137.

  28. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/12/theater-blood-gore-titus-andronicus.

  29. Titus Andronicus, 4.2.65.

  30. Ibid., 5.1.63–64.

  31. Ibid., 4.2.91.

  32. Ibid., 5.3.178.

  33. For the case that Peele wrote much of the play’s first act and three other scenes, see Brian Vickers, Shakespeare, Co-Author: A Historical Study of Five Collaborative Plays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 148–243. Vickers argues that the preponderance of alliteration and polysyllabic words suggests Peele had a hand in writing the first act and some of the later scenes.

  34. Titus Andronicus, 5.3.120.

  35. Ibid., 2.3.34–36.

  36. Ibid., 3.1.203–4.

  37. Ibid., 5.1.124–44.

  38. Ibid., 5.3.184–89.

  39. Ibid., 5.1.21.

  40. Ibid., 5.1.68, 71.

  41. Ibid., 5.1.73–83.

  42. Castries, vol. 2, pp. 89–90.

  43. R. B. Wernham, The Return of the Armadas: The Last Years of the Elizabethan War Against Spain, 1595–1603 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 91–113; Edward Tenace, “A Strategy of Reaction: The Armadas of 1596 and 1597 and the Spanish Struggle for European Hegemony,” English Historical Review 118, no. 478 (2003), pp. 855–82; Paul E. J. Hammer, “Myth-making: Politics, Propaganda and the Capture of Cadiz in 1596,” Historical Journal 40, no. 3 (1997), pp. 621–42.